Vancouver!

Posted on December 30, 2012 by gydle

I’m not dead yet! This may very well be my favorite line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail – it’s a close tie with Silly English kuhniggits! and Run away! Run away! Spoken with the proper accent, each phrase has served me well in response to a variety of situations I’ve encountered across the years.

You might very well have wondered about my status, since my last post was about a month ago. I saw my trusty CTO Dave not long ago on a trip to the US, and the issue came up.

Dave: You haven’t posted much to Gydle lately.

Me: I don’t have anything to say.

He shrugged, and that was that. Yesterday he sent me a comic from the Oatmeal that explains it much better than I did. Make sure you scroll down to the part that says “I’m a firm believer that if you don’t have anything to say, you shouldn’t be talking. And if you don’t have anything to write about, DON’T WRITE.” Continue reading →

Spooky

Posted on October 31, 2012 by gydle

Happy Halloween! A whole month has gone by and I haven’t written a thing here on Gydle. It’s not the funk, thank goodness, that has passed. I’m back in the saddle, writing away. I had a very relaxing vacation and knitted a pair of mittens. I am now a mitten-knitter, something to which I have always aspired.

Today as I was driving, I caught a snippet of one of my favorite TED talks, the one in which Elizabeth Gilbert of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame talks about the nature of genius and the dark side of success. I quoted her talk a while ago in a post on Inspiration.

I took it as a sign.

The important thing about the creative process, she says, is showing up day after day. You have to do your part, and trust that whatever inspiration or creative genius or whatever you want to call it will come and visit you at some point. You have to make the choice to put yourself out there and create something. Continue reading →

The function of funks

Posted on October 5, 2012 by gydle

I was a little worried that after my last post, someone would stage an intervention. Take away all my running shoes, maybe, or set up a booby trap in front of the door so I would trip and sprain an ankle. Remember, way back this spring I asked you to remind me to be moderate when I started going off the deep end. Thanks for nothing, people!

As it happens, I intervened all by myself and took two consecutive days off. Then I went into a funk. And that has really slowed me down. Continue reading →

I’m a movie star

Posted on September 18, 2012 by gydle

Here I am again. I just got back from a run and I had to post something. It was transcendent. It’s probably just my endocannibinoids talking, but I feel like I’m entering a whole new plane of existence. Yeah, that does sound cannibis-like. Duuude.

This morning I was snooping around on iTunes looking for some new running tunes. None of the music that other runners were raving about on various blogs and magazine sites did anything for me; the songs were all too strident and fierce. Then I happened upon an album of new age-y, celtic inspired music by David and Diane Arkenstone, and when I checked it out with my BPM counter, all the tracks were right in the 90-95 bpm zone. Perfect for running! On impulse I splurged and bought the whole album for 12 francs. I downloaded it to my iPod and headed out the door. Continue reading →

Hibernation

Posted on July 22, 2012 by gydle

It takes a long time for this old bear to learn her lessons. For the past few months I’ve tried to feed this blog and translate and run and work on my novel and keep everything going smoothly in our household and keep up with interesting things on the internet. And everything is going fine except for the novel. Somehow, all those other things are just so much more immediate. So much easier to tick off the list over the course of a day. But when the day ends and I’ve not put in the time on my writing project, I’m somehow unsatisfied. Continue reading →

The supportive spouse

Posted on June 6, 2012 by gydle

I mentioned in a recent post that we were in Ithaca in mid-May celebrating the careers of two extraordinary scientists – Marc’s dad Jean-Yves and his PhD advisor, Wilfried Brutsaert. They’re “retiring” – I put that in quotes because they both still go to work every day. It’s just an administrative formality and, in Yves’ case, a move up one flight of stairs to a new office. Continue reading →

The garden again

Posted on May 30, 2012 by gydle

It’s spring. The weeds are back in force. But somehow this year I just can’t get myself too riled up about them. It’s a combination of things:

I’ve finally hired Oscar to deal with my garden overload. It came down to Oscar or tennis, and I chose Oscar. I look at the weeds and say “Oh, I must remember to tell Oscar to deal with that next time he comes.” Next time I see Oscar, though, he’s limping and I can’t understand his French any better than I did last time. I try to communicate about the weeds, but he’s obviously in pain and very busy so they remain. For the time being.
I’ve decided that the horrible ones with the impossible-to-pull-out roots are hopeless. They win. I pull the stems off when I walk past them, and accept the fact that I will be doing this well into the autumn as they continue to grow back and get tougher.
My weeds are nothing compared to these ones growing in the US that have Homeland Security’s knickers in a twist. The ones along the Texas-Mexico border are so big that whole communities of illegal aliens can hide in them for months at a time and no one will ever know they’re there. At least I don’t have to use a chainsaw to weed my garden. Puts things in perspective.
I’d rather go running than work in the garden.

Continue reading →

Memory lane

Posted on May 22, 2012 by gydle

I hope the saying is true, that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” You must be loving this blog now.

Marc and I were in Ithaca last week, attending a symposium honoring his father and his PhD advisor, both Cornell professors.

We met in Ithaca, back when I was recovering from a foray into teaching high school math and trying to figure out what to do with my life and he was finishing his PhD. Every day at noon, we’d gather with the High Noon Athletic Club at the back entrance of Teagle Hall.

Continue reading →

Let the conversation begin

Posted on April 22, 2012 by gydle

Wow. It looks like I should turn this into a running blog, if the number of page views I got from that last post is any indication. Thanks for stopping by!

Or maybe people just liked the image of me as a marmot.

I ran twice this weekend – and both times I was clobbered with inclement weather. On Saturday I finished a long run in a cold rain, with salty water running down my forehead and into my mouth. After a run like that, a warm shower is such a comforting thing. Today I ran with a friend, and we were pummeled with hail for about ten minutes. We had a headwind, and it hurt. I pulled the collar of my fleece jacket up around my face to protect myself. By mile four, the sun had come out, my jacket was around my waist, and we were watching the sunlight sparkle on the water as we dodged the puddles on the trail.

Continue reading →

Celebrating health

Posted on March 31, 2012 by gydle

Once a year Lausanne hosts a big natural/holistic medicine fair called “Mednat.” I went a couple of years ago and picked up some essential oils that smelled like the pine forests back in New Mexico. This year, the headline promised an “Agrobiorama Expo” which, to me, sounded like organic farm type stuff. (“Bio” is French for organic.)

Maybe the woman with heavy green eye shadow and ivy growing in her hair on the expo’s homepage should have clued me in …

Thanks to my friend Matt, who gave me a copy of “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer, I can no longer eat factory farmed meat (even in Switzerland, where rules and regulations are at least 300% stricter than in the US). So, thinking I would find some sources of organic produce, chickens, eggs and beef, I paid the 17-franc entry fee.

Continue reading →