$20.32

Craig and I have a mason jar that sits on our bookshelf in our new multipurpose room (aka "the quiet room"). It once was a jelly jar, but the chameleon-like contents filled their previous space and needed a new jar. The contents have filled two-thirds of the mason jar and we hope to graduate to a larger jar soon. Time shall tell if our new neighborhood will bring more rewards.

Occasionally I take the jar off the shelf and pour the contents onto the table. I began collecting found money on June 28, 2010. Craig joined me in the search a few months into the endeavor. The three of us just celebrated our 3 year anniversary. After 3 years, I'm proud to announce that the collection we affectionately call our retirement fund officially surpassed the $20 mark. I know people who have found $20 and even $50 in just one lucky moment (our biggest finds have been several quarters in one spot and a single dollar bill). I hope to someday add such a remarkable find to our jar, but for now our small findings here and there have been thrilling. It's a great day when one of us comes home and gets to show off our findings. A text from Craig once stated, "Regarding finding lost coins, today I’ve hit for the cycle." The coworker who stood nearby when I read this message didn't even understand the reference, let alone share in my joy of the news. I guess this is our own special challenge.

We've worked hard for our annual earnings of six dollars and seventy-seven cents. We're the only people I know who will bend down to pick up a mere penny, but it's worth it to us. I'll take it one step further. We're the only people I know who have back-tracked to where a penny was spotted earlier so that we could pick it out of the tar. Craig has been known to get off his bike during a work-commute to pick up a coin in the intersection. I've waited until the end of the line getting on a bus so I could pick up the nickel that I just noticed on the curb. Once on the bus, I've casually switched seats to snag the dime stuck in a corner. Craig consistently found coins in the gym locker room. I find money on runs. Many of our evening walks or strolls to the store have included a find.

Some coins have waited quite some time to be found and require examination before we can decide what type of coin we've acquired.

Some coins had only recently lost their previous owner.

But all of them have some hidden story. We keep all our stories and adventures in our mason jar on the bookshelf. Someday we will retire with our earnings and our memories.

Happy New Month!

In a previous job, I had a coworker who was a New Year's resolution fanatic. Every January for as long as I knew her, she resolved to stop smoking, stop drinking, eat healthier, and exercise more. Not only did she resolve to make these changes, but she stuck with them. Until February.

I'm no stranger to this goal-setting strategy. It feels so good to make such large changes all it once, but, for most people, it rarely sticks. So, in 2012, I started my own little alternative to New Year's Day and instead started New Month's resolutions.

My first goal was to treat my nails and cuticles a bit nicer. This has been a goal of mine for over a decade. I've put bandages on 2 fingers at a time so that they'd be less tempting to pick at until they healed. I've given up 2 fingers at a time. In college I had friends nag me every time I picked. This was the least successful. I ended up just getting angry with one friend and told her she'd better stop for the sake of our friendship. It's a habit that drove Craig nuts. He even warned me, before I met his parents for the first time, that his mother worked in HR and used the appearance of applicants' nails as an indicator of how well they took care of themselves. This warning inevitably made me more nervous about the upcoming meeting and you can guess what that nervousness led to (don't worry, the first meeting went fabulously. I am among the proud few who get to say her in-laws are wonderful). I've failed so many times at this goal, but still gave it another shot. This time around, I went for the preventative care. By admitting to myself I simply do not have self control in this area, I could better prepare myself and prevent the future failures. I bought extra nail clippers, cuticle cutters, and cuticle creams. I had these tools everywhere: near the computer, next to the bed, in the car, in a backpack, and at school. I gave myself no excuse for messing with my fingers instead of using my tools. Usually I keep a chart of some sort when I want to track a goal, but I figured I could track this one based on the appearance of my nails.

Over a year later, my nails are far from perfect. I still pick at them here and there. My thumbs are still funky looking. They break all the time. But, thanks to some patience and some hard work from a friend, my nails improved significantly and got to look like this on my wedding day:

PS - This month's goal is to blog more. I aim to post 5 blogs this month. Hope to see you soon.

Half Marathon

As far as I can recall, I've never trained well for the race for which I've focused my training. Instead, my training for my goal race tends to help me with another race. When training for my April marathon in 2009, I set a PR for a half marathon in February. A half marathon feels easy when you're trained for a marathon. A half marathon does not feel easy when you're trained (or under-trained) for a half marathon. This fall, I did some training for a January half marathon. Along the way, I set a new 5k PR. But, as with previous races, I was not well-trained for the January half marathon.

