Color Run Philly!

Guess what I did this weekend?

I ran my first 5k! 

Sister and I did the Color Run, which was a totally awesome experience.



I've read allll about 5ks, since I was pretty nervous. So like a good runner, I laid out all my stuff the night before.

This is mostly amusing because I'm so not a "runner." I just happen to occasionally run.
Slowly. 

We set our alarms for nice and early--4:15, to be precise--and got ready, complete with (temporary) tattoos and Color Run gear. 

Annnnd GO!

The run itself was a nice easy course. It was pretty humid out (thank you, Philly summers), but not unbearable. Sister has a heel thing (something like plantar fasciitis, we think) so long stretches of running were uncomfortable for her. We wanted to stay together, so we ran through all the color zones and did a good amount of walking the rest of the time.

Freshly through the Yellow Zone. 

Blue ahead!! Yes, the dust gets in your mouth, but it's just cornstarch. 

Mostly, it was just about the fun of it and experiencing a 5k. There was so much energy, and people were so excited and enthusiastic!

We made it!! 

I think our time was something like 35-40 minutes. Like I said, we were just doing it for fun, and since we did a fair amount of walking I was ok with that time. It's a really low-key run, they don't even officially time it, it's just about getting out and enjoying yourself!

Color bomb!

Clearly it was a blast. 

We're doing the Electric Run (the Color Run's nocturnal cousin) next week with a couple other friends. I'm super pumped!

Garden Update!

We've had a cool spring here in the Philly 'burbs...I'm totally ready for the heat of summer.



For now. Give me a few weeks and I'm sure I'll be complaining about the humidity.



'Cause I'm dramatic like that.



Anyway, I'm resolutely plugging away with my garden, even though it's off to a slow start. I'm just thrilled to be playing in the dirt. In this post you can see some of the work I (and Dan and Dean) did on the fencing. It's so much prettier now.

Especially now that there's a bit of green poking through!

Two rows of Tom Thumb Lettuce, and one row of Bibb. And those little spikes in the background are spinach! They're all heirloom and organic, 'cause I'm fancy like that. 

(Not.) 

Peas creeping up the trellis...

There's also a baby zucchini on the other side, and I'm going to add some cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and beans over the next few weeks. Eventually I'm hoping to propagate some basil and green onions too. 

Love this!!!

How Media is a Powerful Tool

Today I read one of the most bone-chilling, mind-boggling, horrifying stories of my life.



I'm part of a minority trying to bring this story to the light.



This story is the story of Kermit Gosnell, a medical practitioner from my very own Philadelphia. Gosnell ran the Women's Medical Society, a fake clinic that treated women, mostly non-white women of low socioeconomic status. He offered illegal drug prescriptions, as well as abortions.



Full disclosure: I'm pro-life. Simply on a scientific basis, I think that once you can detect a pregnancy, it's a human life and deserves to be protected. I also understand that abortion is a many-faceted topic, and saying "just outlaw it!" glosses over so many issues, and an answer that simplistic will never suffice. We live in a broken system, and many things need to happen in regards to education, prevention, and healthcare before we can really deal effectively with abortion laws.



All that aside, nobody should be able to read Gosnell's story without shuddering. The language is graphic, with details about how this man (and his largely untrained staff) murdered babies aborted at 30 weeks, punctured the organs of the women he treated, and even killed some of his patients. It will (and should) turn your stomach.



And remarkably few people are aware.



This is just as gruesome and horrific as stories like Sandy Hook, Trayvon Martin, and so many other tales of gore and violence. Our media eats this stuff up. Why is no one talking about this? No matter where you stand on abortions, we should all be able to agree that cases like Gosnell should never ever happen. We can use this to dialogue about pro-choice/pro-life laws, we can use this as a jumping-off point to reform and improve women's healthcare, we can take this platform to make sure that medical procedures regulated for the health and safety of everyone.



Help me spread this story. We cannot allow horrors and injustices like this to go unnoticed.

The Trip That Wasn't

In my previous post, I shared our upcoming trip to Washington DC. It's one of our favorite cities to visit, largely because it's such a beautiful place to walk around and just look at cool stuff! Dan and I are both history nuts, so looking at old stuff really gets us going. 

However, we woke up on Monday to snow. Like, a lot of it. And from all the weather information we could find, it was doing the same thing in DC. Ick.

