even the greeks weren't stupid enough to run in the rain

wow. i'm still not sure why i did it, but i'm also somewhat amazed that i didn't die. or at least end up in an ambulance or hospital. i suppose that's something to be a little proud of. sunday i ran 1/4 of the lausanne marathon. in a torrential downpour. we were soaked before we even got to the starting line, and that was through my rain shell. but i ran the whole thing; not even any walking. ten-point-six-some-odd kilometers. geez. i definitely need new shoes though. these ones have finally given up the ghost. which is a shame, since i liked them. i wonder if they still make similar ones---these had a huge air pocket right under the ball of your foot, and were very springy; completely unlike any of the others i tried on at the time (which, admittedly, was almost six years ago, but still).

however, i'm more than a little pissed that they recorded the times without telling me, and then published them to boot. of course i'm glad i just finished, but my time was fucking abysmal, and i can't believe they had the audacity not only to take it, but to distribute it. this is even after i went and specifically asked about it, and received their promises and assurances that they would erase all record of my having participated. yeah. displeased does not even begin to illustrate my ire.

as if to add insult to injury, the weather shaped up within hours of us finishing. beautiful saturday afternoon, beautiful sunday afternoon, monsoon inbetween, just another special delivery for the poor saps stupid enough to try running in an organized event. i'm not sure i'll ever do anything like that again. true, it was only my first, but it was more discouraging and depressing than anything else. probably better just to continue going on my own. we'll see.

but anyway, i've been (obviously) walking a little funny since then, but no permanent damage has showed up yet. messed up my sleep schedule pretty good, though. took a nap sunday afternoon, and then was wide awake at 3am. which i guess worked out alright in the end, though, since jaime and i had made a phone appointment for ten (which would have been midday for her, as she was driving back from portland to spokane), but she apparently hadn't been on the road yet, since i was unable to catch her. so i called when i woke up at three, she actually answered (wonder of wonders, i've been trying to get her on the phone for over a month now), and we had a really good, nice long chat. i miss her, and being able to talk with her. somehow she has a mysterious way of making me feel better about things. regardless, it was good.

friday i got bored again and cut my hair. i guess i'm getting pretty good at it by now, but it's not like it's very hard. saturday morning was yoga as usual. yannick had mentioned he might come, but didn't. haven't seen him in a while; i'll have to track him down at some point soon.

finally saw godfather I and II (little bits at a time over the last week or so worth of evenings). they really are quite well done, in that way that really gets to you so forcefully that you almost feel sick, just from empathising with the psychological and emotional struggles of the characters. especially the scene where she tells him that it wasn't a miscarriage. and when fredo admits that he feels belittled by the fact that his younger brother takes care of him. that was some heavy stuff.

i've reserved a "refuge" (multipurpose center) in the woods north of lausanne for our thanksgiving party. i'm starting to realize what a big ordeal this has turned into, and hence am starting to worry a little. but that's probably a little healthy, too. if i don't worry at all about it, there's a much larger chance that it will end up being a disaster. cross your fingers and hope that doesn't happen.

three nights in a row

it's strange. sometimes i feel like i don't have any social life at all, and then others, everything happens at once, and it's like there aren't anymore free evenings in the week at all.

tuesday, a bunch of us went over to jean-christophe and celine's place for a "real valaisian raclette" as they like to call it, even with the cheese that he brought back from valais. turns out, it was actually his birthday, and he didn't tell anyone, which i found a little annoying, since i would have wanted to do something about it, but it was a very fun evening nonetheless. i even convinced him to try teaching me to do the raclette thing. i didn't do too bad, for my first time, but it's clear that it takes practice, and is not nearly as simple as it looks. i also probably drank much more than i should have, seeing as jean-christophe kept insisting, and my french isn't quite good enough for arguing. :) but celine (who doesn't see me very often) commented on how she thinks i really am getting a lot better every time we see each other, which i found encouraging, since it's hard for me to gauge my progress on my own.

twin peaks is basically dead. probably we'll get the o'neils, ildar and me together some weekend and just finish it out in a marathon, since we seem to be the only people still interested, and half the time the o'neils can't come on wednesdays for one reason or another. anyway, it was just ildar and i again this week, so he reminded me that i had mentioned at one point possibly teaching him how to cook. sounded like a good idea, so he came over and i walked him through making a cream sauce out of the gorgonzola i had left in the refrigerator. we threw some walnuts on top of it and some pasta, and it was actually very good. and i think we both had fun, which is of course the important part.

then 'movienight' on thursday was kinda special, since i didn't end up doing any of the cooking, which is unusual, but cool from time to time. especially this time, since it was sarah making us egyptian food---which was tasty awesome. really really good. oh, and i have no idea how it came up, but i guess now fred says he's working on finding nice girls to introduce me to. [rolls eyes] i think i must have said something to the effect of complaining that everyone says the best way to learn french is to have a french-speaking significant other, and yet it's nearly impossible to meet people, much less become involved in a relationship with them, until after you already speak the language. catch-22. ha. anyway, i guess we'll see what he comes up with.

se perdre and paragliding

i got horribly horribly lost trying to find thomas's apartment friday evening. well, no, that's not entirely acurate---i knew exactly where i was, the problem was that i didn't know where i was going, since he told me his address was "chemin du stand 24." as it turns out, there isn't actually a number 24 on chemin du stand... and of course he just moved in, so his name isn't on the mailbox yet, and yeah, it was just a pretty bad situation. of course, once i did finally get there, fabius and jim were relentlessly mocking my continued refusal to buy a cellular telephone, but a guy's gotta stand by his principles, right? jim had finally found a set of cards for the game he was looking for (called "mille bornes"). it was an interesting game, but either we didn't quite understand the rules properly, or there was something slightly flawed in the gameplay, because we kept ending up in pseudo-stalemate positions. anyway, it was pretty fun.

oh, and on thursday i made samosas at markus's, which was awesome, because everybody loved them. :) yay tasty goodness.

saturday consisted of yoga in the morning and running in the evening. this time i ran all the way to epfl, which is about 8.6 kilometers as best as i can measure it on the map. what i thought was really interesting though, was that it only took me around 45 minutes, which is basically the same as it takes me using public transit. if i could find a convenient place on campus to shower and change, it almost seems like a good idea to try running in every morning (or even just some mornings). hrm. gonna have to look into that. oh, and i somehow convinced myself to sign up for the 1/4 marathon, which will be on the 23rd (next sunday). i'm not exactly sure why i did this, and i'm starting to freak out a little bit, but hopefully it won't turn out too bad.

now for the exciting story! on sunday, i went to meet thomas and his cousin in brig, and we went paragliding in fiesch! it was awesome. i had never been before, and i kinda thought it might be scary, but surprisingly, it wasn't---not even a little bit. i can't explain it, but i felt much more at ease there than i did in the airplane with jean-christophe. i'm even considering looking into what it would take to get a license to do it myself.

then in the afternoon we went on a "klandersteick" (the german term for "via feratta," as best as i can tell) around a resevoir in the area, which was also fun. and somewhere in there we ended up at the top of the eggishorn, which was a beautiful view.

we went back to his parents's house for dinner, and had a good time with them, even though my german is pitiful (and i know nothing of any kind of swiss german, not to mention oberwalliserdeutsch), and their english wasn't particularly good, but we were able to get by (and of course thomas was there to help out when it became necessary).

now i still just have to catch up with all the work i'm increasingly further behind in...

twinpeaks is slowly dying

well folks, i'm not sure if we're going to make it to the end or not. i had hoped we could hang on long enough to eek through, and then plan something else, but interest is waning rapidly. fabius has decided he doesn't like the series anymore and probably won't come back, and i guess jim has been going to happy hour with the american biologists he knows on wednesday instead of tuesday. i have no clue what happened to enno; haven't heard from him in what seems like forever.

so the end result is that ildar and i had a nice time last night, and again i have lots of food which will probably go bad before i am able to eat it.

ildar (kudos to him) even managed to switch us to french for the better part of the evening, which was nice, and likely beneficial. we even looked up a couple of words in the dictionary along the way.

ketchup is overrated

there seems to be a sort of bitter irony in the fact that during times when lots of things are happening, clearly, there's no time to write about them. and when one has time to write, there never seems to be much to write about...

so it feels like there's been a bunch of things going on recently. hopefully i'll be able to remember them all. i think my last entry was on yannick's birthday. i wasn't able to catch up with him that week, and he went to ticino with his family that weekend, but he called me and suggested going to a yoga class on tuesday evening, so we went back to the scottish guy's studio. i went ahead and bought 10 classes, which brings the price down to 20.40 each, which is as reasonable as anywhere in lausanne. anyway, it was a good class (unfortunately, it was also pretty packed), and afterwards we went to a mexican restaurant for dinner. i was proud of myself for being quick enough on the draw to pay the bill before he realized what was happening. :) after that, we went to a bar nearby and had a few drinks, which he then insisted on paying for, even though i tried to put up a fight. the only dumb part was that i forgot his gift in my desk at work. [rolls eyes]

wednesday was of course twin peaks, and we had a pretty good crowd (dena, conlin, peter, ildar, jim, thomas). our numbers have slipped recently, it seems. fabius has decided he doesn't really like the series anymore, and i'm not sure what enno's deal is, but i guess he's been really busy for the last month or so. i wanted to try making a smooth potato soup, but it was way too thick to go through the food mill (not sure what i did wrong), so we just mashed it with the masher-thingy, and it tasted good.

oh, and i was a little irked at markus planning his 'movienight' on wednesday that week as well (he's supposed to have thursdays, and wednesdays are mine). i finally pointed it out to him, and he said he'd try to do better in the future; i guess this time it was due to some other people who were going to be involved in the planning of stuff that wanted to move it. anyway, i was a little disappointed to miss this particular one, as it was going to be when they were making a big deal out of the fact that markus's birthday had been while he was on vacation in brazil.

on friday, as a result of a discussion amanda and i had on the lab hike the previous week (we went to gruyeres, hiked the molesan, saw the cheese factory, the chateau de gruyeres, the h.r.giger museum, and eventually had an excellent fondue for dinner) wherein we were having difficulties distinguishing/describing the subtle differences between ricotta and mascarpone, we (amanda and i) decided to host a 'cheese and wine tasting.' it was a blast. we had waaaaaaay too much cheese. unbelievable. seriously, there must have been at least 3 kilograms of cheese out on the table, if not more. and plenty of wine, too. it was delicious, and fun, and i even learned some things, too. like i would have previously claimed that many of the swiss cheeses (say for instance, appenzeller vs. gruyeres) were basically indistinguishable, but having them side by side, you really can tell that there is a difference. (now, the question remains, that if you can't tell the difference when they're not side-by-side, then does it really matter? but we'll leave that one for another day). but yeah, even nikolaus and olga came, which was nice. we should probably do it again sometime soon.

ha. well, and that other thing that happened friday night. well, let's just say that chris learned that chris should not attempt to do dishes while intoxicated. :) i dropped two plates and a pepper grinder. one of the plates survived. the other two items were pretty much obliterated.

saturday, i went again to yoga (since i've already prepaid for a bunch of classes, making the decision to go is much less of an ordeal), which was again very full, and i ended up next to the heater (not where i, or anyone really, wanted to be) which of course she forgot to turn off, and so i was standing in even more of a puddle than usual by the time it was over. she apologized afterwards, which was nice, and i talked to here for a little while, pointing out that she sometimes cheats a little bit on the left side (not holding things as long as we did on the right).

later that afternoon, i went running. this was the first time i've dared to try timing myself, and i'm not sure how bad it is, but i ran the first 5k in about 26 minutes, and another 4k in 20 minutes. yannick suggested that i should try to sign up for the 1/4 marathon. i'm hesitating, but there's a possibility i might do it. i kinda wish someone would do it with me, but i don't think there's anyone that would be interested. the registration deadline is this saturday, and the actual event is going to be october 23rd.

at the last minute saturday night, ildar called wanting to arrange a hike for sunday morning. i probably should have gone into work on sunday morning, but i didn't have the heart to tell him no (and it sounded like a lot more fun than work anyway) so he and i and conlin and dena went on a nice little walk though the oak forests north of nyon. had a little bit of trouble with the train schedules, so there was a bunch of waiting involved, during which we played more hearts (what appears to be the o'neil's favorite game). i obviously lost miserably, even despite shooting the moon once, but it was fun nonetheless.

sunday evening, i had bought a ticket to go to the morcheeba concert with yannick and one of his friends, and we went over to his apartment beforehand for drinks. this time i brought the gift (leather fitted camera jacket for his camera), and he seemed to like it, which made me happy. we sat and talked with his friend godefroy for a while, during which an interesting thing happened---now, i don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but godefroy and i were chatting about something, in french, and then yannick came out of the kitchen, sat down and joined us, chimed in which something in french, the two of them replied to each other a couple of times, and then he turns to me and suddenly says whatever it is he was going to say _in english_. now, i like the guy, so of course i'm not really going to throttle him, but my impulse at that moment was that i really wanted to. :) instead, i settled for spitting out a phrase i had constructed earlier anticipating that something like this might happen, which basically translates to "yannick, i put up with your nonsense when we're alone, but if other people start speaking to me in english because of you, i swear i'll kill you, okay?" hrm. well, at least i'm pretty sure that the way i said it in french was more playful and less upset-sounding than the way i just wrote it in english, but i'm pretty sure it got my point across gently enough.

he seemed a bit surprised, but it seemed like he understood what i was thinking, and the really interesting part was that he then responded by explaining what he had been thinking, which helps me to understand where he's coming from as well. basically, as it turns out, even despite not being a citizen, he's a lot more american than i give him credit for (which is my fault for projecting my intense desire to disassociate myself from the united states as much as possible on to everyone else as well). i mean, he did live near san fransisco for a significant part of his childhood. anyway, what he said was that to him, we were both sort of "from" california, so he speaks to me in english, in the same way that he and godefroy were both sort of "from" france, so he speaks to him in french. as appalling as this seems to me, seeing as he has an alternative to fall back on (two, actually), i guess in a way he really does feel like an american, and interacts with me as a compatriat accordingly.

the more i think about this, the more it starts to make sense, and i even feel a little bad for giving him a hard time about it. the truth is, even though i think of him as french, he didn't move to france, or even really speak any french, until he was 14 and starting high school. in fact, if i pay really close attention, i can even pick out bits of an american accent when he's speaking french (insofar as it's still pretty difficult for me to identify any accents in french, otherwise i'd be better able to try to masque my own, but anyway). i'm much happier about the whole situation now that i have a better idea of what's actually going on. i'm also glad he doesn't hate me for being a jackass. :)

they'd both adjusted to swiss timing already, but i started to get antsy when 7:30 (the curtain time for the concert) came and went, and we hadn't left yet. but it was only a short walk over to the venue, and even by the time we got there around 7:50, nothing had started happening yet (though the place was pretty packed). being short kinda sucked, but i'm also kinda glad we weren't too much closer, since i think it probably would have gotten to be too loud for me. where we were it was just about right. afterwards, i saw that yannick had apparently been using a sort of special earplugs that are supposed to have a better frequency response than the ordinary styrofoam cylinders---i had no idea such things existed, but it sounds interesting; probably i should try to get some for myself.

interestingly, there was no opening band, they just busted right out with the headliner, morcheeba (albeit half an hour behind schedule). i had only vaguely heard the name before, and didn't really know anything about the music, but i actually liked it rather well. i guess they had a relatively new singer (i found out later that they've gone through like four over the lifetime of the band...), and she was good, but i think she's got some room to grow as a performer. i guess it just seemed a little weird that she was hamming it up as much as she was; basically doing the sexy dance at the same time as she was singing. but she played a mean saxophone, and is apparently trying to learn the flute as well (she was okay on the flute, but not spectacular). i felt like her [instrumental] solos, while definitely delivered with gusto/emotion/feeling, had a bit of a rehearsed flavor to them, even though they sounded like they wanted to be more of a jazz improvization sort of thing. but all these are just nitpicks; the music was very good.

it felt a little odd to be leaving after only a 90 minute concert (which, to be fair, is a pretty long set for one band---but it's still a very short concert for 58 francs), but i'm glad i went. we had a quick drink at a nearby bar called "tacos" which i only mention because (in keeping with our irony theme) you can't actually order tacos. they told me the closest thing they serve to mexican food is chips with guacamole. i found this hilarious. they were tired (from partying the previous night) and i was starting to worry a bit about not having done any work over the weekend, and anticipated getting up early the next morning, so we called it a night and went our separate ways.

incidentally, speaking of work, i did end up missing my tuesday deadline, but after explaining the problems i've been having with the program to olivier, he was cool about it, and very understanding. i still need to work my ass off until i get this damn thing functioning, but i'm happy that he's not going to kill me for falling behind what we had planned.