Cheap Hobby

I am not one to talk too much about this, but I don't really mind it anymore. Since the end of August, I have been on this quest to be in the best shape of my life - health wise and body wise. At this point, I am past where I ever thought I'd be and I am healthier than I ever have been. And I also haven't been this small since middle school, I'd say. As of now, I have lost about 30 pounds and I'm not gonna lie - I wouldn't be sad if I lost a bit more. lol However, right now furthering my weight loss is not my goal. Getting in shape and continually bettering myself is my ultimate goal.

In the past, and especially these past few months, I discovered that running is something that really love to do. Who knew that something I absolutely hated to do in P.E. would later on come to be something that I'd love? Plus, come on...I'm Ethiopian, and some of the best long distance runners in the world are Ethiopians. It's in my blood! lol jk. Anyway, upon this discovery, I kept on telling myself that I'd run some races but would never actually commit and take on the challenge. This time I'm taking it on, and I'm so excited!

Today, I did lots of searching and found a 5K race here in Nashville on April 10th, which I signed up to do. A 5K is about 3.1 miles and is something that is not hard to do. I have run that distance many times, but because the race is about 6 weeks away, I will be able to work on it and improve my time. I also have REALLY wanted to do a half-marathon and after much searching, I found one (that a friend may be joining me on!) that is on September 5th in Virginia Beach, Virginia. That gives me plenty of time to train and do pretty decent on it. I haven't signed up for it yet, but plan to do so soon, hopefully. In between those two races, I'm planning on running other 5Ks and also hope to find a 10K race in Nashville or nearby so I can get more racing experience.

I'm excited to start this new chapter of my life, where I try new things, go out of my comfort zone and challenge myself. Although I have always liked to do these things, I never challenged myself 100%. This time I will, but along the way I plan on trying other new little things, too. One other thing is, I would absolutely LOVE to take kickboxing classes. As soon as I get a job and get some pretty steady income, I will sign up. No doubt about it. I just wanna do something different and challenging mentally and physically...and also be able to kick some ass too!

I always wanted to have a countdown clock for something so I thought I'd be corny and add one for the 5K on my blog. It's the little things that make me happy. :)

14,000 Years of Companionship

People who know me, know that I love animals. I had several pets growing up and like most little kids, I wanted to be a veterinarian. Somewhere along the years, that plan changed, but I still loved animals. I still absolutely love animals...of all kinds. I also have lots of respect for all animals, creatures...and life. With that said, the other day, I was thinking about our dogs at home and how much I love them. Then today I saw an article talking about 'dog people' and 'cat people.'

First I was thinking about how smart animals are. I believe my dogs are smart. I mean, how do they know their names? We have two dogs, Bora and Kumla...how did they learn which name is theirs? How come they can learn human words, but we can't learn their 'language'? And how can they read human emotions? It's amazing. What's up with the inter-species connection between humans and dogs? Well, I do know that dogs have had a close relationship with humans for over 14,000 years. Of course the dogs of thousands of years ago are not the same dogs we have in this current day and age, but after many years of domestication they have come to be known as "Man's best friend."

When I am with my dogs, and when I play with them, or when I talk to them, or when I give them a hug or just look in their eyes - I many times forget that they are DOGS. No, I am not delusional or some crazy dog lady. lol I believe this is because dogs exhibit many emotions that are similar to humans. Although it is hard to determine, as animals cannot communicate to us in words, I believe dogs have the ability to feel deep affection towards people. Their body language shows whether they are happy, sad, angry, depressed, or excited. They seldom complain, never threaten to leave us, don't judge us, and always forgive our failings. Their constancy can be a comforting presence as we go about our daily ever-changing lives. Dogs have successfully been used for therapy, to lower blood pressure, and to relieve stress. They are also trained to be loyal guide/companion dogs to disabled persons...and have also been known to rescue many people from dangerous situations. When I think about what lengths dogs will go to for their human companions it amazes me. It also amazes me that there are so many people who abuse their pets. I just don't understand it. All dogs (and other pets) want is love, food and attention - and probably in that order.

