Category Archives: Fat

Just A List of Ten Thoughts

Posted on 11 August 2010 | 6 comments

Today I am sitting in Starbucks having just completed some work on my dissertation, and I have a few (about ten) random thoughts:

  1. Writing a dissertation is nothing like training for a marathon. When you train for a marathon, if you have a bad training run, no one knows but you and the handful of people you share that with. When you are writing a dissertation, you can’t hide your lack of work or your foolishly naĂŻve thoughts. Your dissertation director, at least, will always know.
  2. Writing a dissertation is exactly like training for a marathon. Both endeavors are a hell of a lot of work that culminates in one final product, and neither product is really understood by anyone who hasn’t done one. The marathon fills your physical need for challenge and excitement. The dissertation fills your mental need for the same. Neither one is comfortable, and neither one is a known commodity the first time around. Hopefully, there will not be a second time around for the dissertation.
  3. Getting things right with God is a hard job, like training for a marathon or writing a dissertation. No matter how many times I try to regroup and refocus my life with Christ, I find that I can never get it right. It’s a long, constant road to growth. And, for some reason, I keep being prodded to reconsider my career choices. It’s a strange feeling that I can’t quite interpret. I don’t know what God wants me to do anymore, possibly because I have been so focused on what I think I want to do. Should I simply have stayed at Grace? I don’t like to second guess my choices, but I have been spending a great deal of time lately doing just that.
  4. Waiting to put together your classroom because people are painting it right before school starts is a test of patience. Yeah. I think this is self-explanatory. Even though Lisa put the work order in last spring, the painters will be there through the weekend. I am a little panicked, but I know this whole Burris thing will be an exercise in my obedience to God and in my ability to give grace.
  5. Re-learning not to say bad things is a challenge. I recognize that I spend a great deal of my time talking about people and things. I don’t like it when people talk about me. I never used to talk about people. Jaymes wrote in my yearbook before we began dating, “You never say anything bad. How do you do it?” I think I did it because I was so in love with Jesus that I didn’t see any value in getting ahead in this world. How to get back there is the big question. At any rate, I need to stop running my mouth. I am working on it.
  6. Just because you have a few bad runs and you feel like you are gaining weight instead of losing it, that’s no reason to give up running. It probably does indicate that you should start swimming, too, just so that all your eggs aren’t in one basket.
  7. I like music. All kinds, except what Kellie plays, and especially old school Jennifer Knapp.
  8. I don’t think studying in coffee shops could ever be overrated. In fact, when I get the opportunity next summer, I plan to spend great deals of time in coffee shops reading, writing, and dissertating. I might be the person who talks with everyone and annoys the other patrons.
  9. I love being vegan and trying to eat healthy food that I make in my own kitchen. I could really live the rest of my life without ever going out. I’m a good cook. And humble. 🙂 Also, I can’t wait to eat a peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat each day for lunch at school. Eating PBJ makes me feel like a kid again. Young and carefree. I haven’t dealt well with growing up and becoming responsible.
  10. The hot weather makes me happy, but what makes me happier is a good thunderstorm. Thanks, God, for this morning’s amazing show.

6 Comments

Posted in Coffee, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Grace, PBJ, Reading, Religion, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Vacation and the Rest of Summer

Posted on 1 July 2010 | 2 comments

I just learned that I start teaching at Burris on August 18th, which means I have approximately six and half weeks (not counting the week I will be gone to Nebraska and Minnesota) left to accomplish all of this:

  • finish painting the outside of the house (the floor will wait until next summer)
  • finish a chapter of my dissertation (or at least get a really good start on it)
  • work 20 hours each week in the IEI
  • start training for the marathon in November (once school starts add lifting weights and swimming)
  • go through all of the Write On! Featherweight stuff and get it together
  • plan for the entire school year next year (two seventh-grade, two eighth-grade, and one tenth-grade year curriculum plans)
  • play some disc golf, basketball, and possibly soccer (can someone teach me to play soccer?

