Berkeley, here I come!

Earlier this week, I went for a run.  I use this website called Gmap Pedometer to see how far my runs are, and you have to type in your town for it to zoom in.  So I get back, and I sit down, and I type, "berkeley, ca" into the search bar.

Whoops.

It was actually the first time I'd done that here.  When I first moved to Berkeley, oh so many moons ago, I typed "urbana, il" multiple times - sheer force of habit - and it made me a little sad every time.  This made me a little sad too, except that I'm leaving for Berkeley today, so mostly it was just a funny little trick that my fingers played on me.

Now I have to sit on planes and in airports for something like 11 hours, but it will all be worth it.  I can't wait to see everyone!  I am so so so excited!

Niagara Falls

I'm back!

I'm back because I'm home and don't know what else to do with myself, because I don't want to work tonight --

-- phone call from my postdoc advisor.  Turns out I don't have to teach next semester if I don't want to! So now I have to decide if I want to teach.  Interesting. --

Anyway, yeah, not working any more tonight because my grant isn't due until Tuesday, and it's actually in pretty good shape.  It's not quite there, but I have several days to make what are some relatively minor edits and additions at this point, so I'm just about done worrying about it.

So I might as well tell you about my trip to Niagara Falls!

I didn't drive up with the express purpose of seeing Niagara Falls, of course.  I went to go visit my friend!

M is originally from Buffalo, is a current grad student at Berkeley, but is back in Buffalo for this semester.  I drove up to visit her a few weeks back, and it was such a beautiful drive.  Man, driving through the Appalachians and up into western New York with fall in full swing… not something I ever thought I would experience, but it was absolutely gorgeous, and I'm so glad I got the chance to do it.

So seeing M was wonderful, of course (I really miss her!), and she was super excited to take me to see Niagara Falls, which is like a 15 minute drive from her house.  Isn't that crazy?  I can't even imagine growing up right by Niagara Falls.

The pictures really don't do it justice.  The amount of power behind that incredible amount of water is absolutely mind-blowing.  It was surprisingly scary, actually!

So I had a wonderful weekend, and it was a really neat experience, and really nice to catch up with my friend!

I also just downloaded these pictures from my phone, and there was this one from the Color Run, a 5K I did back in September:

It's weird; you can't tell at all from this picture how much weird chalk-paint I had on myself.  That… was maybe an experience for another post.

Anyway, Niagara was awesome, I live in a really gorgeous part of the country, and I am really happy to have a car so that I can get out and see it!

Speaking of that, Jevon was here a few weekends ago, and we went back to Fallingwater so he could check it out, and so I could try to get a better tour guide this time!  I think the trip was a success on both counts.

Okay, that's probably enough from me for now.  Two posts in one day, imagine that!

Que le temps passe vite!

Ohhh the shame.  Two months since my last update!  No blog posts at all in the month of October!  I am so, so slacking.

I don't even know what my problem is.  It's not like I don't have things to talk about.  I'm in a new town, and I really like it, even!  I have some new friends, and we do fun stuff sometimes, even!  I had an awesome trip up to Niagara Falls to visit my friend from Berkeley, even!  And it's not like I'm working so hard that I never have free time or something.  Far from it, in fact.

Let's see, what am I up to these days?  I'll do a quick update in the next few minutes, and then I'll try to do a post dedicated to Niagara Falls/Buffalo soon.

- I can't write for too long this morning because I am subbing for a friend/colleague who is at a conference this week, and she needs someone to cover her class.  So I have to show up and play a movie for some undergrads, and have them fill out attendance cards.

- Speaking of teaching, I have a meeting tomorrow to find out what class I'm teaching next semester.  I have my fingers crossed for Intro to Psycholinguistics, but if there's not enough enrollment, I'll be doing First Language Acquisition.  Either would be fine, I guess, but I'm hoping for Psycholing because I've never taught it before and I'm more comfortable with the subject material.

- I don't really know where the time goes.  I have lots of meetings, and I do lots of reading.  I've been writing a lot lately because I'm applying for a grant (due on Monday), and trying to submit a paper for publication before I apply.  I'm also applying for two other grants, and probably a job (all in the first week of December - yikes), but I'm not quite thinking about that yet.  Before that, I have to finish the grant I'm working on, plus submit this paper, and submit a short response paper, plus I was hoping to have my dissertation stuff submitted somewhere by the end of this month, but that's looking less likely now.  I'm presenting a poster at the ASA in San Francisco the first week of December, so making a good poster is my first priority.  And I'm giving two talks that week, so I should probably work on those too!  See, it sounds like I should be really busy, but I don't really feel that busy.

- I'll be in Berkeley really soon, and I can't wait!  I get in on November 25th and am staying until December 9th.  Two weeks!  Lots of time to hang out, see friends, check out the old haunts.  I. can. not. wait.

- But before that, I have a conference in Toronto… a week from today!  Whoa!  A week from today I will be driving up to Toronto with some folks from my lab group.  It's only about 5 1/2 hours (isn't that crazy?) so we're carpooling to save some money.  I don't have to present anything at this conference, either - I'm just supposed to hang out and check it out, so that will be pretty fun, I think!

- Umm, I did a half marathon the weekend before last.  It was great, actually, but sort of… unceremonious.  I finished in two hours even, so I basically met my goal, which was unexpected and awesome.  I've been trying to up my running, because I freaking love fall, and I love to be outside enjoying the crisp fall air, but it's been sort of hard when we don't get that much daylight.  I've been having a horrible time waking up in the morning… it's a little better now that the time has changed back, and it gets light around 6:45 instead of 7:45.  I could conceivably go running in the mornings now, I suppose, but I haven't gotten my act together enough to actually do that.

Well, I'm getting antsy because I have to get ready to head to campus.  But I will do a Niagara Falls post soon!  And maybe I will talk about my new friends, too.  The super short version is that I have three postdoc friends, and they're totally awesome, and I've also gotten a bit closer with my neighbor (whose class I'm covering this morning).  So, life is good!

pretty stuff from my phone camera

I have a car!!!!

It is so exciting!  I love it!  And now I can go wherever I want, whenever I want!

I also snapped two nice photos of campus on a whim the other day.

It really is a very nice campus.

I gave my colloquium talk yesterday, and then I bought my car (which was a minor ordeal, involving a surprise trip to the DMV to get a PA driver's license... at least that's over now), and then I finally got home around 6:00 and just zonked out for the night.  I knew I was tired, so I didn't set my alarm for this morning, and I woke up at 11:00 am, which I haven't done in, like, years.  I usually can only do that when I'm sick or something.  It was totally weird.

Then I ate some zucchini muffins and drank some tea, curled up on my new couch and watched a movie, and then went for a 6.5 mile run to try to tire myself out.  This evening I drove out to Wegmans, everybody's favorite grocery store 'round these parts, and also stopped by a furniture store to scope out some rugs, and by Michael's to pick up some crafting stuff.

Now I'm home and I'm actually pretty tired, so the longer-than-usual run (and the pumpkin beer I picked up tonight) must have done their job.  I might watch another movie!  And then bright and early tomorrow morning, I'm heading out to see Falling Water, the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house in southwestern PA, with my neighbor and fellow language researcher at PSU.

Man, today feels really good.  Things are good.

One Week in State College, PA (a report card)

Today marks my eighth full day in State College, so I think it's about time for a report card detailing my preliminary impressions.  Here is a list of ten things that have been particularly striking to me over the past week, along with what I think of them, in case you care.  (And if you're reading my blog, it seems like you might actually care what I think about things, for some reason.)


Population density.  My first inclination is to just say A-freaking-plus and be done with it.  Don't get me wrong.  I love Berkeley, very much.  But I can't help but feel how much more at peace I am here, and it's definitely due to the relative lack of people.  There's just fewer people here, and less noise, and more space, and it is so nice.  I live in a beautiful neighborhood, with tall leafy trees and big yards where families can run around and play.  There are many nice things about living in a relatively urban area, for sure.  But I think a place like this is really the place for me.  The downside, of course, is that life is much more car-dependent here.  I was totally fine for five years in Berkeley without a car.  But a week in SC (three days of which I rented a car anyway) is already a little annoying.  This place is just not as set up for car-free living.  It's doable, but it will be easier once I've gotten a car, and I don't have to do things like walk for 45 minutes to get to Ace Hardware and discover they don't have what I wanted anyway.  All things considered, then: A-.  (It's the stuff that's generally correlated with low population density that brings this one down a bit.)

Penn State campus.  It's really pretty!  Prettier than I expected, actually.  Let's be clear, it's no Berkeley, but no campus really compares to Berkeley, with its eucalyptus grove and redwood trees and babbling brooks.  The PSU campus is pretty in an East Coast, brick buildings, lots of foliage and criss crossing paths sort of way.  It's definitely more like the U of I campus than like Berkeley, although it seems geographically more compact than the U of I.  Definitely classy, but welcoming too, and that's a nice combination.  B+

My new department.  It's going to be kind of weird to be in a psychology department, I can tell.  I got a tour of our facilities yesterday and discovered that my little branch of our department occupies the bottom two floors of a six story building occupied entirely by psychologists.  There are so many psychologists.  It is weird.  But I've got to say, everyone has been fantastic so far.  Incredibly warm, nice, welcoming, and helpful.  It definitely doesn't feel like home in the way Berkeley did, and I sort of doubt that it ever will, since I spent five years with the same small group of folks who all knew me pretty well.  (It was kind of like high school in that respect.)  But there are definite perks to being in such a big powerhouse of a department here.  They have some serious resources, for one thing; the building is beautiful and modern, and the research facilities are really great.  It's going to take some adjusting, but I'm pretty sure I'll manage to get used to it.  A-, for reasons of sentimentality.

Downtown area.  Super cute!  It's kind of like... Green Street plus Downtown Urbana, if you're an Illinois person, and maybe... Elmwood plus Northside, if you're a Berkeley person.  Lots of places to eat, extremely safe, but also has a distinctly collegiate feel to it.  One thing that's really interesting to me is that the types of restaurants here are just nothing like Berkeley.  First of all, the actual-restaurant-to-bar ratio is waaaaay tipped towards the bar end of the scale, which is the opposite of Berkeley.  Also, there's a lot more "normal" food here than in Berkeley, and by that I mean the offerings here are not as interesting.  The more mainstream types of "ethnic cuisine" are definitely represented (Thai, Chinese, Mexican), but you can replace things like Vietnamese and Ethiopian with like, Italian and German.  There's a German deli and an Austrian deli downtown, and that kind of blows my mind.  I think I'd rather have Ethiopian food, but I guess I'll take my time here as an opportunity to become reacquainted with the food of my people.  A-

Undergraduate student body.  It's pretty weird to be surrounded by thousands of 19 year olds attending a Big Ten school again.  It's taking me back to 2003 in a major way.  If I put my 2003 brain on, it feels pretty normal.  Like, oh yeah, I remember frat boys with backwards baseball caps and sorority girls with bleached blond hair and short shorts.  It is weird to walk to campus through my neighborhood and be surrounded by evidence that 50,000 rowdy undergrads inhabit this town.  There are gaggles of made-up girls in sequined tank tops roaming from house to house, and boys in polo shirts crowding on to dilapidated porches to play beer pong and yell at passers-by.  And I say "girls" and "boys" because it is striking to me how much they resemble children.  I cannot believe I am going to be in charge of educating these young minds.  ("Animals," my neighbor calls them.  "A hoard of savage beasts.")  When I think about how much the people in some of my classes drove me crazy in college, I get a little bit apprehensive about being in charge of them next semester.  But whatever: for now, it feels strangely familiar, and I'm okay with it.  B

Smoking.  There are so many people who smoke here!  It is really weird!  I think what this actually means is that there are very few people who smoke in Berkeley (well, who smoke cigarettes, anyway...) and I didn't notice that, because I don't smoke.  But now that there are people smoking everywhere I go, it's very noticeable, and very strange.  On the other hand, I've been here a whole week and have yet to walk by someone getting high on the sidewalk, so, there's that.  C

Driver/pedestrian etiquette.  Remember when I moved to California and was perpetually annoyed with drivers actually stopping for me when I was approaching a cross walk?  Well, I have now come full circle, because I'm really confused about when I'm supposed to cross the street.  I lived in California long enough to accept the fact that drivers expected - even wanted - me to cross the street in front of them.  That is definitely not the case here, and I'm having a hard time remembering what I'm supposed to do when I get to a cross walk at the same time as a motor vehicle.  Do I slow down?  Speed up?  make eye contact and wave them ahead?  Not make eye contact and assume they're going to just barely come to a rolling stop anyway?  Lay flat on my stomach and wait until it's over??  I don't know what to do anymore.  It's usually fine because they usually exhibit no signs whatsoever of detecting my presence and just blow through the intersection anyway.  I guess I'll get used to that again soon.  What's interesting to me is that driver/pedestrian etiquette is only noticeable (and really, only dangerous) when you don't have an intuitive sense of how it works.  I'm not making a value judgment in either direction, just observing that the important thing is to internalize the customs, whatever they may be.  S, for satisfactory.

