An Irish adventure

March 15, 2015 / thievinsteven / Leave a comment

Yay date night! and it was the weekend that downtown was celebrating St. Paddy’s day too. Amanda taught me that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland which I’m a little skeptical of but it seems nice of him. I don’t know exactly how you drive snakes out of anywhere. Do you shout at them? Do you chase them with whacking sticks? Do you raise a large family of mongooses? I don’t think getting rid of a snake problem by starting a rodent problem is a great solution, and then who drives Rikki Tikki Tavi and his family out of Ireland? In any case, St. Patrick, if you’re reading this could you stop by and help us out with our copperhead problem?

Our plan was to go to Centro for dinner. When we got there, after 8:00, we were told there would be an hour wait. In my shocked state I allowed them to put us on the wait list and take my phone number down before leaving to find that the Hive was much better suited to our schedule. We walked in, sat down and had beers in hand within 10 minutes. That is when Centro called and said they had a table available, 13 minutes after telling me there would be an hour wait.

Dear Centro,

Your food is amazing, but get your shit together.

Love,

Steve and Amanda

Amanda got an amber ale. They were all out of the Death by Hops cask of the night but I got another IPA that Amanda decided to try. Here’s a picture of her reaction, I think she really liked it!!!

Next up: dinner. We were both pretty hungry by now. What is it about daylight saving time that pushes your dinner schedule back an hour or two? We still get hungry at the same time but just decide to be unhappy about it and find a snack before finally getting around to dinner. The loaded tots at Busy Bee/The Hive are amazing so we started with those.

I got the left hand burger with onions cooked in some stout I think and sharp white cheddar cheese

Amanda got a chicken sandwich with some kind of basil pesto, pear and honey. Amanda won this time and about bit my face off when I tried to steal it from her.

After dinner we went to Tir na Nog for some Guinness followed by some cheap green beer. Immediately upon walking in Amanda joined two guys calling the hogs. They were so happy to run into another Arkansas fan I think they fell in love. This really set the tone for a great night of watching and interacting with very interesting people including one guy I overheard telling a stranger about how the settlers didn’t even have cell phones and they managed to find their way home so he didn’t really see what the problem.

There was an Irish rock band called The Fighting Jamesons playing. The high energy, small venue show reminded me of my punk rock days back in the 90s. I went to lots of shows in little hole in the wall places with my old high school friends back then. I nostalgia’d HARD.

My first time in a mosh pit in I guess 15 years was fun although I did get my glasses knocked off my face. They got pretty mangled before I was able to find them since there were drunken horses stomping around. Luckily I ordered them from China for 30 bucks so it wasn’t such a loss.

While searching for them I found a set of keys and saved a couple from a ruined night. The girl looked like she was about to kiss me or Amanda or both of us after their frantic search ended with me asking if the keys were theirs.

We also saw an entertaining wrestling match between some guy and two cops. They tackled him to the floor of the bar and carted him off for a free night’s stay in a ~~suite~~ cell at the city jail.

We also saw some bagpipers at the bar for some authentic Irish celebration. Amanda was surprised to learn there is a bagpipe class available at State so I figured I’d let you all know too.

All in all we had a blast. At the end of the night Amanda drove us home since my glasses were smashed. Thankfully we were not smashed and didn’t suffer too much the next morning. Probably a good thing that they were all out of jello shots 😉

Have you had any adventures out on the town lately?

My training brain

March 8, 2015March 8, 2015 / thievinsteven / Leave a comment

Yesterday I ran 8.2 miles, my longest run yet. I never thought I’d run that far before deciding to train for a half marathon. To be honest I used to think I couldn’t do it. I thought that my old ankle injury would handicap me too much and to be honest, it’s really stiff today. I can barely bend it.

I think about it differently now though. I think about a lot of things differently. Training for this race and steadily increasing my longest run distance has changed me. I feel more capable in general. I feel more confident. Barriers seem less insurmountable. I see challenges in a different light which helps me see ways to tackle them.

A week ago I did a 7 mile run. Mile number 7 was really difficult and I had to really concentrate to keep running. This week the first 7 miles were pretty easy and it was mile 8 that was really difficult. I did have Amanda with me on this run which was a huge help as far as making the run go quickly and distracting me from having to think “Ok, still running, keep going, only x more miles to go.” but still, the progress is there. I’m stronger than I was. I have more endurance than I’ve had in… decades I guess.

In the past if I tried to do something and woke up with an ankle this stiff that made me hobble around I would have said well… I guess I can’t do that. My new training brain is thinking about how we can best recover so I can make my 3 mile run on Monday. I look forward to pushing myself. I relish testing my limits. I take pride in my achievements.