Here is how I plan to accomplish all of it:

  • House painting—WEEKENDS
  • Dissertation—AFTERNOONS
  • IEI—MORNINGS
  • Running—EARLY MORNING before dog walking, must get up by 6
  • Write On! and Planning for School—EVENINGS
  • Disc Golf, etc.—IN BETWEENS

I am sure there is something I am forgetting. I am not sure I can accomplish all of this in 6 weeks. Say some prayers, breathe some for me.

*

My family (Dad, Mom, Adam, and I) just got back from vacation in Cincinnati. Cincannati is like dissecting owl pellets: you have to wait through the disgusting stuff to find the gems inside it. The majority of the city of Cincinnati, not the suburbs or the outskirts, looks like the worst neighborhood of most other big cities. We wanted to walk to Findlay Market, but the shuttle driver at our hotel said he’d better drive us because the neighborhood was so bad. I agree. Usually, I am unmoved by deteriorating neighborhoods. I am not afraid of loitering people, or run-down buildings, but this area of Cincy was more than just derelict. People had looks in their eyes that were so down-trodden, so forlorn, that I was afraid of them. They looked the way Cormac McCarthy describes people in The Road. That desperate. That carnal. While we were there, each morning the news reported several shootings within a couple of miles of the hotel. My dad couldn’t sleep because of all the sirens, and there were literally 50 or so homeless people sleeping on the grounds of the library across the street.

However, much like other big cities, if we stayed South of our hotel, toward the Great American Ball Park, there were no worries. In fact, there were multiple tourist attractions and affluent shopping malls, complete with Brazilian steakhouses and upscale clothing stores. I wish I could rest one day from thinking about culture. I wish the injustices and inequalities weren’t so blatant to me. Sometimes I just want to go back to not recognizing the painfully obvious way our society is stratified. I can’t though, so my heart hurts. I have a hard time having fun, but I have a hard time identifying how I can do anything to help a system so big and so broken. One of my constant prayers is for God to show me my role in helping to fix our very broken world.

*

Also, I found this amazing graphic to help me plan meals while I am training.

The only hard part about this pyramid is drinking enough water. Our water tastes pretty gross, and even though I know algae isn’t bad for me, I still don’t want to drink water that tastes like organic matter. Ew.

*

Food: banana, juice, sweet potato waffles with strawberries, blueberries, and a touch of syrup, carrots, cherries, tortilla with faux peanut butter and strawberry jalapeno jelly, a few Thai chips, chocolate soy milk, salad, guacamole and salsa and chips, cauliflower, blackberries, peach, veggie burger with bread,

Exercise: walked the dogs,

2 Comments

Posted in Disc golf, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, IEI, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

It’s a Muddy Mess.

Posted on 26 June 2010 | 1 comment

The tag line for the race my brother and I ran today is “It’s a mucking good time.” Sometimes tag lines match the event they’re publicizing and sometimes not. In this case, the motto matched clear up until we were waiting in line to get rinsed off. We were covered in muck that smelled a bit like pig shit, and then had to wait almost two hours for the Anderson Fire Department to hose us off. For some reason, when our group of four (Adam, Zack, Heather, a woman I met in the race, and I) got up to be hosed off, this peach-shirt-clad jack ass took over the hose because he didn’t think things were going fast enough. Instead of leaving the hose on stream, he opened it so it sprayed. We were still filthy when he declared, “That’s it. You’re finished. Get out.” Yeah, right. I am not getting in my car like this, even if I do have clean clothes to change into. I can’t even change into clean clothes because I don’t want to ruin two sets of clothes with pig-shit-mud! Seriously. I am hoping they ask for comments, because I have a comment. Get rid of Mr. Peach-Pink, Salmon Shirt, and figure out the post-race stuff!

Post race is just as important as the rest of it, which was absolutely fantastic. One of the best times I have had in a long time, aside from the fact that I look like I’m packing a kid’s swim float ring under my muddy shirt in the picture below. Awesome.

Okay, make that two swim float rings, situated one on top of the other. Doubly awesome. I have to say that for a fat, old kid, I hoisted myself over those obstacles with reckless abandon, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I wish I could do the one in Chicago in July, but I will be on my way to Nebraska!

On the way home from the race, we stopped at Hacienda in Anderson. Every time I eat there I get seriously bloated and tired, so I think they must put lard/animal fat in their beans and rice. And, I ordered my taco salad with no cheese, but it came with a huge dollop of sour cream. Tasty, but decidedly non-vegan. Their chips and salsa are probably the best I have ever had. I also had an new beer: Bohemia. I thought it was an excellent beer for a Mexican beer, but the beer advocate folks only give it a B-. Compared to all beer, I agree, but compared to Mexican beers only, I cannot support the B- grade. This beer blows out of the water every other Mexican beer I’ve had, which is most of them. My grandparents used to live 10-ish miles from Mexico in Harlingen, TX, so for my 21st birthday or maybe just for a birthday, my cousin Paula and I drank a variety of Mexican beers and drove our grandmother’s golf cart until the battery ran out. Grandma kept saying, “Don’t go too fast. You’ll get a speeding ticket.” We had to push the thing home.

*

I need to work on my dissertation and the stuff for the IEI. One will wait until after family vacation, the second will be done tomorrow and emailed before I leave on Monday. I just have to finish revising the assessments I have written, get the okay, and write the other two versions of each one. I am really enjoying the challenge of all of it.

For vacation, we are going to Cincinnati. It will be the first time we have been to the Great American Ball Park, and I am pretty stoked. They have veggie dogs. 🙂 We are stopping on the way in Dayton, OH, to eat breakfast at the Golden Nugget. I hope my dad orders the buckwheat pancakes, because he will love them! He has a thing for buckwheat. And, we are going on a Riverboat cruise, to Jungle Jim’s, and to the Cincinnati Zoo. I hate zoos, but I can tolerate it to spend time with the family doing other things we love. I am hoping to get in a couple of good morning runs while we are there, too. Marathon training officially begins on Tuesday! Woot.

On a totally unrelated note, I found a new writer/spiritual contemplative to think about. Her name is Pema Chodron, and I got turned on to her because of this quote: “If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” I could use more advice like this. And then, it would help if I took it to heart.

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Food: banana x 2, bagel with faux-peanut butter, juice, chocolate soy milk, chips and salsa, taco salad, beer, popcorn, slushie

Exercise: mudathlon, bike ride to slushie place, dog walking (1 mile)

1 Comment

Posted in Beer, Fat, Goals, IEI, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan

Blah. And some more blah.

Posted on 17 June 2010 | 2 comments

I need to start writing here consistently, and I need to finish the two book reviews that I started when I was in Florida. I need to paint the house. I need to finish the floors. I need to plan for next years’ classes. I need to work on my dissertation and meet with Debbie tomorrow. I need to spend time running. I need to write my presentation for the PCA conference in October. I need to revise a couple of essays and send them out to try to get them published. I need to give time to my friends and family. It’s slightly overwhelming, and all of this in a summer that I thought might be relaxed. I need to not be so overwhelmed by all of my activities, commitments, and self-assigned bullshit.

But, first, I need to finish these end of course assessments for the IEI at Ball State, which is where I have a summer assistantship.I am having a hard time getting motivated because it’s a bit intimidating to make assessments for courses you’ve never taught and probably never will teach, though I’d love to teach in the IEI. I think it would be very satisfying. As for my summer work, it’s different. It’s challenging. It’s fulfilling.

It’s different because I have never considered how to teach a language in a very short amount of time to someone who doesn’t speak it, much less if that person is beginning college or graduate school, which I think are very different considerations. I am not sure that it is as important to teach a graduate student how to keep a daily planner as it is to teach the same skill to a 19-year-old college freshman. All college freshman should have to take a study skills class, regardless of their ability to speak English or not.