All this talk doesn't mean I'm necessarily a 'dog person', but if I was told to choose between a dog and a cat to have as a pet, and I had the means to care for either, then I would pick a dog. But I'd be happy with either...or many other animals. (In the past, I have wanted a rabbit, a ferret, a lizard, a rat, a snake, a turtle and a gerbil, among other things. lol) According to the article I read on CNN.com today, the personality description of a 'dog person' does not really describe me. I'd say I'm in between a dog and cat person. The 'dog people' in this study were apparently more social and outgoing, and scored higher on agreeableness and conscientiousness, while 'cat people' tend to be more neurotic but 'open' - meaning creative, philosophical and nontraditional. I'd say I'm a little bit of both - not so much neurotic, though. ....or am i? lol jk

Either way, I just wish more people would have a better understanding, appreciation and compassion for all living creatures. We are all taught (hopefully) to have compassion for other humans, but why not extend that to ALL living beings. I mean we all inhabit this earth, playing an important role in each other's existence - why not treat animals, who provide so much for us, with compassion and respect?

I don't care what anyone says...my babies are cuties and I love em! :)

 

Warm Weather + Nashville = Me Excited

I've always had no real connection to Nashville except for the fact that I was born here, my mom's family lives here, and now my parents (and I) do. I only have on friend here and I have never really given this city a chance. Luckily, this past weekend gave me a small taste of what Nashville has to offer. One of my good friends came up from Atlanta last weekend and along with my high school friend who lives here now, we spent a good time together. The weather was beautiful and we went to the Parthenon (a replica), danced the night away, went on walking bridge over the Cumberland River late at night and looked that beauty of downtown from above, and went to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. This small amount of fun caused me to look up more things that this city has to offer me as far as fun and intellectually stimulating activites. I can't wait for the warm weather so I can explore the beauty of the Tennessee outdoors and to experience what Nashville is very well known for - the live music scene. Here are the top places I want to visit. I can't wait!

- The Tennessee State Museum: Apparently it's huge and encompasses a lot of natural history.

- Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Art Museum: Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, is now a museum and has a 55-acre botanical garden.

- Chihuly Exhibit: Dale Chihuly is a famous American glass sculptor and has exhibits around the country. It's gonna be here in Nashville for the summer.

- The Hermitage: President Andrew Jackson's home, and the fourth visited presidential home. Visited Washington's at Mount Vernon...why not Jackson's? :)

- BB Kings Blues Club: I've seen Mr. King perform live, I love blues and I love live music. Perfect.

- Las Paletas Gourmet Popsicles: Interesting food find and very popular spot. All kinds of flavors from rose, to avocado, and mango chili. Mmm..yum.

Anyone wanna join? Come on down to good ol' Music City, USA! :)

There's a [Tiger] in the Room

You know, I can easily get sucked into celebrity drama/news (and I really used to get into it when I was younger), but now I just don't care as much or I make a conscious effort not to. And if somebody does something personal like commit adultery, divorce their spouse, or whatever, then FINE. It doesn't affect me, nor does it affect their talents or why I liked them to begin with. It can be hard to separate our inane infatuation with celebrities and why we REALLY liked them to begin with, but I think it's silly when someone has to make a public apology for something that does not affect the public at all and should be dealt privately within their home. 

About 2 days after everyone found out that Tiger Woods had been cheating on his wife, I was so sick of hearing about it. WHO CARES?! What he did is nothing new. He didn't kill anyone. Leave him alone, and stop interrupting pressing worldly news with this useless garbage! And why are there always some people who have high moral expectations from others? ESPECIALLY celebrities (except if they're famous for not being moral lol). I mean, did Tiger Woods tell people that he was going to be moral? Did he become famous and wealthy for being a family guy with impeccable moral values? No! It was thanks to his golf abilities that everyone knew him. He is arguably the best golf player ever. Period. Whatever other expectations people had of him that he did not meet is their fault. Not his.

Despite all this drama he's going through (and me being sick of hearing about it lol), I still have lots of respect for what he's done for the sport of golf.

Just my little $0.02. lol

Unemployed But Full of Love

Yesterday afternoon/night was an interesting scenario. Both of my parents and I had our laptops at the kitchen table and were working on our resumes and filling out job applications, helping each other out, and chatting. What a great way to spend our 'family time' on Valentine's day, huh? lol I could care less that it was Valentine's Day (in fact, I even forgot it was yesterday), but I honestly enjoyed that time we had...although my brother was missing in the mix. :(

I guess it's not really how you spend time with your family, but the fact that you even do is what's more important. :) 

I love my family.

Going Back in Time

We are now in February. What does that mean? Lots of things: Groundhog Day predicted we'd have a short winter (I hope so! lol), we've been inundated with endless Valentine's Day theme shows, specials, ads, and products said to be love-related, Presidents Day is right around the corner (what date is that again? lol I think the third Monday of the month, if I remember correctly), Carnival season and Mardi Gras is soon approaching (and will be bigger than ever this year...Go Saints! lol) and finally this is the 82nd anniversary of Black History Month.

Now, I have never been one to go around touting that it's Black History Month, and most people including myself forget about it since I am no longer in school. I'm on the fence on whether BHM is useful, and have always been. I believe it is important, as many and most people including African-Americans, wouldn't even have heard about the important people and events in the history of the African diaspora in what used to be and sometimes still is a Euro-centric curriculum. (It was conceived in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson as a corrective to the traditional teaching of American history.) In many schools it has become an important part of multicultural and anti racism programs and approaches, which is great. At the same time though, why separate it from the rest of American history? I may be being a bit cynical when I say this, but I think it undermines the fact that Black history is an important part of American history, and it seems like it has become something like a false token for Black ownership and is also subject to a lot of commercial hype. And some may even ask, is it necessary to have it now that we are in the 21st century?

People forget that a little over 50 years ago, blacks and whites could not even learn in the same classrooms. It's still fresh in our history. However, we as a nation thankfully have come SO far in those 50 years, which is why we (especially people around my age and younger) tend to forget about the struggles African-Americans suffered in the past. This past weekend I was reminded of one such struggle when a former Colorado state representative suggested that civics literacy tests, as a requirement for voting, might have prevented Barack Obama from being elected. Great idea, Mister. Instead of moving forward and bettering ourselves, let's go back in time and oppress people. Because of his statements, I decided to look up the process of voter registration and voting during the time when literacy tests were implemented. I've always known that literacy tests were difficult and not actually LITERACY tests, and were used to disenfranchise African-Americans, but I never really knew what the whole process consisted of until now. Here's what I found.

Up until 1965, there was an entire complex system in the South (and some Western states) devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions Latinos) the right to vote. Let's say you were an African-American living in Alabama and you wanted to vote, you would have to go on down to the courthouse to register. If you were lucky enough to withstand intimidation and harassment, avoid arrests on false charges, and not fear retaliation such as evictions, firings and boycotts, then you'd be granted the registration process. At that time you'd fill out a state-wide implemented 4-page application and recite an oath, which was designed to intimidate and threaten. You had to swear that every single question you answered was true under penalty of perjury, and you'd be told that everything you put on the form would be passed onto the White Citizens' Council and the KKK. And in many counties you also had to have a previously registered voter to "vouch" for you. THEN, about 10 days later, you'd have to come back and take a "literacy test" where you had to score 90% or better in 25 minutes. A typical test had three parts. In Part A, you had to read out loud part of the Constitution, pronounce everything correctly, orally interpret it, and then write it down from dictation as the registrar spoke (mumbled) it. In Parts B and C, you would have to answer two different sets of four written questions each. Part "B" was 4 questions based on the excerpt you had read. Part "C" consisted of 4 "general knowledge" questions about state and national government. (In some documented cases, people have also been asked to guess how many beans were in a jar.) After all of that, even if you were to pass everything with flying colors, the Board of Registrars would have to decide if you were "qualified" enough to vote. How discouraging is that? If only people were more aware of what African-Americans, women and other minorities had to go through in order to vote, there would be larger turnouts during elections. Here is a compilation of questions used for literacy tests in Alabama in 1965. Would you have passed?

http://www.ccle.fourh.umn.edu/literacy.pdf

In the end, 28 days of Black History is better than none. And instead of just boring us with a litany of names and dates like most students experience, I hope the celebration of this month continues to bring appreciation of what black history has meant for our nation in the past and what it continues to mean today.

Need Some (quite difficult) Pictionary Words? :)

Below is a collection of some random words. What makes them slightly less random is that they weren't just pulled out of a hat - they were pulled out of my brain. These are some words that have crossed my mind, I've had conversations about, or I've read about in the past 3 or 4 days.

Hypocrisy

Gullibility

Cognitive Dissonance

Luck

Ignorance

Jealousy

Providence

Creativity

Love

Conformity

Simplicity

Greed

Heritage

Compassion

1935-1936

Here is a photo I found of my great-uncle on my uncle's Facebook with the following caption:

"My uncle Major General Jagema Kello at 15 fighting Italian fascists in Ethiopia - now that's a hero!!"

( He's the one in the middle.)

Amazing Method of Calculation from Ethiopia

Centuries before computers came to be part of our daily life, Ethiopians used the very system computers use today to compute. Amazing! :)

M-E-H-E-T....?

Today I spent some time with my father helping him translate my grandfather's (my mom's dad) autobiography. While doing this he told me lots and lots of stories about the family, which I absolutely love. While doing so, I got to asking him about the birth of me and my brother. I've asked my mother several times to tell me about those times, and although she does tell me things, it's never really as thorough or detailed as when my father tells stories. My father told me about her pregnancies and the births. I found out I was an average weight and came pretty much on time, but my brother was late and she had to be induced...and he was almost 10 pounds when born. Wowzers! I also asked him if she had any quirky cravings while pregnant. She didn't have the weird cravings that you hear of women always having (like ice cream with pickles, lol), but apparently she ate enough pizzas and watermelons to feed a small country. No wonder I love eating those things! lol jk, I don't love them THAT much.

After learning of more tidbits of that nature, I asked him why he and my mother decided to give me my name: Mehetabel. I was wondering this because no one (except for my friend, Alicia) calls me by that name. NO ONE. And I'd say 85% of my family doesn't even know that's my first name. Everyone in my family just knows me by my nickname, Metty. And then my friends call me by my middle name, Rahel. No one in my family (except for grandfather) calls me by that name either. But at least people call me by that name. With Mehetabel, only one person calls me by that.

A little history of the origin of the name. My name, Mehetabel and it's several variations, comes from the Bible (Genesis 36:39) and means 'God makes happy' or 'God does good' in Hebrew. It is basically mentioned in passing in a genealogy. Apparently it was a name that was fairly popular among Puritans during the 17th century, but by the 19th century it was very rarely a name given.

Growing up, I absolutely hated my name and would constantly be upset at my parents for giving me that name. I didn't like my name because:
1. It was really uncommon.
2. No one could ever pronounce it right, although it's not hard.
3. Kids would make fun of my name.
4. NO ONE ever called me by that name, so I had no connection to it.

Numbers 1-3 is what bothered me the most when I was younger, but I just realized today when I was talking to my father, another reason (and probably the biggest reason) why I didn't like it...and that's number 4. I really did not OWN my name. The only time I heard my first name out loud was either during roll call in class, when I went to the doctor's office, or when a telemarketer would call and ask for me all while completely butchering the pronunciation. Because of this, my name felt like a burden to me - like I was cursed with it. My dad did tell me that at the time of my mother's pregnancy, they liked the uniqueness of the name and what it meant, and had it set in their minds that if I was a girl I would get that name. (My father initially wanted to name me Amrote, meaning my beauty, but my mom opposed as there was already someone in the family with that name.) Apparently though, soon after I was born, my mom realized that she was tired of explaining the pronunciation and meaning of my name, that she started calling me Metty and it caught on with the rest of my family. I honestly can't recall a time when my parents addressed me by my first name.

Fast-forward about 18 years later, and I started to embrace my name and it's uniqueness. As I met people in college, I told some my first name and many loved it. This helped me appreciate the beauty of the name. Fast-forward a couple more years later, and I really started to love it and would have no problem telling people my name. And now, I feel like I own the name. It's mine and I love the fact that very few people on this earth have it. The funny thing is I never ever wanted to legally change my name, as my parents told me I could if I wanted to. I just felt like it would be a slap in my parents' face, and ironically I loved the fact that they took the time out to give me a meaningful name, and not just name me Ashley or something. No offense to all the Ashleys out there in the world! lol If I have children in the future, I would like to give them unique names, too...but of course, nothing TOO unique. lol

Odd story: In 6th grade, a substitute teacher asked me if I was named after a cat. I had NO IDEA what the heck she was talking about (she was a weird lady, lol). A few years ago, I randomly remembered that incident and decided to look it up. She wasn't as crazy as I thought...there IS a cat with that name. In 1916, a newspaper columnist named Don Marquis would write a fictional social commentary piece six days a week, which was originally intended as a space filler. It was called archy and mehitabel. Archy was a cockroach and his best friend was Mehitabel, a cat. The two of them would share their daily adventures in a 'satiric commentary on daily life in the city during the 1910s and 1920s.' In 1957, there was even a short-lived Broadway musical based on them. WHODATHUNK?? lol