Change Log

I ran 20 miles, the farthest I ever have. The MoMoFo fun run winds around two loops through the Morgan Monroe Forest, a 30 minutes drive north of Bloomington. I was on my feet for over 5 hours, the weather was hot, humid and sunny with temps in the high 80s and the dew point pushing 70 degrees making the forest feel downright tropical. Hydration and body temperature control was a big concern for me throughout the race. I broke my rule of not trying anything new on race-day and popped salt pills every 5 miles. That combined with forcing myself to drink 1.5 liters of water every 5 miles for sure saved me from a severe electrolyte imbalace. Around mile 8 is when I started seeing other runners really struggling, some exhibiting symptoms of heat stroke. I had an ice bandana that Ashley helped me make which I filled up with ice at each aid station (placed at those 5 mile increments). With the ice pressed against my neck and melting down my back I only noticed the heat and humidity for the last 6 miles or so. I was soaking wet the entire time, but comfortable. The physical battle was intense and I knew I was developing a bad blister at mile 5. My legs were ready to stop at mile 10. The last 3 miles were brutal. The mental battle also challenged me, at mile 15 my brain was convinced I had developed rhabdomyolysis (where muscle cells disintegrate and enter the blood stream, causing the kidneys to shutdown) and that I was dying. Lukcily, I had to keep running the race in order to get back to my car to drive myself to the hospital so I had no choice but to keep moving. I finished the race in 5 hours 45 minutes.

Recovery was slow, my quads were the slowest to return to normal. My sleep was severely affected for the three nights following the race, waking up every hour or so. I felt "normal" after 7 days. But my first 3 mile run after that was still sluggish and I reacted very badly to the heat.

Ashley and I flew to NYC for a two-day excursion and to see her piece in the Galerie Shibumi. We spent the first night afternoon and evening roaming around Chelsea, we had a fantastic meal with the best katsu I've ever had and incredible crudo. Our second day I took the subway up to The Met and ran through central park back to the hotel. We then walked down to Chinatown for dim sum and spent a few hours in the New Museum which had an extensive multi-artist collection featuring a plethora of bio/body horror and other unsettling things. My legs and feet were taking a beating throughout this. We met up with Ashley's parents and sisters in the early evening to have dinner and then mosey on over to the gallery. There was a great showing of people at the gallery and Ashley's piece got some well-deserved attention from the attendees. It was great that her mom could be there, since the piece partially featured her. For the finale of our whirlwind day Ashley and I dropped our luggage off with her parents who would drive the sisters home and then meet us at the last stop of the Southeastern train line. Ashley and I hustled to Grand Central, running the last few blocks, to make the 9:15 train. After driving home from the train station, we made it to her parents' house at midnight.

While this was happening, a severe thunderstorm was ravaging Bloomington. An EF-2 tornado touched down 15 miles north of the city and carved a 100+ foot wide path through the Morgan Monroe Forest, the same one I had just run through, snapping full-grown trees completely in half along a 50 mile track.

After one and a half years of growing my hair, I've cut it off. I was becoming unable to handle runs in 85+ degree temps with high humidity. Even tying my hair up I was very uncomforatble. I was also becoming distressed by the amount of maintenance my hair was requiring and the extra steps and time needed to dry it, style it, etc. It's just not in my nature to enjoy these things. Once it was cut I didn't feel any different. I felt normal again, like how I was supposed to feel.

Ashley's MfA held a "Prom Night". Fish themed. We dressed up fancier than everyone else, suit and dress. It was a lot of fun for a pizza party.

The house finches have left the nest.

I'm prepping for my next race and so ran 15 miles, the farthest I ever have. Legs hurt a decent amount but the most grueling aspect was the sheer boredom I felt for the majority of the 3 hours. That honestly might be the limiting factor for this race, hopefully I'll be able to lean on my social skills to find interesting people to talk to.

I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 for the last few months and finally "beat" the game after 70 hours of playing. There isn't really an end to the game, as with most RPGs you craft your own ending, whatever suits the story you are trying to tell. I played the entire game with the Chinese language pack enabled such that all the dialogue is in mandarin. I wouldn't say I learned anything this way, but it was fun to be able to recognize phrases or words in an immersive environment. Next on my gaming list I think it world or warcraft again, and I'd like to stream my journey.

The house finches have hatched from their eggs, we hear them peeping and squeaking every 20 minutes or so every morning.

