lets get dirty.

Hey America, how are you?

Let me tell you something America, and please know that I'm talking directly to you, and only to you. Nobody else is included, not even England or Canada, or anybody else. You look good.

I'd like to talk about my running. Let's get dirty and let it all hang out. My motivation for running is a bit low at the moment. I go through some periods of enthusiasm, and I strung together a small (12 day) running streak that ended last week. I found a nice race called the Flying Monkey Marathon that I think I can get excited about, but it comes in fits and starts for now.

The point I want to make is that, life is difficult for a young and healthy white man. Who is there to feel my pain? Nobody cares what we do, since we're young and healthy. If we train like crazy and run a marathon, it doesn't mean that much because we're young and healthy, and that kind of thing should be no problem for us. And things are especially problematic for young and healthy men like me who are generally well below average in athletic endeavors. A couple years ago, I trained like crazy and even ran every single day for more than six months and I ran a marathon in 4:17, and a half marathon in 1:49. These times were great for me and I'm proud of them, but they're below average for someone my age.

But what people don't know about me, is that I've had a bone in my leg since the day I was born. I don't like to talk about it since I don't really want any pity. Please consider that when you see my race times. I'm doing all this with a bone the size of a full-grown ferret in my right leg.

Thanks for your time.
Love, Keith.

Texas Independence Relay - March 1-2, 2008

I don't need a very long race report since probably all my readers were there, on my team. I'm proud to have been a part of the Battling Bloggers of the Texas Republic. You guys ROCK!

I had a great time, running, resting, seeing the small towns, running again, rooting for my teammates, crashing on the floor and sleeping harder than ever before, and then running again.

I apologize for anything I may have said when I was itchy and jonesin' for some sweet sweet gummy bears. I think I yelled at Manny to "keep the water and just get me some f--k--g gummy bears!" I realize now that not having my gummy bears wasn't the end of the world. Sorry Manny.

I'll post the pictures I took soon. For posterity and clicking ease, here is an exhaustive list of the team members with their blogs.

Dave
Adrienne
Katy
Holden
Keith
Sarah
Edwin
Jon
Karen
Joseph
Tommy
Cassie

Keith out!

TIR running / recovery plan

I've been working out the ideal recovery plan for my running, since I think the TIR is going to be a test for how fast we recharge everything. Here's what I've determined, through exhaustive experimentation, to be the ideal plan for running / recovering. Some of the tasks require some assistance from one or more teammates.

## Prior to run
3-4 hours prior to run - start drinking lots of water
1-2 hours prior to run - 100 - 150 calories of carbohydrates, more water
30 minutes prior to run - less water, so nothing will be sloshing around on the run

## During the run
mile 0 - I drink a little water but spit it out
mile 1 - I eat five or seven gummy bears
mile 1.5 - One small cup Peachy Keen Cytomax - more gummy bears
mile 2 - no liquids at all, I need lots of positive reinforcement
mile 2.5 - only red gummy bears, but I dont eat them, just chew and spit
mile 3 - I'll raise my arms and say 'whoop whoop whoop!'
mile 3.5 - I need negative reinforcement at this point - no gummy bears.
mile 4 - A light slap to the face/ eye poke is ideal at this moment.
mile 4.5 - A little childish mockery, one gummy bear
mile 5 and beyond - please provide various surprises to keep things interesting. intermittent gummy bears.

## After the run
- a little pretend stretching
- some flexing of muscles
- talking about how I was tired for a while and felt better for a while and then tired again
15 minutes of groaning
30 minutes of staring into space, gummy bears ad libitum

This plan has proven to be the most effective at recharging my glycogen stores, which I think will be a key component for maintaining energy in the later legs of the relay. You might take issue with the necessity of some elements, but the data are the data. Bottom line is that it works.

Ran 3 miles last night, 2 more on tap for tonight.

Keith.

Yeehaw.

Hey America! How are you?! You look beautiful.

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been terribly busy. I look for some time when I can sit down, write a little to you, and post some pictures of my travelings. I went to Mallorca, Spain for a conference with some of the best numbercrunchers in the world. I have pictures of that. And I went to Colombia to meet Claudia's parents, which I was quite nervous about. I have pictures of that too.

I wrote and applied for a pre-doctoral fellowship which was quite an involved process, with a firing line interview and everything. I'm happy to say I was accepted and my employment situation is significantly more secure than before. Without this fellowship, I could keep my job of course, but worse than that, I may have had to teach! I'm still recovering from the last time I taught and how the TA evaluations came back and everybody was very positive except one guy that wrote "TA is so suck." How could he write that! Can't you be a little more constructive with your criticism Mr. Bui! Yes, I know it was you, Mr. Bui! The form was anonymous, but I know it was you!

Well, there's that, and during my absence, I missed so much stuff that needed commenting, for example:

There was a marathon recently in the area, and so many of my friends were in it. I'm proud of all of you. I was home that day, cursing myself for not being in shape enough for a marathon. It's a painful experience to be a runner in Houston, and not be fit for the Houston Marathon. I thought about selling my bib, but in the end I decided that I deserved to lose my money, the lazy bum that I am.

There's a certain relay that people have been talking about. I have a lot to say about that too, and I haven't been connected as I should be. I'm excited about the race. I think the whole experience is going to be a blast and a half.

And there were some other events of general interest which could have yielded some interesting comments. For example, there was a senator that got caught propositioning an undercover police officer in an airport restroom. I had some funny things to say about that, and I missed my chance. And how his excuse that he wasn't propositioning, he just has a wide stance and hit the other guys foot accidentally, that doesn't really make sense because in the restroom, to have a wide stance you have to have your pants all the way off. I was going to say that, and I was also going to say that the bottom line is, if your in the restroom and you touch my foot even accidentally, you have to lose your job, whether your a senator, or a doctor, or a busboy, or anything.

I've been focused almost exclusively on neurobiology and there are a lot of interesting things going on. Maybe at some point I'll try to boil it down for something that would be interesting for the general public. I've read some interesting things recently that attempt to address how you can keep a concept in your mind, sort of a analogy to working memory at the cellular level.

Anywho, I'm looking for time. I don't even really have it right now, I'm still at work and all.

Talk to you later,
Keith out!

Good Hair Day

Hey America! How are you? You look good.

Rest assured, I look good too. Very good. Amazingly good. I'm having a very good hair day, that's why. It's a shame that not everybody gets to have a hair day like the hair day I'm having. If they did, there would surely be no wars, no hatred. And like all great things, my hair is being misinterpreted. Instead of inspiring people, even my very own friends and coworkers are growing tired of my enthusiasm about my very very good hair day. I'd say this was the second best hair day I've ever had.

I've been doing well America, despite the lack of blogging. I'm quite busy. Ever since my boss left town and got a job in the real world, I've come to realize that I have more advisors than ever. As of the last count, I have four professors who have a legitimate claim to being able to tell me what to do. I'd say probably two of the four are happy at any given moment.

And I'm preparing for a trip next week. For 6 days, I'll be in sunny Mallorca, in the Spanish Islands, living it up, running down the nude beaches, enjoying my free food and vitamins, hob-nobbing with celebrity computational neuroscientists from around the globe. All the big names in mathematical biology will be there.

I've been running well, and I'm proud to say I've run every mile prescribed to me in the Hansons' Marathon Training Program that I introduced to you here. Maybe not always on the day prescribed, but soon thereafter, and every lazy morning was rectified by an evening run, sometimes late at night.

I've followed the old four-stage pattern that I encountered again and again during my six month running streak last year. First, when increasing mileage, everything goes well, and enthusiasm carries me through one week easily. The second week hurts as the increased workload begins to take it's toll. The third week is better, and the fourth week feels too easy. That's where I am now, feeling fit enough for the schedule, at least for this week. Next week, things take quite a jump in mileage and speedwork. I'm a little nervous about it all, but I expect the enthusiasm of the mileage bump, along with all the running on the nude beaches to carry me through to the second week at least.

Anyways, I'm incubating my cells in some calcium indicator, so I have to go now.

Comb your hair.
Keith.

2:04:26

Haile Gebrselassie breaks marathon world record in Berlin.
Read the full story here.

I had a feeling he would do it. He's so determined. He's determined to win the gold medal in the marathon too.

Rock on like Haile!

Keith.

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Registration.

i'm interrupting my workday to remind you that if you haven't registered for the marathon, you should probably do it this weekend or even today. It's at 93% capacity already!

I registered for the full yesterday.

Keith out.

building base

hey bloggers, how are you? you look good.

I was scheduled for 3 miles Saturday and 4 miles Sunday and I ran zero miles both days. It was Claudia's birthday so we took an impromptu trip to San Antonio and San Marcos. We spent a couple days paddling on the San Marcos river and eating fine foods on the San Antonio Riverwalk. Paloma made me an excellent New York Strip steak. Some mariachi played Malagueña Salerosa for us the next day at Michelino's. It was a very nice weekend.

But now I have some catching up to do on my schedule. Some people say you shouldn't try to catch up but should just pick up where the schedule is, but I think I'll try to catch up anyway. I ran the four miler on my off day yesterday (Monday) and felt okay. I think it's getting cooler. If I feel okay I'll pick up the other three lost miles on tomorrow's off day.

Anywho, keep in touch.
Keith.

procrastinators, it's time!

Dear bears, and chickens, and things,

Is Houston! Is Marathon! Is Time!

If you were procrastinating like me, I think it's safe to say that your free time is up. If you were thinking you were going to run in the Houston Marathon, or Half Marathon this year, it's now four months away and the hobbyjogging needs to get focused into something more disciplined.

I had this revelation about a week ago and started planning and looking at some schedules (and running more often of course) and it seems the marathon bug has made a complete recovery. One clue to that is that I'm reading about plans and blogging about running right now, and it's like 1AM in the morning.

I ran four times this week, which is the most for a couple months, and the cobwebs are becoming loosened and things are starting to float along like its supposed to. I've decided to try a new type of training plan, from the Hanson running group in Michigan. You can find it on their site : http://hansons-running.com/ or you can just look below:



As you can see, there's a lack of long long runs, with nothing over 16 miles, but looking at it, it doesn't seem like that makes it an easy plan. The Hanson guys say that physiologically there's nothing magical about the 20 miler, and you can improve the same way with intelligent strength and tempo training. We'll see. It's quite different than the approach I took last year, which was to run more and more, lots of easy miles, running everyday, if you recall, for over 6 months. At the end, I ran what I thought to be a very nice 4:17 marathon. So I plan a lot more 'quality' work this time. But this schedule also gets up to about 50 miles a week, so while there's no 20 miler, there's still a lot of miles, so it's not a clean quality v. quantity experiment.

But I'm excited about it, and it's nice to have that back.

Keith out.

badumpa da da, dadumpa da da da da

Hey America, how are you? You look good.

I haven't been updating that much, b/c I've been quite busy. I don't even have time to write out the "b/c" I have to abbreviate it, that's how busy I am.

I've been moving, or I've moved actually, everything is complete, there remains only a few stray boxes of miscellaneous junk that has no place that needs to be recategorized. The only idea I have for that so far is to pile it all in the corner and put a blanket over it. So now I live in the Medical Center, in the heart of Condoland. I'll post some pictures soon.

This weekend, Claudia and I caught Pulp Fiction at the midnight movie on Friday, so that was cool and the Theater District Open House was yesterday and that was very nice too. We saw the symphony and a scene from the Marriage of Figaro and some Colombian dancers and got some cookies and some cheescake from Artista, all for free, so that was cool. Oh yeah, and we saw the projection booth at the Angelika and the guy gave us all a foot or so of actual film from the Harry Porter movie. And I asked the guy if it was still a problem for the film to catch fire and he seemed to not know what I was talking about, so I guess he didn't see Cinema Paradiso.

I've been running a little. Not as much as someone who's supposed to be marathon training, but once in a while there is enough time and energy for a run. The longest was about 6 miles around the new place. There is some good running in the new area, so that's nice.

