the agenda

Today, I've been reading about aerodynamics in speech production.  Aerodynamics is usually given the shaft in phonetics classes, I think partially because there's a lot of math and scary looking equations involved, and also because it's one of the least well understood topics in phonetics, in some respects.  Fluid dynamics is hard; even the people who are experts in this stuff aren't necessarily sure how to describe the way particles of air behave when propelled through the vocal tract.  You have to understand what the individual particles do, but also the way they all interact with each other, and how they react to changes in the medium they're traveling through, and obstacles in their path.

It's really complicated, but I need to understand it better, because a big chunk of my dissertation has to do with fricative noise, and more specifically, I'm going to be comparing fricative noises produced by adults vs. children.  I have to be able to wrap my brain around all the factors that affect the way "s" and "sh" sound, so when I find differences between adults' and children's speech, I can know what exactly to attribute them to.  Kids' fricative sounds are different not only because they're still developing the motor control necessary to produce fricatives at all, but also because their vocal tracts are constantly growing and changing, so at the same time they're learning to control and coordinate their exhalation and tongue movements, everything keeps moving around on them, so they have to keep adapting the way they do things as they grow.  That's not so much what I'm interested in, though - what I really want to know is how higher level factors (like word frequency and utterance complexity) affect low-level pronunciation.  So I have to know which fricative differences to attribute to differences in vocal anatomy and motor control, and which differences to attribute to psychological, sentence processing factors.  And that, folks, is basically the layman's summary of my dissertation, and a broad overview of all of the reading material I will be tackling in the coming months: fluid dynamics, speech motor control, developmental vocal tract anatomy, and speech production planning.

Depending on how much time I have, I'll probably throw bilingualism into the mix too, since so many of my preschoolers are bilingual, and it'd be nice to know how all of these variables behave in the mind of someone who's juggling multiple languages, too.  Add to that a need to improve my statistics and programming knowledge, so I can get my data and analyze it, as well as brushing up on my acoustic signal processing, so I can understand and justify what acoustic measurements I'm taking, plus the sheer number of man hours it takes to coherently write up such a huge project.  This is why I was partially flipping out about completing this whole thing by December, and why I'm really happy to have at least until May instead.  It is such a huge undertaking, and I have so much to learn and do, and so much knowledge to synthesize in some meaningful way.  It's incredibly easy to get lost in the details and start feeling overwhelmed.  What I've found helps is to just set small, accomplishable tasks for myself.  Today, I'm going to read a chapter on speech aerodynamics, and a chapter on motor control, or Today, I'm going to write a summary of the three main models of articulatory planning, or Today, I'm going to write a script that will take acoustic measurements for all of my fricatives.  That sort of thing.

What I originally wanted to say in this blog post, though, is that reading this chapter on speech aerodynamics is very heartening, in a way.  Speech aerodynamics is hard and complicated, and I'm not getting everything in this chapter, but I'm getting a lot of it, and that's a really nice feeling.  I was thinking about when I started grad school, and every chapter I had to read was so hard.  There was so much I didn't understand, and I just felt like I was wading through a stream of obtuse arguments that I could never properly evaluate.  Now, nearly four years later, I'm much better at reading things I don't understand, and better at getting something out of them, I think.  The trick seems to be to just keep hacking away at it; to keep reading and re-reading even when I don't get it, and gradually, over time, the amount of stuff I do get has become noticeably greater.  It's a slow process, but a really gratifying one when I step back and take a look at it, and when I don't let myself be overwhelmed by my lack of understanding.  It's weird to realize that even the pros don't understand all of it.  That's what makes it science.

It's very useful to me to explain what I'm trying to do and why in the simplest possible terms, and so as I move forward in my dissertation writing, I think I'll be using this space more often to write about what I'm doing in "layman's language" (or as close to it as I can get).  It's easy to get lost in discipline-specific concepts and constructs, and I would like to hone my ability to explain my research interests in a concise and understandable way.  If you get bored, dear reader, I'm okay with that.  :)  Posts like this are mostly for me, and if someone else finds them in any way interesting, that's a bonus.