I ran the 50th Indy Mini, a yearly half marathon whose course takes you from downtown Indianapolis out to Speedway and around the Indy 500 racetrack. Ashley and I went up the night before to stay in a hotel and avoid the early morning drive. Ashley was a great sport and booked us a reservation at The Old Spaghetti Factory. I was able to load up on pasta and complimentary bread. The morning of the race I was excited, it was quite chilly out, 38 degrees with a slight breeze I got a short 1 mile warmup in making my way to the starting corrals. There were 30k+ runners and it seemed the whole city turned out to support: high school emo bands, senior center line dancing clubs, cheer squads all lining the race course. I felt fairly strong out of the gate, my goal was to simply enjoy myself and not push too hard as to hurt anything. Around mile 8, pushing around the Indy 500 race track, I realized I was on a very solid pace to go under 2 hours and I was feeling decent. I knocked back a salt packet Ashley had given me, a handful of Nerds gummy clusters, and pressed on. My legs started screaming at mile 12 but I pushed through, the only time I stopped was to give Ashley a kiss at the final 100 meters, always worth it. I finished with a Strava time of 1:58:25 my "chip time" was 2:00:02. Two second off an official sub-two hour half marathon. I'll have to run it again.

We watched the Davinci Code as a live play in the community theater in downtown Bloomington. We will almost certainly be having our wedding at the same venue so we thought it would be a proactive experience to see what the space can do. It was a fun time! The acting was mediocre, the plot was (naturally) identical to the movie, but the theater was packed the the crowd boozed up and in a good mood. After grabbing some street tacos after the show we stopped to talk to some friends sitting out in front of a pub. While we caught up, another patron set their phone up so we could all watch the screen, the Artemis II mission had re-entered Earth's atmosphere. We all watched and cheered when the 'chutes opened and they finally splashed down.

The house finches have laid 4 eggs. They are sky blue with black speckles.

I received a care-package from mon containing everything one needs to make a classic pastrami reuben. It as great, and kept me happily satiated for several days.

Months ago I had signed Ashley and I up for a pretzel making workshop out at the Muddy Fork Bakery. We each baked a dozen or so large pretzels, met some nice people and learned that Ashley's MfA advisor knows the owner of the bakery and has purchased lye from them as part of his indigo farm. It has been happening more frequently, our friendships and relationships being revealed to be so tightly intertwined within this small community.

For our 8th anniversary we drove up to Indianapolis for a day of exploration and a fancy dinner at a restaurant Vida. It was a very nice 4-course meal and at a fairly decent price (by city standards). Afterwards we learned that Vida is considered the best restaurant in Indianapolis.

We got a Sam's club membership.

There is a pair of house finches nesting on our front porch. The momma gets scared and flies away each time we enter and leave the house. There are three eggs and they are sky-blue in color.

The pressures of work are beginning to mount, though I feel largely in control.

We've initiated an extended campaign against a hive of ants in our backyard. We've opened the conflict with targeted chemical warfare: borax laced syrup planted along the insect's superhighways. The ants swarmed past our defense line and pushed deep into our territory, their scouts scrambled in and around our food stores, likely contaminating the lot. We were able to survive the assault and as the ants retreated back to the hive as the sun fell, they did not indicate any awareness that they were bringing back bellies full of toxic slime meant to cripple their queen. Indeed, initial damage reports in the following days indicate catastrophic colony collapse. We will continue to pressure the hive with our checmical-based trojan horses until there is nothing left.

The US has begun a war with Iran in a decapitation strike during ongoing negotiations. The Strait of Hormuz has been closed.

I'm on the hunt for a decent pastrami reuben and have been met with significant setbacks. Supposedly Fat Dan's is my best bet in town. We met up with some friends on the weekend to try it out, only to be immediately turned away. They were closing at 6:30pm because the kitchen staff walked out. Odd. Certainly does not bode well for this establishment. Later on in the week I discovered the local bagel stop seemingly sells pastrami sandwhiches. I stopped in and paid an obscene $18 for 6oz of meat. After handing sandwhich to me, they announced in no uncertain terms that I had just purchased the very last pastrami sandwhich they will ever sell. The worst part was, the sandwhich was quite good.

The record high for Bloomington on any March day for all of recorded history was 82 degrees. We hit 87 degrees on March 17th.

I traveled to Las Vegas for a work conference. It was my frist time in the city of sin, it's not a place I can exactly let loose in. For me, that would entail getting away from the lights and sounds and parties and out to the desert mountains and hills. Nevertheless it was a fun way to view fringes of the human experience. Much like visiting a zoo, I enjoyed the spectacle and the flow and function of these hairless bipeds roaming around their playground.

The conference itself was enjoyable. I had fun hanging out with my friend (and now boss) again. Meeting and talking to our customers gave me a tangible sense of obligation and a new drive to continue to build.

