prob·lem
   /ˈprɒbləm/
–noun
1.
any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty, or difficulty.

Example:
when you are 7 months pregnant and Honey Dip Donuts is right behind your home.

Lame! I happen to pass this as I go on my walks (that I just started, hehe). Tonight, I gave in.

White Coat Ceremony, 9 August 2010

The white coat ceremony welcoming students into the Ohio State University College of Medicine was this afternoon. It was a really nice ceremony. Here are some pictures.

Hey, look, a coat. And it is white. And it has my name on it. Cool.

Putting it on.

Ice cream afterward.

Jacob's 24th Birthday at the Zoo

For my birthday Becca took me to the zoo. The Columbus zoo is actually pretty big, we spent 5 hours there and barely made it through all the animal exhibits. Some of my favorites were: gibbons (monkeys), polar bears, leopard, langurs (asian monkeys), fox faced bats (huge!), the aquarium, gorillas, koalas, elephants and rhinos are cool, tigers, etc. However, my favorite part of the zoo was the best animal of all time...the amazing river otter! The otters were really fun to watch, they started swimming and playing and showing off for their audience, and it was a really neat exhibit. Best animal ever. After the zoo we ate at Potbelly's, a sandwich place with great subs and huge cookie-ice cream sandwiches. A great birthday, Becca was so nice and traipsed all over the zoo even though her feet were aching. Now for pics:

Becca and Black Bear

Polar Bear and bucket chew toy

The mighty river otter.
Swimming around.

Ginormous bats.
Pictured here with a keeper for scale. Pretty brave lady for walking right under them, but you'll notice how she has a full face shield just in case.

My sweetheart. And some penguins.

Lots more pics, but you get the idea.

Pregnant at 5 months

I look bigger than the pictures, but hey I'm not complaining:)

Barefoot Running

Today I ran 3 miles barefoot around the Smith Fieldhouse indoor track. There has been a lot of hoopla online and within the running community lately debating shoes vs. barefoot, footstrikes, etc. There was even an article in Nature recently about a footstrike study. Barefooters say it is more natural and that shoes mess up your form and footstrike, actually increasing impact forces and leading to injuries and stuff. Shoers say that they protect your feet and help cushion impacts to reduce impact forces and injuries. I say I don't really know one way or another. Most of the scientific studies are biased (funded by shoe companies, ulterior motives, small sample sizes of biased parts of the population...) and so far I haven't seen convincing evidence from a peer reviewed legitimate study that favors one side or another. As for my experience, I have noticed that altering my footstrike to a midfoot/forefoot landing seems to alleviate lateral knee pain (ITBS), and that it doesn't matter whether I have shoes or not. This is just my experiment of one. I ran barefoot today for 2 reasons: wanted to try it out, forgot my running shoes at home. It was fun, and I think I will do it again, but I still feel like shoes are a good idea esp. for outside conditions.

Jacob

Minnie Mouse

We put Mouse asleep today. She had a tumor and it was well past time. She was old (we got her when she was at least a couple years old). She kind of took a while to finally kick the bucket, which was funny. All and all, I totally didn't anticipate this being so SAD. Seriously, this is a crappy night.
Peace Out
P.S. I'd post a picture, but that would be gross.

~Becca

A Painting in the Process

So I'm sitting at our desk, it's 10:23 and Jacob is asleep. To some, Friday nights = date night; apparently to Jacob and me it means nap time. We totally fell asleep at 6:30.
Alright I guess we did do something. Jacob met me at work after his bike ride (which is soo uphill from where we are, awe so sweet) with my favorite: a veggie burro from Diego's. (We are dangerously short of having an addiction.) Once I got off, we ate at an outdoor table - chatting and chilling. So there, we aren't totally lame...right?
Anyway, I woke up, he's still out. I was looking through pictures to give me some inspiration because blogging does NOT come easily. (But we have a striking audience of Jen, Andrea, and Michelle whom we must entertain! ha jk). And I saw some before/after shots of a couple paintings I've done. I thought it might be neat for some non-painters.





And yes, there are things in the first painting that I wish carried through to the final product. But that is okay, paintings have a mind of their own.

While I'm on the subject of paintings, can I just express a pet-peeve of mine regarding other people's taste in art? I hate how people only like paintings that look picture-perfect, like a photograph. Don't get me wrong, if a painting can achieve that while maintaining a 'painterly' style... where up-close especially, you can tell it is a painting, see the brush strokes and yet the further you move back - the more realistic it becomes. And when an all-out impressionistic piece achieves that, that is GREAT... pure talent. But when a painting looks like a computer, not a hand, created it? Gross! And yet that is the art many people 'appreciate.' Yeah that takes skill, but accomplishing realism in art while presenting it as a painting, not a photograph, takes far more skill in my opinion. Besides, I love art rough and messy. (yeah, abstract doesn't really cut it for me either, but you get my drift). So the next time you buy a painting of flowers, or Christ, or a landscape, look up close: Can you see the brush strokes?

In the first painting, I mainly mixed my colors with turpentine (paint cleaner/thinner) to get a thin layer over the entire surface: It makes painting much less intimidating to get all that white out of the way.
In the second painting, I really got some color in there. I love autumn colors, thus the theme of the painting.
In the third, I made really simple changes... detail touch-ups. Mainly, I added some highlights. Lights and shadows make all the difference in any painting, with any colors.

And I just have to brag: I am freakin proud of this painting. It is a "Glaze" - which means, in short, there are a good 50 layers of paint on this baby!!! Yeah, I'm telling you, the painterly ones take work:) (not the case all the time, but whatev.)