Pennsylvania liquor laws.  This is the first place I've ever lived where you have to go to a special store to buy alcohol.  It's stupid.  And it doesn't accomplish anything except making me go to a special store to buy alcohol.  Apparently you can only buy two six-packs of beer at a time here, too?  I dunno, I read that somewhere.  The upshot is that I haven't bought any alcohol since I've been here, because alcohol stores make me feel kind of skeezy.  (I think there may be separate stores for beer vs. wine and liquor, too.  It sort of looks like "bottle shops" are for beer, and there are plenty of those around, but I haven't seen any wine or liquor stores.)  Anyway, why can't I just buy a six-pack of Blue Moon at the grocery store like a normal person, Pennsylvania?  What's the freakin' deal?  F

Farmers' market.  The farmers' market here (and CSAs; see below) might make up for the stupid liquor laws.  I went to the farmers' market for the first time today, and it was so cute.  Just like everything in this town is so cute.  Pretty much all of the vendors were Amish, which is kind of a trip when you're used to the Berkeley farmers' market.  The Berkeley markets are huge, with weird but awesome California produce (avocados! $1 each!  fresh figs! $5/basket!), and are filled with a wonderfully and totally Berkelified clientele.  Lots of tattoos and piercings and half-mullets and homemade clothes and people who probably shop exclusively at the farmers' market because we only have one Earth, man.  And I love that, don't get me wrong, but it is pretty much the quintessential liberal hippie paradise.  When you're used to that and then suddenly the person behind the table is a sweet little Amish boy wearing overalls and a straw hat and calling you ma'am, it's kind of a trip.  Anyway, the farmers' market was amazing, and Amish products are amazing, and the prices were dirt cheap!!  Maybe because the vendors have less far to travel to get here?  Maybe because the cost of producing things is just so much cheaper here?  (Gas, land, water, fertilizer... it's probably all way cheaper here.)  In any case, I spent way less than I ever spent at the Berkeley FM, and got way more, so a big ol' thumbs up for that.  I'm a little sad I can't get fresh figs anymore, but what are you gonna do?  A

CSA offerings.  Related to the farmers' market offerings, there are some amazing CSAs out here.  I found this dairy CSA, where you get to order raw, local, organic dairy products every week and they deliver them straight to your door.  I think I have died and gone to dairy fat heaven (which is probably what my heaven would be anyway).  The only slight bummer is that produce shares are far less flexible here than in California.  In the Bay Area anyway, you can sign up for as many weeks of produce as you like, and stop and start your order whenever you like, and there's always plenty of local crops available year round.  Here the CSAs only run from March to November (because things don't grow from November to March, because I am back in the land of seasons), and you have to sign up for the full season in advance, which means you're plunking down $400 dollars in February for a half year's worth of fruit and vegetables.  Maybe to offset this slight bummer, there are other CSAs that run year round, like dairy products and herbs and fresh baked bread.  I'm totally doing the dairy one, and I'm going to try to find a winter vegetable share somewhere too, but those are a little few and far between.  In any case, way to go, PA.  A

Everything is wonderful.

Everything is wonderful!

I freaking love this little town.  It is so gosh darned cute, and everyone I have met so far is ridiculously nice and welcoming.

I love my apartment.  It is beautiful, and huge, and perfect.

I love that my stuff is arriving from California tomorrow, so I will actually have normal things, like a normal person, and not be sleeping on a borrowed mattress on the floor (although that has contributed to imparting a certain zen-like air to my evenings thus far).

I love that I have already managed to acquire a sweet desk and a sweet office chair.  The former was discovered by yours truly at a used furniture store (which had a surprising amount of high quality stuff!) and is an old, classy, solid wood thing that looks like it might be from the 60's, and the latter was purchased at Staples today and is the nicest office chair I have ever owned.

I love that my Penn State ID says "Faculty/Staff".  Tee-hee!

I love that I found a couch that I love and a futon that I love (for my guest room/office), and that those things will be delivered next week.

I love that I finished grading final papers and entered final grades for my class this evening.

I love that Jevon is going to be here in just over a week!

I love that I have already been invited to participate in a color run 5K in September, and I love that I went for a beautiful evening run yesterday.

I love that there are crickets and frogs here, and that it sounds and smells and feels like summer.

I love that I am not writing my dissertation anymore!!  I love that I have free time to just adjust, and get used to things, and meet people, and explore my new town.

I just love everything.  This is a great week.

Dr. Melinda! Dr. Melinda!

It's done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

... now I have to grade final papers and a final exam.

I. DON'T. WANT. TO TALK. ABOUT. ARTICULATORY. DURATION. ANY. MORE.

NO MORE.

IDON'TWANNATALKABOUTITANYMOREDOYOUHEARME????

Oh my god, you guys, 26 pages of talking about the duration of articulatory movements.  I want it to be over, and somehow, it's never over.  There is always more to say.

I am so goddamned close to being done with this background chapter, and I just don't think I can finish it tonight.  10+ hours a day of writing for four days straight, and I'm having a really hard time keepin' on keepin' on.

All I have left now is to summarize my research questions.  And I have started doing so, but I'm hitting the wall again, where I can't think straight or form coherent sentences anymore.  I'm getting all spacey and glassy-eyed, and I can't tell what's important, or remember how I intended to finish my sentences by the time I'm a clause and a half in.

GAH I really wanted to be done tonight.  But it might be time to pack it in.

Good lord I am ready to be done.  I have made so, so much progress over the past few days, and I am getting so close, both temporally and work-wise.  I still have to write my discussion chapter, but I kind of don't even care at this point.  I mean, I know it's going to suck too, but I am just so, so close that I can taste it.

DO YOU HEAR ME, DISSERTATION?  YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED, MY FRIEND.



8/5, ETA: I just emailed my background chapter to my advisors.  I'm... kind of happy?  I guess?  But also kind of... vaguely angry that I just worked for about 15 hours straight.  (Such that obviously the only appropriate course of action is to whine some more to the interwebs.  Sorry.  This is my venting space right now.)  Also: feeling apprehensive that every day this week is basically going to be like this.

grad student life

At dinner last night:

Me:  I know someone from my hometown who just had her third kid.

Friend:  Whoooaaa.  That's crazy.

Me:  It's not actually that crazy, is the weird thing.

Friend:  Actually, you're right.  I guess she could have gotten married right after college, waited a bit, and still spaced them two years apart.  I guess we're getting old.

Me:  I know, it's really weird.  All these people my age on their second and third kid...

Friend:  Yeah, but... we know LaTeX.


Wahn wahhhnnn.

must... keep... going

I'm hitting the wall, and it's only 2:00 in the afternoon.  No good.

Well, back up.  This is a weird day for many reasons.  I got up at 5:00 this morning, as I have been for the past few weeks, and I worked on my dissertation until around 8:00.  Then I took my shower and ate breakfast and was ready to head in to campus to get ready for my class this afternoon, as I have been for the past few weeks.  And as I was leaving, I turned my back in a weird way, and it did that stupid, stupid spasm-y thing that it does periodically.  I usually get about one back spasm per year, and then I hobble around like an old lady for a few days before my back decides it's going to quit giving me grief.