I started training for the half to help a couple of co-workers get in regular runs. They planned to do the half marathon, but I was still recovering from my everlasting knee injuries. I decided to take it week by week and if I felt I was ready, I'd run. By December I concluded I could survive a half marathon and mentally prepared myself for the event. I knew that I was under-trained and recovering from injuries. Still, I couldn't help but give myself a time goal. And then I got the flu a week before the race. And then the flu led to bronchitis.

So, I ran the half marathon under-trained with remnants of the flu, with a lovely bronchitis cough, with a time goal. Luckily, running under-trained with a time goal squashed out the flu and bronchitis. While staying focused on just keeping my legs moving at a reasonable pace, I completely forgot about my illness until mile 11. I had slowed down, which apparently gave my body enough energy to start coughing again. I sped up as soon as I was able. Another thing about running in such conditions is that I found it difficult to focus on my surroundings. My primary thoughts were on my pace, my stride, my knees, and the next water stop.

My tunnel vision paid off and I met my time goal. After the race, I met up with many of my runner friends, including runner friend Andy. Andy is a fantastic person to run with because he tells fantastic stories in a fantastic British accent. He's run all 10 PF Chang's half marathons. I knew he was running and I knew we occasionally ran the same pace. Here's a photo of the two of us after the run.

We chatted about our performance and shared our approximate finishing times. His time was approximately 1:53 and my time was approximately 1:54. Gosh, I said, we must have been right near each other at some points! He started in a different wave, so his race began about 90 seconds after mine. Still, I felt certain that we must have crossed paths along the race. As soon as I got home and to my computer, I looked up the results.

Andrew

 Half Marathon

Point	Time	Time of Day	Pace
START	00:00:00	7:53:27 am	--
5K	00:25:42	8:19:09 am	08:17
10K	00:51:46	8:45:12 am	08:24
10M	01:25:21	9:18:47 am	08:53
FINISH	01:53:34	9:47:01 am	09:05
		Avg. Pace	08:40

Laura

#2040, Half Marathon

Point	Time	Time of Day	Pace
START	00:00:00	7:51:59 am	--
5K	00:25:23	8:17:22 am	08:11
10K	00:52:19	8:44:18 am	08:41
10M	01:26:43	9:18:42 am	09:06
FINISH	01:54:53	9:46:52 am	09:04
		Avg. Pace	08:46

                                 
















Sure enough (if you note the "Time of Day" columns), we ran quite close to each other for most of the race. Though he started later than I, he slowly gained ground and finished just 9 seconds later than I did. At the 10 mile mark, he was a mere 5 seconds behind me. It seemed that we must have been running side by side for at least 3 miles. How could he not have noticed me? I decided that it was quite a large race and we could have been nearby but still had dozens of people between us. Maybe we weren't as close as it seemed.



So, when the pictures were posted, I took a look.

Well, what do you know. I was more oblivious than I realized.

Untitled

Since I'm sure many of you are sad to see that Craig did not update his blog for his Monday night post, I've decided to say hello. Craig left for Houston to spend Thanksgiving with his family. I spend so much time with Craig that we inevitably share many of the minor events of life with each other. It's funny how quickly I missed sharing these little things with him. Within hours of his departure, I wanted to text him, but I refrained. Instead, I started a list of the little things that I would have shared with him immediately if he had been around .
1. We keep our door open most evenings so the cats can roam around or hang out with neighbor-Rick. Yesterday evening, as I sat near the front door on my computer, I had an uninvited guest. A young-looking white cat strolled through the door without a care in the world. He/she headed over to drink from the cats' water dish. I happened to have my camera handy to take a picture, but my sudden movement scared it away. Too bad.

2. I was paying too much attention to the wedding date that Craig and I set. I then decided to find its prime factorization. After I failed at finding factors below 30, I turned to Google, asking "Is 33013 a prime number?". I discovered a great website in the process. Turns out, it is!

That's about as exciting as life gets here in apartment 204. However, I'm sure I would have shared that a staff member told me about her experience with a student while I was at a conference on Friday. "You're working me like Ms. Matera!" he exclaimed. This is quite the compliment, for a teacher.

The End.

