February 2019 Monthly Running Challenge

@girlinahat I have nothing helpful to offer except a huge hug and the promise of being here to listen whenever you need a sympathetic ear. Really hope the treatment helps. I have the opposite problem, I battle depression too and also apparently have a resting *kitten* face so people are constantly asking me what's wrong even when I'm actually feeling happy!

I run every month anyway.
2nd 3.1m parkrun
4th 6m
7th 5.5m
9th 5m
11th 6m
14th 6m
16th 14m
18th 7.3m
19th 6.5m
Total 59.4m

Got 3.0 treadmill miles in this afternoon. I wish I'd had more time, because I was feeling pretty good, but week days are really tight for me. I bow to those of you who manage to devote more than 45 minutes to exercise on during the work week; even getting up at 4 am, 30-45 minutes is all I can squeeze in on a good day.

28.0/55.0 miles for February so far

Elise4270 wrote: »

MegaMooseEsq wrote: »

I woke up to a winter storm warning: another 5-8 inches expected overnight. Sigh. That combined with negative real temps this AM had me kind of grouchy, but an hour or two on the couch with these snuggly buddies cheered me up.

Snuggles!

February. UGGGG.

I have the same orange cat.

Does yours purr like a motorboat? I once thought I was having computer problems but it was just him purring while sitting on top of a cabinet. It looks like they are both also used to being used as furniture by their smaller siblings.

@girlinahat and @elise4270 I was hoping someone would ask

Like many species, fruit flies have fairly distinct morphological differences between the sexes. In particular, the females have longer abdomens, while the males have bristles (called "sex combs") on their forelegs. Also the tip of the males' abdomens are dark while the females' are lighter. Of course it's really hard to tell if they are flying around, so we would anesthetize them (simple carbon dioxide gas) and look at them under a low power microscope to sort them. Interesting fact about fruit flies- the females have an organ for storing sperm, which is why we would only use virgin females for breeding purposes. How do you know if it's a virgin? If it hasn't been in the adult stage long enough yet to mate! So we looked for females that were light colored and puffy, indicating they had just emerged from their pupae in the last few hours. These days, when we have fruit flies around the kitchen I still try to determine if they are male or female before I swat them

@Elise4270 we would use eye color a lot too, but not for determining the sex. The lab I was in studied proteins related to clotting, which is hard to tell if the fly has the regular or mutant version just from looking at it. So we would induce another, easy to spot, mutation to help keep track of which flies had which mutations of interest. The most common ones we used were the white eye mutation, or green fluorescent eye mutation (my favorite)! Some of the other mutations were curly wings, wingless, and eyeless (not completely, just small vestigial eyes). Sometimes I miss the days where it was just me and the flies, no one to bother me haha. The down side though is that fruit flies mature so fast, I literally could not take a single day off while we were in the middle of an experiment -_-

TL;DR- way way more than you ever wanted to know about fruit flies

Well I posted about how I probably wasn't going to run because of the weather and then ran anyway. 5 miles on trails in 34 degree freezing rain with 15 mph winds. Yay! and honestly it was not the most suck I have ever embraced, it was kind of not that bad. Next time I won't be as intimidated.

I was correct that my jacket only kept the top half of me dry, and my leggings got soaking wet and freezing. But while I was moving, I was warm enough, although when we were walking on the way back the wind cut straight through my wet leggings. I overdressed on my top half - shell jacket over a wool base layer and tech fabric mid-layer - in the expectation that my legs, face and hands would lose enough heat that I wouldn't need to worry about getting overheated. And it worked as planned. Bamboo/merino glove liners under flip mitts kept my hands dry. My husband on the other hand had fancy running gloves which got soaked through, and his fingers weren't working by the time we got back, had to go run them under water in the sink so they would warm up enough to operate his zippers. Water was ankle deep a lot of the way, gave up on trying to keep my feet dry.

We saw a very wet red-tailed hawk on the boardwalk, which sat there until we drew even and then tried to avoid us by slowly flying down the boardwalk in front of us. She was pretty fed up with us by the time we had "chased" her a quarter mile! She finally flew off the boardwalk into a small tree. She was still there when we came back and scolded us severely in her shrill little voice as soon as we came in sight.

No running on the boardwalk today, my trail shoes didn't have the traction for wet boards slimy with algae. We walked to the trails and took off into the woods, which gave us a little protection from the pelting rain. We had looked at the forecast and determined there wasn't supposed to be lightning until after midnight tonight, and I guess the forecasters had broccoli in their socks or something because no sooner had we set off than the world shook with thunder. It kept up the whole time we were out there. "Well this wasn't how I planned to die!" I said, and my husband said, "At least it's just thunder, no lightning!" and about that time the lightning started.

Anyway it was an adventure! And now it's over! Yay! I'm currently drinking a homemade cappuccino with a giant spoonful of cacao powder and a shot of peppermint.

So, the thing you have to know about this photo is that this is not a creek or a river. It's just the land, ordinarily dry land, at the same elevation as the woods trails. Yep, it does flood here - I've seen the water up over the boardwalk completely in high water season.

@girlinahat - FamilySearch.org is the online site for searching all of the LDS/Mormon resources. Used to be here that you had to go to Utah to their genealogy library in Salt Lake City which I have done and it is simply overwhelming. Not something that you could wade through on a simple weekend or even a few days visit. My dad's family (cousins) have a lot of records going back to our family in Ireland and when the emigrated, etc. My aunt on my mom's family traced their family back to Scotland and to the village where our great, great...grandmother was born. Unfortunately all of the records there were burned in a fire many many years ago so they couldn't go much further. I am still hoping to find some bits in the online library though.

I do hope you feel better and get all the issues sorted. I have fought with hypothyroidism pretty much all my life and it can be hard and depressing especially if the medication is off because you just feel so bad. I had a recent bought with sleeping so much and still being so very tired during the day and it didn't even occur to me that it was off. Mine has been really stable for 4+ years. But it was way out of line. I started new medication and am finally having energy again and still sleeping well but only about 8 hours a night instead of 9-10 and no longer napping in the middle of the day. Also I cannot imagine anyone saying 'you don't look depressed...' WTF. Hang in there and hopefully it will get sorted and you will feel better soon, get your mojo back and be out there attacking those races!