It’s challenging because I have some very definite ideas about what students should know when they enter an English 103 or 104 classroom, and my ideas don’t necessarily jive with what the IEI instructors can accomplish in their seven or eight courses, which I believe are taught in seven weeks each. I could be wrong. Anyway, the classes go from fundamental (or survival) through communicative to academic. My task for this week is to design reading assessments for each course to test the learning outcomes for each class. This task is challenging when I have only learning outcomes, and no real grasp on or feel for the students. I said today when I was talking to the director of the IEI that this is challenging for me because I view language acquisition to be a much more organic process than academia views it to be. Think about how you learned language. Did you ever take an end of course assessment? Probably not, but then again, you weren’t trying to acquire a language in a few short months; you had years to do it.

Finally, it’s fulfilling because the end result is that people are equipped with one more skill that will make their lives in the US a little easier. I can imagine nothing more intimidating than being in a new culture without having command of the language of that culture. I by no means believe that all Americans should be required to speak English; we are far too diverse of a culture to require that. I do, however, believe that going to school at an American institution requires that you be able to speak, read, listen to, and write the predominant language of that institution and to be able to do it well. Particularly, the humanities require this. I am still trying to decide if getting a science, math, or another non-language-intensive degree should require a command of English, since we are in the US (I suppose the predominant language at some American universities is Spanish, Portuguese, or French?). I am leaning toward no, but it’s up for debate. At any rate, this summer work is fulfilling, too, because it’s forcing me to have to reconsider all those things I think about language. And, I am learning new things every day. Very good.

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I am at a point where I just want to lose weight, which makes me a very bad fat studies scholar. I love food too much. I love good healthy vegan cooking way too much. I could seriously eat all day long, but then I’d have to run all day long. And my foot’s been really funky, so I haven’t run at all, only walked. And not much.

*

I want to write a list poem about freedom, or imprisonment as outlined in Sarah’s post. I just need time.

2 Comments

Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Food, IEI, Pedagogy, Reading, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Sunday, June 13

Posted on 8 June 2010 | 3 comments

Sunday, June 13 will mark one year of taking life seriously. It will be one year ago on Saturday, June 13 that I weighed myself when I got home from family vacation and decided it was time to do something about my lifestyle. I think the weight, a magical 256.4 pounds on my brother’s bathroom scale, was just the quantitative evidence of the feelings I had been having for quite some time. I have never been one to gauge my health or my happiness by a number on a scale, but I had been feeling particularly unhappy with myself for quite some time. This feeling of unrest had more to do with my inability to find clothes that fit, my disappointment with my level of physical fitness, and my general feeling of blah. I knew I needed to make some changes, so I said to myself that my changes were not going to be about losing weight, but about getting to a place in which I felt good both physically and emotionally. On Sunday June 14, 2009, I started running. Actually, what I started doing was walking. Slowly. I started by running 30 seconds to a minute and walking a minute in between each “run.” I built up to “running” 13.1 miles on May 8, 2010. I didn’t get the time I wanted, but I finished, and as a side perk my blood pressure is lower than normal, I’ve lost 40 pounds, and I feel a million times better.

I suppose since it’s been a year, it’s time to set some new goals. One goal I had already set for this year was to run a marathon the fall after my 36th birthday. I am maintaining it as a goal by signing up for one on November 6. Here is my list of goals for this year from June 13, 2010 to June 12, 2011 (they are in no particular order):

  1. Finish the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on November 6. Running, walking, or crawling.
  2. Shave my head on June 13 and on the 13th of every month all year long.
  3. Contemplate things outside of myself. Cultivate spiritual wholeness.
  4. Have 75% or more of my students grow one academic year’s worth of growth during the school year.
  5. Finish two chapters of my dissertation.
  6. Run 1000 miles (3 miles per day). Run and walk a combination of 3000 miles (10 miles per day).
  7. Go vegan. Stay at least lacto-vegetarian.
  8. Learn to say only what is necessary. Listen more than talk.
  9. Read one new book and one magazine from cover to cover each week. Follow the news, in print.
  10. Finish painting the outside of the house.

3 Comments

Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, Grace, New Year, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan