America’s Finest City Half Marathon

Phew…. that was a toughie!

So I haven’t really trained since my San Diego Rock n Roll Half in June…. I’ve run a little, here and there, but no real training, and no long runs at all. I was in a total summer funk, and just never got around to training. I started off the race at a pretty good pace… 10:59 min/mi, but at mile 5 my tummy was giving issues (nerves, I think), so I had to use the restroom. UGH! Then I got back out there, and started running a bit slower, but still going pretty well. I drank water at every water station which helped me stay hydrated. Everything was going well, but then right after mile 10….

I got a major calf cramp. I’ve never gotten one of these, and it terrified me. I almost cried! My toes curled (could NOT uncurl them at all), and my leg started to go numb. I pulled over to the side, and a volunteer at the water station saw me, and brought me water. She suggested I drink gatorade for cramps. She was so nice. I massaged my leg for a bit and hobbled. I hobbled for about a half mile, then I started to walk a bit faster. I wanted to RUN! I wanted to run because other than the major cramp, I felt pretty good. I wanted a better time than last year (2:59, crappy due to being injured), but when my leg wasn’t doing so well, it was when the “hellish” hills showed up. :(

I was definitely bummed that I cramped up, but a little happy that I did better than last year. This race marks my one year anniversary of when I decided to become a runner of half marathons. :) I wonder what my time would have been had my leg not cramped up, but there’s always next year. I shall try again. I came home and iced my legs/hips for at least an hour. I’m still tired, and I know tomorrow, I’ll be super sore.

OH!!! Something super important that I totally forgot to mention cause its embarrassing…. I had NO idea where I parked my car. Yup, none at all. I ended up walking all along Park Blvd past the zoo and back looking in every lot. My feet were killing me, my hips totally burned, and I was starving, and I wanted to cry :( Then I went back to the finish/celebration area…. sat in the grass, looked up, and BAM! Saw my car. Across the street. The walk to my car would have been less than 10 minutes, but it turned into an hour. Utter FAIL!

Anyone ever have utter fails like this? I felt so dumb!

San Diego Rock n Roll Half Marathon

So much to say….

Pro’s:

1. Beautiful course

2. Easy course (mostly flat, with some downhills and a few uphills)

3. Well planned, and plenty of volunteers

4. Great snacks after the race (hummus and pita chips were my favorite. Couldn’t find the oranges though >.<)

5. Plenty of parking

6. The traffic people that were directing us out of the lot, sent us directly to the 5S. Great! That’s what I wanted to do. Made is easy to get home.

7. Beautiful medal

8. SO much support along the entire course. The team in training coaches were everywhere! Cheering everyone on. Loved that.

9. Great shirt. (Posted in prior post)

10. The music was awesome! Sure, some of it wasn’t my type of music, but I never run with music, and this was a nice change. It really pumped up the runners too.

Con’s:

1. HUGE race, so many, many, many runners! Took me almost 1.5 hours to get to start line after the race had started.

2. Lots of traffic to the runners parking lot. Granted, I got lost, and somehow, I ended up getting there “the back way” and avoided the traffic :)

3. Shuttle took FOREVER to get back after the race because of the heavy traffic.

4. Long lines for restroom…. and no toilet paper once I got there, and some people were nasty! Pooped on seat, used clothes to wipe butt and left it there, and the stalls really stunk like you know what. GROSS!

5. Some runners were rude. Slightly pushed you, then said excuse me as they were trying to get up closer to start line…. UM, SIR! You can’t gonna get there any faster. There’s lots of people in the way. Just chill!

Overall, there were more pro’s. I loved the race itself, and will do it again. Too bad, I ran it alone. My friend got sick the night before, and couldn’t make it… my other friend finished a lot sooner than me, and had to go, and my other friend finished way, way later after I was done, and I had to go. :( Running alone isn’t too bad, but celebrating with friends afterward is amazing! Perhaps next year.

Oh, no PR for me this time. I ran rock n roll in 2:41 and I had done Silver Strand last November in 2:40. Sigh. Maybe next year. Still, great run :)

Anyone else run this race today?

My top 10 of 2010

10. The Town

Yes, I’m a little biased because I love Ben Affleck, but that Boston accent makes him even sexier. The movie held my interest the entire time, and I kept rooting for the “bad” guy.

9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Oh, how I’ve missed this show. Thanks to Nextflix, I was able to re-watch nearly the entire series. I used to think that I liked Angel with Buffy, but after watching it again, I realized I actually loved Riley with Buffy. I was very happy to find the entire series on sale at Costco, so I treated myself to the awesome gift that Buffy is. Oh yea!

(Happy birthday to me! So excited about getting my hands on this sweetness.)

8. Bones

I’m such a TV addict. I hate to admit it, but I am…. So I try to avoid shows that I don’t normally watch for the fear of liking it and becoming addicted to that as well. Again, thanks to Netflix, I decided to give Bones a chance on my time off from work. Guess what? I loved it. I like the science, the characters and their relationships. They’re funny, likable and somewhat relatable. By the way, I’m totally okay with Hannah and Booth. Why not let the man try to be happy with someone that wants him? Oh, and I love Hodgins the best because he’s hilarious, and so freakin smart. He’s got a doctorate in Entomology, Botany and Mineralogy! Pretty cool. I always look forward to him saying “particulates” in every episode.

7. Netflix

Love it! Streams via my blu ray player or my wii which is super convenient. This is how I was able to catch up on a lot of great shows.

6. Amazon.com

I’ve spent so much money on here, its ridiculous! What can I say? I’m a total sucker for great deals. Any time I go to the store and see something great, I have to check on amazon first to see if it’s cheaper, and if it is, I buy it online.

5. Buying comic con ticket early

When I bought my 2011 ticket this year, I didn’t think I’d be such a huge ordeal for others to buy their ticket online. I just thought it would be nice to get my ticket early and get preview night again since I missed out on that this year because it sold out so fast. People haven’t been able to buy tickets online for a while, and there’s a lot of talk about it, so I’m really glad I got my ticket early. I’m so bummed that the first day of the convention is on my last day of work, but I’m hoping that there’s nothing too exciting on Thursday at comic con cause I’d hate to miss anything. Starting my countdown to comic con 2011 right now!



4. Realizing what I do NOT want to do

I like my job, but I do NOT love it. I just don’t and I don’t think that I ever will. I’ve been looking into going back to school, and I thought I had decided to go to optometry school. I’ve always wanted to be some sort of doctor, and my bachelor’s degree meets the entry requirements, which helps make my decision much easier. However, today, someone made me think that I should consider becoming a dietician. I do love learning about diets, nutrition, and healthy living, so that sounds like something that I would love to do. Sigh!!!!!!! I know I don’t want to be a teacher forever, but now I’m debating between optometry and nutrition. What to do?!

3. Roxy’s puppies

It was amazing seeing something being born. A little scary because I didn’t actually know for sure if she was pregnant or not, but the crazy, shiba shrieking started at 4am, and several hours later, 3 puppies! Riley, Oreo and Jun Jun. We kept Riley, and she’s a huge trouble maker, but I still love her. Oh, she also drives her mommy crazy sometimes.

2. Great Friends

It’s incredible how many of my friends are very different from me, yet we click and like hanging out. So many great memories this year.



1. Running

I never thought I’d like to run. Never. And I never thought that I’d love to run. Never! One day, I decided to give it a try since I have a treadmill in the garage, and it was tough at first, but before I knew it, I was running and enjoying it. I bought myself a garmin, started tracking my runs on dailymile, and before I knew it, I was signed up for half marathons. I was so motivated, that I decided to get others involved and start a running club. It went well at first, and then it slowly fell apart. It was sad, but I’m okay with that. My goal for 2011, is to run 4 half marathons starting with the San Dieguito one in February.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

My Review
As a fan of the Twilight books, I was looking forward to watching New Moon for several reasons. First, I wanted to see what the new director did with the story since there was a much larger budget for it, second, I was hoping that the acting had improved from the first movie, and lastly, I wanted to see the relationship between Bella and Jacob develop on the big screen.

I've broken down my review into the four typical categories as used by yahoo movies: story, acting, direction, and visuals. I've rated New Moon as follows:

Story: B
Acting:C-
Direction: B
Visuals: B-
Overall: B-

Story:

Overall, the director stayed true to the original story that Stephenie Meyer created in New Moon. Because we're dealing with a movie we need to keep in mind that it needs to be concise and stay within a reasonable time frame. The movie was about 2 hours and 10 minutes, but it definitely did not feel that long to me. In fact, it felt much, much shorter than 2 hours, and that could be attributed to the fact that I enjoyed watching New Moon.

Some parts of the storyline were merely touched upon, while others were expanded in the movie for which I felt were unnecessary. One of those unnecessarily long story lines that bothered me was seeing Bella having nightmares and awkwardly screaming while sleeping. You could see the awkwardness on Kristen's face during those scenes and that just made me cringe while watching.

What did I want to see more of? I wanted more Bella and Jacob. This was the book where we would see more of Jacob and see how the relationship fully develops with Bella, but it was not elaborated in as much detail as I would have liked. Even though there wasn't much of Edward in this movie, I still felt that I saw too much of him when Bella was "hallucinating". I wonder if it would have been more powerful had we just heard his voice as she hallucinated instead of having to see his agonizingly painful face with those hot red lips (what's with the lipstick on Edward?) All in all, the story in the movie was pretty faithful to the original and that's a great thing. I must point out though, that this movie won't make much sense and it'll be hard to believe why Bella is so depressed after Edward leaves if you haven't read the books. Story: B

Acting:
Where do I start on this one? Well, there were plenty of characters in this story, but nearly everyone was minor in comparison to Bella (Kristen Stewart), Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) which is a bummer since there was strong acting from others. For example, even though Dakota Fanning had very few lines, it was very evident that her acting skills are above and beyond those of Kristen Stewart. It's very tough to believe that Kristen has some acting experience since she's so horrible. I don't know how she manages to make nearly every scene so awkward, but that really bothers me especially since the whole story is about her and she's in nearly every scene.

Robert Pattinson wasn't in the movie very much, but in the scenes that he did have, you can also tell he's not a very good actor. Was he always supposed to be in so much pain? Well his face always had this expression of extreme pain even in scenes where he was supposed to look somewhat happy or even neutral. Too much for me. Robert needed to turn it down a notch. I'm sure with more experience, his acting will get better, I hope.

Go Taylor Lautner!!! He was the best lead actors in this movie. The feelings that he was trying to portray were very believable and I could feel his excitement when he would see Bella, and I could sense his anger/pain when he couldn't do everything he wanted to do for Bella. I also liked his transformation (I know, has nothing to do with his acting).... don't we agree Jacob looks much, much better with shorter hair?

Look at the pictures below and see if you can figure out what Jacob was feeling or trying to say.... Like I said, I think he did a good job. I was expecting to go from Team Edward to Team Jacob after having watched this film, but because I felt that there wasn't enough Jacob storyline (cut short for the movie), I didn't find myself switching to Team Jacob.
What about the other characters with small roles? I did like the wolf pack because they acted the exact same way that they were described in the book, and I'm excited to see more of them in the next installment of the twilight saga. Acting: C-

Direction:
Chris Weitz did a much better job directing this movie than Catherine Hardwicke did on Twilight. There were a few things that bothered me, and therefore, earning a B from me. In a few scenes are the camera is a bit shaky which I didn't think many people would notice since they are so entranced with the storyline. Also, because I easily get motion sickness, the scene where Bella is depressed and the months are passing by as she stares out the window... the camera rotates around her as the seasons change, but I had to look away since I was starting to get dizzy. I did notice the camera man reflected in the mirror before I looked away and waited for the scene to pass. Anyone else notice the camera man?

Isn't it the director's responsibility to expect superior acting from the actors? Like I said before, the acting was not good, and I feel that the director was to blame, at least, partially. He should have challenged and pushed Kristen Stewart to portray Bella Swan correctly, but as we can see from watching New Moon, Mr. Weitz was content with the mediocre performance from the leading lady.

Something that I really enjoyed were the action scenes. The Volturi really got the chance to shine, there was no Bella, and they were fast paced that they kept everyone's attention. The action spiced up the storyline even though they were somewhat tame when compared to the type of action you'd normally see in an action movie.

Lastly, some parts of the movie was too cheesy and really unnecessary. Mr, Weitz, did we really need to see this? Too silly and just lame. The audience burst out laughing for this scene. Direction: B
Visuals:
Not bad. At times the wolves looked really awesome, but at times looked super cute and not scary at all. I think the hardest thing to portray on the screen was the wolf phasing. Sometimes, it looked amazing and sometimes it was too cheesy. One of those cheesy moments was when Bella upsets Paul and he phases (which was kinda cool), but when Jacob comes to Bella's rescue and he phases, it's so lame. It just seemed too fake which translated to being too cheesy. Another issue that I had, was the sparkly vampires, but that's nothing new. That's the same issue that I had with Twilight. It's just so lame, and that part of the story doesn't translate very well to the movies. Visuals: B-

Overall:
In my book, this movie is a B-. When comparing it to the first movie, Twilight, it is much, much better. I think if the quality of the acting were better, this movie would have rated much higher. Remember, I am rating this movie based on the fact that I'm a Twilight fan and I've read all of the books. I'm not sure if someone who hasn't read the books will enjoy this movie, but as someone who likes the characters and the story, I did enjoy watching this movie very much.

Another Man Down

Where is the support for us newbies?

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that a fellow colleague was leaving my site several weeks before school ended. I was somewhat shocked to hear about his dilemma, but at the same time I was reminded off all the bullshit that new teachers can go through in their first years of teaching especially if they don't have someone in their corner to guide and support them. So what happened to my fellow co-worker?

Well, he was given the shittiest kids to work with all year long, he didn't have the support of administration, and he was not given a chance to prove himself as a teacher before he was forced to resign. Many of his kids were failing and he was struggling to gain control of his students/classes, and I know this because he came to me several times asking for advice. I tried to help out as much as I could, but it's very tough for new teachers to get by when those in charge (our administration) don't follow through with consequences (when students breaks the rules) to stupid rules that they "establish" at the beginning of the year.... So what happened? Well, instead of administration trying to help out this poor teacher, they corner him with "evidence" of how awful of a teacher he is and they tell him that he must willingly resign from his teaching position or get reprimanded by not being allowed to work for the district AGAIN! What is a poor, intimidated, new teacher supposed to do?

Yeah, he asked for help. He went to the rep of our union for help, and she accompanied him to all the meetings that he had to endure with the principal and whoever else is pushing our new teachers to "willingly" resign. Did the teachers' union rep help at all? I don't know, but he's no longer working with me, so I'd have to assume, NO, she didn't help very much. I'm very much upset by this because this is the second year in a row where a friend of mine (a new teacher with NO support from anyone) is asked to leave the school. Their students are then feed some bullshit about how the teacher left early due to personal reasons. Why can't administration just have the balls to come out to the students and say, "We fucked up. We put all you assholes into the same classes and gave those classes to a new teacher, and we didn't help the teacher when he needed our help and support. You kids are ungrateful brats, but we fucked up." ?

I was very fortunate to have gone through a great masters/teacher's prep program through UCSD where support was always available. I feel that my personality is strong enough to handle the types of kids that come through my school, but I also feel that I was taken care of my by supervisors through my program. If I ever needed someone to stand up for me, guide me, give me tips or console me, I knew that I could always count of my supervisors. With that being said, I think that all new teachers should have someone that is not part of their work site that they can count on for help and support. I know that the district has this program for beginning teachers and that program comes with a person called a "support provider", but its not the same thing. These support providers have an agenda, especially if they work at the same site as the new teacher. I could go on and on about this issue, but I think I'll stop for now.

So, what is my point?

Why are people so damn surprised that new teachers don't last long? Well, fuck, they don't get support! Teaching is a tough profession and I wasn't aware of that until I became a teacher. We're very much under appreciated by principals, vice principals, parents and especially students.

Happy For My Well Deserved Free Time! ☺

Spring Break Stuff Week 1 (4/6-4/10/09)

Being so busy with work and other lame work-related stuff keeps me from doing what I like and watching my favorite shows, but now that I have free time during my 4-week long spring break, I’ve been catching up on my faves.

Baseball Season:
I tend to not watch baseball as much when I’m working, but the 2009 opening day game was great, and it got me excited all over again. What’s my team? Ever since I’ve been a little girl, I’ve been a Dodgers fan. Go Blue! I need to get myself a nice Dodger jersey. ☺

I’m happy to say that they’re off to a good start by winning 5 out of 8 games. Our roster is not bad, and I think we’ll be fine as long as they don’t get hurt and as long as no one is on the DL for long.

