Kitties

Well I am now two cats closer to being a crazy cat lady. A friend of mine from school, Maike (but I pronounce it more like "Mia"), has taken a job in England that starts in a few weeks. She wants to bring her cats, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get animals into England, and so she cannot bring her cats there until March. So we are taking care of them in the meantime. Their names are Maggie and Shelby. They arrived on Tuesday night and are currently staying in one of our spare bedrooms. Tiger is a little freaked out to have other cats in the house - he gives the room a suspicious glance every time he walks by it. Maggie and Shelby are adjusting well. Tonight, Maike came over for dinner and visited the cats. We had some fish tacos and then sat in the bedroom with the cats and chit-chatted. It's been a nice evening.

Work has been pretty good this week. I took Monday off to go Christmas shopping and shipping. I have been trying to spend a few hours each day working on the CMMAP website. It is hard right now for two reasons: 1. I actually am generating results and I really want to look at them and make plots and write a thesis! and 2. Sometimes I wonder how useful all this writing is, and I hope I am not just reinventing the wheel. Sometimes I want to question the utility of this, but then again I am getting paid pretty well to do it and so it is hard to complain. But I am really excited about my results and I feel like the next few months will be very productive!

Another exciting thing that happened today is I went running for almost 6 miles - my longest run in probably about 2 years. I probably walked about 1/3 of the time, but it still only took just over an hour so I feel pretty good about that. My knees felt great while I was running but actually felt a little funny when I walked. I will be careful about them. I think it will help a lot if I don't run every day, stretch a lot, and it would probably help if I got back on the bike to help with the leg strength side of things. But I am glad to be able to run again. I went during lunch and it was a wonderful break.

Now Tiger is sitting on me and we are watching college football (woohoo!). But Chris is pestering me so I ought to go. It is almost time to go to bed anyway.