A Summary of my New Year's Resolutions

1) Sprint Distance Triathlon - 1 pt

If I could give myself more than one point, this is the one that deserves it. I didn't only do a single triathlon, I stretched myself into doing three (one that turned out to have no swimming, but I was prepared for three). And I'm still training (albeit a little slower in the winter) for future races. I've always said I was only "sort-of" a runner because of how slow I run, but you can't be sort-of a triathlete - you either are or you aren't, and this year, I am one. 

2) Chronological Daily Audio Bible - 0.5 pt
I started out so strong on this one, but I got frustrated with the extra, non-bible stuff in the podcast, and stopped. It was interesting hearing the bible chronologically though, as it put a lot of the old testament into context for me. I got through King Solomon's reign in history before falling out of the habit, and it was good to be reminded of the history of the nation of Israel.

3) Jen Wilkin's God of Covenant Bible study - 1 pt

This one was pretty great. I enjoyed my time studying the second half of Genesis having studied the first eleven chapters last summer. And I found myself identifying with biblical characters I have typically ignored. Genesis is a set of stories that you grow up learning as kids, but it was great to read the text of these familiar stories and see new themes.

4) Make a second quilt (gotta use that fabric!) - 1 pt

I did this! I finished a second quilt top, but I still have not bound the quilt from last year, so that extends into next year. I also made some other blocks for smaller quilt projects.

5) Sew a piece of my own clothing - 0 pts 

I had such good intentions here. I bought the fabric and made a paper cutout of the pattern, but then I got scared and never cut my actual fabric. I did do some quick basting stitches to put together this year's Halloween costume, which made me feel crafty, but not enough of anything to call this resolution a success.

6) 2019 Reading challenge - 0.5 pt

So, I failed to finish this challenge, but the intent of the resolution was to broaden my reading horizons, which I would say I successfully achieved this year. I was trying to do the "Reading Women" challenge, which had a list of 24 books with the caveat that they should all be written by or about women. Here are the 15 books I managed to read for the challenge (I read some other books this year too, but they are not recorded because they didn't meet one of the challenge categories).

A book about nature - Old Lady on the Trail by Mary Davidson

A myth retelling - Gingerbread by Helen Oyemi

A book written by a South Asian author  - The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

A book about or set in Appalachia - Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

A book featuring a religion other than your own - Home Fire by Kamila Shamsee

A book you picked up because of the cover - Becoming by Michelle Obama

A multigenerational family saga - Divine Secrets of the YaYa sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

A book by Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies (by Jhumpa Lahiri, obviously)

A book you bought or borrowed in 2019  - My Grape Paris by Laura Bradbury

A romance or love story  - To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

Any book from a series - Always Dakota by Debbie MaComber

A novella - After Many Years, by L. M. Montgomery

A mystery or thriller written by a woman of color - Aunty Lee’s Delights by Olivia Yu

A children's book - Clik’d, by Tamara Stone

A young adult book by a woman of color - The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas  

7) 12 baked complexities - 0.5 pt

I was doing pretty well on this for the first half of the year! I made an ice cream cake, DIY pretzels, DIY pizza crust, and a number of gluten free baked goods (not pictured). I didn't do some of the things I wanted to try (like DIY puff pastry or DIY croissants) so I'm not giving myself a full point. I also did the Paleo diet for three weeks this year, which expanded my cooking horizons dramatically!

8) Complete a capture the flag hackathon challenge - 1 pt

I did this because one of my co-workers started a monthly hackathon happy hour, which I have enjoyed. I don't know that I'll do it again, but I'll count it as a pass - thanks to my workplace!

So 7/8 that I made progress on and 4/8 that I definitively completed, I'm happy with that.

I'm still putting my 2020 list together - I'll post that January 1st. Have a blessed holiday, all!

Top Ten Moments of 2019

For the last episode of Rhett & Link's podcast Earbiscuits, they challenge listeners to go through their memories or camera apps to find their top ten moments from 2019 (after they've both gone over those moments for themselves). So, in that spirit, here are my top ten moments of 2019, with images! If you got my physical Christmas card, some of this is a repeat, but the blog allows me to be more detailed.

#10: National Night Out and the Columbia East Buy Nothing Group

I picked this photo from National Night Out in August to represent a whole series of things I've enjoyed/that I'm grateful for in 2019. Over the past two years, I've been trying (with the assistance of my friend Julie, who works for  NavNeighbors) to be more intentional about making connections to the people who live around me. One of the ways I did this was by taking Isabel to National Night out to meet our local police and firemen when they were at the village center, and trying to engage more with the village center meetings. While at one of those meetings, I met my neighbor Mandy, who is a part of the Buy Nothing group I'm a part of on Facebook. I enjoy swapping things on the group for porch pickups and have gotten some great home decor items. There have been two in-person swaps to meet each other (one for clothes and one for toys) and neighborhood walk/bike events that Mandy has organized. I haven't made it to any of the in-person events yet, but I'm grateful to have found this way to connect with those who live in my community.

#9: WELocal and IEEE WIE
I presented on two diversity panels this year at conferences, both due to my connection with the Society of Women Engineers group at the Applied Physics Lab, where I work. I value working at a place that supports my attendance at these events and always love attending them and feeling the energy of a bunch of female engineers looking to encourage and support one another. You can read my post about the IEEE WIE talks from November if you're interested!

