Panic!!!!!

So thanks to Bresnan Cable for interupting the Simpsons with a sombre black screen saying CIVIL EMERGENCY ALERT ISSUED FOR ALBANY COUNTY, WY without any explination. I think my heart actually stopped for a second as my system was overloaded with images of Jihad terror raining down on poor little Laramie. And it made me miss a punchline. Bastards. The alert was followed by a cheery split second advert asking for books for schools or some such thing, like the world is going to end so you might as well be charitable and increase your chances of going to heaven. It reminded me of Dad's story about being in the car when the radio went dead. This was during the cold war, when any iminent nuclear strike would be announced initially by radio silence.
Poor sod, I can now imagine the terror that that loose wire must have caused..

I was so mad I almost shouted at a cable guy in the street today. But I'm polite and he was on the phone, it would have been rude to interupt.

Better news: I got a 'very good' on my intro chapter from Tim. I'm fully expecting a gold star or a smiley face next time. I can still remember the first gold star I got at school for my story about talking pinapples. What a great achievement.

Yet more running pictures... Sorry... this time from the half marathon. I'm so proud of my boy, looks a bit grey doesn't he?! :). I just look manic as usual, checking my time to make sure I got a PB... sad.

creeaakkkk... snap.... thump.

I survived my longest run to date: 14.5 miles of creaky, lopsided pain. I was hoping to get to 15 miles, but I actually thought both my knees might drop off if I carried on. It was dark by the time I finished, and I had a red salty square on my forehead from running by headlamp. I actually enjoyed the first 10 miles, but after that the miles seem to stretch on exponentially, with every step a real challenge. I was going so slowly that it took me almost 3 hours; I don't think Queen Paula is going to be shaking in her slightly urine stained trainers yet.

It was lovely being on the prarie above town. The sun was setting deep red over the hazy Snowies and flocks of birds kept darting out of the grass singing. Shame about the diggers and no trespassing signs. I hope the development holds off long enough for me to complete my training, somehow several hours of running up and down the streets of Laramie doesn't have the same appeal.

I could barely walk when I finished, and my breath was freezing in the air. I feel ok today, but I need to keep an eye on my knees, if that makes sense. I noticed something disturbing about my anotomy.. I think my lopsided running gait is making my breasts wonky. They don't warn you about THAT on runners world! They also don't warn you that putting too much crap in your pouch can cause energy gel sachets to explode and cover everything in peach flavoured jiszm (sorry parents). Nice.

Anyhoo, some of you will have had an email asking for sponsorship. Andy and I discussed asking for money 'for the crazies', but decided it was probably in bad taste :).

Anyone who feels like sponsoring me please go to

www.justgiving.com/chrislikesbiscuits

God, I'm really not sure I can run a marathon; the fatigue and constant cold is pretty bad right now... but I'll give it a bloody good go!!!

glug glug arrghh!..

I spent the weekend finishing my Introduction chapter for my thesis and learning important stuff about diving. Like how to pee in a wetsuit without anyone noticing and the meaning of some of Andy's more obscene underwater hand signals. I spent about half of my time underwater terified and half exhilerated. I think I'm going to really enjoy myself when there is more to see that the lower half of swimmers and a pool floor. Diving is pretty hard, I'd suddenly shoot up to the surface or smack down onto the pool bottom with only the excrutiating pain in my ears as any sort of warning. By the end I was floating serenly and motionlessly with my legs crossed, feeling quite smug until I suddenly shot up like a cork and breached like a whale. I must be extra floaty- I was wearing 18 pounds of weight by the end while some of the guys were only wearing 2. Maybe it's the breasts :). I forgot about the weight but I remembered pretty damn quickly when I took my BCD off and started to sink. Hence glug glug arrgh. We learn by the mistakes that don't totally drown us.

Some of the stuff we had to do was really horrible, like taking the masks off underwater or trying to breathe from a free flowing regulator (bubbles up the nose, water in the lungs and lots of coughing ensued). I also had the added fun of a leaky purge valve on my mask so I had a continuos slow trickle of water in my nostrils. I was a bit of a slow learner, and once I started freaking out it got harder, but I got the hang of everything. Not bad for a virtual non-swimmer I think :).

Oh yeah the thesis.. grumble grumble, corrections, uggh, fed up is all I have to say about that. We have our checkout dive for the openwater in about 3 weeks, if I can submit by then I can have a really good weekend :).

How to cure a cold...

..how about having bugger all sleep and running 13.1 miles? Actually, it worked out pretty well for me. I think I'm mostly ill because I'm run down and stressed about my thesis, so getting to forget about it for a whole weekend was great.

I ran the Georgetown to Idaho Springs half marathon with Andy. We drove a senic route there past Lookout mountain, giving me the opportunity to shout 'lookout! mountain!'.. I do this everytime we pass and will continue until either Andy laughs or hell freezes over.