So yeah, back spasm this morning.  Not a particularly bad one, but it immediately started stiffening up, like it always does, and I was hobbling around already.  I tossed back a couple Advil and started to head for campus, but it was hurting.  Now... I had been wanting to find an excuse to cancel class today, or let them out early, because I really, really need to get some serious writing done.  So part of me (the little devil on my shoulder) was hissing "dooooo iiiiiittttt... caaaaannnnccceeelllll", but then part of me (the stubborn goody two shoes part) was going, "don't be ridiculous, you're fine, go teach your class."

I made it about a block when I started thinking about what I would have done if I didn't have a dissertation to work on.  And I realized that my back was bothering me enough that if this were a different summer, or during the semester, I would have seriously considered canceling class independently of the fact that I have a dissertation to finish.  So the fact that I was being so stubborn and hobbling to campus anyway was directly tied to the fact that I had been feeling guilty about wanting to cancel class back when I didn't have a good enough reason to.

So I stopped walking, and I stood there for about 6 seconds, and then I turned around and went home and canceled class.  Because forget it.  I'm an adult.  Adults are allowed to have sick days, and this is basically a sick day, and one that I legitimately needed, because I can't really stand up straight right now.  (Which is totally legitimate.  I don't want to be struggling to stand up straight at the front of a classroom for 2 hours.)  The thing that's weird and extra lame about it is that then I felt like, "Hooray!  A sick day!  I get to stay home and work!!"

Being an adult: maybe not as cool as you had hoped.

So now it's 2:06 and I should be heading to my classroom to teach, and instead I am blogging.  I have gotten a tremendous amount of writing done today - which is freaking excellent - but I am hitting the wall.  And this brings us back to my opening sentence.  Part of me is like, "It's only 2:00!  Suck it up, quit being a wimp, and keep working."  But then I realize that I've been writing more or less straight for... 8 hours now, if you figure in some little breaks.  So, uhh, no wonder I'm hitting the wall and suddenly having trouble forming decent sentences.

The problem is that now I don't know what to do with myself, because this is normally the point where I would go for a walk to get some perspective and clear my head, but walking is probably not in the cards today.  Dude, back spasms suck.

So... I dunno.  Maybe I'll read or play the piano or something.

some thoughts in passing

I would like it to not be 55 degrees and foggy anymore.

But I guess starting in like, 19 days, it won't be!  So that's weird.

Speaking of that, I realized this morning that I need to start making phone calls to get my utilities turned on in State College.  So that's pretty weird too.

Also, thank you all for the encouragement.  My background chapter still has a ways to go, but it is totally shaping up, and I actually kind of like it.  This thing might turn out okay after all.

I'm just not really going to get much sleep for the next two weeks.  :-P  But then I'll be done!!

*sigh*

Man, it so comes in spurts.  I wrote a difficult section of my background chapter this morning, and now I just don't want to do it anymore.  I finally broke out of the guilt-anxiety-avoidance spiral a little bit - that horrible limbo where you can't make yourself start working on something because it just feels overwhelming and like you can't do it - so it was going relatively well.  But now I just have more difficult sections to write, and I just plain don't wanna do it.

Times like these are when I have to find non-difficult sections to write, like just summarizing other people's studies, because that at least keeps the juices flowing and helps me feel productive.  Confidence building sections, really.  So I guess I should find some more studies to summarize, and maybe that will help me feel better and get back into it.

I also have this problem currently where I keep rationalizing the amount of time I have left.  I was going to try to have this chapter done by tonight, but that's looking less and less likely.  So now... if I can just get it done sometime this week, I can spend all of next weekend revising my three existing chapters.  I think I can do revisions on one chapter per day, if I really buckle down.  And that leaves me about a week to write my discussion chapter...

TIME IS DISAPPEARING.  And I kind of don't like it one bit, because AAAAACK I HAVE TO FILE THIS THING IN 18 DAYS, but at the same time, there is a weird sense of relief beginning to creep up on me, just the tiniest tiniest bit.  I am so in the home stretch.  In 19 measly days I will be done.  I am so close, and yet so far away...

fast forward button plz thx

You know the part where I'm done with this dissertation, and with teaching this class, and with packing my stuff, and with moving in to my new place that's 3,000 miles away?

And I don't have to worry about how all that stuff is going to get done in the next, oh, three weeks?

Yeah, can we just skip to that part now?

On the bright side, I have the greatest advisors ever.  I got comments back from both of them on my last chapter, and I finally got brave enough to read them (it's scary looking at comments, because what if they have no idea what you were trying to say, or there's some huge fundamental flaw that you completely missed because you were too busy getting the stupid statistical model to work, etc. etc.) and they're just the. greatest.  So encouraging and understanding and helpful.  Basically along the lines of, "This is a good idea, and I can tell it's not quite there yet, but it's good, so you should do the best you can with it for now, and then keep working on it."  And also they keep saying things like, "I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation with you once you're Dr. Fricke."  So basically, the best possible way to talk a tired and frustrated grad student down off the ledge!

Oof.  I need to get back to work.

weird weekend, weird blog post

I wanted to write a funny post about what a Berkeley weekend I've had, but only parts of it are funny, so I'm not sure how to write it up.  On Friday night, I went to my friend G's house, and we brewed up some beer.  G has been brewing for something like 2 years now, and I've really appreciated that he's let me sort of glom on to the process and learn a little bit about it.  I'm going to start brewing when I move.  I would've started earlier, except that I don't have much room in my place, and also each batch makes something like 50 beers, and having two people regularly producing 50 beers within a relatively small friend group is just too much beer.

Anyway, on Friday night, a small group of us were brewing up some raspberry ale (it's raspberry season right now, and the raspberries are plentiful, cheap, and delicious).  We were standing in the kitchen, being generally extremely nerdy and philosophical by turns.  One friend in particular was talking about how he'd like to re-do the U.S. government.  He had some really, really interesting ideas (I think), like adding lobbyists as a fourth branch of government.  The thing is, they are the fourth branch of government right now.  They're just invisible and unregulated, and it's totally screwing a lot of things up.  So we were talking about how to regulate that and bring it out into the open; what you'd have to do to really make the "lobby" an official branch of government.

Then another friend pointed out that this was probably someone's worst nightmare: five Berkeley grad students brewing beer in a kitchen in Oakland, talking about how to restructure the government.  (Actually, it's probably my dad's worst nightmare.  Love you, Dad.)

But I loved it.  It was so fun and interesting.  I love thought experiments, and this was a really good one.