Forgot

As most of you do, I lead a busy life and inevitably forget things along the way. Anyone who knows me well, knows I love lists and charts. Over the years I have made exercise charts, food charts, medicine charts, flossing charts, and sneezing charts. I make to-do lists, packing lists, and goal lists. While there are very few things I've forgotten on a number of occasions, there are many things I've forgotten at least once. I forgot to wear my glasses, I forgot to take my cell phone home from work, I forgot to go to a meeting. I forgot to set my alarm for running club, I forgot to take a dose of medicine, I forgot to feed the cats. I forgot a friend's birthday, I forgot to pay the rent on time, I forgot to pack my toothbrush.  There are simply so many things to remember that I can't remember all of them everyday.

Today I get to add a new item to my "I Forgot" list. One hour after arriving home from work, I remembered that I forgot to take my car home with me.

Home Sick

I awoke to my alarm just before 6:30. I should have set it for later. I wasn't ready to wake up. I called in sick today, but I still had an 8 am meeting. As Craig noticed as he got ready for his way-too-early morning bike ride, I was up at 4 am for the second day in a row. Both nights I woke at 2. Since I had the freedom to use my lamp, I stayed in bed and avoided the temptation of the late night DVD player/internet usage and opted for magazine reading and crossword puzzles. This didn't help me fall asleep any quicker. While wasting time before leaving for work, I saw that the Hunger Games has arrived at the library. What a perfect day for a book to come for me!

I left for work at 7:30. I arrived early to the meeting and sat with psych Julie and speech Jason. Julie noted that I had something on my shirt. I looked down and shared that it was most certainly a booger. At least people couldn't doubt that I was sick. The parent didn't show up, so I didn't accomplish anything other than learning that our new special ed teacher is 24. He is fresh out of college, but worked on a naval base while he decided what he wanted to do. I drove, so I was able to leave right away. I passed co-worker Tana on my way out, and she handed me a bag of the complete Hunger Games series. She asked, "You're the type of person who returns books, right?" I said that I generally get books from the library, so yes I am (I didn't mention that I usually renew them for a year first). She promised she wouldn't charge me 10 cents a day (didn't there used to be a cents sign on a basic keyboard? I can't find it). I looked at the books. They look like she hasn't even opened them. They're hardcover. I'm nervous about reading them.

I decided to stop at the kickboxing place to place the hold on my account. The people there said I could only do that through Scott. When I called on Sunday, they just said I had to fill out a form. They didn't specify that only one person could give me that form. The guy I talked to was new (it was his second day), but I stated that this is the reason why I want to put my account on hold. I hear something different depending on who I talk to, that the staff has been inconsistent and unreliable. He explained that they're going through a "restructuring" and they're "almost there". I said, that's fine, but I joined in January and they've been doing that since then. I'm glad to hear they're almost there, but I don't feel like paying money in the meantime. So I left, feeling frustrated. 

I had parked on the west side of the road to avoid having to make 2 lefts (one into the kickboxing and one when leaving).  On my way to work, I was thinking about going to a diner. I've been craving diner coffee. Over the past few years, I've realized that I have a preference when it comes to coffee.  I am not even close to a habitual coffee drinker, and I have no clue what makes good coffee. All I know is that I generally enjoy plain coffee at diners. I do not enjoy coffee from gas stations, Starbucks (unless it's a calorie-filled mocha), or my school cafeteria. So, I decided to try out Crazy Otto's Diner, which is next to where I had parked my car. They have a sign on the window that says they are a Guiness Book of World Record's holder for the largest Spanish Omelet. According to the menu, they obtained this record through a Cali location. They also had a sign that said I could get an egg, hash browns, and toast for $3.99. So I went. I ordered coffee and water and the aforementioned meal. I read the first chapter of the Hunger Games, very, very carefully. The chapter was good and so was the meal and so was the coffee. It was nice to relax. Crazy Otto's appears to be a place that has lots of people show up by themselves (2 others came solo in the time I was there) and also a place for regulars. Though it is a chain, it has the feel of being a local diner.

And now I am home ready to rest and recover from this cold.  I found a penny outside nearby neighbor Mark and unnamed girl's apartment.

April 23rd

In 2009 I applied for the NYC marathon lottery. I did not get accepted.

In 2010 I applied for the NYC marathon lottery. I did not get accepted.

In 2011 I applied for the NYC marathon lottery. I did not get accepted.

In 2012, I earned guaranteed entry after being denied 3 previous years. I must register by April 23rd to secure this guaranteed entry.

Due to injury, I took 6 months off from running. Only recently have I returned. I can run 4 miles without any knee pain.

The question is: will Laura practice enough self-control and common sense to resist this year's guaranteed entry or will she succumb to the temptation of something she's been waiting for for nearly half a decade?