The Banshee of Live Oak Park (y otros cuentos)

Wow, have I got a story for you. And then I'll tell you how my summer is going.

On Sunday, I was running with the dogs, as per usual, and I decided to go through this beautiful little park in North Berkeley. It's called Live Oak Park, and it's up in the Berkeley Hills, full of very tall trees and cute little paths and a babbling brook. It's very nice, and I hardly ever run through it, because it's a bit of a trek to get up there. I guess to set this up properly, I should also mention that North Berkeley/the hills is where all the rich people live, and it's generally an extremely safe area. It's kind of like southwest Champaign, or Sandy Ridge in Mahomet or something. Very bourgie.

Anyway, I'm running through this lovely little park with the dogs, admiring the trees with the sunlight streaming through them, thinking about what a nice, crisp, clear morning it is, when I am ruthlessly snapped out of my reverie by the most god-awful bloodcurdling scream/cackle I have ever heard. To my right, directly next to me on the ground is this woman who decided it would be nice to hide amongst the brush and literally shriek at me as I passed her. Well. More precisely, I had come to this part of the path that narrowed, and I suddenly found myself stuck between a huge tree and an insane screaming woman sitting 3 or 4 feet to my right at the foot of a small hill. The thing about it was, the path was really narrow, and the dogs were right in front of me and were totally freaked out too. So they stopped to check her out, and I couldn't push them ahead or turn around and pull them behind me, because we were bottlenecked in this little piece of path between the tree and the foot of the hill.

Let me tell you, I honestly do not remember the last time I was so frightened. Running along, la la la, what a nice day, blood curdling scream. Freeze. Realize I'm cornered by a crazy person. And then, in between cackles, as I'm trying to figure out what the hell to do, she looks right at me and says, "I'M A BIG GIRL NOW! A BIIIIIIIIG GIRRRRRL NOW! AHH HA HA HAHA! THE JOKE'S ON YOU!"

Did I mention how terrifying this was? Never before in my life have I been in such proximity to someone who is quite literally a raving lunatic. The scariest part was her eyes - they were this milky, translucent color, and just burning with insanity, there is no other way I can think of to describe it. She was very clearly not on this planet, mentally. I don't know if she was schizophrenic or what, but this is the kind of person in the kind of state where... well, I could imagine something terrible happening. I honestly was somewhat expecting her to punctuate her "the joke's on you" by lunging at me or something.

And Huck. Huck is trying to give the insane woman a kiss. If there were any doubts about whether that dog loves everyone and everything, let them be assuaged.

So after a few seconds of panic that seemed like an eternity, I pushed passed the dogs and started running again. Once I got a hold of myself, that's all I could do, is take off and run run run away. I was completely shaken up for a good half hour after that... adrenaline pumping, replaying the scene in my head, being so glad that nothing bad happened. Another thing that was so terrifying about it is that it came out of nowhere. I would have been somewhat more mentally prepared for it if we hadn't been in the nicest part of Berkeley. Like, you can kind of be on guard for crazy bums when you're downtown, and you can see them coming from further away when you're more on guard and not enjoying the peace and quiet of running through a lovely little patch of trees.

Man. I don't think I'll ever run through that park again now. Quite a shame, because it's so darn pretty.

So that was my Sunday. Monday was the start of my Spanish class! Yay Spanish! It really is like a full time job... I have to remind myself that this is what I signed up for, and it is going to be so good for me. Already, my comprehension has gotten pretty decent... I can parse words really well, and I'm picking up all the little grammatical turns of phrase that let you put together real sentences. Things like "because" and "the thing that..." and "if you want to..." and all the little pieces that make the difference between "me Tarzan, you Jane" and "Hello, my name is Tarzan, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Jane." Not that I'm anywhere near that suave yet. But I can understand other people when they're that suave, and that's the first step. I'm still stuck saying things like, "My name is Melinda. I am 25 years old. I have two dogs. I like my husband very much. He has a head that is shaved. How nice!" But whatever, it'll come.

