Our Sweet Girls

On Friday, both Scout and Riley went to Doggie Daycare. I know what you are thinking, but daycare allows us to leave the dogs home alone Friday night after we have worked all day so Drew and I can go for happy hour without guilt. Anyway, Riley developed a horrible cough Friday night, which she probably caught from another dog at daycare. She proceeded to cough all weekend keeping Drew and I up all night on both Saturday and Sunday. Now she is on antibiotics for doggie bronchitis and codeine for the cough. Are we bad people if we take some of our puppy’s codeine?

Dogfish Head 120 minute IPA = YUM!

I mentioned in a previous post that while Drew and [m] were away at the neuroscience conference in Atlanta I went to a Dogfish Head tasting at The Local Dough. All I can say is wow. Before I was introduced to this brewery out of Delaware I was kind of a snob about beer not from the Pacific Northwest and was hard pressed to admit that any American beer not from Oregon or Washington could be as good as a Rogue, Bridgeport or Deschutes. Well Dogfish Head has made me completely abandon this snobery. The highlights of the tasting include the 120 minute IPA. Dogfish Head describes this as: "Too extreme to be called beer? Brewed to a colossal 45-degree plato, boiled for a full 2 hours while being continuously hopped with high-alpha American hops, then dry-hopped daily in the fermenter for a month & aged for nother month on whole-leaf hops!!! Our 120 Minute I.P.A. is by far the biggest I.P.A. ever brewed! At 20% abv and 120 ibus you can see why we call this beer THE HOLY GRAIL for hopheads!"


It is currently on limited release but one of the Dogfish Brewers loves Arizona (go figure) so we get more of the their beer than many other areas of the country. My words are inadequate at describing how much I love the 120 minute IPA. Another highlight was the Chateau Jiahu, which was a beer they brewed from a 9000 year old Chinese recipe obtained from DNA on pottery. It was much better than I had been expecting considering that, "In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers used pre-gelatinized rice flakes, Wildflower honey, Muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers. The rice and barley malt were added together to make the mash for starch conversion and degredation. The resulting sweet wort was then run into the kettle. The honey, grapes, Hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers were then added. The entire mixture was boiled for 45 minutes, then cooled. The resulting sweet liquid was pitched with a fresh culture of Sake yeast and allowed to ferment a month before the transfer into a chilled secondary tank". YUM! Who knew that molecular archeologists could be so useful.

They were also selling $2 pint glasses and my friend Bethany won me a T-shirt by making 4 golf puts into a pint glass. My own aim was off that night.

"All By Myself"

The past two weeks have been "awesome-o" because in addition to sharing my home with Drew and our wonderful dogs we have also had the pleasure of having my dear friend [m] as a temporary roommate. Sadly for me, today both [m] and Drew left for a conference in Atlanta. I realized that this is the first time that I have been in Tucson without Drew since we started dating over two years ago. In addition, they had to miss out on the Dogfish Head tasting at the Local Dough . I will post more on the tasting later. It definately deserves its own entry...wow!

'My Left Leg'

I use running to regulate both my weight and my mood. Admittedly, running is probably an addiction for me. If I see someone else running I have a visceral response and for a brief moment I wish I was that runner. I imagine this is similar to what a drug addict feels when they watch someone else shoot up.

Anyway, in my quest to run the Tucson marathon before the age of 30, I hurt my left leg. The pain started on the inner side of the upper portion of my thigh when I was in Portland. At first, the pain was dull enough that I could just run through it. My thigh would be tight at the start of a run but after about 1/2 mile it would loosen up and feel fine. This ceased to be the case after my 11 mile run on Monday in which I was unable to walk Tuesday morning. CRAP! My inability to walk forced me to finally see a doc. Please note that almost all of my pain was on the inner side of my thigh. If this is something that you have paid attention to then congratulations you could be a sports medicine specialist the U of A campus health center. The first doctor diagnosed me with illiotibial (IT) band syndrome. While this is a very common running injury look where the IT band is... it is on the outside of the leg. This is hardly in the ball park of where I am having pain. Moreover, the first doctor I saw told me that I did not need to take a break from running. I only needed to cut back on my miles a bit. While I really liked her advice, common sense prevailed over my addiction. My body knows that I need to quit running for a week or two.

