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For those who maintain that the Stanford mascot (a tree) is silly, I give you this picture, taken by Chris. After that, there can be no doubt that yes, the tree is incredibly silly.

Anyway. I had another nice weekend, dampened only by the gray skies and the threat of soggy weather. I saw Million Dollar Baby on Friday night with Melanie, Nick, Curt and Sara. Becca, Jen, Gavin, Cari and Lisa joined us for dinner afterwards. It's hard to describe the movie without giving away what happens, and to know the entire plot in advance would definitely take away some of the film's impact. I'll just say that it is well-written, well-acted, and powerful. It is realistic to the point of making the viewer uncomfortable, and while that sounds like a negative, in this case it works. When I went to bed on Friday night, I was still thinking about it. So, it was excellent, and I now understand why it's been nominated for so many awards. I haven't seen all the nomined flicks, but Hilary Swank is definitely deserving of her Best Actress nomination, and maybe a win.

Rich and I ran the Mardi Gras Beach Run 5K on Saturday morning in Galveston, but it turned out to more more like 4.5K. It was the first time I'd run since the marathon, and Rich is slowly getting back into it (the 4.5 miles he ran with me at the marathon is the farthest he's gone in a while), so we were taking it pretty slow. We passed mile 1 in a little over 11:00, and then passed mile 2 under 19:00. Wha...?!? Yeah, we'd sped up, but we did not reel off a sub-8:00 mile. We finished in 29:34 for my second fastest "5K" ever. 29:34 would be an average of 9:32/mile, and we were definitely not running that fast. So, mile 1 was correct in relation to the start line, and mile 2 was correct in relation to the finish line. But the turnaround point, located between miles 1 and 2, was obviously miscalculated, or mismarked.

While leaving the race, I happened to look down a side street and to my surprise, saw the Wienermobile!!! "Ohmygod, STOP THE CAR!" I shouted at Rich. Once he recovered from the shock, he circled the block so that I could get my picture taken with the Wienermobile. Sadly, the drivers were nowhere to be seen, so I couldn't ask to see inside or anything. But it was awesome. No one else seems to be nearly as excited about my seeing the Wienermobile except for my mom, who, when I called home and described it as "seeing a flash of orange and yellow, guess what it was" immediately answered "the Wienermobile!", and my sister, who also shares my amusement and remembers fondly the time we were at my grandmother's and laughed so hard we almost suffocated after seeing a Wienermobile commercial on TV.

My family rocks.

Saturday afternoon, Rich, Nacho, Katie, Fred, Becca and I headed to the Grand Chapiteau in the parking lot at Reliant Stadium to see Cirque du Soleil. Their Varekai show is in town, and it was amazing, as usual. The was the show that had its development chronicled in a Bravo series that I watched a few years ago, so it was neat to see the acts that I remember seeing on TV. Cirque du Soleil continuously amazes me with the incredible physical things people can do. The performers make things that I know must be horribly difficult look so easy, and so smooth and fluid. After the show, we had a great dinner at Star Pizza. Mmm.

Yesterday I had to spend a couple hours in the afternoon working on my paper, because the extended abstract is due today. The paper is for the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Controls conference to be held in August in San Francisco, so I really hope that 1) the paper gets accepted and 2) I can get the travel money to go and present it.

Last night my women's team played our final soccer game of the season (the next season starts in March, so we don't have too long of a break). We lost the game, and I didn't have a great night, but oh well. Afterwards, we all went out and had Mexican food to celebrate the season. I had a great time. When my old women's team dissolved, I was afraid that I wouldn't find another team, or one that I could contribute as much to, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise. I love my new team. Sure, we still lose a lot, but we win every once in a while, and they are so much more fun to play with.

I turned down a trip to the Sketchers outlet with Melanie because I'm working on a paper. I feel like I'm back in college.

It could be worse, though. I could be stuck inside by an ice storm, left with nothing to do but watch the entire first season of One Tree Hill and accidentally paint my butt by sitting on a paint can lid. If that sounds like your thing, you'll have to go elsewhere.

TiVo is awesome. I love it. I paused the TV last night just because I could. Ha HA!

I'm running a 5K tomorrow morning with Rich. It's good that he convinced me to sign up for it (yes, he convinced me, I can't remember the last time someone asked me to do a run, instead of me bugging them), because I need the motivation to get back out there. I haven't been a couch potato since the marathon, but I also haven't been running. Not even once. And this is bad, bad bad bad, because one of my goals for this year is to not lose all my running endurance over the summer like I did last year. See, I didn't want to run in the oppressive heat, which sounded like a good idea at the time but turned out to be a decision that I greatly regretted when I was first starting marathon training.

Anyway. I need to keep running at least a couple times a week. Though I do need to up my bike riding in preparation for the MS150 in April.

Carter and I were talking last night about publishing blogs. He wants his blog in book form, and I think it might be neat to have a copy of mine as well, but...come on, it's a blog, no one else would want a copy. Who wants to read a book of what I did every day, except me? I think there are probably plenty of places out there in internet-land that would allow me to publish my blog, but the cost is probably prohibitive unless you want to mass-produce the thing. Anyway. Interesting to think about.