Speaking of husbands and dogs, they're all doing great, by the way. Roger's still getting home pretty late, but he came home so happy and excited last night; he had had a really fantastic meeting with the CEO of his company who had only glowing things to say about him, and I know it was a real morale booster. So even though he's still working a lot, it's going really well, and he seems pretty happy most of the time (when he's not completely exhausted).

Rye pulled a bag of hamburger buns down off the counter while I was in the shower this morning, somehow managed to open the bag without damaging it at all, and was madly trying to choke down the last one when I discovered him. So basically the dogs haven't changed. Huck tries to kiss everything that moves, and Rye finds really weird stuff to chow down on when he gets bored enough.

La vida es asi, mis amigos! Time to brave these 58 degrees temps and walk those perros. Mil besos a vos y hasta pronto!

The Year of 10,000 Miles

I've been a horrible delinquent blogger lately, and I really do apologize profusely. It's funny; I love reading other peoples' blogs, and when someone doesn't update for a while, I think, "Jeez, why won't they hurry up and update? I want to know what's going on in their life!" And I do realize that anyone who actually reads my blog has probably been saying that for weeks now.

It's just that time goes by so quickly! So very, very quickly! February was over far too soon, with the big conference we hosted on campus, and then me getting to deal with organizing and filing receipts for us to get reimbursed from our various sponsors, and now suddenly it's March and the rain is probably over until November, and I have to start really actually studying for my M.A. exam, and soon it'll be graduation, but I have so many papers to write and things to do in the meantime, but it'll all get done somehow. In other words, the rest of the semester is going to be busy busy busy.

There's lots of good news to report, though! For one, Roger finally got his raise! It's been so great having some spending money the past few weeks. I do really know that money isn't everything, and I really don't want to sound like I'm complaining, because we've been getting along just fine for past 18 months. But we have furniture now! We got an extra bed for our guest room, and some book shelves so we can put some things away and have some surfaces to set stuff on. I also got a weed whacker and went to town on the front lawn, so we didn't have a replay of last year. :) Although I really don't think the people in this neighborhood would care if our yard got a little out of hand.

Sidenote: our neighbors were blaring Michael Jackson today. Nothing like people rocking out to "Man in the Mirror" at 2:00 on a sunny Sunday afternoon! I like it that people around here do things like... play music. And have cookouts. And say hello to people walking by on the street. I think gentrifying areas are the place to be... such an interesting mix of all kinds of people, all living in the same few blocks.

Anyway. In addition to getting a raise, Roger's company is settled in San Francisco now, so it only takes him 40 minutes to get to work instead of an hour and 40! His commute is now a 10 minute walk, a 20 minute BART ride, and another 10 minute walk. That certainly makes me feel better about it, and I know that aspect of work is less draining for him now at least. This is not to say that I've been seeing him any more; on the contrary, they're working on signing another big contract, which means he's been getting home as late as ever. (I'm pretty sure he didn't make it home before 9:30 at all last week.) But I guess I should be getting more work done anyway, so I'm trying to just roll with it.

This past week was fun for me because we had our prospective students visiting. The people who were admitted for the incoming class in the fall were here, checking things out and seeing how they like the department. I really enjoy prospie week because I really like it here, and it's fun to meet new people and be able to honestly tell them that this is a great place to be. We had a girl from the U of I staying with us (which was the major impetus for us getting a guest bed last weekend), and I think she had a really good time. We also had a few people visiting with interests quite similar to mine, very lab-by types, and it'd be great to have more of those around. There was also a really sweet French guy who speaks a ton of languages, and I told him somewhat sheepishly that I selfishly want him to come here so I can keep my French up. His English was really phenomenal, too, and he seemed like he liked it here, so we'll see. I may be able to go back to actually actively improving my French instead of just trying to maintain it as best I can, and that would be nice. I feel bad for talking about him like he's some French language robot, though! He was actually a very nice guy with like, a personality and a sense of humor and everything. Not just a little help-Melinda-improve-her-French automaton...