We had our first tornado warning of the year. Around 9pm our phones and weather radio started sounding off, screeching to find shelter immediately. Ashley and I gathered up Renna and sat on beach chairs in our basement while wind whipped rain, hail, then rain again against the walls above us. I was watching the live weather radar on my phone and could see the telltale sign of aloft rotation: a tightly confined region where the wind velocity is indicated to be moving rapidly towards the radar source right next to wind moving rapidly away. It was about two miles from us. Ten minutes later it had passed and we came out from underground. In the following hours we saw picture of the surveyed damage, a pet shelter and bank had been hit, a 5 minute drive from us. No one was injured. The tornado was rated an EF2.

We visited the Mulyana exhibit opening at the IU art museum. Mulyana is an Indonesian contemporary artist renowned for his large-scale knit and crochet installations. This exhibit focused on the health of underwater ecosystems, coral, and coral bleaching. I was particularly taken by a wall-sized piece of beautifully intricate crochet'd coral made from white plastic bags. The effect was an incredibly realistic bleached coral with a wonderful desaturated effect that really tickled my appreciation for light/shadow play.

I also had a chance to check out Ashley's installation in the Tangent gallery along with some of her colleagues. While there, a woman popped her head in and was introduced to us as the person who hand knitted the sweaters worn by the characters in Coraline. She uses medical-grade stainless steel sutures as knitting needles.

I've procured an early 00s CD/Tape boom box and have been joyfully listening to my daily NPR and local Bloomington punk station. I've also finally begun the transition away from Spotify to physical CDs. I bought a second-hand external CD drive and a batch of blank CD-Rs and have been burning as much as my library as I can. I love the feeling of ownership over my music and the physicallity of being able to hold songs in my hand.

This Milan Winter Olympics began this jaunt. I really like that Ashley and I are both in natural agreement to simply have the live broadcast on 24/7.

We had our first big snow, a massive storm extending across the majority of the country. I had been tracking the storm via my usual Youtube weather guys for a week prior. I was anxious that we'd end up on the freezing rain side of things and really be in for some trouble. Luckily we ended up on the snow side, just barely. Unluckily this meant we got crushed with snow, 14 inches. It fell all day Sunday and we had a pleasant time hunkering down, watching movies and relaxing. I spent the next several days shoveling snow, 20 minutes at lunch, 30 after work. The prioriy order was: get the sidewalk cleared the cars dug out, then a path for the garbage cans. This storm came from a more frequent weather phenomenon in which the polar vortex breaks down and arctic air is pinned over North America. Even a week after the storm the temperature has not risen above 25 degrees.

I've taken a new approach to my remote working, spurred on by my new job and a more settled life here in Bloomington. I'm enjoying remote work more than I was a few months ago I think partly because I am doing something new and partly because the weather prevents me from wishing I was commuting elsewhere. I am happy being steady, stable, and able to get good work done while maximizing my use of my new-found free time in the morning and evenings. I have felt a renewed drive in my mandarin studies and I am making sure to lean into it slowly rather than pushing myself to log everything and make flash cards and watch shows and everything else I was trying to do before. Now, I can bask in my routine and stick firmly to it. Wake up 7:15am, make breakfast and coffee, Duolingo daily tasks complete over coffee, work, run or HIIT, dinner with Ashley over conversations or shows, HelloChinese done by 9:30pm, bed by 11pm.

Hard to believe a year ago I had no idea I would be packing my things and leaving Philly for the small-town Indiana life. I had not yet been to China, hadn't quit my job. A lot can happen in a year. Much as happened so far in the 4th year of the wiki, though the stand-out moments are starting my new job as a Director of Engineering and running a 10 mile trail race.

My job is, so far, quite fun. I have a sense I am simultaneously out of my depth and fully capable of making some rapid important change in the company. I wont talk much details here still as I think it does a diservice to myself and to report on only the first steps of a grand adventure. That said, I am happy to be there, I think it was the right move, and I'm looking forward to what's in store.

The trail race was the 10 mile fun-run of the Frozen Morgan Monroe Forest (FroMoMoFo). I felt particularly underprepared for this race, I had not broken 7 miles on road for a year and a half leading up to this and nothing more than 5 miles on trail. Trail races are more difficult than road races because of the rolling hills giving significant elevation gain. So the FroMoMoFo fun-run ends up being 10 miles and climbing a 150 story building. I was sore after this one. Both my quads were busted for 3 days. I was able to get my Monday and Wednesday run in (the race was on Sunday), shuffling along, heavy legs. One of my favorite things about these hard races is watching my body build itself back. It's somehow able to pull itself from the edge of ruin and, a week later, I'm back to normal.

• Clean out clothes and donate most.
• Make a physical media library of my favorite music; collect cassettes.
• Make 1-bit stickers and sell them at a market.
• Run a trail race longer than an half marathon.