Sequoia sempervirens

Note the size of the tree as compared to the car.

Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park

This is where they filmed the chase scene in Return of the Jedi!

Jevon is standing next to the overturned roots of a collapsed redwood.  The bases of these trees are enormous.

a perfectly California week

This week has been an absolute hoot, let me tell you.  In preparation for our Grand Road Trip, and also just because we wanted to do something fun and different, Jevon and I decided to do a test trip up to Humboldt County this week.  There were many reasons for it: I'd never been there, and it is so quintessentially northern California, his mom's family is originally from the area, and we wanted to see just how uncomfortable it would be sleeping in the car before we commit to doing it for a week on the way to Illinois.

Also: there's a semi-famous theater company up there I'd never heard of, the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater, and they do a month-long theater festival every summer that Jevon had always wanted to see.  So, we got tickets to the opening night of "Mary Jane: the Musical".  That's right, a full length musical theater production about marijuana growers in Humboldt.  It was so interesting.  Like, way more interesting than I'd expected.  I wasn't all that jazzed about watching a musical comedy about marijuana, seeing as that's not exactly my scene (I know, I'm a Berkeley grad student, I should stop being such a square all the time...), but it was actually fairly nuanced social commentary from a really interesting perspective.  Plus the songs were really good!  I can't say I ever expected to be sitting in the grass (no pun intended) at an outdoor theater in a tiny town in Humboldt County, wrapped in a sweater and a sleeping bag for the cold California summer night, watching a musical with a bunch of locals about the complicated economic and social issues surrounding marijuana growing.  According to the play, marijuana brought in $2.6 billion to the Humboldt economy last year.  Whether that figure's exactly right or not (although I'd think they'd have the best idea of anyone), I had no idea the extent to which pot dominates the local economy.  I guess I'm totally naive, but it was a completely different social climate up there.  Of course, the audience at the opening night of "Mary Jane: the Musical" is probably a self-selecting group, to a certain extent, but it really seemed like everyone was on board with preserving the pot-growing way of life; for them, it's a cash crop, and the fact that it's illegal seems to create a lot more problems than the plant itself.  My impression was that they just wanted to be left alone to keep producing a product that there is obviously huge demand for, and that they're going to keep producing whether it's legal or not, since it just brings in so much money.  But in the play they talked about how people have very different attitudes toward legalization; some people think the tax revenue would be great, and that the reduction in crime and crime-related expenses would be incredibly beneficial to society, but some people worry that if it's legalized, the price will plummet and the local economy will suffer tremendously.  Really interesting stuff.

Anyway, we did plenty of other stuff besides watch a musical about pot.  Mostly we wandered around little towns and went in to used book stores and breweries.  (Northern California is a pretty excellent place for used books and local beer, in case you were wondering.)  We also went to Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park, which was amazing and gorgeous, and I think Jevon got a kick out of my wonderment at the redwoods.  It's fun going around California with a Californian; he takes so much for granted, and I'm sitting there bug-eyed going, "What?! Do you SEE that?!"  The trees were just unreal, and I got plenty of pictures of them, which I will soon upload in a supplementary post.

So, we left Berkeley early on Wednesday morning, spent all day Wednesday and Thursday wandering around Humboldt, went to the play on Thursday night, and then decided to start driving home late last night.  It's about a 5 hour drive, and we had slept in the car on Wednesday night and weren't looking that forward to doing it again, so we drove for a few hours, took a nap for a few hours, and then made it home early early this morning.  Once we got up and moving today, we decided to look into buying a tent for our Illinois trip.  Sleeping in the car was fine, but it'd be really nice to have the option to camp, too.  So we got on Craigslist and, lo and behold, there was a sweet tent for sale in Berkeley.  We called the guy, and it turns out he lives about two blocks directly north of me, and we're going to check out his tent tonight.  He bought it in the late 60's and has used it a grand total of 6 times, but he said it's spent the last few decades sealed in a bag, perfectly dry and in storage, and that it's in nearly perfect condition.  We looked up the brand of tent, Stephenson, and the equivalent of this tent would go for over $600 today, so I'm thinking it's totally worth the $50 this guy is asking, even if we only use it on this one trip and never again.  But the guy said apparently Stephenson - which is now known for super high-tech, fancy-schmancy tricked out backpacking tents - was originally a nudist organization, so their catalogs back in the 60's were filled with naked people hiking around.  I love this.  I am buying a tent from an old Berkeley nudist hippie for my epic road trip across the country.