Then yesterday, I read an article about a movie that just got released this weekend, Fruitvale Station.  The article said you should go see it if for no other reason than the fact that it's by a black director and stars a mostly black cast of really talented actors, and it represents a unique and important point of view that basically never gets portrayed on the big screen.  And the article said that the movie was under a limited release this weekend, and that if it did well, it might be released more widely.

Besides that, the only thing I knew about this movie is that it was about Oscar Grant.  Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART police officer on New Year's Eve the first year I lived in Berkeley.  It was a huge deal out here.  He was unarmed, and he died a few hours later, and the whole thing resulted in protests and looting in Oakland.

So I knew going in that it had something to do with the incident, which is the story of a black man getting shot and killed by a white police officer, and that it was by a black director (apparently originally from Oakland, although I learned that later) and was starring black actors.  That's all I knew.

I felt really weird about the movie.  It was indisputably a very good movie.  What felt weird about it was that I knew Oscar Grant was going to die.  That was kind of the point of the movie.  Well, no, the point of the movie was to portray a (fictionalized?) version of the last day of Oscar Grant's life.  It's his mom's birthday, he stops by the grocery store to pick up some crab so his grandma can make her famous gumbo for everybody.  He takes his daughter to preschool, he drops her off at her cousins' so he can go out with his girlfriend for New Year's Eve.  On the one hand, it's just a normal day in the life of a flawed but well-meaning human being.  But the movie really felt like it was at pains to make you like Oscar Grant.  It felt a little too heavy handed at points, like the scene where a dog gets hit by a car, and he runs out into the street and holds the dog in his arms as it slips away.  It's a short, very painful scene, and it's completely obvious that the only point of it is to make us see what a loving person Oscar Grant is.  It doesn't connect with any other aspects of the plot.  And come to think of it, it's in stark contrast to the scene immediately following it, where Oscar drives out to a parking lot to make a drug deal.  I guess that's the point, but it just felt like it was trying too hard sometimes.

It's hard to know how I would have felt about the movie if I didn't know anything about the whole situation.  What's interesting is that even though I felt the heavy handedness of it at points, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still absolutely horrified when he was shot.  That's why I have to say that it was a very good movie.  Even though I could feel the mechanics of it a little bit too much - like I could feel it working on me - the reality is that it did work on me, and it's hard to argue with that.

The big takeaway for me was that even if everything leading up to the scene where he gets shot was completely fictionalized, I came away hurting for Oscar Grant and his family, because the point is that he was a person, and even if he was flawed, he certainly didn't deserve to die.  And my personal opinion is that even if the guy who shot him did do it completely on accident (which seems somewhat likely, although admittedly it's not like I know that much about it), he should have done longer than 11 months of jail time.

So we came out of the movie, and we decided to go for a beer.  It was pretty intense, and we wanted to decompress rather than head straight home by ourselves.  We walked around the block, and our normal spot was totally packed and too noisy, so we decided to try Saturn Cafe.  Saturn Cafe started in Santa Cruz, and it's a vegetarian and vegan retro-themed diner.  Kind of like Steak 'n Shake if it had started in Santa Cruz.  Apparently they normally have beer from Bison Brewery, this place in Berkeley that's supposed to do some interesting stuff.  So we're looking at the menu, and our waiter comes over, and he's this really cute, skinny, kind of femme little guy, with big plugs in his ears and big black glasses, and a very emphatic way of speaking.  We tell him we just saw Fruitvale Station and we want some beer to decompress, and he says, "Well... unfortunately all we have left tonight is PBR."  He sees the expressions on our faces and quickly adds, "But we have other alcohol!  We have... mimosas."  And we all start laughing.  And he adds, increasingly awkwardly, "And... champagne.  And... Bloody Mary's."  So we've just seen a movie about the Oscar Grant fiasco, in a theater full of locals who were here when the whole thing went down, and now we're in a vegetarian diner being offered champagne by a cute little gay boy.  What a night.

We ended up "taking a minute to think about it" and then sneaking back outside, then going to Beta Lounge and drinking real beer instead.  We talked about the movie a little bit, and lots of other things, and then eventually I came home and went to sleep.

This morning, I heard the verdict from the Trayvon Martin trial, and I'm just feeling really weird about things.  It is strange (but important) to realize how much your life is shaped by the color of your skin.  I hate it, and it hurts, but it's important to think about it, and to realize how different your entire life would be if you were a different color.  Far, far too often it affects the way people look at you, and the way people relate to you, and especially the snap judgments people make of you.  When you're white, you don't notice it, because the snap judgments are generally good or neutral ones.  But when you're black and there's a gun involved, it damn well seems like you're not going to get the benefit of the doubt.

So there were parts of this weekend that were really fun, but also a lot of it makes me feel a little sick if I really think about it.  And now I have to compartmentalize all that stuff and do some work.

I think this chapter is done!!?!??!?!!1!

I seriously need a walk, but I think this chapter is as done as it's going to be for now.  I decided to not even bother with the introduction, because I'd rather hurry up and get it to my advisors so they can tell me if it makes any sense before I worry about writing a decent introduction.

So!  We are sitting at 103 pages, friends, and this chapter clocks in at 23.  Considering that that's minus the as-yet non-existent introduction, but includes 9 pages of the best discussion section I've written yet - it was like pulling teeth, probably because I came up with my own theory of how speech production works that seems to actually account for my own findings and a small slew of findings in the literature - it is a very significant 23 pages for me.  I now know exactly what I'm arguing, and I now have to go back and make the rest of this thing jive with what I'm arguing.

Allow me to continue tooting my own horn for a moment, and say that I analyzed all of the data for this chapter and wrote the entire thing in exactly 3 weeks.  That is progress.  And even if I'm a little behind where I would have liked to be by now, I really think this thing is shaping up, and I might even end up being somewhat happy with it.

Now... let's see what the advisors say.  :-P  Gonna go for a walk, re-read the whole thing, and then send it off.

THREE DOWN, TWO TO GO.  I GOT THIS.

horseshoes, hand grenades, and dissertations?

Almost.  Almost!  I almost made it to the 100 page mark today.  I really, really wanted to make it, but it's 7:05 and it's time to head over to G's and bottle the beer we started brewing a few weeks ago.  I'm about done for the day mentally, anyway.

But that means that tomorrow, I'm going to break the 100 page mark!  More importantly, though, it also means that I added 8 pages to the ol' diss today (no small feat), and also that I am closing in on the end of this chapter.  Just need to finish up the discussion section and write most of the introduction, which I can do in about a day and a half if I really put my mind to it.

I cannot wait to be done with this chapter.  Then I'll have a little over a month to edit, fix, and tie things together, but the bulk of it will be done.  Don't worry, you will get a triumphant update when I wrap this one up, probably on Wednesday of this week.

Chugga chugga chugga chugga...