We dallied around--we wanted to leave late on purpose, to miss traffic. It meant we'd have less time in the city, but this trip was more about the "because we can" than because we had some crazy agenda. We tossed our stuff in the car, left a note for Sister (who was house-/dog-sitting for us) and headed out. Less than an hour into our journey, we hit a solid block of traffic. 

Seriously, we spent about 30 minutes going less than a mile down the turnpike. We hadn't even made it to I95 yet. 

We listened to the traffic report, considered our options, and decided to spend the day in Philly instead! 

I called the hotel and cancelled our reservations. Thankfully, because we were paying for it with rewards points, we didn't lose any money and our certificate is still valid for another hotel, another time. 

Here's a few snapshots of what we did in Philly...

First stop, Museum of Natural Sciences. I was super psyched to take these pictures, because my class just finished studying dinosaurs and now I can give them some real-life scale! 

Dan was a good sport.  

Dino femurs. 

Sorry for my weird-looking hand, but this is the size of a T-rex tooth. 

This made us laugh--scientists constructed this image and all kinds of theories about this dino just from the bones pictured above. 

Their little write-up about it. Ridiculous. 

After the dinosaurs, we looked at some information about diatoms (that we're pretty sure our friend Jonathan helped to study and catalogue) and some dioramas of animals from various parts of the world, we got to the butterfly exhibit. I think this was Dan's favorite part, he was pretty into it. 

Aren't they pretty? 

Feeding on rotten bananas. I got a pretty good shot of one butterfly with his proboscis out, pretty excited to show that to my students too! 

This dude's a moth. Moths rest with their wings open, they're nocturnal, and their antennae are furry instead of smooth (my dad actually taught me that forever ago, but it stuck and it's still correct!).

I forget the name of this butterfly, but that's some impressive camouflage. 

Next stop, (late) lunch. Dan found this awesome place just a few blocks away called Famous 4th Street Delicatessen. Holy moly, it was fabulous. 

Pickles! 

And the best part...hot pastrami on rye with cole slaw and Russian dressing! This gal was in heaven.

After lunch we decided to head home. I took a little nap (yay spring break!) and then we ran some errands together, including grabbing Jurassic Park from the library. So fun! 

Overall it was such a great day. We were relaxed and really thankful we made the decision we did--it was just what we needed! 

Sister Stuff

Last weekend my sister and her BFF (my pseudo-sister) came to visit me! It was totally awesome. They're getting and grown up and are super fun to be around.


Not that they haven't always been super fun to be around. But now they're like, peers.


Which is awesome.


Anyway, because my life is insane we didn't have a ton of time to spend chilling, so we decided to make the most of what time we did have and cram it full of excitement.


And Chick-fil-A.

Heaven. 

Our most exciting event was a trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

I go to the art museum probably around once a year, and it's always worth it. I'm usually enticed by whatever exhibit they have on display (this time it was van Gogh) and I always forget that you have to buy a special ticket for admission to the extra-cool exhibits. 

Which I never do. 

It's still fun, I like seeing the regular exhibits anyway. And I'm cheap, so I'd probably be so annoyed about spending the extra dough (for van Gogh...haa) and wouldn't even really enjoy all the cool art. 

"Your art...was the prettiest art...of all the art." 

Who can win my love forever and guess the origin of the quote?! 

Ahem. 

I did bring my iPod touch, which means I'm about to grace you with some low-quality photos!! Let me hear it, people! 

Little tiny boy armor. 

Jess and Meg wish their boyfriends looked like this. (Not.)

"If I was a knight I'd totally have a huge feather like that!" 

Buddhist crap. 

I jest, this is the lovely, life-size Japanese garden and house. It's very zen and peaceful and beautiful. 

Ommmmm. 

A painting of New Hope from the American art exhibit. 

This is for my daddy. So many beautiful grandfather clocks!

I also decided that I really like Monet and I want something like this to hang in my kitchen one day.

We were a little baffled by the Contemporary Art sculptures. 

Clearly. 

It was really fun. The girls were super easygoing (read: apathetic) about a lot of things, but we can generally agree on what kinds of art we like to look at, so we had no problems. 

Now the question is, when will they move in together somewhere here on the East coast so we can all hang out like this on a regular basis!?