I had one of those rare pleasures: a perfect race. Everything came together for me on the day, I ate right and ran strong. I thought I was on for a mild case of the Paulas, but everything settled down ok :). The course was undulating, but generaly undulated in a downward direction, so it was great. Our pace varied between a crazy 9.30 per mile (very fast for me, slow for normal people!) and just over 10 min miles. We ran the first half in 1:04. I was thinking about slowing down anyway when Andy started to feel ill. So, not only did I run a PB by about 7 minutes, but I also proved to myself that I'm not a horribly over competative selfish runner by walking with Andy when he needed it. I reasoned that I'd have other half marathons but only one fiance. I did leave him in the last half mile and, as advocated by some crazy shouty spectators, 'ran my buns off'. There were a lot of friendly spectators, and we were wearing our patriotic tops, which allowed all the Colorado brits to locate us. The atmosphere was great. Now if I can just shave about 40 mins off my time I might start winning :).

We went back to the motel and replaced the smell of damp dog that seemed to be eminating from the bedding with a smell of strong muscle rub. The hotel was a bit skanky, but at least the power was back on- the night before there had been an outage and the woman on the desk was working by torchlight. She wasn't too pleased that we couldn't pay our bill in advance, 'the boss normally likes payment in advance','yes but you have no power so can't process credit cards, 'yes, but he normally likes payment in advance'... jeez.

We discovered the motel jacuzii, and 15 minutes of having my swimming costume inflated by the air jets and my legs soothed was almost enough to make me forgive the damp dog smell. We did get shouted at as we left the spa because it was 'by appointment only'..maybe if they put up some signs to that effect or told people on check in it would help.

Sunday we had a gold panning lesson, which was a lot of fun. We now have 6 gold flakes between us, so paying for the wedding should be a breeze. We came back via Fort Collins to get measured for wetsuits and to pick up a photoframe. Andy also dragged me kicking and screaming into some clothes shops since we have a wedding to go to in a few weeks. God, I hate shopping with a passion: the continual looking at my bad hair and wobbly bits in the mirror; failing to fit into anything because I'm not 6 foot tall with a 20 inch waist. In the first shop I was helped by a very perky shop assistant. I found some clothes that were actually nice and cheap and went to try them on. After a few minutes a voice outside asked 'is everything ok?' I replied in tight angry voice, that yes, everything was fine, but what I actually ment was 'I'm stuck by the boobs in one of your stupidly complicated many strapped double layered tops and the panic is making me expand and get more stuck. Please f*ck off while I try and rip my way out.' The next item was a dress with crossover straps, that I had no clue how to get into. Andy came and helped me and together we managed to garotte me. I tried one nice funky dress on (Andy said he could see Jacqui wearing it, which I thought was a good sign) but it made me look like a hairy hippo so I left sad and humiliated. After a few more 'I look like the side of a house, waahh!' moments I finally managed to get a fairly nice halter neck dress and heeled shoes. It's a catholic wedding and I'm going in a 'bad munroe' style dress and heels I can't walk in. Lord help me.

Insomnia

So what exactly is the point of insomnia? What possible benefit to humanity comes from lying awake at 4am with 7 seconds of a emenem album track that I don't particularly like endlessly looping around my head. I've been like this for almost two weeks, and all that has changed is that I've got progressivly tireder, iller and more grumpy, and sometimes the song loop switches to Jackson by Johnny Cash. This is even more annoying because I don't know the words, so my brain spends hours going 'we got married in a fever, meneh meneh meneh meneeer.' I wonder what the selection criteria for the tunes is?

Anyway yesterday I felt sufficiently sorry for myself to dig through the recycling bag for a copy of Cosmo that Beth had brought with her. I hate cosmo, but I'd already pretended to read Andy's Physics World and still craved something glossy to point my eyes at. I don't do girly, I don't do shopping, I don't do clothes and I don't do gossip, so I'm not really into Cosmo. Even the sex talk is recycled- you only need to read it once a year for a few years and you've read all the hints. How many times do we need to be informed that you can 'fill a condom with ice and freeze it for a sexy treat'? Right now I'd rather add fruit juice and eat the results.

I opened the mag at random three times, and got

1) Jazz hands- get your man to put vibrating penis rings on his fingers
2) Brown watery vaginal discharge
3) A celeb so skinny she looked like a centrurys dead thing wearing a badly fitting skin suit with a hideous puffball skirt over the top, who was described as 'effortlessly feminin'. She just looked f*cking hungry to me.

I ploughed on anyway. It was definately better than my previous reading (Airframe by Michael Crichton.. the first book I've read that was so bad I just read a few pages every now and again to have a vague idea of the plot and then skipped to the end. A bit like watching porn on fast-forward, so I'm told. Crichton thinks global warming is a silly lefty fantasy, but it's hard to condem the guy who gave us ER and Jurrasic Park).

