on blog hiatus and should be sleeping

it's bad when you know you need to sleep because you're waking up at 4:30am to open up a gym, and you can't b/c your mind doesn't stop working...including writing a silly blog post like this one. there are so many things going on in life right now that, whilst i often think of things to post on here, i'm overwhelmed at the thought of trying to post. so i'm taking a break. for now i'm at school full time. working only one more month at the gym (till the end of sept) and starting a new job at church coordinating the Work Day ministry! --which i am very excited about doing; it fell in my lap and God has been supremely confirming that i should take the job and has given me lots of peace. in the mean time i leave you with this random picture i ran across today of the nasty nasty 'dreadlock' i sort of secretly grew last year. it was an experiment...ha ha. it makes me laugh. (angela can attest to the degree of grossness, as she found it in her mailbox commemorating the day it got cut).

this goes out to the bride of aug 29th

and it's here too


er, it was...if you go to youtube and type in: total eclipse of the heart, literal version, you might be able to find it again. very funny

'noogavisit

i made whirlwind trip to chattanooga and back in 2.5 days. i saw everyone (or most) that i could who isn't going to be at rachel's wedding. it was very sweet. as i drove up the rolling hills of Monteagle i started squealing...and was prompted by my innards to put on some celine dion (after michael jackson had run its course). then i arrived at lookout mountain, drove by the overlook, and i squealed again. i couldn't believe i hadn't been back in a year and a half! it felt reminiscent of home for sure.


lupton field where i coached lacrosse for 4 years. a memorial we put up for palmer after she passed.
some of my lacrosse players. we hopped the fence at the cemetery together after hours. it was the best memory of my short visit.
my old co-workers at Why Know, which is now called On Point
Sarah LaRose Kane and her son Collin. Sarah painted me an awesome awesome awesome painting, pictured above.
angela let me borrow her camera and i had a few minutes to walk around downtown by myself. i enjoyed that quite a bit




...there's just something about these bridges (market and walking)
Susan Green :)

rain advantages and disadvantages

i have been reading articles on running barefoot. a lot of research has been done, and is maybe more recently is picking up momentum in the world of people who do research, on the benefits of going without shoes....er un-shod. (can get a shout out to james ward? thank you new city-ers). several marathoners (from south africa and ethiopia) have done amazingly well, becoming world champions, while barefoot. and there is more documentation on various famous people who are barefoot proponents. basically the point is that shoes have been increasingly over engineered over the years, potentially largely related to the need to market and make a profit off the running industry, and as a consequence our feet and subsequently the rest of our bodies have suffered. so the benefits of running barefoot are multi-fold, and according to these articles, contain many scientific improvements related to oxygen and energy and biomechanics.

as a quick summary, running barefoot is: better for your running posture/alignment/stride, better for your heels (thick souls on shoes have trained us to be heel-strikers instead of mid-soul strikers --> just notice how you run without shoes and the difference in how your foot lands), better for your feet (improvement of muscles, nerve stimulation, oxygen, etc.), better for your ankles (more awareness of the terrain, less twists and turns due to 1 inch elevation off the ground etc.), better for your calves (development of muscles is more natural etc.), better for your knees (less twisting and shock absorbing strain is put on these joints etc.), and up the rest of your body--seriously: back, shoulders, posture, head...

so it rained today. the one day i had free to lay out and get sun to be a beautiful brown babe (bbb) for rach's wedding. it downpoured the minute i left work. BUT i had a cool conversation with my roommate Amy because i got home earlier, and as a result we decided to go to Forest Park and go running in the rain. barefoot. on grass. UP hills. i felt very athletic, but also very much like a kid...especially as we ended our athleticism with some frolicking in the nearby fountains [see picture above taken on a different day]. sometimes i love rain; and playing in the rain reminds me of summer days in Florida (but showers in Florida are SO much shorter than they are here in the midwest).

disadvantages of rain: no tanning. no ultimate frisbee championship game tonight :(
(yes, my summer league team made the championships! and yes, i am in an ultimate frisbee league. but unlike we did in high school, we do not yell "ultimate!" when we throw off to the other team between points. no, um, that's called a "pull" (but we don't yell it). court, can i get you to say "chilly"? :)

today i was Burmese

i went for a picnic with the Burmese family i have gotten to know over this past year. after exploring the creek in Tower Grove Park and the mother, Salimarbe, dug up certain seeds she was looking for, we decided to eat. right then it started to down pour rain so we ran into a pavilion. we sat on the ground and ate yummy rice and spicy food that i cannot identify with our hands. it was a good memory. at their house they gave me this Karen (type of people) 'jacket' (i think they call it that). i was honored by the gift. you can't really see it, but my face also has Burmese makeup on the cheeks that Muslim women wear.