My life in State College: Balance

So for the past maybe two weeks I've been making a larger effort to not overeat. In fact, I'd really like to lose 8-10 pounds by the summer, if possible. Starting weight: 136.8 - ok still under 140 which is when I really start to notice my belly jiggling (ha). In any case, I've been using this cool application on my phone which can actually even scan items you are eating (if they have a barcode of course) and add the cals and nutritional info to my list. Otherwise, you can just add stuff in manually. But it knows various supermarket brands of things which I find cool...anyway. So according to my 'food diary' if I want to lose 6 pounds by May 6th, I must consume no more than 1200 cals a day...that's pretty difficult. HOWEVER, if I work out (which I do anyway) of course I get those calories back provided it doesn't go over whatever I burned+1200. So for example, today I earned 470 extra cals from my jog today + the fact that I walked 50 minutes to and from school in total. I still managed to eat 1600 ish (1200+470 freebies from the workouts) thus about 90 cals under my goal of 1200...which means I am on track. If I go over the minimum I could still be losing weight over time, just not as quickly. Even if I'd eaten 1600 without working out, it would just mean maintaining what I am now, not gaining.

Annnnyway, it's fun to figure out the body's science. Also, I want to run a few 5K's this summer, and right now I'm running one 5K on the treadmill weekly. Strong like bull! Actually a 10K would be great, but I think I need a few months to 'train' before I even entertain those thoughts...

happy healthy thoughts!
-J

My life in State College: Chicago conferencing

Chi-town! Love it!

Last Friday, T & I started our morning journey to Chicago from the University Park airport, which btw can hardly be called an airport. Oh, State College, your smallness so amuses us.

Actually, our original flight had been cancelled the night before - slightly frazzled, we called US Airways and they rebooked us on the 10:30 flight with a new connection to Chi-town from Philly. All was well.

Luckily, our flights were boring and on-time and all that, so our arrival at 3ish was on time. We got to the hotel, checked in, met up with another friend and went to the conference hotel to register. Hooray, we made it!

Saturday was full of fun reunions, figuring out the talks we wanted to attend and the opening session/plenary. Afterwards, the opening reception was full of free-flowing wine and tasty foods. There was a post-reception reception in Dr. C's presidential suite, since he was the conference head organizer for this years meeting. More wine....more food. More fun chats! So glad to see Dr. T again after his sudden move last year from PSU to Groningen, Netherlands. A smaller crew continued over at Timothy O'Toole's, a lovely irish pub near our hotel. After $200 worth of irish car bombs, a Mexican-American we lovingly named Taquito and a chance meeting with some middle-aged Canadian man who did a shot with us, we were feeling fiiiiine. Lovely!

Next morning was rough...but we pushed through and went to a bunch of sessions plus a great plenary and grad student session with more free food (yay)...but an early night it was.

Monday - my presentation! I was a bit nervous but everything went well. Kinda wish more people had shown up, but that's kinda the drawback of these large-scale conferences I guess. It was a good day all in all though, PLUS later on we had deep dish pizza with I & P....YUM. and calorie-tastic I'm sure...

E and I were the last ones in the hotel room on the last night as T had left on Monday cause she taught on Tuesday. Waking up Tuesday morning we looked at each other and went...we're conferenced out - time to see some of Chicago before heading back to the airport. Aren't we awesome. Anyway, first up was the BEAN! I've been wanting to go there since the last time I was in Chi-town but hadn't. Great pics there. Also, more of the mag mile and then a final stop at Garrett's popcorn before going back to pack, check out, and shuttle back to O'Hare. Glorious.

Flight home was also easy-pease and my roommate H picked me up at 10pm. Home to my kitty :)

Overall a great 5 days...back to the grind now!

My life in State College: Criticism

I'm not sure I'll ever find it easy to take criticism...even when it's well-meaning. I gave a practice conference talk in my department last week (going to a big conference in Chicago on Friday). It went alright, but it was overwhelming at the end.

I also gave a talk at a small conference this past weekend, but it was here in State College. It was a low key event - a chapter meeting of Central PA German teachers. My talk there went swimmingly though, and it motivated me to get preparing for next weekend's much bigger talk.

In academic contexts, all you do is get criticized and questioned, though not necessarily in a bad way. People like to engage, discuss, question preconceived ideas and so on. No problems there.

But it's tough to take criticism when it's from your peers, even when they are right. You have to swallow your pride and re-organize. And when they try to help you make your work better they are often doing it because they think your stuff is actually really cool, and want it to be presented in the best way possible. I am thankful for the support of my department community in these areas - and am happy I put myself out there and came out alive ;)

And yes, this weekend, I'm off to Chicago (!) for the annual Applied Linguistics conference. I can't wait to see some of my friends who are no longer at my institution and... hang out in Chicago. But more importantly, I look forward to the unique feeling of being surrounded by some of the most brilliant thinkers in the field. Plus the 1500-2000 others. How neat it feels to be at a conference with so many people who are interested in similar areas. Most are critical thinkers, engaged, participatory, community-minded. They encourage, and yes, they criticize. I hope I get some good feedback from my (to-be-improved) presentation there.

Bis dann!

“He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.”  -Abraham Lincoln

My life in State College: Waiting for true spring

springing up

bouncing babies and chirping birds

lovers giggling, hands touching

budding tulips arc towards the warm sun

the warm rain

green, then greener

the greenest days are here

-J

My life in State College: Smokey

State College, PA. Yup,  since August 2010. I returned awhile ago, tis true; Germany is but a distant (sigh) memory now.  I suppose I decided that this blog wasn't coming with me once I returned. But now I've brought 'er back. And what's been happening since August you ask?

• I moved back into my old brick duplex rental with two new fantastic roommates
• I taught and survived the fall semester
• I attended close friends' T&S and cousin J's wedding in the fall  
• I spent New Year's in Madrid, Spain with 35 dear friends from Marburg (for more on Marburg, see all previous posts before this one :) )
• also: other wonderful reunions with MR folks here in PA and also in NY
• I visited old roomie J-Humph in San Antonio (warmth in January!)
• [ummm...I turned 30]
• I found out that I'm a bridesmaid in two of my best friend's fall 2011 weddings
• I found out two close friends were preggers with their first babes in August 2010 and recently met the little ones for the first time
• I am currently still surviving semester nummer zwei at PSU

annnnnnd....


I GOTS ME A KITTY! OK I got Smokey back in October. BUT, he's great. To rejuvinate this blog, some kitty talk and pictures are certainly in order:

Smokey the cuddle-boy

zzzzz...!

me and the fuzzball

Mr. Whiny McWhinerstein has stolen the collective hearts of me and my roomies H & R.

Not much else new. work. work. work. drinks. chill. repeat!

This week, I felt reminded of how State College is in the summertime (Spring Break left our collegy-town gloriously empty). Oh, how I look forward to that....

Coming up: Chicago for AAAL annual conference annnnd that's about it. Looking forward to sharing a room with great friends - fellow app-lingy folks T & E.

~J

"Life is either daring adventure or nothing." - Helen Keller 

[keep the nothing at bay...]