Congratulations to Daniele and Phil!!!!!!!!!

nice rock!

I'm in LOVE!

with my new bike.
see?
and, i love my:
classmates
learning team
mba program
professors
condo
friends
running
cooking
sleeping
riding
basketball
roommate
new hometown, charlottesville!
etc.


though i feel stupid 99% of the time, i still love it.

don't hate me 'cause my bike's beautiful

ta dow

worth 2000 words

since i've been doing nothing but studying and being generally bad at school, photographs will have to do to state "what's going on with mandy"
i try to ride my bike and i sweat a lot. i wear my u.va kit to protect myself from angry townies.
on sunday night i dressed up as a flamenco dancer at the interntional food festival, where i of course represented espana. i made natillas with gongy's recipe. (gongy was my grandmother) and i look like gongy's sister rose, who "wore makeup and jewelry like a gypsy".

Finding bliss amidst the pain

the last 48 hours have been marked with intermittent periods of joy and pain.

joy in the form of two things:

1. rediscovering basketball. i haven't touched a basketball in 2 years. imagine my excitement when i felt the leather in my palm and reminded my body of the poetic motion of the perfect jumpshot. when all of my problems with my operations and decision analysis cases seemed to converge on my saturated brain, i found sweet release on the court. just me, a hoop and a ball. for 20 blessed minutes basketball was mine to discover anew. aaaaaahhhhhhh.

2. the perfect ride. with 'crossvegas fast approaching, i was definitely worried about my fitness. i dug around and found a non-pro kit (for the first time in 4 years!) and dressed myself in the colors of the brazilian flag. i switched on the ipod and took my trusty old specialized road bike (a prototype, mind you...i've got the only 53 cm in existence!) out on the road for some self-inflicted flogging. despite my fears that it would be the suckiest 2 1/2 hours of the week, it ended up being incredible. i hammered the crap out of myself and returned from my ride happy. my friend william had called me earlier that day and confirmed my suspicions: virginia was enjoying a week of absolutely perfect fall weather. add that to my gorgeous ride on the best roads in the country (my tax dollars at work!), and you have happy mandy. it made getting dressed for my evening learning team meeting almost fun.

which brings me to the pain:

my decision analysis and operations classes. such agony! this mba program has been a lesson in humility...i have never been so demoralized by the frequency of which i feel stupid. i'd say for the hours in a day when i'm not deep in r.e.m. mode, i am feeling dumb about 90% of them. the 10% is saved by my insanely-awesome ability to cook anything and everything.

hey, small victories.

and speaking of small things, here i am on my patio in my non-pro brazil kit (a gift from the brazilian fernandez sisters i met at la vuelta ciclista el salvador), posing like a ballerina in front of the morning glory that creeps along my fence. i rather like morning glories, and am glad someone else took the trouble to plant them.

speaking of pain, that picture reminds me i need to do my cardboard recycling.

Drugs and Chicken Pot Pie

This morning I awoke at 6 after 4 hours of fitful sleep. My right ear felt like it was going to burn a hole in my head. I could’t fall back to sleep on account of the pain. Since I had no one to whine to (plus, I had lost my voice completely so I merely squeaked), I proceded cry and call many of my C-ville friends and ask if they knew any doctors that would help me. My financial state is such that I cannot afford good health insurance and thus am only covered if I lose some limbs. Which doesn’t apply to the case this morning but it sure felt like it. Sucky. Couple that with the fact that I stupidly crashed myself on my BRAND NEW VANDERKITTEN hardtail yesterday (on the usual side, my left); and I was a wimpy kitty.
So I finally got a U.VA nurse on the phone who gave me some advice. In summation: drugs. Lots of them.
So I went for it. I haven’t taken this many drugs since college.
Michele Yeaton, hereafter known as Mother Theresa, brought me chicken soup and one of my favorite things in the world: her homemade chicken pot pie. See the photographic evidence of life’s finer things when you're half dead:

Today's weather was 100% glorious and I am pouting because I didn't get to ride. Wah!
I emailed my professors, begging for mercy tomorrow in terms of speaking in class. If they want me to whisper, I sure can…but who really wants to listen to a dying mouse?

Here is my class (red line designates me and my cute green loafers). Aren't we dashing? Lotsa blue shirts...

ps: some days i wonder why i retired from pro bike racing. this classifies as "normal behavior" for pros. oh dear.

Sleepytime!

On Wednesday I sensed something coming to get me. My body was slamming on the brakes, but the anti-lock was off and I was headed somewhere nasty…fast. So instead of pausing to listen, I forged on ahead. I went and frustrated myself on my ‘cross bike. I studied hard. I jacked around on the piano in the Darden forum and tried to remember Jessica’s Theme.
So my body made me listen. That night I was visited by a heinous fever, and spent a lot of time sweating and whining about how cold I was without solving the problem by simply pulling a blanket over myself.
I walked into Marketing class looking like a zombie, and the fun compounded when I was Cold Called. For the uninitiated, it’s a Darden tradition. Watch out! The prof asks you, right off the bat, to give your recommendation on the day’s case. Now, remind you, that this is the reason we are here: we are not yet experts nor are we CEOs. We’re learning how. And a Cold Call is a way to hit the FF button. I flailed during my Cold Call. Mightily, I might add. I was already feverish, but I think I sweated a bit more on account of it. In the end, the prof took the conversation in another direction and I was out of the hot seat after 10 awkward minutes. Thankfully I’ve spent many years humiliating myself on my bicycle so my pride was used to the sting.
I suffered through Operations, and Sven was nice enough to drive me home. I then spent the hours from noon to midnight dozing on the couch. I took a break from sleep with a foiled attempt at watching The Fast & The Furious (if you have ovaries, you will like Paul Walker). Guess the lappytoppy doesn’t have “a valid DVD decoder”. I wasn’t about to call HP again, so I fell back into dreamland.

He’s not as hot as Sven, but he’ll do on the silver screen.
I dragged myself up the stairs after midnight, and slept until 8 a.m. I’m doing the math: in the last 36 hours, I was awake for maybe 10 of them. Wow. Guess I needed that. The life of an MBA student isn’t as glamorous as a pro cyclist, I’m afraid. Less spandex, more studying, and forced sleeping. But some of this…

A replay of last weekend. Left to right: moi. Brett, AKA the guy who challenges the B-Skool dresscode on a daily basis. Brendan, part of my Learning Team and the awesomest UNC grad ever. Christine, a fellow Californian-by-birth who is wicked hot. Noah; a good buddy of one of the sweetest boys in the pro peloton, Michael Cody.