Speaking of my epic road trip, I remain über-excited.  I think we're leaving on Thursday!!  We're playing it by ear, but the itinerary looks something like this:

Leg 1:  Drive to Medford, Oregon.  Stay with Jevon's mom for a day or two.
Leg 2:  Stop by Crater Lake National Park on the way to Boise.  Spend a day in Boise, maybe.
Leg 3:  On to Yellowstone National Park.  Spend a day or two in Yellowstone.
Leg 4:  Swing up through Billings, Montana, then back down to check out Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument, and Badlands National Park, in South Dakota.
Leg 5:  Depending on how tired we are of being in the car, either swing up to Fargo and then down to Minneapolis, or head straight for Madison.
Leg 6:  Madison, Wisconsin for a taste of civilization again.  Then on to Chicago for a day or two.
Leg 7:  Chicago to Home Sweet Home, where we will hopefully recharge our batteries for a few days, eat at Papa Del's at least once, and see everything C-U has to offer!  It's no Santa Barbara, but I am so looking forward to it.

I'm tired of typing, so I'm going to go!  If you will be in any of the aforementioned locations in the next 2-3 weeks, drop me an email, because I would love to see you (yes, you!).

weekend excursion

Thursday was a pretty rough day for me, obviously.  Nothing bad happened, is the thing; I just have a day every once in a while where I feel especially awful and sad and crazy, and Thursday was one of those days.  I've been forbidding myself from blogging on those days, because no one really needs to read about me feeling like a crazy person, right?  But I did decide to publish that blog post on Thursday night for whatever reason, so I'm not going to take it down.  I do feel like that sometimes, and I do think it's normal and healthy and part of moving forward.  And just to clarify, I don't feel that way all of the time - not even most of the time - and I am definitely moving in a positive direction, emotional well being-wise.  It's just a very slow process, and it's two steps forward, one step back, that sort of thing.  So no one needs to be overly concerned about me or worry that I'm miserable or anything like that.  I'm generally okay, and getting better.

Ok, enough of that.  Yesterday, a carful of us drove up to Tomales Bay, to this little oyster shack where they fish the oysters out of the bay and serve them up to you on ice.  You choose whether you want them cooked or not.  So we got 24 raw oysters for the 5 of us, served up with white wine vinegar and herbs, and we brought our own bottle of wine and some crusty bread and cheese.  It was tasty!  We also got 4 grilled oysters, which each had a dollop of melted chili butter in them, and they were super good, but I might have been mostly into the butter. ;)

Grilled oysters with chili butter.  Image by Emma Christensen, at TheKitchn.

So at this oyster shack, they have communal picnic tables, and while we were finishing up our tasty lunch, this older Filipino couple came and sat next to us.  They were really cute, and the guy was just talking up a storm.  Talking talking talking, he wanted to be an 'agriculturalist' in the Philippines, but he wound up getting an accounting degree instead, Tagalog is the easiest language in the world, this is how you plant a pineapple, one time his son did this one thing, yadda yadda yadda.  It was fine at first, but we were all about ready to leave, and he just. kept. going.  Then he started to talk about how the only presidential candidate he believed in was Rick Santorum, because he watched his facial expressions, and he was the only one speaking truly from the heart.  My friend's husband said, "That's because he's crazy."  And we got a good laugh out of that, but it was clearly time to get going.  Thankfully (?) I was getting pretty sunburnt by that point, so I was like, "Man, I really have to get going, I'm going to be a tomato tomorrow!"  And they thought that was hilarious, so it was a semi-graceful exit.