#8: Guinness for Ryan's Birthday
I love the new Guinness brewery in Baltimore. I'm not a big fan of traditional Guinness, but I like the vibe and the layout of the place, and have learned that trying experimental brews is usually more successful for me in terms of what I like to drink (the tangerine ale this year was a particular favorite). We went for Ryan's birthday and I enjoy the tasting experience they provide, as well as the space to hangout on the lawn in the warmer weather.

#7: Family Vacation
I wrote about this (and the next one) in great detail on my blog earlier this summer, so you should check out that post if you are interested, but it was a highlight of the year to re-live the nostalgia of my childhood summer vacations with the whole crew again. Also this family froyo selfie is possibly my favorite photo of my family ever taken.

#6: Deep Creek Anniversary Trip
I also wrote about this in great detail, but essentially, Deep Creek was three days of Ryan entertaining my every whim, letting me go kayaking every day, walking around the Oakland B&O station and small shops for hours, and waiting while I tasted lavender everything at the Deep Creek Lavender farms. Our July anniversary means we always see fireworks on our trip, and fireworks over the lake makes not only my top ten for this year, but probably my top fireworks experiences of all time (that's another blog post I'll have to write some day).

#5: Boston's Downton Abbey Exhibit
While we're on the subject of travel, my crazy one-day trip to Boston (I flew in late Friday night and flew out early Sunday morning) to celebrate my cousin Megan's 25th birthday was a pretty epic trip. We went to the Downton Abbey exhibit which was tons of fun, the perfect mix of history and movie magic, walked around Boston for hours, and ate delicious Chinese food together in Boston's Chinatown. I've enjoyed re-defining my cousin relationship with Megan as we've both become adults and can now get together and do fun things without needing to coordinate with our parents. Last Christmas, she and her boyfriend Zach stayed with me and Ryan and we went to Korean BBQ, so this trip was a continuation of our enjoying being adult cousins together. But no matter how old she gets, she'll always be my baby megs!

#4: Meeting Andrew & Bethanie's Baby
Moving closer to the top of the list, this October I got to meet Eden, the firstborn of two of my college friends. Andrew & Bethanie were my Bible study leader & discipleship mentor while I was in college, and they've been praying for a baby. I didn't meet her the way we'd planned - she was in CHOP getting a feeding tube inserted unexpectedly - but I did get to meet her and love her, and gift her a UMBC baby hat (which, her mom tells me, she absolutely hates wearing). But she tolerated it long enough for us to take this matching photo! As more of my friends have kids, I'm consistently amazed at my heart's capacity to immediately love these children because of my love for their parents. I could go on about the other kids in my life, but since baby Eden was born this year, she holds the spot exclusively for this year.

#3: Dress Shopping with Abigail
My sister got engaged this June, and one of the highlights of the year was going dress shopping with her. Dress shopping when you are not the bride is a completely different experience, and I found it amusing to compare my experience to the TV show "Say Yes to The Dress". I went to two appointments with her to shop for her dress, and this photo is from another appointment, when we closed down the David's Bridal store looking for bridesmaid dresses (we did find one that we all liked that night). I fully expect to cry when I give my matron of honor speech in February, even though I've tried to practice it so that I don't cry. I'll post the text of the speech to this blog after I've given it, so stay tuned for that!

#2: Triathlons (& other races)
It feels like cheating to put all three of these into one moment, but I'm going to anyways. The level of training I've put into triathlons definitely is a defining moment of this year, and my good friends Christina (who trains with me) and Dave (who supports and Instagram coaches me in training) made the races even more enjoyable. For all three events, during the swim I thought "this is awful", but by the time I got to the run I was hyped up on adrenaline and thinking "I have got to do this again" - and so I will! I got a USAT membership for 2020 and am slowly re-training my brain to recognize that I can call myself an athlete, and be proud of it.

I also did a bunch of other foot races in 2019 that were lots of fun - Run the Vineyards with Christina and her husband Josh in April, Crushing the Bay cancer research fundraiser run in May to mark the one year anniversary of Dad's passing, the Downtown Columbia 5K, the Ellicott City Turkey Trot, and the Celtic Solstice 5K at Druid Hill Park. I'm no Eric Liddell, but I have gotten to the point where I genuinely enjoy running (even though I'm slow) which I never thought would happen!

#1: Brown Cyber Solutions
OK, by far the biggest defining moment of 2019 was Ryan's deciding to strike out as his own consulting business. This was a huge, huge part of our year, and unfortunately, there's really no photo to show for it! Here's the little logo we designed for his company as the best image I have for it. Ryan has wanted this for a few years, and while he essentially does the same job he did before, he enjoys the fact that he is managing himself now, and we are learning a lot together in the process. We are so grateful that we're both working so that he can take this risk without too much stress, and that it's worked out for him. I'm incredibly proud of him for taking the risk and pulling it off successfully.

My next post (which I will probably also publish today) will be the resolutions post I have done annually for the past decade.

That Decade Meme

Well, as 2019 draws to a close, my mind is naturally drawn towards a year end review (which, never fear, I will still write - but I have a few more weeks to finish off last year's resolutions before I score myself). However, in addition to the year-end, it's become an internet thing to reflect on the decade, either based on your accomplishments:
https://mashable.com/article/theres-only-one-month-left-in-the-decade-and-weve-accomplished-yet-another-meme/

Or on your levels of attractiveness:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/2009-vs-2019-how-hard-did-age-hit-you.html

I posted my 2009 vs. 2019 photos on my Instagram, and since then I've been thinking over my past decade. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you'll know that I usually dwell on the decades in May (around my birthday) due to my annual "Dear Future Me" tradition of writing to myself one, five, and ten years in the future on my birthday. But since we're at the end of the 2010s, I'm doing a look back - not at my accomplishments, but at how my life has changed. The 2010s were a decade of big change for me because I'm a millennial (born nearer the end of the millennial block, but firmly in the standard years of 1981-1996), and I came into my adulthood in the past decade.

