My turn!

It has been over a week since I defended my dissertation, and I am only beginning to re-emerge into the world. Last weekend, as noted below, was spent driving to the mountains and watching Shuwen's amazing team relay (here's a article in our local paper on it). They have a celebration dinner tonight, to reminisce about the experience.
<-- Celebration at Dale's. Marc with four of this committee members (believe it or not, there were seven in all)

Meanwhile, I am busy preparing for and thinking about job interviews. Wish me luck with those! And this morning was my last "really long" run before the Chicago marathon, a 24.5 mile effort at Umstead State Park in Raleigh. It went well, as have my training runs and workouts recently. It's amazing to think how different I felt in the spring when injuries were really bothering me. My training cycle for Chicago has been short, so it will be interesting to see what the outcome of that is. Shuwen will also be running it, her first marathon!

Related to this, I finally updated my running log (posted on this blog). That only confirmed to me how interrupted my training has been this past year.

After Chicago, I will be going to Sudan to set up fieldwork we are planning to do in January or February of next year. The idea is to conduct surveys of farmers using water from the Nile, to get an idea for how Blue Nile development projects in Ethiopia could impact downstream water users. It should be very interesting work. I will be back in North Carolina at the end of October.

Shuwen and I are excited to be able to spend about a week in Chicago, catching up with friends and family. That will be a treat.