Look! A Dandelion!

A few random things:

Yesterday, as on all Thursdays this quarter, I went to my 9 am class, and then to my 11 am lab meeting. Class was good, and during our mid-class break, a group of us decided to sign up for the Shamrock Run 5K as a team. (It's cheaper if you register as a team, and well, we're all starving graduate students so cheaper is better.) There are 5 or 6 of us doing the run on March 16th and we're pretty excited. Our school has no undergraduates so the environment feels more like an office than a school. As a result, students rarely do anything together, so it's nice to see some socialization happening. We've come up with a team name and will be meeting next week to design our team t-shirts. We're "The team formerly known as OGI." See, when the whole tort cap decision came down a few months ago, we effectively ceased to exist as a school. OGI no longer exists. We're getting swept up into the School of Medicine ASAP. (So hurry up and grab all the OGI garb you can get your hands on before it's gone for good.)

The meeting went on significantly longer than usual because our presenter talked quite a bit. After over an hour of listening to details on her project, I couldn't help but phase out and start staring out the window. It was beautiful out! It was beckoning me. Once the presentation ended and we conducted about 5 minutes of lab business, I declared that I was headed out for a run and would be back in an hour. My boss asked if I'd like to take her dog with me. Her dog is a great running dog. I've taken her out before while dog sitting for a week. She doesn't pull on the leash, and she knows to run on the side of me farthest from the road. Anyway, I took my boss up on the offer and headed out with her dog for a great 5.25 mile run. I was thinking I had gone about 4-5 miles, but when I used my GPS software when I got back it came in at 5.25 miles. Pretty good!

Aside from feeling great about having the chance to run outside on such a beautiful day, I also got another treat. While running through a park, I saw the first dandelion of the year. Sure, the dandelion is a definite harbinger of the onset of spring, and that's good and all. But I was more excited about the little "weed" for a different reason: Dandelion Wine! I simply wasn't able to make time to pick flowers and make wine last year and I was pretty disappointed about it. This year, I'm not going to let anything get in my way. Come on Spring!