Carter used My Publisher to make a great photo album for his parents. He had major problems actually getting the book to him, but I don't think it was My Publisher's fault; more of a problem in that Carter's mail delivery is weird, and he is cursed when dealing with the USPS. I've been thinking I should put together a "best of" book of Peru photos. Sit it on my coffee table and daydream about the Andes.

I was just watching I Love The 90's Part Deux: 1999 and they were talking about Lance Armstrong's first Tour de France victory, and joking about how the French must feel, having an American win.

VH1 commentator: "They're France. What are they gonna do? There's not much they can do at this point, other than hurl baguettes at him."

That mental image totally cracked me up.

Jo asked me for help with a cover letter. The first sentence she gave me was this one:

• Diagnosed culture and developed an action plan for change by initiating a NASA-specific program to asses culture.

Apollo 1 ~ January 27, 1968
Challenger ~ January 28, 1986
Columbia ~ February 1, 2003

"This Thursday, NASA observes a Day of Remembrance honoring those members of the NASA Family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery. In their memory, NASA flags at Headquarters and every Center fly at half-staff...

We know that we can never repay the debt we owe all of our fallen colleagues, but with those hopeful words in our heart, we can honor their legacy each and every day."

We just went outside to watch the brief memorial, which ended with T-38s flying the missing man formation. The plane that pulled up quickly disappeared into the cloudy, rainy sky.

Those who know me should realize by now that I love technology. Though I always try to fight it when it first arrives, I end up embracing it. A timeline:

November 1999: I write an editorial about the evils of ICQ. I write this article...while I use the damn chat program on an hourly basis.

December 2000: After declaring loudly and on multiple occasions that I would never get a cell phone and don't understand how they're all that useful...I buy a cell phone. And it basically hasn't left my side since. And I'm not even a phone person.

October 2001: I convince myself that because of my small dorm room and small desk, I must have a flat panel monitor. (Though to be fair, the monitor I had previously was from 1996 and about 14 inches.) Somebody told me that flat panel monitors only last a couple years, but mine is still going strong.

May 2002: I buy a digital camera. I don't know why I was so behind the curve on this one, really. The digital camera is perhaps my favorite technological device developed, well, in my lifetime thus far.

September 2002: I sell my digital camera to buy a better digital camera.

January 2003: I get rid of my cell phone to get a better cell phone. One with a camera. Everything is better with a camera.

January 2004: I sell my DVD player to buy a Playstation 2, which works as a DVD player and lets me play Dance Dance Revolution. Bonus.

February 2004: I sell my old cell phone to get a better cell phone. One with a better camera.

March 2004: I buy a GPS handheld receiver. So I can go on high-tech treasure hunts and get stung by bees. I have a great sense of direction, but hey, you can never be too sure.

April 2004: I buy a new desktop, just so it can run my software faster.

October 2004: I buy a far better digital camera, but this time I don't even bother to get rid of the old one. Two cameras are better than one, right?

March 2004: Becca and Nick's liberal use of their TiVo to (gasp!) pause live television during the Academy Awards results in me yelling a lot, and generally not being able to handle live TV being paused. The horror.

December 2004: I buy my dad image-stabilized binoculars for Christmas. I now want image-stabilized binoculars, because come on, have you seen how cool they are?

January 2005: I buy a TiVo. Later that day, I surf eBay for a new cell phone with an even better camera.

I'm tired. Seriously tired. And it's all because I'm stupid.

See, I started this photoblog. Then I started surfing photoblogs.org, and now have a favorites folder of at least 40 sites that I like to look at each night. Then I got an email from a local photo guy inviting me to join his Texas Photo Forum. And now I'm thinking of starting a site similar to these two. All that, and I'm not even that great a photographer. Funny.

Anyway, what it all means is that I'm finding myself on the computer at home surfing the web and doing website tweaks for multiple hours each night. And my sleep suffers. (Saying that is going to drive my dad crazy.) Something's gotta give.

I wasn't going to do this, but I've seen too many other people actually getting free iPods. I'm willing to try it. To get a free 40GB iPod Photo, I need 10 people to follow this link:

http://www.freephotoiPods.com/?r=14429074

and sign up for one of the offers. Yes, the point is to get you to sign up for stuff you don't want, but if you're smart you can avoid it. I suggest signing up for the Complete Home trial (it will cost you $1, then you stay a member for at least 7 days, cancel within 30 days with no penalty, and get a $20 Lowe's gift card) or Netmarket (similar deal, $1 to start, stay for at least 7 days, then cancel within 30 and you won't get charged any more).

If you're concerned about potential spam from whatever email address you give them, let me know and I can set you up an email address on my server and I'll deal with the spam for you! What a deal, eh?

So. We'll see if this works or not. And if I manage to get a free iPod Photo, I'll let you play with it. ;)