Thursday July 17, 2008 I ran the Jim Kane Sugar Bowl 5 miler for the 2nd year in a row. Even though my running had been shitty, I wanted to compare time to the previous year. Went w/ Funshine (new nickname for db) and Cleo. We drove which sucked because traffic was a bitch and I didn't think I'd make the race. Luckily Jake got there before me and had picked up my race packet. Funshine dropped me off to find Jake and he went to park. Found Jake and got my number on, made a trip to the bathroom even though the lines seemed too long, seemed plenty of time to spare. Saw some other CRCers, Jake's whole family was there, mom and brother were racing too, dad was snappin' photos. Didn't start that close to the start, this race has no chip so gun time is all there is. Wouldn't matter in the end, I slowed down. It was fucking hot that Tuesday night, too hot for me! Funshine and Cleo ran next to me at the start and then when they couldn't get further apparently Cleo was howling away, though I didn't seem to hear it. Maintained an okay pace for most of the race but I don't have any way to time myself right now, never got another watch after losing mine in Australia. Had to rely on mile splits which was better than nothing but harder to judge my pace. Started slowing down in the last mile and eventually got passed by Jake's brother and some CRC girls. Picked it up for the finish and finished less than a minute behind them so not that bad. Stuck around a little bit at the end for post-race food and stuff. But it was hot, I was drenched and we had Cleo.

476 out of 1124
42:52 for 5 miles
8:34 minutes/mile
7 out of 37 athena

Been bad posting if anyone is still listening. Life keeps changing. It'll be one way for a long time then change to something different and then again transform into something else. Not sure how I feel about the way it is now. It's better in some ways, worse in others.

Was in Bar Harbor for 2 long weeks and thought I would be glad to get back to Boston. But then I enter my apt. and see the mess I live in. Still haven't done a good deep cleaning of my place since moving in. It was supposed to be cleaned before I moved in but wasn't and even though it's only one room, it's hard to clean w/ stuff all over the place. Maybe I should just hire a maid. How much can it cost to clean a studio?

Got back to work though and started doing things, experiments. It's actually fun when I'm doing things, even though I make plenty of mistakes. I love the bacteria I work with. It can really be a great time doing my thing in the lab, most of the time I'm doing my own thing w/ little direction and feel like a mad scientist, especially since I'm working w/ human pathogenic stuff that can at least give you some pretty cool diarrhea or at worst kill you. I took it as a compliment today when at the department picnic I was asked if I contaminated the picnic. Haha! just don't get me fired for those insinuations. It would be a thrill though to have a major foodborne disease outbreak on your hands and have to find the culprit, testing all the food and stool samples, would have been a great episode of Scooby Doo or Encyclopedia Brown mystery.

Some of my experiments need lots of planning to get things right the first time so it takes me a long time to get things done. And I've spent several unproductive months so now I'm in a crunch w/ several projects going on at once. I also need to decide if I should take a class in the fall. I'm required by my program to take 4 grad level classes and I've already done that but I know my boss wants me to take more. In his mind, they're free so why not but to me it's just more work and not only am I already a doctor, I'm not getting any kind of degree for taking these extra classes, I'm not a PhD student, I'm a postdoc. I do feel a bit guilty though for not jumping at the opportunity.

So I think life is better right now when I'm getting work done. I just need to keep it up and hopefully have a couple great, productive months coming up to feel better about things.

My social life seems lacking compared to what it was the past year. Don't hang out w/ the girls as much as I used to. Things got all out of whack and never got back into our usual things. Makes me sad that we're not as close and don't have as much consistent fun as before. Running was what seemed to bring us all together initially and now I'm crapping out w/ that too. Have a good week then a bad. No consistent schedule anymore. Don't go to track, don't go to long runs. Don't run w/ anyone. I have no consistent schedule w/ anything right now and makes life hard to live.

Just saw a really good friend's daughter for the first time tonight and she turned 2 a couple months ago. Seems retarded it took so long since we've both been here the whole time. Would have liked to see her as an infant. Oh well.

My mom is in Martha's Vineyard this weekend and asked me to come but I couldn't get things to work out w/ Cleo so I'm staying here for the weekend alone. db's in Maine and it didn't work out to be there either. maybe at home alone is where i should be right now anyway. kinda had a crap day.