At the start of the decade (2010) I was set to graduate high school, and was waiting to see what colleges I'd get into to move into the next phase of my life. I remember vividly the night of December 31st, 2009, when I was rapidly finishing the college applications I had held off until the end (there were tears) but in the spring of 2010 the acceptance letters were rolling in and I was re-visiting colleges to make my decisions. Ultimately I decided to go to UMBC, and in the summer of 2010 I was on campus as a student for the first time for honors orientation, then the CWIT retreat, and then my first week on campus as a real college student that August. There are so many more photos from that first week/that first semester, than the rest of my college years because it was all brand new and I was making new friends. Flowing into 2011, I finished my first year of college and got my first job, a summer internship, at the end of which I had decided I wanted to keep working. In one of our monthly dinner (when I went to college, my dad started coming up to campus for dinner roughly monthly) Dad talked me out of it, and I went back to school to finish my degree. I was fighting my first ever case of imposter syndrome. I was worried that if I gave up this first job, I'd not get another one, which was silly. I went back to school, and the start of February 2012 was the semester I started talking ballroom dance classes - and therefore the semester I met Ryan. I remember the day vividly, and I remember the first day he asked me if I'd go to the Friday night dancing with me, and I remember the Easter Sunday in April that Ryan came to meet my family and ask Dad if he could take me out, and the very awkward first date we had (even though we'd been dancing partners for three months by then, this was a date and that made things different) and the moment that summer that he asked me to be his girlfriend officially. 2012 was quite the year.

For the most part, 2013 passed normally - until that October when we got my Dad's first cancer diagnosis. He'd fallen on a hike with my brother, and had assumed for a while that the pain he felt in his hip/posterior was just a result of that fall - but it was cancer. He had surgery, and it was supposed to be over, and we moved into 2014. The spring of 2014, I was applying for full-time jobs and deciding on how to best fit in as many graduate classes as I could while I was still on scholarship. That May, I graduated with my friends with a bachelors of science in computer science, and they started full-time jobs, but I took a summer internship at APL, and was back in the fall for a final semester before graduating with a masters that December. I also ran my first race that November, driven by Ryan's passion for it to try to get myself into shape. Dad's cancer had spread, and the summer of 2014 he started chemotherapy - but we were still thinking that there would be a way to beat it at the end of that year (or at least, I was - I don't know what my parents thought).

In 2015, I started my full time job at APL, and I started bugging Ryan about what the plans were for the future of our relationship. March of 2015, we got engaged, and as we were planning our wedding, we got the news that cancer had moved into Dad's lungs, and this had moved from a "we can beat this" to a "how long do we have" kind of cancer. As that news spread around my extended family, our July 2015 wedding became a more significant event. After my wedding, Dad never went back to work full time again, and my wedding was the last time all of my Dad's side of our extended family were all in the same place at once. And then I moved into Ryan's house and changed my name and started my new life. 2016 rolled through, and Ryan added me as a co-owner of his house (making 2016 the year I became a homeowner), and we kept running together (we ran the 10K across the bay that year). Somehow Dad kept beating the odds, and kept living, and at the end of that year, my sister got engaged. So 2017 because the year of gaining a brother-in-law, adjusting to that change in our family, and we rolled into 2018 as a family of 13 - 2 parents, 2 brother in laws, and 9 tight siblings.

At the start of 2018, things were tough (and you can go back and read the blog about those days) as it became clearer that Dad was at the end of his battle with cancer. I'm not going to re-hash the bad days - instead, I'll focus on the precious memories from the start of that year. In February, UMBC opened a new event center, and Dad (wheezing and on a cane) came to a game with me. UMBC pulled off an impossible win in March Madness, and I enjoyed watching with Dad on TV. My parent's 2018 wedding anniversary (their last) was spent in a hospital, and at the start of May, my dad moved into his eternity with Jesus. And that was 2018. And now we are coming to the end of 2019. I'll recap this year in a later post, but I ran my first triathlon this year (I ran three) and Ryan started a business, and another one of my sisters got engaged.

IEEE WIE USA East Forum Recap

Hello all! The weekend before Thanksgiving I got to attend the IEEE Women in Engineering USA East Leadership Forum. Here are my notes from some of my favorite talks at the event.

A) The Neuroscience of Inclusion
This talk was given by Dr. Asma Abuzaakouk, a neuroscientist at the Mitre Corporation. She started by stating that Inclusion + Diversity + Psychological Safety = Creativity & Innovation, and that there was hard science to backup the imperative to have a culture of inclusion.

She described how human brains "feel before we think", because the outermost layer of our brain is the Reptilian fight or flight response (it takes 8 ms for a response to be generated by your reptilian layer), followed by the Limbic response (which controls needs like hunger, thirst, reproduction, etc.) followed by the Neocortex (which takes 40ms to generate a response). She phrased it that human brains are hardwired to scan for threats first, and not reward, and a response to the perceived threat will be out of our mouths before our neocortex has processed the information.