Weekends at Westbrae Wash 'n' Dry

The guy who manages the laundromat I go to is a little... off.  The Yelp reviews refer to him as the Laundry Troll, which is not entirely inaccurate.  He's kind of old, grizzly, and very crotchety.  He has a gruff and gravelly voice, and he likes to bark orders at people, telling them not to overfill the machines, or not to leave their dry clothes in the dryer too long, things like that.

At first I was a little intimidated by him, because he's kind of mean, and he's a little creepy when you're a young woman going to do your laundry and he's the only other one there, sweeping the floor and giving you side glances.  But now that I've been going there a few months, he's actually grown on me, in a weird way.  I think he might have some sort of learning disability or something, because he talks a little strangely, and he repeats himself a lot.  My impression of him now is that he just takes his job very seriously, and he likes to take good care of his laundromat, and he also kind of likes to tease people in that way that crotchety old men with a twinkle in their eye do.  I had to go to the bathroom a few weeks ago, and the bathroom door was locked.  "Is there a key to the bathroom?" I asked.  "Uh-huh," he replied, deliberately being as unhelpful as possible and seeing how I would respond.  "Do you have it?" I asked, catching on to his game.  "Uh-huh," he replied.  "Well, can I get you to let me in, then?" I concluded.  And I think he's liked me ever since.

This morning when I showed up to do my laundry, the Laundry Troll was nowhere to be seen.  It was nice and quiet on a Sunday morning, so I loaded up my laundry and sat down to work on my knitting.  Another lady came in, and as she was loading up her laundry, the machine next to her started spewing water.  A big puddle was spreading across the floor, and not showing any signs of stopping.  "Is that yours?" I asked, motioning to the washer.  "Nope!" she said, clearly relieved.  I looked around and whoever's clothes were creating the problem had disappeared.  I set down my knitting and went out the back door to the parking lot, where the Laundry Troll can sometimes be found sweeping or working in the garden.  No luck.

The maintenance closet door was open, so I poked my head in and found a mop.  As I came out and headed for the puddle, an old guy in a tracksuit came in the front door.  "Do you work here?" he half-grumbled at me suspiciously.  "No," I said.  "But this washer started spewing water, so I thought I'd see if I could find a mop."  I started sopping up as much water as I could, but there wasn't much I could do without a bucket.  The old man stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me, watching me swish the water around, looking slightly bemused.  "Hnh," he grunted.  "Where's Larry?"  "I don't know," I replied, assuming he was talking about the Laundry Troll.  In any case, I hadn't seen anyone but him and the Asian lady, so I was pretty sure I hadn't seen anyone named Larry.  "You know Larry, right?" said the old man.  "Larry Lasagna?"

I didn't even know what to say, so I just stared at him.  "Yeah, Larry Lasagna!  I don't know where he is today."

"Me neither," I said.

"You need a bucket," the old man continued, after a pause.  "Where'd you get that mop?"  "In the closet," I said.  "The door was wide open."  He glanced at the door, then back at me, then shuffled across the room to the maintenance closet.

A few clangs and thuds later, the old man in the tracksuit emerged victorious, awkwardly carrying a five-gallon bucket.  He set it down next to me, and I gratefully set the mop in the bucket, letting the gray water collect in the bottom.  Bits of dirt and debris streamed from the mop, but the water was coming out the bottom of the washer faster than I would ever be able to get it into the bucket.  The old man looked at me waiting for the water to drain from the mop.  "You're gonna have to squeeze it out with your hands," he said.  Dude.  No way.  I was already going above and beyond the call of duty by getting a mop of my own accord.  No way was I going to squeeze dirty floor water out of it into a bucket with my bare hands.

I stood there letting it drip for a few seconds, and the old man stood there watching me.  The Asian lady was bustling around doing her laundry, trying her best not to get swept up in the drama of the malfunctioning washer.  The old man looked at me and harrumphed again.  "A shovel.  We can squeeze it out with a shovel."  And he shuffled off back to the maintenance closet.

Forget it, I thought.  I've done more than my fair share.  I propped the mop against the washer and sat back down to work on my knitting.

The old man now had a purpose.  He set to work mopping water and squishing it out into the bucket with the shovel.  He seemed quite satisfied with himself, and also not at all bothered that I had abandoned what had started out as my work.  After a short while, my laundry was done washing, and I was grateful to have an excuse to concentrate on something else.  As I was moving my clothes from the washers to the dryers, the Laundry Troll made an appearance through the back door.

"Steve!" said the old man.  "You got a problem on your hands!"  So the Laundry Troll was apparently not named Larry Lasagna, at least.  Whatever his name, I was glad the old man was the one sloshing water around when he arrived.

Steve/Laundry Troll/not Larry Lasagna took one look at the water and broke out his stash of beach towels.  He was much less angry than I expected.  All in a day's work, I suppose.  I tried to look inconspicuous as I pumped quarters into the dryers, wondering what would happen next.

As Steve was finishing mopping up the water, a pot-bellied man came into the laundromat and headed straight for the problem washer.  The old man pounced on him.  "You overfilled it!" he half-yelled self righteously.  "Look what happens when you overfill the washers!"

"No, no," said Steve the Laundry Troll.  "When there's too many people on the rinse cycle at the same time, 's too much water for the pipe.  Pipe's only 'bout yea big," he said, making a small ring with his hands.  It was the longest sentence I had ever heard him construct.  "Not enough room."

The old man seemed a little disappointed, and the pot-bellied man seemed like he just wanted out of there.  The old man and Steve continued talking about something, and a few minutes later, the old man came over to me again.  "How'd you say you got in the closet?" he asked.  "The door was wide open," I repeated.  He studied me for a moment, then walked back to talk to Steve.

I finished loading the dryers and sat down to work on my knitting.  A minute later, the old man was back.  "You're very industrious!" he exclaimed, apparently quite pleased that not only did I have the chutzpah to look for a mop in a water emergency, but I could knit too.  "What are you making?"  "A hat," I said, not really wanting to engage in conversation with 24 minutes left on my drying cycle.  "Well, it's a nice color," he said.

"Steve wanted to know how you got in the closet, and I said karma!  Ha ha!"  I couldn't help chuckling a little bit.  "She opened that door with her karma, I says!"

"Well, when there's water leaking all over the floor and an open closet, I figure the least you can do is look for a mop," I said.

He looked at me for a moment.  Then: "A very industrious young lady..."

Do things like this happen in State College, Pennsylvania, do you think?

I'm going to miss this town.

Yosemite

We added another National Park feather to our cap this weekend: Yosemite.

I'm still pretty tired from our two hour hike yesterday, and I'm not sure that typing up a big long narrative would really do the place justice anyway.  Suffice it to say that Yosemite is absolutely gorgeous, and if you ever get the chance, you should go.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

These first ones are actually from the drive home last night, as the sun went down.  California is a really beautiful place, and I will miss drives like this.