The only problem with the moving is how much money gets spent without really paying much attention to it. And with a frightful look at my bank account I decided that I would challenge myself this week to spend as little as possible. I had a twenty dollar bill at the time, so I decided to spend no more than that 20$ bill until payday on Friday. Claudia is taking the same challenge. Somehow though, we decided yesterday that 7$ on a giant burrito from Chipotle was a good idea, so it was almost half gone in the first day. It was worth it though, I loves me my giant burritos. With the burrito and some necessities from the grocery store I've got 8.62 + 1.71 that Claudia owes me so thats... $10.33 remaining. There's a 6$ monday special at the pizza place around the corner, and Tuesday is chicken day, with .89$ chicken at Popeye's, so if I split those with Claudita I can get by for two days on about 5$ and then I'll have to come up with something else for the next three days.

more to come...
Keith.

Tank # 2

Hi America,

Here's what happened with the frogs, and how they're all gone now. I think they are tree frogs, gray tree frogs, I think, which makes them quite a handful. They can climb straight up the sides of things. This is one we named sticky. He is something of a pioneer.

They are also capable of climbing straight up the sides of the glass fish tank.

So we prepared a second tank, designed for animals which are primarily terrestrial. Here you can see the flowerpot, with an assortment of plants, a food dish, and a bridge made of skeleton bones.

We tried feeding them bloodworms, which one website says they like, but I don't think they ever ate any of them.

But they had a nice home, I think, with plenty of things to climb on.

And some nice props for some exciting roleplaying games to invent. This could be the bridge to hell for example.

We borrowed some drosophila melanogaster from one of the labs to see if our babies would be interested in them.

They were interested. Very interested.

There is some video footage of this particular encounter. Check it out.

But there were too many frogs. Somehow, we started with 59 tadpoles, which we counted very carefully when switching tanks the first time, but then switching the grown frogs from the tadpole tank to the frog tank, there were 63! We always planned to set most of them free, so we did. We took all but four with their flowerpot to the Burke-Crenshaw park, by my house.

I think they're probably doing okay, there seemed to be tons of life around that spot. Hopefully they're doing some major damage to the fireant population that I encountered while I was there.

Anyways, Rock on.
Keith.

I've never been so proud.

We got them some drosophila from one of the labs at UH. This is their first real meal.





Rock on!
Keith.

Frogs!

Our tadpoles have been busy. Growing legs, then arms, then losing their tail and all. Here's what they looked like a couple weeks ago.


Some of them were starting to grow their back legs.


Their transition to froghood seems to happen by shrinking away the extra stuff, rather than growing legs and arms. Here's one that is in the awkward phase between poledom and frogdom.


When they reach this stage, with nicely shaped arms and legs, there tail gets absorbed and they become little frogs. It takes less than a day from this point. They're also very awkward looking at this stage. Especially when they try to swim. Their arms and legs are flailing around and their shrinking tail is getting less and less effective.


At some point, they all seem to come to the conclusion that it would be easier if they just get out of the water.


They seem to rest for a day and do nothing but recover. Then they are able to swim around like frogs, kicking their powerful backlegs like a frog is supposed to. And they hop of course.


Apparently, they also realize that not only can they walk and hop, but they can climb the glass wall of the aquarium. We had to seperate them into a tadpole tank and a frog tank that is covered on the top. They're getting to the point where we are trying to figure out where to leave them. Conventional wisdom says to bring them back to the pond they came from, but the tire-track puddle doesn't seem to be a very good option, especially because somebody else drove through it again the other day.

Anyways, Rock on.
Keith.

Last weekend.

Last weekend, Claudia and I decided to tie the bikes on to the back of the car and head down to G-town for a nice little tour of the seawall. We really intended to work out that day, I swear. Instead, we left the bikes tied to the car and headed to Schlitterbahn instead. The weather was beautiful and cooler than it's supposed to be in July so it seemed pretty fortuitous to be on the way to Galveston already.

After 3:00PM it's only 23$ and there's plenty of time to get completely tired of the waterslides so it's not a bad deal. They have many types of slides of all possible speeds. These are two of the slower ones, where you go down in a bigger boat-thing that fits four people.



Instead of walking around all day from slide to slide, they have a bayou system that floats you around everywhere so there's very little walking to tire you out.