She argued that social exclusion creates a state of threat, impeding the best possible thinking from employees, and showed some scans indicating that social exclusion lights up the same part of the brain as physical pain or threats. She described some ways to control the three types of chemical "brain messengers" - Norepinephrine, Dopamine, and Serotonin - to decrease the sense of threat:
1) Breathe intentionally - this slows your reactions and allows you to actually formulate a response
2) Engage in Appreciation/Gratitude - this produces positive brain signals, countering threat state
3) Engage in short tasks - this occupies the outer layers of your brain and gives the neocortex processing time
4) Shift your questions - ask what outcome you want and focus on outcome rather than threat input

She also noted that humans will mirror the neuron patterns of other humans when engaged in conversation, and that it's faster (i.e. easier) to mirror the neural pathways of your in-group, so bias is biologically inevitable - but that we can intentionally counter those unintentional neural shortcuts to create an environment where everyone can do their best thinking.

B) Leadership Secrets of an ex-CIO
This talk was given by Dean Lane, a four time CIO, military veteran, and book author (https://www.amazon.com/Chief-Information-Officers-Body-Knowledge/dp/1118043251).
He opened his talk by asking how many of us self-identified as managers, and when only about a third of the audience raised their hands, said, "you're all managers - you all managed to get here on time!" He then challenged us that true leadership would take it to a different level, and had ten characteristics that could move you from a leader to a manager. They were:
1- SPIRIT, a vital principle that gives life to organisms and decides temper, especially when animated
2 - MOTIVATION, the incentive to do well, to consistently play hard and rarely admit defeat
3 - INTEGRITY, firm adherence to a code of values, "doing the right thing even when no one looks"
4 - PROBLEM SOLVING, finding a solution by examining, assessing, advising, acting, and assuring
5 - TEAMWORK, work done by several associates, each doing a part but subordinating personal preference or prominence to the efficiency of the whole
6 - DECISIVENESS, inferring on the basis of evidence the final judgement on what to do ("she who hesitates is lost")
7 - SENSE OF HUMOR, the ability to say funny things and see the funny side of things
8 - ATTITUDE, a mental position regardless of fact, your feelings or emotions towards fact (Optimism vs. Pessimism)
9 - DETERMINATION, firm intention to achieve a specific desired end
10 - TIME MANAGEMENT, managing what gets done in a day and prioritizing what you need to do

C) Social Media - Toxic or Tonic?
This talk was given by Veronica Wendt, a researcher and educator at the National Defense University.
She opened her talk with a brief history of information exchange in human history, highlighting how the printing press (in the 1400s) changed communication from one-to-one spoken word to one-to-many with the advent of broadcast news. From then to now, mostly communication has evolved as a broadcast capability, built around trust agencies like the government or corporate news organizations. From home radios (1930s) to home telephones (1940s) and home TVs (1950s), all technological development had improved the speed with which you could have one to one or one to many conversations, and you could always assume you could trust the party on the other end (either because they were your friend or because they were a trusted organization given permission to broadcast). When home computers and web browsers were developed in the 1980s and 1990s, the nature of communication changed. At this point, we no longer had to worry about being in the same place at the same time to communicate (as with telephones) and could no longer trust the people on the other side of communication. The web shifted us from one-to-many to many-to-many communications.

She showed a clip from a 1999 (twenty years old!) David Bowie interview, where he predicted this future. She defined information (facts provided to learn about something or someone), disinformation (false information intended to mislead) and propaganda (misleading information used to promote a political cause). She then cited the MIT study "How Lies Spread Online" (https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/how-lies-spread-online/) and talked about cascading of different types of information/disinformation/propaganda occurs. This study proved that a lie spreads six times faster than the truth online, based on the following principles of disinformation: dismissing the truth as false, distracting from the truth with lies, distorting the true information, dismaying the audience, and dividing the audience.

At this point, she provided a series of countermeasures to disinformation:
1 - self assess your online behavior, how likely you are to click and why
2 - recognize what the space is, and what it can be, when online
3 - acknowledge the power of algorithms to sway you
4 - add some unpredictability to your digital patterns
5 - acknowledge the addictive nature of social media
6 - choose your platforms deliberately

She closed her talk with some stories of social media "bright spots", like the online WIE forums, and encouraged us to be the bright spot, realizing that as an individual, we should all view how our behavior (choosing to engage with someone online or not,) sets the tome of the whole ecosystem.

D) Connect to Lead - Human Skills for Future Ready Leadership
This talk was given by Rachel Druckenmiller of Unmuted Life
Rachel's talk started by highlighting how we are more connected digitally than ever, and how that leads to less overall human intimacy. She challenged us that our leadership needed to be based on real human connection, and stressed that was not possible with a phone or other devices. She then provided three simple steps to human connection:

1 - Be Conscious. Have self-awareness and be willing to let others expose your blind spots. Understand your skills and the skills or others. Understand how you show up when it comes to stress - are you a turtle (who retreats into a shell and needs some space to process) or a tiger (everyone knows when you are angry, and you need people to have your back and support you)? Be conscious of how you are wired, and buddy up with your opposite.