And this is where the Yosemite ones start (in case it's not obvious):

National parks, man.  They are truly a national treasure.

Now I'm back home and it's time for another week of dissertating... but first, a slow and deliberate evening jog to enjoy the beautiful weather, and perhaps an evening of Game of Thrones...

random Sunday thoughts

I have been meaning to document this for some time, so here it is:

There is a lady who lives on the sidewalk outside of Trader Joe's, as far as I can tell.  She is always there, and she always has multiple signs with angry things written on them.  One is about how she's hungry, but she will only accept organic food, or $20, because GMOs are evil, or something like that.

My favorite sign of hers looks something like this:

i am a poet
i write poems
i make words
i am like a radio
BLACK PRIDE


She is white, if that matters at all.  (And I think it does.)

It occurred to me recently that there aren't going to be any homeless people in State College, and it's going to be a little weird.  Homeless people always make me a little uncomfortable, because I want to help them, but I realize there's nothing I can really do to help them, besides volunteering at a soup kitchen or something like that.  I have gotten used to having them around, though, because there are so, so many homeless people in Berkeley.  They camp out on the sidewalks downtown and near campus, and you see the same ones over and over again.  There's also a special breed of weirdo that inhabits Berkeley, and that I've never seen anywhere but here, which is the maybe-homeless.  As in, they look kind of unkempt and disheveled, but you can't tell if they're crazy and homeless or just crazy.  Most of these people have at least a few signs, and they don't seem to care whether you notice them or not.  It's as if they see their life's work as standing on the street corner outside the games store with a big poster identifying animals' footprints, for some reason.  (That's just one guy.  My favorite of this type is probably the guy who walks around with sandwich boards on, with an arrow pointing to the left and big angry letters proclaiming "PASS ON THE LEFT!!!".)

There are many things I will miss about Berkeley, and actually, the crazy people are probably one of them.

I need to do some work today, and instead I have been wasting time on the internet and cooking.  It's been a good day, really, but now I think it's time to do some statistics while my rice cooks.  And then I'll probably go for a bike ride to enjoy this nice day.

Oh!  Speaking of nice days, Jevon and I went to the hipstery-est wedding I could ever have imagined yesterday.  It was in a backyard in San Francisco, replete with thrift store clothing, sideburns, and tongues planted firmly in cheek.  It was actually very lovely, too, in a weird way, but some of the people there made me feel a bit out of place.  Like the very fact that I would allow them to let me feel out of place probably meant that I Care Too Much About Things.

Anyway, rice is almost done.  Bye for now.

o hai, VOT measurements

Why yes, I do have to re-take 4000 VOT measurements today.  It's what I do every day!

I have spent literally every day this week cycling through the same 110 sound files, labeling and relabeling and relabeling them.  Another team of researchers was awesome enough to share their data with me, and my first order of business was to replicate their findings.  (That's only the first order of business.  The more interesting part is supposed to be what I do after I successfully replicate their findings.)  I finally got some results this morning, and much to my chagrin, I did not replicate their findings.  So now I have to re-measure everything again.  Carefully.  By hand.

And if I still don't replicate their findings, then I have a very awkward situation on my hands.  Because they were kind enough to share their data with me, and then I have to be like, "Actually, I did this like four times, and there is now no possible way I can believe what you wrote in your paper.  Because no matter how carefully I do this, I am not getting what you got."

So... cross your fingers that this re-measurement results in a successful replication?  Because I am not re-doing these measurements another blasted time.  And I don't really want to have to write a paper where I say "um thanks but you guys were wrong".

Saaaaaad faaaaaaaace.  :-(((((

o hai, dissertation chapter

Whew!  First dissertation chapter finished and submitted for comments.  It's not perfect, but I think it's pretty good.  As good as can be achieved without knowing what's going to happen in my next two studies.

So... on to the next one!

ETA: funny that this link is getting passed around on my Facebook feed today.  Trust me, these are questions I have considered.

I'm me! I'm me!

Guys!  Guys!  The six month waiting period is up, and my finalized divorce paperwork came in the mail today.  I never thought it would feel good to be officially divorced, but there it is.  I'm just so relieved to be able to get my name back.  So I went to the bank and changed my name on my account this afternoon.  It was the only thing I could do so far, because the social security administration, campus registrar's office, DMV, etc. are all closed today.  But it's a start, and it felt really good.

Now I'm sitting in my apartment with the windows and door wide open, eating delicious, delicious strawberries from the farmer's market with Greek yogurt, and the lady with the massive garden whose backyard adjoins mine is out gardening in the sunshine, and the people in the apartment building next door are having a party and blasting bossa nova music and laughing.

It's a good day.

"...trying to memorize every corner, letting my eyes rest on all of the things I have loved..."

We have a very Berkeley, very local news blog that I like to keep up on, and a guest contributor posted this article this past week.  It hits home a little bit too hard right now.  Read the article for an idea of how I'm feeling these days, and read the comments for an idea of what the annoying parts of Berkeley are...

Today is another writing day.  I've been coding, staring at data, and trying to figure out what I should say for the past week.  But today, it's time to sit down and make myself write.  It's already May, and that's freaking me out in multiple ways.  I've looked at my data in every way I can think of over the past two weeks, and now I have to just say something, even if it's not going to be as good or as conclusive or as tied-up-in-a-bow as I would like it to be.  Then I can come back to it in a few weeks and make it better, once I've gotten comments from my advisors, and I can also compare these results with whatever I find in my other chapters.

To work!

Happy 200th Post-iversary!

I didn't even notice that my last post was my 200th post on this here blog.  And to think that in the beginning I didn't even know if I'd keep it up!  It turns out I quite like blogging, so I think this thing will be around for a while.

Well, I made some good progress on the ol' dissertation this week, but I'm at a bit of a standstill.  The problem is my data set is so, so small that I don't really know how to do statistics on it.  I had what seems to me to be a decent idea just now, but I don't want to take it too seriously and type up all of my results based on this slightly wacky idea, just in case my advisors won't let it fly.  When you're doing your stats is not the time to get creative with your dissertation writing.  It takes a while just to do the stats, and then it takes way longer to write it up, and I don't want to sink a bunch of time into something that's just going to get shot down.  So thankfully, I am already meeting with one of my advisors tomorrow, and I'm going to run this idea by her and see what she thinks.

What this means for me is that I'm already very slightly behind on my self-imposed schedule, I think.  Sort of.  But I also think it'll be okay.  My plan is to spend three weeks on each of my three chapters, and then I will have one month to write up my introduction and conclusion before I start teaching my class in July.  Well, this is the end of my third week for this chapter, and it's not really done yet.  I've made pretty good progress on it, but I don't know if I'm going to make it by Sunday night.  We'll see.