They have something called boogiebahn, where you get on a boogieboard and try to stay in the half-pipe thing where they have tons of water streaming by. It's tough to try to stay on and to try to stay in the wave without getting shot back over the back end. It's fun though. I stayed on a little while and then got a little too close to the side and then I have no idea what happened but I was off the side and the boogie board was back up on the starting ramp. (That picture's just some random kid.)



Lots of fun. Here's some more pics.




It was a fun day and and the bicycles took a nice hundred mile drive for no reason.

Keith.

Tadpoles!

There's a puddle of water, made by somebody driving off the sidewalk on the university campus, and there's a frog that thinks that's a good place for her eggs. We saw a thousand or so tadpoles there a couple months ago and decided to raise them - surely we could provide a better home than a dirty slimey puddle. So we collected about 5 or 6 and brought them home. If you ever try this, make sure you get your tap water and let it sit for a couple days first, so that all the dissolved chlorine comes out because our first crack at tadpole raising was a complete failure and they all died by the next morning.

We were right about one thing though, the roadside puddle isn't much better. A couple days later it rained and the puddle overflowed and most of the other tadpoles got stuck out on the sidewalk when the water level dropped. A few days after that, the rest of them were dead for no obvious reason.

But then with the rains a couple weeks ago, there came more tadpoles to the same roadside puddle, so we decided to try again, being much better read about tadpoles and how to keep them alive. Here's a reference, if you're ever inclined to try it.

Here's some pics. They're horribly cute, and horribly entertaining. I can watch them for hours. There is some anxiety of course, since the first batch all died, and sometimes they do stupid things like get themselves trapped in the rocks, and when I spend twenty minutes trying to gently-gently move rocks to get him out and he goes right back in there 30 seconds after he's freed. Otherwise they're adorable.



I know!



Some of them are starting to get their back legs. There's one that's more advanced than the others, but not by much. His name is Leggie because he has legs.



If you stick your finger in the water they will cling to you and start nibbling.



And since their tank is just a wee bit cramped, they're about to get introduced to their brand new pimped out crib. I know! Just as soon as the chlorine dissipates and the plants bump up the oxygen level.



Rock on my chickieweemonkies!
Keith.

There's a movie called Once playing at the Landmark in River Oaks. It's very good. The music is great.

busy busy busy

Hey Bloggers,

I know I haven't posted too much recently, but I have been quite busy. Here's a photo-recap of some of the things I've been up to. First of all, I got a nice digital camera, which makes uploading photos easy, so there should be more pictures in the future.

My Mom came to town, and Claudia and I hung out with her for a few days. Here we are by that thing on Memorial. The dog belonged to the guy who took the picture.
We saw the bats emerge from the Waugh street bridge, and we also went to the downtown aquarium.
This is some kind of a crazy salamander. It has gills and legs at the same time.
There were little shrimp that will swim up to your hand and clean your fingers if you don't freak out like I did.
A couple weeks later, Claudia and I went to the zoo on free-day. It wasn't that crowded because it was pouring rain most of the time. This is a lion.
I forget what this was but somebody shaved it.
We also took some time to play a round of golf with some comically large golf clubs.

Armand Bayou Nature Center has tons of animals, 95% of which are gigantic spiders.
I dog-sat for my boss. A delightful little whippet and a sizeable greyhound. They look so much like my beloved five-dog and their mannerisms are identical. It was nice.
I had a birthday. I'm 31 years old now. I celebrated at Churrascos. I had the salmon, Claudi had the churrasco. Then cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory.
I made some flautas that I'm kindof proud of. It was Emeril's recipe and it took quite a lot of work. But they were very good. Lunch today will be the last of the leftovers. It's a little sad to see them go.

But that's not everything. There are 45-50 new additions to the family. Stay tuned for some pics.

Rock on.
Keith.

Happy Birthday Freedom and Democracy.

Two hundred and thirty-one years ago, our forefathers along with Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, Henry Ford, and George Washington had an idea. It was a simple idea, that people should be able to decide who their leaders are and they should also be able to be different if they wanted to be different.

Today we can celebrate the birth of freedom. the birth of democracy. and the birth of the modern world.

Run an extra mile if you love freedom!

Rock on America!
Keith.