2 - Be Curious. Everyone you know is carrying an invisible backpack of experiences that effects how they show up to the meeting with you. It's up to you to be curious about what's inside. Notice their load without judgement and listen. Empathy is listening and accepting (without always agreeing) - understanding, recognizing their feelings, and accepting their perspective. She argued that the most under-utilized words as a leader are "tell me more about that?" and that leaders should also be asking about their own opportunities for growth (what's one thing I did well - to build confidence - and one thing I could do differently - to build competence without criticism)

3 - Be Connected. Make other people feel seen. Look for your opportunity to be the difference in someone's life. Bet on yourself - your skills, your humanity, your relationships and experience - and make a moment for someone else.

On Discipline

I have been thinking a lot about discipline due to triathlon training. For the past several months, have been engaged in almost daily training, and felt a level of guilt when I miss training days. So what motivates me to be so dedicated and disciplined for this, and how can I apply it to other parts of my life? I've come up with three things that I think help with the triathlon discipline, and some examples of how it's helped with other things. It's performance review season at my job while I write this, so I'm thinking some about how it applies there as well.

1) There's An End Date

I think the number one thing that helps my discipline with working out in preparation for the race is that there is an identified end date. I have to be disciplined only up to this point, and a day that I skip is a day that I lose out on and can't make up later - because there's an end date. This can also be described as an exit point. Like when my husband and I were learning to ballroom dance, we took courses ten weeks at a time. At the end of the ten weeks, we'd say, OK, do we sign up for another class, or exit? I think this is most often the problem with commitments, is that we don't make the space to identify evaluation periods and end dates. And without those deadlines, things start to become monotonous and boring and so you skip it, and then your discipline is gone. With regards to performance reviews, setting expectations for someone new on the task - i.e. I need you to work this for at least six months before you make a change - helps set an end date and set expectations, and give you an exit point. It's possible that the end date will come and you'll decide to set a new end date with new goals - like I did my June triathlon and signed up for a September event - but the end date/evaluation point for exit, instead of the long, unending task, makes discipline easier.

 2) It's A Measurable Goal 

Everyone's heard of making measurable goals. A triathlon is the ultimate measurable goal, because you can measure in distance, and in time to complete, and in how you complete it relative to the other athletes, and what you have to do to get closer to the fastest athletes next time. Three ways to be measurable. Measurable goals are the hardest thing in performance coaching at work, because "doing a good job" is not measurable. Trying to get people to see their goals relative to last year (like time in triathlons) or to stretch themselves farther/take on more work (like distance in triathlons) is helpful. I also have started asking "who is someone here that you'd want to be like in five years? What can you do this next year to get one step closer to where they are?" (like trying to be a triathlete who places in the top of your age group). There's a reason my workplace calls it performance "coaching" - because sport is a good metaphor! 

 

3) Other People Are Involved

I post my triathlon updates to my Instagram stories. I've competed in a race with my friend Dave (though he's significantly faster than I am) and Dave also posts to his Instagram stories. Many of my friends follow me and ask about the training updates. Some of my co-workers are in on it too. This tie to other people is key to keeping me motivated, because I know if I don't, someone will know that I didn't do that thing. This isn't a new theme - I've heard about the power of accountability for years in my evangelical upbringing - but this is something more than accountability because there's an end date (as mentioned) and it's measurable. Also, the people you are involving have to be people you care about, people you won't lie to, and people who encourage rather than discourage you. These relationships are hard to build. They take time. As a supervisor, this is something I have to remember. I've worked for my boss my entire professional career, and I trust him, based on the relationship we've built over five years. I have to work to build that relationship with the people I supervise.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to do another triathlon. I did three this year, which is two more than I was expecting to do, so I've stretched myself and that made me happy. But I'm achievement driven, and there's another achievement right over that horizon...I just have to swim, bike, and run to get there...stay tuned! 

On Weight Loss

I saw a photo of myself from five years ago recently and couldn't stop thinking about it, so I wanted to put some thought behind it. I had a conversation with my workout buddy on our recent bike ride around this as well. So here are my thoughts, with some photos sprinkled in to keep it interesting.

When I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, I was asked to step on a scale in the locker room at my high school and write what I weighed on a worksheet before the fitness challenge at the start of the semester long PE class. The scale was in a semi-private corner, but the number that I had to write (186 lbs) would then be passed to multiple classmates as they tallied how many sit-ups I could do, how many rounds of the pacer I ran, and other things. I wrote it in the lightest possible pencil strokes that I could, because I knew that it was a big number, and then proceeded to compare myself to each of my classmates. My high school arch-rival (who was really a very nice girl - I don't know why I turned things into a competition between us in my head) weighed 116 lbs, and I remember feeling totally awful about the 70 lbs difference between us. I was able to complete the minimum expected fitness challenge for girls my age, but left the class that day feeling shamed, and pretty much vowed that I wouldn't tell anyone what I weighed ever again.

By the time I graduated high school, I weighed 204 lbs. I know this because the week before school, I secretly went into my parents bedroom to step on their scale. I had heard about "the freshman fifteen" and wanted a baseline from before I left for school, but I didn't want anyone to know what my baseline was, because I knew it was fat. And college wasn't helpful with this. While I was in college, I met my now husband, and he kind of danced around the topic. I had avoided scales because I knew it wasn't going to be great, but finally, after spring break of my senior year of undergrad, I agreed to step on a scale and let him see. This was right after I'd gone on a cruise ship with two of my college girlfriends, and I weighed 231 lbs. I cried for hours.