Anyway, on the way back, I snapped some shots of the landscape from the car window, some of which turned out decent.  It was a gorgeous summer day, and it was so, so nice to get out of town, see some countryside, and have a little adventure.

Oh, I forgot about our pitstop.  On the way back, we stopped in this teeny tiny little town to check out the bookstore, and most of us picked up a little souvenir.  I got a $3 calendar that has beautiful pictures of coffee drinks, and for each month it details the history of coffee drinking in a particular country, and gives a few recipes for a traditional coffee drink from that country.  Jevon got a book published in 1827 that was written by a former slave, and it has a bunch of household tips, tricks, and handyman-type things, like how to make 19th century style recipes, or how to mix your own stain for woodwork, weird stuff like that.

When we came out of the bookstore, we saw this little market across the street, and we went in looking for snacks.  We ended up getting some chocolate, coffee, and amazing strawberry peach crostadas, and then we sat down at the picnic table in front of the market to snack for a bit.  Well, there were three of us on one side of the table, and two on the other side, and when the other two stood up, the table tipped right backward and dumped us on the ground.  It was really, really scary for about half a second, and then once we realized what had happened and we were all okay, it was really, really funny, and the guy sitting behind us got a really good laugh out of it too.

Well, it's 11:00 and I could probably use a shower.  Then it's time for groceries and reading, then maybe some dog walking, and then some frisbee this evening.  Love to all, and I may even see you soon - barring unforeseen circumstances, the plan is to leave on our road trip in about a week and a half, which puts us in Illinois sometime in mid-July.

ill-advised evening post after a long day

Someday -- someday -- I will be mentally and emotionally stable again, and it will be oh-so-nice.

Workin' on it.  Super tired of the mood swings and the random crying and feeling totally manic all the time.  I am not as put-together as I project myself to be, not right now.  I feel like I used to be about as put-together as I acted, and now I'm just continuing to act all put-together on auto-pilot when actually I feel slightly insane at least most of the time.  But you know?  I'm moving very gradually in a positive direction, and every week I feel a little bit more like myself, for the most part.

It's just taking a really long time, and I'm so tired of it.  But I'm working on it.

***

I never make posts like this, because I always tell myself that I will regret them almost immediately.  Why is this an exception?  I have no idea.  I already know I'm going to regret it, and I'm having serious second thoughts about clicking the "publish" button.  I think it just feels kind of nice to admit that I am having a pretty rough time right now.  To say it out loud, and to realize that it's normal and that it will get better.  It is getting better, just... slowly.  And I'm tired of waiting to feel like myself again, y'know?  I pride myself on being on an even keel, normally.  I guess I think of an essential part of my personality as being fairly unflappable.  I'm strong.  I'm happy.  I don't let things get to me.  Well, this gets to me.  This whole awful transition period.  I have been gotten to.  And I hate it and I want it to go away so I can feel like myself again.

That's all.  I'm just biding my time and taking it as it comes, and some days are far better than others.  This was kind of a rough day, and tomorrow will probably be better.

depressurizing

I think it wasn't that I was "running out of steam" so much as I needed to depressurize.  :)  I'm feeling much better now!  So here's the update: I am not applying for the Penn State job right now.  My advisor talked to the person in charge of the job, and now that we have some insider information, I will be applying for a very similar job next year.  Sorry to be so cryptic, I just feel weird talking about it on a public blog, even though I don't think anyone terribly... "important"... reads this thing.  Except for you, dear reader! ;)  No, I just mean... well, you probably know what I mean.  The point is, there is probably going to be a very similar job opening up next year, so there's no reason to rush this one.

