Retirement Celebration

Well, I'm not cranky anymore! Thank goodness. The roofing project ended up taking two weeks longer than anticipated, but we survived.

Today I celebrated a retirement- my retirement. Today was my last official day working at USC, and now I'm taking two weeks off to live the good life until grad school starts. I'll be spending my days sleeping, boating, Boise-ing, watching 30 Rock, and generally being lazy. All the while Paul will be studying for the dental boards. I keep telling him that he should learn a thing or two from me and retire as well. But that day will come soon enough and Paul will give up dentistry (assuming he passes the boards) to become an amateur golfer and I will be his unpaid caddie.

My Clothes Smell Like Tar

I am cranky. Our apartment building is getting a new roof and at 6:00 every morning we start to hear pieces of old roof falling into a big dumpster by our window. At around 7:00 they turn the big stinky tar machine and wake up two not-so-happy campers. The tar smell has completely permeated our apartment- when we come home in the evening the smell hits us like sledgehammer to the senses. I can't escape it. It's giving me a headache and making me nauseous. They won't be done with the roof for at least another week, so in the meantime, please pardon me for smelling like new pavement.

A New Trojan

I haven't shared this with too many people... I didn't want my hopes to get too high and then unceremoniously dashed for the world to see, but a few months ago I applied for graduate school. After graduating from BYU almost two years ago, I was more than content to be done with my academic career. Initially it felt weird to not be in school, but I'm sure that most recent graduates have similar feelings. But then the feeling didn't go away. For the past year I've had the awesome opportunity to work in a biology research lab as a lab manager. I've been able to work on several different projects and interact with grad students and post docs and it's been a challenge to try and keep up with them intellectually, but I've certainly tried! It seems like the more I learn, the more I want to know. So... long story short, last November I applied for the Molecular Biology PhD program at USC. I took the GRE, had some letters of recommendation written, had an interview and all the other fun application things, and last Monday I found out that I had been accepted! One of the really great things about the whole thing is that my tuition will be paid for and I get a stipend on top of it. I start in the fall... I'm both excited and nervous... but mostly excited!

The Old Man in the Big City

Last weekend my dad came to visit. He arrived on his birthday, and I'll spill the beans, he's 48! I made his favorite cake- German Chocolate. And yes, we polished off the entire cake by the time he went home. Don't judge.


We spent the days taking a walking tour of downtown, hiking Mount Hollywood, checking out Griffith Observatory, eating way too much at Korean BBQ, touring the Wild Animal Park, eating in Old Town San Diego, walking on the beach, and going to Madame Tussauds wax museum. Needless to say, we had a blast and it was sooooo hard to go back to work. Here are some picture highlights.









This one's for Erin- the world's biggest Buffy fan... "I'm your biggest fang!" (Also for Erin.)

I'm hilarious. Trust me.

Although they're becoming more similar, Paul's and my sense of humor are very different. I have never seen Paul laugh so hard as he does when he's with his friend Sam Ashby. Those guys can go on for hours... Second only to Sam, I think Paul laughs the most at his own jokes. I'll often catch him alone giggling to himself. I usually have to force it out of him, but he eventually tells me why he's laughing. Oh, and I can't forget The Simpsons. I wish you could see his face scrunch up and how he fights for air when Homer says something ridiculous.

Anyway, I on the other hand, happen to find other things more humorous. Back in the good old days of Provo, on one of our snowshoeing expeditions, I played a great joke on Paul. We were almost to Sundance and I told Paul that I forgot to put the snow shoes in the trunk. I waited for him to say, "What?! Really?!" And then my punchline-- "Psych!!! Just kidding. I actually did put them in the trunk!" Oh, it was so funny, but apparently not to Paul. He found no humor in my joke. Weird. Paul has since deemed those "Courtney jokes" and I've given up on them.

Here's another little gem:

His icon used to be a soccer ball, and when he saw that it had changed into a little kitty cat, his expression was priceless. (He still hasn't figured out how to change it back, so don't tell him.)

Here's my latest bit of hilarity. I staged this mystery guest (made up of pillows and a book) in our bed and waited for Paul to discover it.


I waited for HOURS for a high pitched scream, or even just a gasp. All I got was, "Huh? What's that?" I guess my idea of humor as it deals with Paul centers on getting a rise out of him, which doesn't happen often. Oh well, as long as I know I'm funny, that's what really matters.