 

(Above photos from our March 2014 college spring break cruise, and the June 014 triathlon)

The summer after undergrad, my then-boyfriend, now-husband started coaching me in running. I was miserable. It was June, I was hot, and I could barely make it a mile before I had to stop to walk. But we used the couch to 5K program to make it to my first 5K, a color run in November of 2014.  By March of 2015 we were engaged, and I had a wedding date to aim for. By our July 2015 wedding, I had lost the 27 lbs of college weight and was back at 204. And that was good. And then I kind of hit a plateau, where I was still running, but I wasn't losing weight anymore. So I started lying about how much I weighed. I lied to myself, I lied to my spouse, I lied on my driver's license - because I didn't want to weigh more than 200 lbs, so I just docked ten pounds and pretended that'd I'd lose it eventually. I went through cycles of up and down weight loss during these years - up five, down ten, back up again, etc.

 
(Above photos from the November 2014 color run, and a May 2019 cancer research fundraiser run)

Around the time we got married is the time that my dad's cancer was determined to be "terminal". Through a variety of treatments, he extended his life from summer of 2015 to early summer of 2018, and a lot of things happened for my family in that time, and while I did some runs (my first 10K, etc.) I wasn't especially focused on diet and exercise. I set a goal to do a triathlon in 2018, but never really got motivated and failed to accomplish the goal. Then in May of 2018, my dad got worse and died, and I got a renewed zeal for embracing my own life. It sounds kind of dumb, but when I would go out on a run, I'd feel a renewed vigor because of the fact that I could be out running, that I was still healthy/still alive. My friend Emma set her wedding date for late 2018, and I made a goal - I would stop lying about it and actually be less than 200 lbs by the time Emma got married. Using My fitness pal to track things, by September of 2018 (when Emma got married), I was 196 lbs. Then this year my friend Christina asked me if I'd do a triathlon with her (since she knew about my previous goal). So I started training for that, and I kept tracking fitness pal, and I kept losing weight. By the time we actually competed in our triathlon event (June of 2019) I weighed 175 lbs (and this morning, I weighed 172, so I'm still on a downward trend!).

(Above selfies from March 2014 at Harry Potter World, and June 2019 at Longwood Gardens)

OK, my story is over. Here are some thoughts/points I want to make.

1) Weight loss does not mean you can't eat ice cream. I have lost weight, a lot of weight, but I don't eat different foods (just less). Weight loss doesn't mean depriving yourself. I hate dieting because it's always based on depriving yourself. In the years between 2015 and 2018 I tried deprivation dieting on and off and it always resulted in my crying about how I felt like I couldn't eat what I wanted. So I threw that out and I eat what I want to eat. What I cut out was the "eating because I'm bored" snacking. So before I eat something I ask "why". Am I hungry? good reason. Am I celebrating someone/something? good reason. Am I bored/there's just nothing else to do? Not a good reason.

1) Stop telling people they're fat. I promise you that they already know, and you are likely making it worse. I tell the story about when I was 14 because I decided there was nothing I could do, and just gave up. Most other overweight people I know say the same thing - it feels like what's the point, because even loosing ten pounds (which is a big win!) is such a small part of what they need to loose overall. So if someone overweight tells you they lost weight (even if you can't tell), celebrate it. On my journey from fat to fit, fat-shaming (most of which came from my own head) was my worst enemy. So down with that crap. If they're happy, and healthy (you can be healthy with a few extra pounds on your hips), then "fat" is relative. Technically, according to many standards, I am still overweight. According to the BMI scale (the most popular measure of  "normal") a woman my height should be somewhere between 120-165 lbs. But I am the healthiest I've been in a long time.

2) Tell people when you've seen improvements. This is a sensitive area - don't say "you look like you lost weight" because maybe they haven't actually and then it's awkward. But tell people "you look good!" or "you look fit!" or whatever feels comfortable to you, because the encouragement of buddies has helped me tremendously. My girl friends Christina and Morgan who ran the tri with me, and who cheered me on through social media (Morgan) and in person training together (Christina) and my friend Alec, who has always been the first person to notice and tell me when I've lost weight (partly because he's on a pretty good weight loss journey of his own and we encourage each other). And of course, my husband, who kick-started this whole thing by asking me to be honest with him about what I weigh and loving me anyways when the initial number was much bigger than either of us anticipated, and getting me out in my sneakers, hitting the pavement with him.

(Above photos of Alec and and I at graduation May of 2014 and at WELocal February of 2019)

3) Promote health over numbers. I've put all of the numbers in this blog post because I want to highlight how dramatic the last five years has been for me (so I remember and stick to the patterns I've changed), but if you read the post, you'll see that what really made the change for me in the past year was not focusing on the numbers, but focusing on the fact that I am alive and that I can run and that I wanted to make the most of that. I haven't talked as much about how I changed what I was eating, but you can imagine the difference between college - where you can eat french fries every day - and now, where this summer Ryan and I are focusing on eating local veggies thanks to the Breezy Willow Farms CSA. The food choices were not based on trying to loose weight, but trying to eat better for the sake of the global and local economy - but I'm sure that has made a difference as well. I've mostly stopped the fitness pal calorie counting, but I'm still conscious of choosing things like dried seaweed crisps over potato chips, because it causes my skin to break out less - and the weight benefits of that are a side benefit. So don't stress about the scale, or the calorie count, or any numbers. Go with more days of working out than not working out. Go with more days of home cooked meals than store bought meals. Go with health over numbers, and see what happens. If you don't loose weight, but you feel better, then it's worth it. One of my co-workers has changed his diet, and not really lost weight, but he feels more energy as a result, and I think that's a win too.

