Anniversary camping in Pomona State Park

Hello friends!

This weekend, Pat and I belatedly celebrated our three-year anniversary by going camping!

Camping for our anniversary is a new tradition we started last year, and I hope it's a tradition that keeps going! This year, we wanted to go somewhere new (rather than the local camp grounds we've been to several times) and Pat found Pomona State Park in his Kansas magazine. They have a great website where you can look up the campsites, so we picked this pretty waterside spot even before we got there!

Pat (who really planned the whole thing while I was on the struggle bus for other reasons all week) also found some awesome recipes online and we cooked our dinner on the campfire!

We also played around by the water, made s'mores, and had a great time.

Do you ever go camping? I never thought I'd be someone who loves camping, but I do! Hoping to work up to where we can camp for a few days at a time. :)

The Dr. Bob Run, take two

Hey friends!

So it's already been a month since I ran this race, but I really wanted to post about it, so here I am.

First of all, a recap: I ran the Dr. Bob Run in 2012 as my second race/second 5k ever and it kicked my ass. I ran it with the bf, Pat, and was so so disappointed in myself -- because he'd done no training at all and could have been faster than me and because it was so difficult for me -- I was breathing really hard and had to stop and walk a few times, which I hadn't done in my first 5k.

To be fair, the course is super tough. The Dr. Bob Run is held at Rim Rock Farm, which is where KU's cross country team trains and competes. Loose dirt and grass trails, big hills -- but GORGEOUS scenery.

Anyway. This year.

This year the race was just a week after my second half marathon. The weather was PERFECT and I felt pretty good going into it -- wasn't really sore anymore and was excited to run a shorter race. Pat ran again with me this year, but now I've run enough races with others that I wasn't really nervous about running with him.

I brought my phone on the course but didn't listen to music -- I just used it to keep track of the distance. Me and Pat kept a great pace for the first few miles and then split up with just about a mile left.

I finished up solo and was SO HAPPY with my race overall. I had a 10:23 pace throughout, which is good for me anyway, but crazy good when you add in all the hills.

I finished in 32:15, a full FOUR MINUTES better than my time on the course last year. Huzzah! Pat beat his time from last year by a few minutes as well, but I didn't write down his times, just mine. :)

Finishing the race that much faster than the year before and having a great race after such a difficult one the week before was seriously the best feeling! I am no longer enemies with the Dr. Bob Run. :)

What's one of your shining moments of work-out or running victory? I'd love to hear!

For the Kids

Hi friends!

Last week, I posted about my job and why I love it.

Today, I wanted to share with you an awesome opportunity I've had this semester.

Dance Marathon is an organization/event that takes place at universities across the country. KU Dance Marathon strives to provide emotional and financial support to the children, and their families, of KU Pediatrics, our local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital. KUDM hosts fundraising events throughout the year. These efforts culminate each November, when more than 500 KU students unite to stand on their feet for 12 hours at Dance Marathon.We stand because we can, for kids who can’t.

I joined KUDM as an adviser this year and have been so impressed, so inspired and so amazed by the dedication of the students in this organization!

Talking with one of the Dancers about the miracle children they've met is like talking to a mother about her children. Many of them have been involved in KUDM since they started at KU, and it has changed them. Knowing these children has given them each an incredible heart for serving others and extraordinary passion and dedication. You can see it in the way they talk with each other, in their every action, and in the spark in their eye when they're working on KUDM.

As I talked about last week, I am studying to work in colleges and universities, helping students grow, change and become the best versions of themselves they can.

I am fundraising and will be standing for the kids so that each of them can have the opportunity to reach this incredible period in their lives -- so they have the chance to grow up, to make awesome choices and terrible choices and explore the world and figure out how they fit in it. I'm fundraising for the kids and standing for the kids so they can have all the opportunities I've had and all the opportunities I haven't.

I know there are a million good causes out there, and I know everyone's finances are tight right now, but I hope you will consider supporting my participation in the KU Dance Marathon 2013 event. All contributions will benefit my local Children's Miracle Network Hospital. Any contribution will help, and all donations are tax deductible.

If each of my Google followers donated just $1, I'd meet my fundraising goal. If you can spare even just a dollar, I hope you will.

You can find my personal fundraising page here or by clicking the new badge on the side of my page. If you're local, consider becoming a dancer yourself! The event / celebration is November 9 here on the KU campus, and we will be standing and dancing for the kids from 10-10! It's guaranteed to be a great time.

Thank you all for reading!

For the Kids,

Book review: Ender's Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.

Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.

Ender's Game was a super quick read for me. There were some slow parts, but most of it is filled with sci-fi action and keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Ender is a nice kid, and you care about him and what happens to him. And a lot happens to him. Ender is tortured by his brother and then is pretty permanently taken from his family. He faces several plots to physically harm him and one plot to kill him. He advances through school at lightning speed, which isn't making him any friends -- all knowing he is being groomed to lead a war.

Oh, and did I mention that all this starts when he is six and ends when he is barely a teenager?

At the same time, Ender has been bred -- created, designed -- to lead a war. To end a war. So he is cunning and analytical and sometimes violent and you wonder if you should really be cheering for him and then he questions himself and you care about him again.

It's a lot of feelings.

I liked most of the book. I did not like the end. Or the beginning of the end, before it goes into epilogue-y stuff. If you've read it, I'd love to discuss with you (I'm lookin at you, Kate) -- just beware of spoilers in the comments.

This is a great book, I would think, for reluctant male readers. And now, it's a movie!! Coming out soon.

Have any of you read Ender's Game? What did you think?

PS: In case you missed it, I posted yesterday about my trouble with the author, Orson Scott Card.

Book review: Candy Girl

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

Candy Girl is the story of a young writer who dared to bare it all as a stripper. At the age of twenty-four, Diablo Cody decided there had to be more to life than typing copy at an ad agency. She soon managed to find inspiration from a most unlikely source— amateur night at the seedy Skyway Lounge. While she doesn’t take home the prize that night, Diablo discovers to her surprise the act of stripping is an absolute thrill. This is Diablo’s captivating fish-out-of-water story of her yearlong walk on the wild side, from quiet gentlemen’s clubs to multilevel sex palaces and glassed-in peep shows. In witty prose she gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at this industry through a writer’s keen eye, chronicling her descent into the skin trade and the effect it had on her self-image and her relationship with her now husband.

Candy Girl is not for the faint of heart. Or the shy or squeamish.

I don't remember where I heard of this book, but it has been on my list for a very long time. Diablo Cody wrote the screenplay for Juno, so I expected it to be funny, and having never stripped, I knew it would be unlike anything I've experienced.

The story in Candy Girl is interesting -- Diablo really didn't seem like someone who'd end up as a stripper. All of it is new to her and that makes her really relatable, despite the job she has taken on. 

But it's also graphic. Really graphic. Bodily fluids and weirdos and stuff. So you want to be prepared for that if you read it.

I didn't hate this book, and I didn't love it, but it was interesting and intriguing, so I figured I'd let you know it existed! :)

Have any of you read Candy Girl? What did you think?