It’s always easy to see when I’ve been studying pretty hard. I have a tendency to run my fingers through my hair until it sticks straight out – afro style.

I’m finishing up all the backlog of work I have due for the last day of the quarter, which is tomorrow. This includes, 2 case studies, an in-class exercise, that we didn’t finish in class, a final exam, and a poster project. I think I’m down to one question on the last case study and the poster project, which still seems like a lot of work. I’m giving this week a big two thumbs down.

But after I lift my thumbs and present my poster tomorrow night I have time to start doing things like, sleeping, swimming, biking and running. Which is a fairly comprehensive list of things that make me happy. Well, that along with humorous social interactions that have been toned down the past week while Courtenay has been around. I swear people treat me better when she’s around.

Two nights ago on the daily show I saw an interview with Arianna Huffington, “a blogging evangelist” who wrote some book about how to be a great blogger. I don’t normally pay much attention to the interviews (and this was no exception), but I did hear her say that the key to a great blog is to have a secondary interest which adds depth to the author. Her example was her love of cheese.

[left: Courtenay was here for a week before the skies were clear enough for her to see Mt. Rainier. Once she saw it she was stunned, “that thing’s been there the whole time?” Then she took this awesome picture.]

So that raises two questions in my mind:

1. Am I more likely to enjoy reading how to blog from a woman who also talks about cheese?
2. If so, what’s my cheese?

Is it my interest in Seattle area culture and politics? Is it my new interest in learning to sail? Is it my biochemistry class? Is it my duels with Klepto the Crow? Or is it the humorous people I interact with, like Aaron Scheidies going on nighttime bike rides with his own lack of eyesight as a guide?

Maybe I have too much cheese. It could be that I need to write more about my focus – becoming a great triathlete. After all, the blog’s name is “confessions of the highly motivated” not “stories from the guy with 20 hobbies.” Then again, Let My People Go Surfing, was written by a guy with 20 hobbies, and it’s a great book.

I promised a full recap of my eventful weekend, but like my failure to write a recap yesterday, I also failed to have quite the eventful weekend on my schedule. Friday I planned to go for a hike, but ended up sleeping in until 10am, eating breakfast, going back to bed, eating again, laying around in a semi-conscious state, eating more, watching a movie, then going back to bed. It was a far superior day to hiking, and equally non-participatory in the commercialism of Black Friday. Saturday, once the protest was over I went with my mom to get some cross country skis, ordered two books and the Spanish version of Rosetta Stone off Amazon (my mom and dad have been talking about getting this for ages so they can relive their glory days of the 1970’s driving through Latin America in a VW minibus. Selfishly, I’m hoping to use it for my own linguistic benefit as well.), and spent a bazillion hours in REI which resulted in nothing more than a pair of wool socks. Everyone else on my gift list is getting a mix CD (I’m only making one, so don’t think you’re special if you get one) or a personalized poem (this will be more special) or a piece of fiction that will either make you laugh or cry or stop talking to me permanently. Believe me my writing is much better than any other form of art I’ve tried (i.e. amorphous ceramic blobs, mime shows where I had to vocally explain what was going on, paintings of stick figures puking off chair lifts, and other standard short bus productions.)

Sunday I volunteered at the medical tent for the Seattle Marathon. I showed up late, and missed all the exciting sick people finishing the half marathon, then stood on my feet for the entire rest of the day watching healthy people finish 26.2 miles in a day so foggy it looked like San Francisco. Then later I went with Courtenay, Aaron Scheidies and Carrie on a fantastic voyage. We tried to participate in the Christmas parade on Lake Washington by putting lights up on my boat. Unfortunately – due in one part to the fact that I have yet to clean the barnacle covered bottom of my new (to me) sailboat and in another part because I refuse to make the 35 year old diesel engine work harder than 50% effort – we were dropped from the parade like a tricycling 5 year old in the Tour De France.  [This is the Fremont Bridge going up in the fog to allow us through.]

So that’s it for Friday through Sunday. The only other thing that’s worth mentioning is my 10k from Thanksgiving morning. The race had about 200 people in it, though the majority were running the 5k run/walk (including my dad mom and sister). I don’t have a lot of experience in run races, so I decided to pace myself off the leaders for the first 5km. That worked alright, the front pack started as five, and lost a member every mile, leaving two of us at the 5km turnaround, where I realized I wasn’t breathing hard, but the guy I was pacing off of seemed to be scarfing down the brisk air like a German Shephard in a butcher shop. I picked up the pace and never saw that guy again. I don’t know if it was due to the course’s elevation profile, or because of my somewhat poor pacing strategy, but I negative split the 10k by 50 seconds to finish in 33:30, and a full minute ahead of second place. My sister had just finished the 5k a few minutes earlier, and we were able to run back and find my parents finishing their 5km walk. This gave us a chance to have a family finish picture, thanks to my brother-in-law who acted as our private event photographer (thanks Matthew!).

After that Thanksgiving got even better as Courtenay Brown came into town. I’m having fun dragging her around Seattle, telling her how awesome the city is with my best “I’m a Seattleite and this city is way more progressive and awesome than all other cities ever” tour guide voice. It’s something like this, “That’s Queen Anne Hill, where I grew up, and over there is Capital Hill where I went to school, and I think we should go get some coffee at Cafe Vita, which used to be called Paradiso when it was cooler, but now it’s filled with aging cap-hill yuppies with young children – but that’s okay, because even the yuppies in Seattle are totally progressive, and have you heard my favorite radio station kexp? Because Seattle’s music, art, and social scene is totally progressive too.”

That’s all for now. I’m sitting here ignoring both my friends that are staying with me. Courtenay is reading blogs or something, and Aaron is in the next room snoring really loud. I have to write a post soon about how much I enjoy Mr. Scheidies being here. He’s an awesome kid, and it’s hard to describe how much fun it is to have him around in my limited literary giftedness.

I haven’t forgotten about my website! It’s the last week of classes, and I’m swamped with schoolwork. I promise to post about my 10k race last Thursday, and about how I missed out on everything I planned to do this weekend in favor of well deserved over-sleeping. Just as soon as I finish this abstract for a term paper on effects of altitude on Oxy-Hemoglobin affinity.