Anyway, I saw a different doctor on Thursday and she was much better. The final diagnosis is a strained quadriceps. The combination of sitting a car for many hours while driving to Portland, running a lot of hills while not being properly stretched, and wearing old shoes that had lost too much of their original support could all lead to such an injury. This would also explain why my leg loosens up and feels ok to run on but then makes me pay for it later by tightening up so much that I cannot walk. The bottom line is that I need to take anti-inflammatories twice a day, ice my leg, pay more attention to stretching and take 2 weeks off from running. But the lovely doctor pointed out the since my last run was on Monday, I could start running short distances again a week from next Monday. I think I can manage that and it gives me a reason to start biking again. Unfortunately, this does mean that the Tucson marathon is out for this year but the Phoenix marathon may still be a possibility!

The Weekend 'Glides' By

A view of Rough Top and with Picacho Peak in the distance from a glider at about 6,000 ft.

Drew's and my most recent hobby is gliding, which is flying an aircraft that does not have an engine. Intuitively, this may sound like a stupid thing to do, however, in calm conditions glider aircrafts are designed to be able to fly for up to 40 miles or more while only losing 1 mile of altitude (something called a lift over drag ratio). Moreover, the best thing about gliding is that you can fly around searching for thermals, that is, warm air rising up that will lift your glider further up into the sky. It is not uncommon on a warm day for thermals to take a glider from 5,000 ft up to 10,000 ft and experienced pilots can thermal to 18,000 ft. I actually was able to thermal from 7,000 ft to 10,000 ft my third time in a glider, which was a real thrill. Anyway, after being away from the glider port for a few weeks Drew and I got to take lessons and glide on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. It felt great to get up there again. Once your autonomic and vestibular systems habituate to what is feels like to glide it is unbelievably serene.

The trickest thing about gliding is getting the glider off the ground. Obviously, because there is no engine the glider either has to be catapulted up with a winch lauch or towed up with a small motorized place. The glider port that we fly out of, El Tiro, uses a tow plane that will take you and the glider from 2,100 ft up to 5,100 ft. Flying on tow is very difficult but on Saturday it finally started to click for me! In addition to flying on tow Drew and I both got to work on takeoffs and landings and Drew did a very impressive landing without spoilers (i.e., breaks). Once we are licensed (hopefully by next year) anyone who comes to visit can have a glider ride!


The view from the glider on tow

One more reason I love Drew

One of the few things better than a gift is a surprise gift. About half an hour ago Michelle (one of the lab's administrators) told me I had a package from Amazon. To my happy surprise it was the X-Men Trilogy on DVD nicely gift wrapped with an accompanying note that read "Just cause I love you - Drew".

He is so thoughtful and I am very lucky. Now I am all gushy.

Only 3 to 6 Months

A few months ago I got a new pet. Her name is Isabel and she is a very impressive praying mantis that has made one of my favorite plants her home. Almost every morning when I go out to water, I see her perching on a leaf hunting all the flies and mosquitoes in my yard. Isabel is also very robust and tolerates the occasional dog tail knocking her off the plant quite well. Unfortunately, I looked up the average lifespan of the praying mantis yesterday on the internet and it is only 3-6 months. I think this means that she will only be with us for another month or so but I have really appreciated her keeping the bug population down this summer.

Isabel you will be missed!

Oregon Trip

Drew and I started our drive to Oregon with Scout and Riley around 6:30am on Sept. 11. Strategically, this was the same day that Marsha and Brian left for their big move to Durham, North Carolina. I was very relieved to have the distraction of a 23 hour drive and a 2 week vacation from pouting about one of my best friends moving away.

Anyway, the dogs travelled great. Scout liked to sit up between Drew and I so she could see out the front window and Riley slept most of the way.


Scout 'keeping an eye' on Drew's driving.
















We made it to Zion the first day. Zion is a very special place for me and I often wish that it was in Arizona and not Utah.
















We got to Portland early on Wednesday and immediately took the girls to the Williamette river with Ben and my parents dog Sophie to swim. Ben is a dear family friend and the person that has been keeping my parents off the streets for the past few months.
















The main purpose of our trip was to put together some wedding plans and we got a lot done. We found a woman to officiate the ceremony. Her name is Elaine Traffe and she is incredible. She rock climbs and bought us beers when we met with her to talk about the wedding ceremony. We also have a tentative reception menu planned. I will post more on this later.















The wedding site, which is still under construction.

I am a negligent blogger

I started this blog almost a month ago with the intention of posting about the wedding plans and the daily happenings of Drew and myself. In classic form, I have not made a single post since blog's initiation on Sept. 10. In my defense, Drew and I were in Oregon for almost 3 weeks and our internet access was intermittent. Anyway, bear with me and in the next day so I plan to post pictures from Oregon and a re-cap of our trip.