Okay, that paragraph got away from me. Time for some running talk. I'm running the Oakland Half Marathon two weeks from today! It should be really fun, I think. I haven't done a race in a few months, and I haven't done a half marathon in a few years, and it's such a great distance. You're totally spent afterwards, but not totally trashed. It's a really satisfying level of exertion, as opposed to a crippling one. :) I guess I also need to hurry up and decide if I want to run San Francisco again this year. July will be here before I know it... maybe I'll wait and see how Oakland goes, and then sign up if I catch the Big M bug.

But running. While I was running yesterday, I realized that this summer will be my 10th anniversary of starting running. I've been at this craziness for 10 years! With varying degrees of intensity and commitment, of course. That first summer I ran every day. Then I kept it up regularly throughout high school, then trailed off for little spurts at a time during college, and only managed to run once or twice a week while I was in France. Then of course I got back from France, and we got Huck, and I started running with that little bugger alllll the time and ended up doing my first marathon.

So I was thinking about my mileage over the past 10 years. It definitely varies a lot... generally creeps up into the 30 miles per week range when I don't have anything better to do (over breaks, the summer), tends to sink down around 12-15 when I'm really busy or fighting a cold. But my guess was that I've probably averaged about 20/week over the past 10 years. That might be a little on the high side, but we'll go with 20. For 50 weeks a year, that's 1,000 miles per year! And for 10 years... that means I've run somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 miles!! Whoa. I mean, whoa. I really don't mean to toot my own horn (although this is my blog, so I guess I can say whatever I want and all), I just had no idea I was anywhere near that. I had no idea I'd been running for almost 10 years now, either.

Which brings us back to the fact that time is flying. It is freakin' flying, and I'm going to be 26 this year, and I already have little smile lines around my eyes and gray hair, and before I know it I'll have a PhD and we'll be moving away from California to god-knows-where.

Ferris Bueller totally had it right: Life moves by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it.

The last good news thing I have to report is that I'm finally starting to run some subjects on my first real, full-scale research project (the one with the kids' voices and looking at the differences between boys and girls). I already have 7 people scheduled for this week, so I think I'll have fun data to play with really soon! (Yay data!)

Well, I have lots of reading to get done, so I should probably call it a night. I'm thinking about going home to Illinois in June before my crazy five hours-a-day Spanish class starts, so I'll keep y'all updated on that. Much, much love from the Golden State!

Before and After: the Bedroom

I'm back! And it's time for another edition of "Before and After"!

Here is the before shot of our bedroom. In case you can't tell by the photo, it is rather small. Just enough space for our bed and two dressers. The dressers in the first picture are against the wall that you can't see, opposite the side of the bed. Now, as I think I said before, when we first moved in, our room was quite zen, and I actually liked it that way. No clutter, no distractions. Just sleep space.

But I'm pretty sure I like it better now:

It doesn't even look like the same room, does it? I had to move the bed and dressers while I was painting, and I decided I like them better on opposite sides of the room. (Also, I didn't feel like swapping them again. They're heavy, and the room is tiny.) All of the walls are that light brown color, except for the purple one. I was a little concerned it might be too dark, but really, it just feels very cozy. And I think I like cozy better than zen.

So I'm done painting for a while. I finally used up all my paint, and with classes in full swing, I should probably be doing other things besides painting anyway. Our big conference is this weekend, and I cannot wait for it to be over. Well... I can't wait for like, a week after it's over, when I will have organized and filed all the receipts so we can get reimbursed from our various sponsors! It will be so so nice to not have that hanging over my head!

In other me news, I signed up for the Oakland Half Marathon at the end of March, and I am very very excited. I did 14.5 miles today, to make sure I could, and I can. :) It definitely wiped me out a little bit more than it used to, but that makes sense, since I haven't done over 10 in one go since my last marathon, and that was a full 6 months ago now. (Crazy!) I think I'll try to do San Francisco again this summer; it was a great race, and I don't think that course will ever get old.