This training brain thought process isn’t limited to running and exercise. It bleeds out into the rest of my life and is positively impacting my attitude toward challenges in my studies as well. In all aspects of my life I’m shedding apathy. I see footholds in barriers that seemed smooth and shear before. It’s refreshing and encouraging. Sure I still have days when things seem extra hard but I’m constantly proving to myself that I can do things I didn’t think I could and that makes a huge difference.

So, no jokes this post and I haven’t been taking many pictures lately, but here is an inspirational picture of Indy for you. She is becoming more confident all the time too (maybe a little too confident and a little too comfortable with being off her leash, but that’s a story for another time)

Lights Out!

March 1, 2015March 1, 2015 / thievinsteven / Leave a comment

Back in action after another snow storm and a power outage. We got a little freezing rain this morning but I think now we’ll get a reprieve from the winter weather. We had a nice night at home on Wednesday I think before the snow started. We watched Guardians of the Galaxy with Matt and Lisa and cuddled with the puppy on the couch. Indy has overcome her fear of furniture and is now taking full advantage of it for naps.

We woke up in the morning with no power after a night peppered with booms of transformers exploding. Fortunately we picked up some firewood to keep warm and bundled up to go explore. We got about 5 or so inches of snow with a little bit of wintery mix so the snow was wet and heavy but crunchy on top. Indy had a blast and reaffirmed her status as a cold weather dog. The university finally decided to cancel classes but the university was technically still open which totally stupid. I can’t believe they expected people to drive to work in that mess.

This picture was also from exploring the snow covered greenway.

Which reminds me a lot of this picture from last year. We got trapped on campus when the sky suddenly opened up and dropped snow on Raleigh at a rate of inches per hour. By the time we got ready to go the mass exodus from campus had clogged all the road ways out of campus so we abandoned our cars in the parking deck and walked back to my apartment. It was about a mile walk and we stopped by the grocery store for the essentials (read: beer)

After getting very bored with no power by 11 or so in the morning we decided we may as well start drinking. We channeled our inner Russian in honor of Amanda’s brother William who is teaching in Russia and had some vodka shots with snow in them. After that we made Eskimohitos with rum, lime juice and snow. We didn’t have any mint but we made do 🙂

While we were drinking on the porch the power came back on! We finished up our drinks and Amanda passed out around 4 or 5 in the afternoon :p

On Friday, enough of the snow melted so that we could get to campus for the afternoon and we decided to go out to a new barcade (bar + arcade) called Level Up with a few friends, Michael, Leah, Abhishek and Francisco.

We. had. a. blast.

Amanda and I love arcade games and pinball especially. There was only one pinball machine so far because they just opened up and are still expanding but it was a fun one with a Playboy theme. Doing certain things in the game would uncover scandalous pictures which was quite entertaining and distracting.

Sorry for the quality. I took this picture with a potato.

Then on Saturday we had a nice relaxing day starting with coffee at Sola and watching House of cards. In true college student fashion we had Cookout for dinner 🙂

Snow Day!

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 / thievinsteven / Leave a comment

We were supposed to get less than an inch of snow over an hour or two this morning and it would stop by 10:00 or so. Here we are at 4:36.

IT’S. STILL. SNOWING.

And they’re calling for another 3-6″ tomorrow night.

Amanda had the bright idea to go into work this morning. It didn’t take her long to realize that was a silly thought and she should instead be at home enjoying the snow day with Indy and I. Here are a bunch of pictures of our adventures, from our morning greenway walk to our driveway sledding to our afternoon greenway walk and romping with Indy.

Amanda’s snow angel

Indy really enjoyed catching snowballs and killing them 🙂

Driveway sledding! We used tops of large tupperware containers since we didn’t have sleds. This worked much better on packed snow than when we tried it on ice. We have bruises to prove it!

Amanda’s spectacular wipe out!

And finally a great way to warm back up. Hot chocolate and a hot fire 🙂

Have you had any great snow adventures this year?

Away with you, swine!

February 18, 2015February 18, 2015 / thievinsteven / Leave a comment

I’m slowly recovering from the swine flu. The doc said I should stay home until the day after tomorrow but I might try to do a half day tomorrow if I feel well enough. I’m sick of sitting at home. This has been one of the more miserable sicknesses I’ve had to endure and it just keeps lingering. 1/10, would not recommend. I’ve polished off two big bottles of DayQuil. Wooo, party!

Last night we made some fried tofu stir fry. After days of eating nothing but soup and crackers it was very refreshing.

Well, a decent amount of the ice melted today. It seemed like we were going to get a little relief from the winter weather and then it started snowing again. They are big pretty flakes though which is a lot nicer than sleet we were getting. I prefer my weather not to bounce off me. You can kinda see it in front of the green bushes here

That’s about all the material I’ve got. I’ll spare you the details of the flu. We’re making chili for dinner tonight so look forward to hearing about that! Hope everyone has been warm and well!

PhDeviants

Misadventures in grad school, running, and life

Author: thievinsteven