This turned out WAY longer than I expected and also ended up touching on Dad's cancer again (I promise, guys, eventually this blog won't mention cancer), but I hope you start a conversation with me about weight loss/exercise/healthy eating based on this long ramble.

What I did on my Summer Vacation

Hello, loyal blog readers! In the past year this blog has turned into either 1) public reflections on grief or 2) me talking about trips I took. Also, 2019 is well on it's way to becoming the least blogged year of the ten plus years I've had this blog (whoops). So in an effort to correct that, even though the summer isn't even half over, I thought I'd write about some of the things I've done on my summer vacations, since those are effectively over for me for the year (there might be a few more beach weekends but my big trips are done).

The first big trip was with my entire family (my nine sibs, my mom, my spouse and my brother-in-law) to my grandmother's timeshare in Williamsburg. This trip was great because it was re-living vacations we had done when I was a kid, and is the first time in I think about ten years that all of my family had all gone on vacation together.

Ryan and I drove up with Jessica and Derek on Saturday after their flight got in and met the rest of the family at the resort. The first day (Sunday) was basically just chill, hangout at the resort day, with some shopping at the outlet malls thrown in for good measure. It was everything our vacations had always been with tennis and board games and pools and it was a great day.

The second day (Monday) we went to Virginia Beach. Ryan and I have decided it's our favorite beach because of how well-swept the sand is there. We did a lot of wave jumping and Ryan buried my youngest sister in sand (and she buried him in sand). After beach my mom had picked a place that was once highlighted on Food Network for dinner, and we all enjoyed a variety of seafood there.

 

The third day (Tuesday) was the last day Ryan and I were there, and we did another nostalgic trip for me to the Jamestown glasshouse, a fully operational glassblowing facility that is historically recreating how glass was blown in the 1600s based on nearby archaeological ruins. My grandparents used to take me and my siblings to the glasshouse when I was a kid, and it was exactly the same way I remembered it, which made me really happy. There were some exhibits about the different kinds of glass, what different elements you add to make glass different colors, and a gift shop with a whole host of possible purchases that had all been blown by the artisans on previous days. It was SUPER hot at the glasshouse, because the furnaces were going full blast, and generally all around a homeschooling throwback for me.

  

On our way home Ryan and I saw Toy Story 4 at an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (where they serve you dinner in the movie!) and got some Duck Donuts (pictured above) because Duck Donuts has spread outside of NC all the way to Williamsburg. The rest of the family did Busch Gardens amusement park on the days we were back in MD.

Our second trip was for our fourth anniversary to Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland. We did a lot of hiking, kayaking, and farm visits on this trip, in no particular order. We hiked every morning (when it was sunny), we visited Firefly Farms Creamery & Market, Deep Creek Lavender Farms, Sugar and Spice Amish Bakery, Lakeside Creamery and the Christmas Chalet while it rained, and kayaked in the afternoons after the rain passed us. Also we visited the Oakland B&O Museum which was by far my personal favorite of the whole trip. It's a tiny little museum, only opened since 2013 but working hard to preserve the history of the Oakland B&O station and be a part of the larger B&O museum network. I love trains (a hobby passed from my grandfather and dad) and loved the stories behind this museum's efforts to preserve parts of train history. Because we were there over the 4th, we also got to see the Fireworks on the Mountain display from our hotel window!

Ryan and I have many anniversary traditions - we take a photo of ourselves with the photo from the previous year every anniversary, we eat taco salad and red velvet cake (because that is what was served at our reception) and I try to always get him something corresponding to the traditional anniversary gift for that year (this year it was our linen anniversary). So here are some photos of the food we ate to honor those traditions (red velvet not pictured, as the donuts made a better photo).

 

Finally, here's a series of photos I'm calling "funny signs seen at Deep Creek". These are from the train museum, the lavender farm and the Christmas Chalet, and they all made me giggle.

The Day We Really Lost My Dad

We are closing in one year since Dad passed away, and I have been remembering a lot of things that happened during those last two weeks that at the time were intense and personal, and some things I want to share in the year since then. I'm certainly not done grieving. There will always be days where I will think, what would this be like, how would it be different, if Dad were here. But a year is a long time to grow and change and process grief, so I'm a little more willing now to share about what I went through a year ago, and where I am at now.

I am publishing this post on April 22nd, because this is the anniversary of the day that I would say I really lost my dad. This was the last day I had a conversation with Dad that felt real. It was the last day he was sitting in his chair at his computer, instead of lying in the hospital bed. It was the last day he felt like my dad, in full control (as much as he could be on the oxygen tank). Some of my sisters and I had gone to APL Hershey Park day that day, which had been a lot of fun, and I came home late that night, talked to Dad for a while, and made a plan to come back on Tuesday to talk some more. Those plans never came to fruition, because the very next day, he was unable to hold long conversations, and had trouble remembering who we were.

The next two weeks his mind was clouded, and I was over at my parent's house constantly, trying to get my last moment, hoping he'd come back to us. We sat in the room he lay in, reading, listening to music, trying to use photos and music and scriptures to remind him, even for only the briefest moments, of who he was, who we were, and how much we loved him. Those two weeks shook me and my faith dramatically, and I have lots of Facebook messages that I sent privately at that time that detail the days that my Dad couldn't remember who I was, and how that made me feel utterly helpless.  In those messages, I had some very good friends reminding me frequently that God was there, and that he was in control and could handle my loss, despite the apparent lack of any control in those moments.

