Scholar-Athlete-Partner

July 2, 2011

Whoa June was something else.

In 30 days the following happened:

I ran the inaugural Run for Virginia Wine half marathon.

We ran through VA wine country, got a wine stopper for a medal and got a commemorative wine glass at the end of the race for the wine tasting hosted by several local vineyards. It was awesome.

Me, Shell and Ike at the finish

I hosted two 5Ks with the help of PowerBar.

The first was a 5K for my friend Brett’s wife. Last year his wife, Lisa, was running with 2 of their 3 children in a jogging stroller when she was hit by a driver under the influence. Her last heroic act as a mother was to push her two children out of harm’s way. Over the last year I’ve had the true pleasure of spending some time with Brett and the kids and when I found out that they were holding a 5K in her honor I had to help and so I tried to do so by providing nutritional support for the race. Their middle child is autistic and if you’d like to donate to his school, you can do so here.

Start of the race. It was an incredible day and I was so happy that so many people came out to honor Lisa.

With the support of PowerBar I also helped sponsor the 5K for the annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism (the annual conference I go to in order to present my academic work and learn from other researchers). The course was a loop course around Atlanta’s Olympic Park and I may have won for female’s. I say that I may have won because I ran hard and crossed the finish line around 20 minutes. However, that’s fast for me and I started to question whether I had messed up in counting my laps. After stopping to discuss this with the #1 and #2 finishers and the timer, I decided to err on the side of caution and go out for another lap. With the discussion time-out, I still finished around 25 minutes and first in my age group. Based on how quickly I covered the third lap I actually do think that I won, but it honestly doesn’t matter. The money raised from the race benefits the education fund from which I have been a very fortunate recipient of several awards.

I’ve also been hooked on bikram yoga and I even went for a bike ride with The Boy today. Lots of staying active.

In non-active stuff I proposed my dissertation.

My meeting with 5 Ph.D.s whose goal was to critique my work was awesome, I feel good about my ideas and although I need to revise my document, it feels great to be able to defend my work in front of a really great committee, including the former editor of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (one of the best publications in my field). In addition to proposing, I’ve also started teaching a college course (which I LOVE) and I’ve attended two academic conferences (so much science!).

I’m moving!

The Boy and I have been considering moving in together for a while now, but with me only having one year left in Pittsburgh we couldn’t figure out a good way to make it happen, as I own my place (but it doesn’t allow large dogs), he works from home (we’d need at least 2 bedrooms), and we both have fairly high standards of living (which are tough to meet in Pittsburgh). We called about the details for a house on Friday, saw it on Saturday, put a down payment on Sunday, leased it on Wednesday and I rented my condo on Friday. Whoa! What a whirlwind, especially considering we move in together August 1! We are so excited, our friends and family are so excited, and even though moving will be a lot of work, we cannot wait to make this place our new home: