Owen's graduation

I made another trip to Michigan last week for Owen's high school graduation. It felt a bit strange, because he's my first baby brother - now I understand why, when I graduated from high school and when I got married, people kept commenting on how they couldn't believe I was old enough for it because they remembered when I was just a little baby.... I changed his diapers!

with my little (big!) brother

 

parents & two brothers - just one more high school graduation to go for them!

It was great to be able to see him graduate, help my mom prepare for the open house, and enjoy the party (along with the yummy treats my dad baked).

some baked goods from my father & cleverness from my

mother for displaying O's graduation cap and band hat

Also: It's been 9 years since my own high school graduation... but Owen's brought about the first occasion in some time that a person thought I was a teenager - when my mom & I were getting plates and napkins in the school colors, the cashier commented that this must be for an open house. Yep. Then she turned to me and said, "oh, when's your last day of school?" Um... really?

still here

So apparently there was no rapture yesterday, but we still had quite a heavenly day (oops, was that a little sacrilegious?)

We started off with breakfast at our local dive, Choo Choo's. Not a real fine dining experience, but for breakfast on a nice day, it's great - we can walk over and sit on their patio, and it's hard to go wrong with eggs & toast.

Then we wandered around town on foot a bit since it was the city-wide garage sale day, followed by several more yard work projects/weeding (the theme of our weekends when Peter has a day off, it seems).

One of my little projects was getting my new patio umbrella set up - I wanted to get one last year, but everything patio furniture related seems to be so darn expensive. Ikea came through big time though ($25ish), and we enjoyed our first outdoor dinner of the year.

And then we ended the day with Peter making a spontaneous trip to Graeter's for some takeout to enjoy while we watched The Office season finale (and became even more worried that Jim Carrey might be the new boss... blerg).

Also, our rose bush went gangbusters yesterday. Love it.

recent reading

Since I completed my March 2010-April 2011 50 books, I finished zero books for over a month... whoops. Been keeping busy enough with cleaning, crafting, traveling, running, tv watching (I can't help it if all my shows have new episodes at the same time!). But come the start of May it was time to get my rear in gear to get through my two bookclub books.

I had two nonfiction reads this month. First up: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

This is actually quite a fascinating WWII story, taking place in the Pacific (which I feel like got a little neglected compared to Europe when I learned about it in school). The problem for me was my long-standing fears/dislike of (1) deep water, (2) plane crashes, (3) sharks, and especially (4) the idea of all three in combination. And there you have a chunk of this book.

It was definitely engaging and well researched and is an amazing story of survival throughout terrible adversity - but of course that can make it quite difficult to read too. I found myself not wanting to read any more of the horror yet compulsively reading to find out how on earth a person could survive everything from a plane crash, being stranded at sea, and living in horrendous conditions in a Japanese POW camp.

Next: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

This was another very engaging and amazingly researched book - about Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells were (unbeknownst to her, or her family until many years after she died) able to be grown as the first "immortal" cells in 1951 - which allowed major breakthroughs in medical research, from the polio vaccine to gene mapping. Because of this importance, the story of Henrietta and the science of her cells would be an interesting book, even to someone not so sciency or nonfictiony like me. But what made the book really worth reading were the author's interactions with Henrietta's descendants - she almost became like family to them, but they were so distrustful of reporters and scientists based on past experience that they would turn quickly - adding drama and making it truly a story rather than a bunch of information or facts.

The book raises really interesting questions about medical research and ethics - though no laws were broken in gathering and using Henrietta Lacks' cells, and though they aided extremely important discoveries, it still seems so wrong that her children can't afford blood pressure medication while companies make millions selling medications developed out of the cell line.

(My mom also read this one recently; see what she thought here!)

gratuitous Ginger

Ginger came with us to the cottage last fall, fairly soon after we got her. At that point we weren't quite  ready to trust her off the leash, but on the most recent vacation week she spent a lot of time running free on the beach (and I mean running). And LOVED it. We also didn't let her too near the water last time, but this time Peter started throwing a stick farther and farther in - at first she was a little cautious, but by the end happily waded in and retrieved everything. I was a little worried about hypothermia in that lake, but I think she's going to enjoy real swimming come summer.

She was having so much fun that we had to take some photos - and what else am I going to do with them but post them here....

 working on those retriever skills...

wet pup

 on beach, stick in mouth (who even needs balls to play fetch, anyway?)

 returning with stick - what's not pictured is Ginger running pell mell after them (she has A LOT of run in her)

 the remainder of Ginger's time at the cottage spent doing this...

...or doing it like this

on our week off

Peter was on vacation last week - his weeks off are always exciting because he gets a break from the daily pre-5am wake up call and from working looong days, and I get to have him around a lot - I like being able to do things together, like (what I assume) normal people do on a regular basis. Except we're like normal people on hyperdrive because we try to cram into one week all the stuff we've been wanting to do together for the last few months...

We:

• went to our first baseball game of the year

• ran a 5k race 

• did a whole bunch of yard work together

fully availing ourselves of the free spring brush pick up service - this part was all Peter

• had dessert with one of the other interns & his wife

• went out for breakfast with one of the other residents & his wife

• drove to Michigan and spent some time at my parents' cottage (reading for fun, relaxing, lots of playing with Ginger at the beach and taking walks, eating waffles for breakfast - good stuff like that)

Peter: "do you want the stick?" Ginger: "YES"

• had dinner with both of our families

• helped my parents use some extra tickets they had for Friday night: Peter went with my dad and brother to the Red Wings playoff game (they won!), and I went with my mom to the symphony

• shopped at the outlet mall

• ate at Chipotle

• did more yard work together 

Oh, and Peter also got in a round of golf with my dad, and despite his 11-month hiatus (doctors are stereotypically golfers, but doctors in training have no time for such things...) got his best score ever. Plus, since there's really no escaping work entirely, Peter also did a bunch of medical-y reading, and I worked a couple hours every day.

Impressive how much stuff you can fit in a week when one of you is not spending it all at the hospital (ahem)... it was a lovely week together.

flying pig 5k

One of my New Year's resolutions was to run my first 5k race, and I thought the Flying Pig would be the perfect one because it's a big downtown Cincinnati event (the main attraction being the marathon portion, which happened today along with the half marathon; the 5k and 10k were yesterday).

 Peter took my picture before my first race for posterity...

I've been doing quite a bit of running this year, so I knew I was definitely capable of running this race, but I still was kind of nervous. Peter tried to convince me it was just like going out for any other run, slightly shorter than my normal route even, but I couldn't help but get a bit worked up.

There was a huge mass of people - close to 3,000 - so the first half mile was all about dodging and weaving around slower runners and walkers (with strollers even)... that was a little frustrating. But after that I was able to kind of pace myself with a couple other people - this is what made a race totally different from a regular run for me. Having people to stay on pace with (and then pass at the end!) is a whole new source of motivation.

post-run, in front of ball park (where it started & ended)

I guess that motivation and the race day adrenaline I'd heard about worked for me - my goal time was 27 minutes, and I breezed right by that with a 25:29. A large cheering crowd at the end ("finish swine" as it's called in the Flying Pig) is also a most excellent motivator to finish strong. I think the girl I was trailing most of the race but passed with a couple minutes to go was probably in my age group... so I was excited to see that I ended up 8th out of 231 ladies in my division, which put me at 37th of 1887 females!  I have to say, it was all kind of exhilarating (except for a little while during mile 2 when I started feeling a bit wiped) - this all just might have gotten me hooked enough to sign up for another one.

Peter is on vacation this week, so he ran as well. He's had considerably less time for training than I did, but he still beat his goal time and finished in 22:11, sixth in his division. Very good for someone who doesn't have time to run more than about once a week, I would say. He had fun too, and I really liked having him there for a pre-race pep talk and a post-race hug at the finish line....