Here's the roster:
* Infielders - Casey Blake, Blake DeWitt, Rafael Furcal, Orlando Hudson, James Loney, Mark Loretta
* Outfielders - Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, Juan Pierre, Manny Ramirez, Delwyn Young
* Catchers - Brad Ausmus, Russell Martin
* Pitchers - Chad Billingsley, Jonathan Broxton, Clayton Kershaw, Hiroki Kuroda, Hong-Chih Kuo, James McDonald, Guillermo Mota, Ramon Troncoso, Claudio Vargas, Cory Wade, Randy Wolf

Being that there are many games and teams, and a few channels where they show the games, I don’t get to watch the dodgers all the time unless if they’re on espn, fox or playing against the padres, so I gotta get my game scores and news via the internet and Ms. Alyssa Milano’s tweets from twitter :-D

House:
I absolutely love watching this show. Sometimes I miss it, but I’m glad that hulu has full episodes so I can catch up during my free time like my spring break.

I’m writing about it because I was so SHOCKED that my favorite doctor, Dr. Kutner killed himself in the episode last week (4/6/09). I was so surprised since there were absolutely no clues that he’d be leaving the show, so I went online to see if there was any news about it. I found out from entertainment weekly that indeed there was a HUGE story behind his death, but that we wouldn’t know that story until everyone around the U.S. got to see the episode. After waiting a few hours, I found out what happened. The actor that plays Dr. Kutner, Kal Penn, decided to leave the show because he got a job at the White House. You can read more about that here:

http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/04/house-exclusive.html

I’m definitely bummed that he’s no longer on the show, but it appears that he’s following his other true passion of serving the public. I must say though that I would have preferred that his character not commit suicide, but instead leave the hospital for some reason, so that sometime in the future he could come back as a guest star. Oh well. I wish him well. I bet he’s excited to be part of the Obama administration.

Hobbies:
1. Painting – So I can’t really paint, but I have fun doing it. I had John draw something for me (Hello Kitty) on canvas, and I loved painting it in. As soon as I’m done, I’ll be posting a picture of it on here.

2. House hunting – This isn’t really fun, but it’s something that needs to get done during my break. It’s very exhausting when I work all day then go see homes in the evening and I don’t get home until after 8pm, blah blah blah. I found something that I like, but it’s a little out of my price, so I made an offer and I’m waiting to see what will happen. I’m excited about having my own home!! I hope that it all works out for me and I have my own place soon.

3. Working out – Wow, this one is a toughie. It’s easy to be lazy, but I do like working out and I just have to find ways to keep motivated. I have a stationary bike in the living room, so I’m using that while I watch TV, but I’d like to join Elena on her running training. See sent me a link to the workout plan, but I haven’t gotten around to starting it. I asked her to be my workout buddy in terms of motivating me to start running. We’re both on twitter, so I’ll have her tweet me motivational quotes, etc perhaps on a daily basis to ensure that I start and keep up with the workout/training plan. So why start running? Well, it’s a great way to get a good workout and I like doing the 5k-8k runs/walks, but I bet it’s more fun if I were in better shape and capable of running the entire distance. We’ll see how this goes in the next few weeks. There’s an 8k coming up, so that’s a good way to motivate myself to work on endurance training.

"Is everyone in your family healthy?"

F1rst Wednesday, Holy crap!

I went to lunch at Souplantation with my co-worker on Thursday last week, and the weirdest thing happened to me. As I was getting out of the car in the parking lot, the lady in the car next to us was also getting out and she smiled at me and asked me how I was doing. I thought it was a little odd, but I didn't think much about it. Once we were inside, I happened to pass that same lady's table, and she looked up at me and smiled. (AWKWARD!) What did I do? I had to smile back.

After that, my co-worker and I enjoyed our lunch. Nothing much happened until the weird lady was about to leave, and she felt the need to come to our table to talk to me. She asked me if everyone in my family was healthy. Um, what? I had no idea what she was talking about. At first, I thought she was asking me if people in my family were obese since I had just served myself some chili and bread and that may appear as eating way too much. I was so confused by her question. I thought that somehow she was mistaking me for someone else. I told her that everyone was healthy, so she proceeded to give me a flyer for her church.....



She said that Jesus had told her that she should give me the flyer so that my family and I could join her "church" and get healed. She assured me that going to her congregation would save me. WTF? I took her F1rst Wednesday flyer and said thank you. She smiled and left.

My co-worker and I just looked at each other and we realized how creeped out we both were because of what had just happened. I'm not really sure what it was about that lady or her flyer, but I would NEVER go to a meeting like that. I would be worried for my life! It had cult written all over it, and I'm sure I'm wrong about that, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Plus, I don't need to be healed or saved or whatever, and I don't think that people need to go to church as long as they have faith.