Which means I may still be moving to Pennsylvania (chances are even fair to good, I would say), but it would be next summer.  And I am not applying for any other jobs just yet, so I will be in Berkeley at least one more year, which is so freaking good to know.  I didn't realize how much the up-in-the-air-ness was getting to me, stress-wise.

Also, my stomach hasn't been bothering me at all since Thursday morning, and I'm not sure what to do about that.  If my ulcer is healing/has healed on its own, then I don't need to go to the doctor.  But if it comes back in a few days, I'll feel dumb for canceling my appointment and then having to schedule another one.  I guess I'll probably just go anyway and see what they say.

Also also, this is totally dorky, but I just downloaded a sweet application for my iPad that lets me organize and annotate PDFs like a boss.  I am clearly being tongue-in-cheek about it, because it feels like a silly thing to be excited about, but I am really excited.  Especially now that I don't have to write a dissertation in 6 months, I'm really looking forward to reading a lot, having some time to wrap my head around what I'm doing, and hopefully doing some really good work, that I'm really proud of.  Now I have at least until May, and I want to do this thing right.

Also also also, now that my summer has magically been freed up (i.e. I don't have to lock myself in a room and stare at my computer as much as I was mentally preparing myself for), it looks like the aforementioned road trip is going to happen relatively soon, like at the end of June/beginning of July.

Today Jevon and I went down to the farmers' market in Jack London Square, wandered around in the sunshine, tried a bunch of yummy samples, bought some crazy-delicious fruit (we are at the height of strawberry and peach season - YUM), and sat in the grass enjoying the breeze and noshing on juicy nectarines.  It was just what I needed, and I feel approximately 1,000 times better than I did just 3 days ago.

Now it is time for a snack, and for drinking some ice water and reading a book.  I am at peace.

running out of steam

I'm sitting in my beautiful apartment with all of the windows and the door open - it feels like I live on a screened-in porch when I do that, and I love it - and I am having a heck of a hard time forcing myself to work.  I am applying for a job at Penn State University which would probably start in January, and it has been incredibly stressful for many reasons.  Am I moving across the country in a few months?  Dunno.  Do I have to write an entire dissertation in 6 months?  Maybe.  Can I finish this dissertation chapter before I have to apply?  Definitely not, but I have to try anyway.  What in the hell is going on??  No idea.

So it turns out that getting divorced + the end of the semester + trying to write a dissertation chapter in two weeks + applying for a job = stomach ulcer, in case you were wondering.  I woke up with this awful searing pain in my stomach last Thursday, which went away after I ate some food, but it's been back periodically ever since then, and after doing some reading online, I'm pretty sure I have a stomach ulcer.  So that's interesting!  As long as I take some Pepto Bismol every once in a while, it's fine, but I'm anxious for my doctor's appointment to get here (it's on Tuesday) so I can get some antibiotics and nip this thing in the bud.  (Did you know that 70 - 90% of stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium that usually only gets a foothold when you have a compromised immune system due to stress?  I learned that this week!)

Anyway, things are mostly good, actually.  I've gotten a lot of work done in the past two weeks, and now I know exactly what my dissertation's going to be about, and I've even started writing it.  Crazy, right?  It's just that I'm in the home stretch of finishing up this chapter to send off with my application materials, and I have to finish up my 'statement of research interests', and I'm just... close enough to finishing that it's hard to motivate myself to just DO it, y'know?  I need to just do it.

Ok.  Self pep-talk over.  I'm gonna do it.  And then I'm gonna submit these things and wait to hear back about whether I have to write the rest of this thing and move to Pennsylvania in 6 months.  I have no idea what is going on, but I am excited and super anxious, in the good way and the bad way.

I leave you with some awesome pictures of my brain that I recently rediscovered.  I participated in a speech perception experiment at UCSF last fall, and they made MRIs of my brain, which I think are awesome and I'm going to frame them and put them in my office.

Look at that corpus callosum!  Look at that beautiful cerebellum!
And look at how huge the human tongue is!

Ghoooost faaace...  Ghooooost faaaaaaace...