For a few weeks after he passed away (even a few months after), those days were all I could think about - those final days of utter confusion - and all I could remember about my Dad was the pain of those moments, of his being physically there and alive, but not the man I knew, his mental capacity swallowed up by the cancer tumors. My sweet husband encouraged me out of that by asking me to tell him stories about Dad, trying to get me to remember something other than those two horrible last weeks. Here are some of those moments that I've been trying to remember instead:

- When I was a small child, my Dad liked to read out loud to us, but only if he felt we were paying attention. If he got even the slightest sense that we weren't, he'd close the book and demand we'd tell him the last thing he had said. Because of this, I got very good at glibly reciting the last sentence I had heard - weather I actually had any comprehension of that was a different story. I knew I could recite the last line perfectly, and Dad would keep reading.

- When we would go camping as a family, on the last day, Dad would make "hoosh", a weird combination of bacon and bacon grease,leftover ground beef, and whatever sauce we had (tomato sauce, BBQ sauce or maple syrup) to hold it all together on top of a toasted bagel. It sounds gross, but outside on the last day of a camping trip, it was the best. Dad called it "hoosh" because at that time, he was interested in the life of Ernest Shackleton, and in the accounts of Shackleton's voyage, the men referred to "hoosh" being the scraps they ate.

- When I was in middle school, I talked to my dad about the boys I liked, not because I wanted to (I don't think any pre-teen girl wants to) but because he could tell and would gently ask me. Dad referred to this as "my Christmas tree face", telling me how my eyes would light up when around the object of my crush, and my face would get more animated as I talked to them in an effort to be interesting. The boys in question definitely didn't notice, but Dad was tuned into me as his daughter and frequently warned me about the dangers of "wearing my heart on my sleeve" and being that obvious with my emotions.

- When I was in high school, I usually went to my mom for homework help, but my junior year, I had GT physics problems where she sent me to Dad instead. He'd read it, think about it, work through it with me, and if he got it right, he'd say "Hallelujah, dad still knows things!"

- When I was in college, my Dad regularly came out to visit me, at least once a semester, for our private college dinner dates. We would go to the dining hall and get a table for two where I could tell him everything about my semester. I have always been a big talker, especially with my Dad. When I was in middle and high school, I'd get in the car after youth group all fueled up on the extroversion of being around my friends and just talk to him non-stop. When I went to college, these dinners were his way of still seeking out my non-stop talking without the car rides. After the dining hall we frequently walked around the UMBC loop because I had more to say, and Dad would write little notes on a 3x5 card so he'd remember what I'd said as I talked. About a month before he died, we (with my uncle Bob and sister Isabel) went to a party at the UMBC event center to celebrate the history making NCAA win. He was in a wheelchair, with a big tank of oxygen, but he went for me so we could have one last drive around the loop, one last college dinner together. It is one of my personal treasured last moments with him.

I have had all kinds of emotions and feelings this past year. It's still rough to be without Dad, but I am hoping that by writing these things down, I will remember and think of him without the sting of grief, without the painful recollections of what illness and death did to him at this time last year. I don't really know how to end this post, so...the end.

A Message from Dad

In the process of Konmari'ing my house - I have not watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, but I didn't have to watch it to get inspired to tidy up my own house - I found a page of notes in one of Dad's books that look to be notes from a campfire talk he gave at Camp Wildflowers last summer. In order to preserve them, I'm typing the notes up and sharing them with you all here. I have made some modifications to make the notes flow smoothly (mostly adding pronouns to clarify his bullet points).

This first line is from the camp theme song, and opened his talk:

" 'Oft times he weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride forget he sees the upper and I the underside'.

What do you do when God weaves sorrow into your life and you don't know why? You can't see the pattern yet, all you see is the underside, knots and maybe some tangles. Perhaps your pet died like Sysco, Chief's dog. 

Lesson 1: Always run to God, never run from God. Here is a story of some of my dark threads. I have cancer, specifically this story is about my leg wound. Nov-Dec 2013 I first heard I had cancer and I had butt surgery to remove it. February 2015 surgery to remove cancer from my leg. August of 2015 it was not healing. We went through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's day without it healing.  I was listening to the audio Bible and I heard Jeremiah 15:18 - Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed. Man, did I relate.

Lesson 2: Lament is OK. Even good when you run to God. There are Psalms of lament. Run to God and lament because you believe his promises. Mark 9 speaks of the healing of a boy with unclean spirit and his father cried out "I believe, help my unbelief!". So they kept treating my leg wound - I had 50 hyberbaric oxygen treatments, a skin graft - leg wound finally all healed up Sept. 2016, more than 1.5 years after the surgery to take out the tumor. Yet it opened up again later.

Lesson 3: Patient Trust when things are hard. Think of Hebrews 12:11 which speaks of the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Patience builds your spiritual muscles, your faith. One of God's purposes in suffering is to strengthen and prepare you. You know God loves you. He didn't just have his pet die for you and me, but sent his son to die, to live the perfect life of obedience we should have lived and die the death we should have died so we could be with our Father in heaven. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him - 1 Cor. 2:9.

So are you facing sorrow or a dark thread? Run to God. It's OK, even good, to lament to him. Tell God your pain. Recount his promises. Ask him to help your unbelief. Build your spiritual muscles and learn patient trust."

So. As I still grieve for my Dad and you face whatever your dark threads are, consider his little campfire message.