In Roger news, his office is moving to San Francisco in less than two weeks! I am so excited for him! No more leaving home at 7:30 am and getting home at 9:00 pm! (Well, that should no longer be the norm, anyway...)

I want to tell you about my new foam roller, but really, I should finish folding laundry and actually use my foam roller instead of telling you about it. So I'll have to save that for next time! Adieu, bonne nuit, et tout.

I live by the Bay.

And here is a picture to prove it:

There's the good ol' Golden Gate. Beyond it is the Pacific Ocean (can you believe it?), and the hunk of land to the left is San Francisco. On the right is Marin County, where I went to get my bike.

My friend Stephanie and I went for an impromptu walk up in Tilden Park on Wednesday night. Neither of us have class on Wednesdays, so we decided to enjoy the beautiful fall weather and take the bus up to Tilden. We sort of walked around for a while, but it took us a while to get there, and by the time we had really gotten into the park, it was kind of time to head back and catch the bus home. I guess that's what happens when you go for impromptu trips on Wednesday evenings. But I got this nice picture on the way back, anyway. The sun setting over the Bay is always gorgeous, no matter how many times I see it. It always makes me think, "I can't believe I live here now."

Actually, it's kind of like Paris in that regard. I used to take this bus from school back to my place in Paris, and we'd go by the Eiffel Tower, and the Cathedrale de Notre Dame, and I would always, always think, "I can't believe I live here." Even after 9 months. And I'm still doing it here fairly often after... 15 months.

Kind of like... I can't believe I'm 25. 25. I feel like I should be 17 or something. 25 is too big a number to apply to my age. But here I am, 25 and living in California with my husband. Life is so weird.

Anyway. Here's a picture I snapped last night while walking the dogs. The sky was really awesome.

One of these days I'm going to get a new camera (or more likely find the charger for Roger's digital SLR) because there are lots of pictures I'd like to take that don't quite come out as beautiful as I'd like them to. Maybe that's the nature of pictures... but you'll have to take my word for it that that sunset was much more breathtaking than my picture would lead you to believe. The pinks and oranges were really rich and vibrant and contrasted fantastically with the dark blue.

School goes on as normal, I suppose. I never really know what to say about school in this blog. I like it a lot; I'm having fun reading about little kids' voices and how and why they change as they grow. I have lots of grant applications to hand in in the next few weeks, so I have to figure out what exactly to say about my little kids' voices project. It's going to be really, really fun once I get it going, but I have to make sure I think it all out before I just dive in. It's easy to dive into things when you're excited about them, but I don't want to end up with a bunch of data that weren't collected correctly just because I was too anxious to get started.

I really love my advisor. He had some people over for a "lab hike" and cookout about two weeks ago, and it was so fun. It turns out he's been taking banjo lessons, and his wife was absolutely adorable and a fantastic cook, and she does adventure races on her bike. Such warm, down-to-earth folks. I got to play their piano too! And I don't remember how, but we ended up talking about the Monkees and I told them about how I got Mickey Dolenz's autograph and I used to sing Daydweem Baweebah.

One thing you don't think about too much when you're applying to grad school is the fact that this place is going to be your home. You think a lot about the academics, and how good is the program, and what kind of research do all the professors do, but you don't really consider the fact that this is going to be your social group too. I bet that makes or breaks a lot of people. I can easily imagine going someplace where the academics are exactly what you think you want, but if the people suck and you don't connect with them on a personal level, you're probably going to have a pretty miserable 5 years and not really want to do what you wanted to do anymore.

So I'm lucky. I like my people, and Berkeley's pretty all right, too. It's such a weird town, though. I was riding my bike to school the other day and I heard this bum pan-handling but giving everyone excuses at the same time. It went something like this:

"Can you spare a dime, ma'am? Only if you can afford it, only if you can afford it. Spare change? It's okay, times are rough, you keep it for yourself."

Weird.

