Never Before...

Never before has a University of Richmond Track and Field female-athlete thrown a javelin farther than 47 meters. Since the inception of the program the best competition throw by a member of the women's program was impressive, but this Saturday, for the first time ever, someone threw 48.08. Heather Roush threw approximately one whole meter farther than the historic best that UR had to offer. This is even more impressive considering her penultimate throw set her own PR to day of just over 44 meters. It's such a great concept to think about, not only continually improving ourselves and our own best efforts but being able to build upon every one else before us and to be better than they're ever been.

This is not the first time I've witnessed people surpass the historic "best-possible" level set by all other people who've tried before. Everyone likes the idea of human progress, surpassing what has been the best effort of mankind thus far. We've all read an edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, there are people who have made it a goal to jump more times on a pogo stick than anyone else ever has before. My sister, who swam at GMU, broke records while she was there, and is friends with a young woman who holds a world record in distance swimming. It's mindblowing really, when you think about it, that thought that for a time, that is the best time that recorded history has ever acknowledged.

I guess I just love this thought, that we can continually improve and build upon and expand what others have set before us. This ability becomes so apparent in sport, in quantifiable measures of human body and its athletic feats, but its application in the world around us causes me to hope.

My Own Cherry Blossom Festival

So the Cherry Blossom Festival will be this weekend in D.C. For the past 6 springs I have missed it due to schoolwork/living in Richmond, however I get my flower fix in by the UR Campus's lovely manicured landscape (darn all those parking tickets going to something I appreciate, makes it harder to hate the parking attendants). Periodically, when I feel like I might explode from lack of creating art, I wander around campus with my Sony Cybershot and try to capture the beautiful flowers. Many a Picasa album has been dedicated to this venture, and this is the first year I've consciously decided to capture the cherry blossoms.

The shots are varied in thier ability to aesthitically please, but some of them are totally worth the stares I recieved from various undergrads (oh, did I mention my shoes are the exact same style but different colors? cause they are, and that in itself might account for the staring). This one currently graces my desktop background. Hopefully in two weeks I can get some great shots of other flowers.

DayUno

This is actually my second blog and fourth attempt at blogging in general. I had two blogs in High School, each of which I deleted, after the passing of time made me ever so embarrassed of what my irrationally emotional teenage self thought was appropriate for others consumption on the internet.

I re-vamped one of them (it can by found at www.julesville.blogspot.com), which focuses on my travels when I studied abroad in Santiago, Chile. Unfortunately the more I did down there -- where I had to pay for time in internet cafes or buy coffee at one of the four Starbucks in the city (and entire country) -- the less I actually found myself having time to record and share my adventures via Interweb.

I'm not exactly sure what prompted this last compulsive need to share inner thought with potential strangers, especially since I am a law student with a limited amount of time and poor written composition efficiency. For example, it could take me four hours to compose a singe thank-you note after birthdays and Christmas (it just has to perfectly convey my excitement over the new gift!). I guess it's just to unleash any sort of edited-stream-of-consciousness-creativity that cannot exist within the confines of class assignments. I think I also masochistically just like to sabotage myself by filling my time with unnecessary ventures. Or maybe I enjoy the idea of having more than 140 characters with people whose judgment it distant and un-affecting to my daily life.

In short: I now reintroduce myself to the blogging community, in an experiment to see how long this will last.