I feel better for having a bit of a rant anyway. I'd write more but I have a flight to book and then there's the little matter of my final thesis chapter... maybe that explains why I'm not sleeping.

Weddings, evil vegetarians and groaning

I know it's far too beautiful for a she-male like me, but I just ordered this weding dress. I'm so excited I keep grinning and clapping like a retarded seal. The experience wasn't as traumatic as I thought it's be, once the assistant had pried off my baggy shorts and T-shirt combo it all went quite smoothly. She brought me some rediculous underware that took several minutes of sustained effort to squeeze me into and left me looking like a burlesque dancer from moulin rouge. I was concerned the underskirt and corest combo was actually the gown, and she had me down for a slutty wedding, so I was vaguly relieved when she brought me several acres of chiffon and beading to go over the top. It's probably going to be a summer wedding and I'm wearing more fabric than the UN ship out for tempory shelters after an earthquake. I might have to go all roman and employ a legion of small boys to continually fan me during the wedding. I tried on 5 gowns before buying the first one, which was the one I'd gone with the intention of buying anyway. This is obscenely girly by my standards, but it was the nicest, Andy and Beth agreed. I did like one of the others purely because it gave me a Manga-style exagerated waistline, but that seemed like a vain reason to pick a gown. I'm totally in love with the one I have picked. If we get married here, we'll have a party in the UK too so I get to wear it twice, yay!! All I have to do now is figure out how to corner with a train attatched, or plan a route to the chapel that involves only ever walking in straight lines.

Of course, we haven't made any plans, set a date, or even decided which country to do this in, so I might end up a Miss Haversham style man-hater gently rotting in my lovely gown.




Left: Andy and Beth seem strangely excited by their pumping efforts

The next day we went into the Snowies, partly just for the hell of it and partly to look for potential wedding venues. We found a few nice lakes and wooded areas, but there was genrally something wrong; the lake might be popular with anglers, or the woods might be crawling with ants. Then we found a chapel that was just perfect. I am excited to be marrying Andy because I love him and want to spend my life with him, so I'd marry him anywhere, but if we could do it here it would be absolutely amazing. The views are breathtaking, with mountains on two sides, and a lake a short walk away. The fields are studded with wild flowers. It's a fair drive out of Laramie, it's icey in winter and spring and hot in summer and it'd probably rain, but I'm just completely captivated by the place. There's also a cabin nearby where we could decamp for food after the ceremony, but I'm getting way ahead of myself now. The chapel is owned by a local diocese, so there is a chance we wouldn't be allowed to have a non-religious ceromony there, but we'll see.

Left: views around the chapel

We came out the other side of the Snowies in Sarotoga, a dissapointingly uninspiring place. It does have hot springs though, which interested me on one level as a geologist, and on a much more important level as a runner with achy legs that needed a good soak.

Left: soaking in the disconcetingly warm stream.

I was having flash backs to being in a swimming pool as a child when you get a warm patch and know there can't be any good reason for it being warm.

After Sarotoga, we headed back to Laramie. It was Beth's last night so went went for a meal at Sweet Melissa's, Laramie's only vegetarian restaurant. The food was great, but I think they might have heard me and Andy winding Beth up for her sentimentality over animals (she isn't vegetarian), so they decided to get revenge on us. We were both ill when we got back. I felt like someone was stabbing hot knives in my stomache. I had a moment of relief when the pain ended, which was quickly replaced with humiliation when the noisier, messier phase of the illness started. Andy was ill too, but always manages to make less of a fuss than me. We ended up waddling around walmart at midnight searching for imodium, groaning at the sight of the 'restrooms unavailable, sorry' sign. Quite literally a crappy end to a nice few days, but we are better now.

Rocky Mountain national park

Despite Andy looking like a glam rock hamster (swollen face, purple and green eyes- the results of a broken nose due to impact with a softball), we went away as planned. We didn't manage to introduce Beth to the joys of camping because he didn't feel up to driving all the way to the national park on the first day so we stayed in a motel in Fort Collins. We got to Rocky Mountain the next day, and it's absolutely stunning. We drove the highest paved road in America (12000 ft), saw elk and a golden eagle and generally enjoyed not thinking about scary things like vivas.

The next day we made it into Denver. I don't really like big cities, but the main shopping street was pretty quiet. Maybe American's don't do the whole hang out in town on saturday thing. Cow Parade is there, I'm sure the Prague cows were better but maybe I'm biased. We did see some cool ones, including a zebera in a cow costume. One day I might be at a cow parade and not feel the urge to pet all the cows. We spent a long time in Denver aquarium. It's a really nice place, and they thoughtfully keep the tanks really clean so it's easy to take pictures through the glass. I'm really pleased with some of the pictures. I might not be the next Dr. Mustard, but at least I kept my feet dry.

Left: posing chipmunk










Left: jellies, I love this pic! Technically crap but very cool

Below: nemo fish! nemo fish!