Ok

Ok ok ok. Has it been awhile since I posted last? My bad. But there is a reason. About two months ago we went kayaking in the "Venice Canals" of Long Beach. It was awesome! Expecting greatness, we brought our camera and put it in a ziplock bag to keep it safe. Every so often, we'd take take it out, snap a few shots, and put it back in the bag. On one of these occasions, I was taking a couple pictures, and then I handed the camera off to Paul to put away. Perhaps being a bit over zealous to get a move on, I started paddling away while he was still getting the camera taken care of. Apparently I'm not a very a very clean paddler, because I ended up splashing Paul and the camera. A lot. I murdered our dear camera, but I know that it's in a better place now. We were, however, able to salvage the memory card. Here are the very last pictures our camera took.









I like posting with pictures, and since that's not an option anymore (at least until we save enough pennies to get a new one...), the frequency of our posts might be sporadic.
But, as a quick update, we've been enjoying the new year, but it was hard to come back from the nice, long, relaxing break. We were able to spend Christmas with Paul's family- so fun! We played bocce ball and Sequence and ate lots of yummy food. On Christmas day I was able to do a three-way call with my family in Boise and my little bro in Brazil. It was so wonderful to hear from him! It sounds like he's loving Brazil- especially the people. He said that it's been shocking for him to see how friendly they are.
Our season pass to Disneyland has officially ended. :( We spent our last day there with my Grammy and her husband Reed who are visiting southern California for six weeks. I love Disneyland!! Hopefully we'll get to go many more times before Paul graduates. Speaking of which, Paul just started his 5th semester of dental school. (4 down, 7 to go!)

I can't believe it's taken me this long to post

about the race- especially since that's all I could talk about for a week. Truly it was one of the best experiences of my life. When Erin first suggested that we train for a half marathon I thought she was crazy. Why would anyone want to put themselves through such pain and torture? What about running for hours sounds fun? There are a couple people in my ward who have run half marathons and really enjoyed it. So eventually I said, what they hey, lets do it. So, Paul and I started training at the end of April- our very first training day consisted of running two miles (which left us sore for days) and we built on from there. It was incredibly rewarding to see our steady progress. After hitting the four mile mark, every long run after that was the longest we'd ever done in our lives. Paul certainly kept me motivated. Running with a partner is the strategy that helped push me in the beginning. I've realized that running, at least for me, is a mental sport. I think most bodies can handle the physical demands of running, but it takes time to discipline your mind to not think about how tired or bored you are, or how out of breath you are, or how that spot in the distance isn't getting any closer. There were a few times early on where I'd have to run by myself, and I'd let my mind slip and I wouldn't be able to finish. Running with Paul gave me something else to think about. Not to mention, he pushed my abilities. Paul would rather run fast and get it over with. My body has a natural pace that is about 11 minutes per mile, and regardless of how far the run, I always seem to keep that same pace. Paul would make us run fast, but I made us slow down so that we'd actually be able to finish our long runs. We made a great team. We also would have a friendly competition at the end of our runs. At about the last half mile we'd pick up the pace and see who could finish first. (I often won. :))

Turns out that Paul had no desire to actually run the race, and he stopped training with me after we had reached our nine mile long run. My sister came down from Idaho and we ran the Disneyland Half Marathon together. The night before the race we carbo loaded with spaghetti. She fell right asleep, but I woke up about every hour until our alarm woke us up- I was so nervous. I had invested a lot of time into this and what if I couldn't finish the race, or got hurt, or, or, or... We drove over to Disneyland, waited in our corral for about 30 minutes, and then the fun began. As we crossed over the starting line people on all sides were cheering for us. Racers were dressed up as Disney characters there were smiles all around. The best part was that our names were printed on our bibs, so people kept shouting, "Go Courtney! You can do it! Yeah, Erin! You're awesome!" We first ran through the park and then went through Anaheim. There was entertainment at least every mile- everything from hula dancers to high school bands. There were even official Disney characters that people stopped to take pictures with. At about mile 10 we got to run around the Angel's Stadium field. There were people in the stands cheering us on and spraying water on us. There was even a camera there that projected us on the big screen when we ran by. Running the race was honestly as fun as actually going to Disneyland- I'm not kidding! I had a smile on my face the whole time. Running with Erin was so fun- I wouldn't have done it any other way. We got to chat the entire time and we helped each other keep pace. My only goal was to not stop and walk- and we didn't! We even finished strong with our last mile being about seven minutes. My body felt great the entire time just until I crossed the finish line and started to walk- then the pain really set it. The back of my thighs started to burn in a way that I can't even describe. I almost thought I was going to cry. But, the problem was solved with a little snack and some serious stretching.

Erin and I decided that we're going to do it again next year, which I'm so excited about! I've been looking forward to it since the day after the race.

Here's some pictures they took of me en route. A lot of these look like I'm walking, but I promise I'm not! Paul and I discovered that I don't move my body very much when I run- I guess I'm trying to conserve energy. :) The second picture, although it's not actually of me, is my favorite. It perfectly sums up the way I felt during the race: ecstatic.