I think it's okay because the data analysis shouldn't take as long for this next chapter.  I think.  Then again, I always think that, and then it takes way longer than I anticipated.  But I can start analyzing data for the next chapter while I finish writing the current chapter, and then I'll sort of be working on two different things at the same time, and that will probably actually be better than just working on one thing.  It is really daunting knowing you only have one thing to work on!  It just stares you in the face all day long, and if you don't want to do it, there's nothing else you can do to procrastinate, and you just feel guilty.  And you gotta watch out for that guilt spiral!

But now I don't know what to do with myself.  I need to start reading books or something.

ch-ch-ch-ch changes

Holy moly...

I mailed in a check for a security deposit on a townhouse in State College, PA today.  It is real.  I am moving there in August, and I even know exactly what my address will be.  And dudes, this place is ca-yute.

Speaking of real, I'm working on a presentation for our lab meeting on Monday, where I tell people what I think is happening with my dissertation data.  (Good timing, considering I just mailed away several hundred dollars, the need for which is predicated on me saying something intelligent about these very data.)  I am struck by how much more real my data seem when I put them in a Power Point presentation.  Maybe it sounds silly, but when I'm staring at graphs and numbers on my computer, or in my notebook, I feel like I'm kind of faking it.  But when I make a nice presentation with an intro and a conclusion and everything, I almost start to believe myself.  When you take random graphs and numbers and structure them into a reasonable story, with predictions and results and citations, it starts to become within the realm of possibility that I may have done or found something interesting.

(from xkcd)

checkmark for Friday!

I'm done!  I just submitted my first research grant!!!!!!

I'm done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't even care if I get the stupid thing at this point.  I'm just glad I don't have to think about it and re-write things anymore.  And now I am totally going for a run.

whine whine whine

I don't wanna write any more documents for this research grant, I don't wanna.

At least it will be over by Tuesday.  :-/

On Being Home (reprise)

Here I am, at my mom's house in Illinois.  Every time I come back for a visit, I find myself driving aimlessly around C-U for a bit, just sort of... trying it on for size.  I'm back in town for my 10 year high school reunion, and I also find myself thinking about all of the things I've done in the past 10 years.  In a way, high school seems so recent.  I remember it so vividly, just like it was yesterday.  And in another way, it seems like an eternity ago.  10 years ago, I had probably just decided for sure that I was going to the U of I for college.  Since then, I've graduated from college, spent a year of my life in France, gotten married, moved to California, spent 5 years of my life in California, nearly completed my Ph.D., gotten divorced, and now am fairly certain that I am moving to the other side of the country in just 5 months.  And what's truly mind blowing is all the people I've met along the way.  When I think back on all the wonderful people who have become such an important part of my life, to think that I didn't even know that they existed 10 years ago is just astounding.  People who have touched my life and my heart, who have changed me as a person, who have made me grow and think and feel things I never would have imagined.  And just think - it's probably going to happen again in the next 10 years.  How many people are out there that I haven't met yet, just waiting to come into my life and make me forget that I ever could have existed without them?

This is what's weird about being back in C-U: it doesn't change.  It's essentially exactly the same as it always has been, and yet it feels so, so different than it did 10 years ago.  But the strange part is realizing that the reason it feels so different is because I'm different.  I look at it through very different eyes than I did 10 years ago, and to know that I feel the same on the inside, but I'm demonstrably quite a different person is very weird.  It's hard to remember what I was like 10 years ago.  I've always been a little bit too old for my age, so it's not like I was completely immature, but within the past year or two I've really started to feel like my age suits me for the first time in my life.  I feel like 28 is about right, because I finally feel like a real adult.  A young adult, certainly, but I've really been growing in to my own skin recently, and I feel like 28 suits me.

So where does this leave "home"?  I always feel wistful when I come back here, and it does always feel like home.  But now that I'm here with the knowledge that I'm about to move away from California, I'm surprised to find myself feeling a bit reticent.  When I moved to California nearly 5 years ago, I never thought it would grow on me as much as it has.  And now, 5 years later, driving around Champaign on a cold Wednesday night, I've been psychologically "trying on" life in a small college town again.  How would I feel if I were moving back here?  Would I actually want to do that?  Because I'm moving to a very similar place in a very short amount of time, and I'm mentally preparing myself for some reverse culture shock.  Berkeley has gotten into my bones in a way I didn't expect, to the extent that it's much more difficult than I anticipated imagining myself living in a small college town again.  I am still so, so thrilled and excited about it, and I think it will feel really right once I've actually moved and settled in.  But realizing that there are things about life here that are annoying or foreign to me now is a very strange realization.

It will be really nice to see everyone from high school, too.  I'm looking forward to a very nice but very strange week!

Henry W. Coe State Park

It's Spring Break!  Jevon and I had been talking for a while about going camping over Spring Break, but there's still snow in Yosemite, and we didn't want to be gone for too too long anyway, so we opted to explore a park in our own backyard: we packed up the tent on Sunday morning and drove down to Henry W. Coe State Park, which is around 90 minutes southeast of here.  I had no idea what to expect going in, but it was really beautiful, and we had a great time.  We went for a long-ish hike after we arrived yesterday afternoon, ate a camp food dinner (apples, peanut butter, cheese, hardboiled eggs, and a few hunks of bread), and then read until the sun went down, at which point we promptly crashed.

Then we woke up this morning, ate more camp food, and went for another short hike before packing up and driving back.  It was a great little trip!

There's our little orange tent, on the left.  What a campsite!

The barn by the Visitors' Center.

Looking down the Visitors' Center steps on the fog this morning.

More morning fog.

California poppies on our hike.

Cool tree!

Beautiful weather yesterday.

Look at this huge turkey!!

Parked at the campsite.

Morning fog, and Jevon sitting at the picnic table.

The fact that I'm leaving California soon makes it all the easier to appreciate trips like this.  This is a beautiful state, and I am so happy to have called it home for a time.

But it's time to see my other (real) home soon - I'm leaving for Illinois on Wednesday, and I hear a small mountain of snow awaits me!  See you all soon, my Illinois loves!

well would you look at that, Part II

Pssssst.  I think something may actually have happened in my dissertation experiment.  Maybe not - it's too early to tell - but I made some graphs today, and it looks like something interesting might be going on.

I'm whispering because I am not getting my hopes up yet.  Instead, I am going to go back to labeling sound files so that I have more data.  And then I will come back and try again for real sometime next week.

In other good news, my grant proposal is also trucking along.  I did the biosketch (including the personal statement, grumble grumble... what am I, applying to college or something?) and I finished up the project summary today.  Progress, progress!  And a Skype meeting with my sponsor tomorrow, who will hopefully have nice and helpful things to say, and then I'm headed down to Stanford to see a very dear friend defend her dissertation tomorrow afternoon.

Go go go!