The dogs are doing well, Roger's doing great. They put in a bid for a new office in San Francisco last week, and it's looking like they'll be moving in the next month or so. I can't wait for that! That'll shave like 30-45 minutes off his commute in each direction. And then they'll be hiring more people, so he'll have someone to do the crappy part of his job now, and he'll get to focus on the more interesting stuff that he enjoys a lot more. Hopefully (kind of probably) this will also come with a formal promotion, but I'll keep you posted.

Well, it's getting to be that part of the early afternoon where I feel like a bum for not showering and getting dressed yet, so I think that's what I'll do. Love to all, and happy fall.

Yes, yes, I'm a terrible blogger...

... and I truly am sorry about that. I can't believe a month has gone by since my last post (but I do feel like this happens every time a new semester starts). Just WHAM! there goes a month.

It's been a great month, though. I'm very busy, as evidenced by the lack of blog updates, but in a good way. And in a different way from last year; last year I had so many classes I had to take. This semester, I'm taking fewer classes and starting to do some of my own research. I usually only have 2-4 hours of class a day, but the rest of the time I'm reading and tinkering.

I say "tinkering" because I do bits and pieces of things all day long and never really feel like I accomplish much. That's because one of my classes is "Field Methods", where we have a speaker of an under-studied language come in and we try to learn it over the course of a year. Once a week, I meet with our speaker for about an hour, record our session, and then later I have to go home and transcribe everything s/he said to figure out how the language works. This year, our language is a dialect of Quichua, which is spoken in the mountains of Ecuador. It has lots of 'sh' 'ch' 'k' and nasal sounds and everything seems like it's a lot more complicated to say than it has to be. Here are some phrases I've learned so far:

hello/how are you: imashna zhata kangi

I'm fine: alizha mikani

do you speak Quichua?: kang rimangi runa shimipi?

yes, I speak Quichua: ari, nyuka runa shimipi rimani

goodbye: ashta kashkama

So if you're ever lost in the mountains of Ecuador, there you go.

The other thing that's keeping me busy is this independent study project I'm working on. I mentioned it before, but to recap: I wound up with a bunch of recordings of black, white, and hispanic kids, and I'm trying to figure out what it is about their voices that lets people identify their race and gender. By "a bunch of recordings" I mean over 600 sound files, so right now I'm just going through them all and figuring out what exactly I have. The next step will be to play them to people and have them guess what race and gender the kids are. Then I'll have examples of the most and least prototypical voice types, and I'll be able to take measurements and see what it is that makes them easily identifiable (or not, as the case may be).

The reason I'm interested in looking at kids' voices is that it turns out that men's and women's voices are different in ways that aren't entirely predictable by their anatomy. The most noticeable thing about men's voices is obviously that they're lower, because men's larynxes descend during puberty (and their vocal cords thicken, among other things). But the really cool thing is that if you factor out the changes due to anatomy, there are still differences. So basically, men and women each have their own subtly different "dialect" of English.

Now if you look at kids before they hit puberty, their vocal tracts are all pretty much the same, as far as we know. So any differences between boys' and girls' voices before puberty are probably learned. I'm trying to figure out what exactly those differences are, and eventually I might tackle the question of how they're learned. (Dissertation...?)

Enough of that. In other news, I got a new computer!! It is so awesome. Here is a picture of it:

Yes, I made the leap and bought a brand new MacBook Pro. Yes, I am officially an academic now. But it's so pretty and fast and I looooooooove it. :)

Things are going great for Roger at work. They signed a big contract this week, so he actually has the weekend completely off. We're going out to celebrate my friend's birthday tonight, and we're going for a bikeride out in the country tomorrow. I can't wait! We were going to go today, but it's so hot (80 degrees here, 95+ on the other side of the hills), and my bike was making a funny noise, so we decided to postpone it until tomorrow.

I think that'll have to be all for now, friends. I'm going to do some reading before we head out tonight. I'll try to be better about updating!

Only one more week of long days left,

and then they start streaming by like water through a sieve again. This has been a wonderful break. My first semester of school went by so quickly, reminding me again of the fickle nature of Time; when you're waiting for something that's a few weeks or months away (as I was before moving and starting grad school), time passes so slowly. But when you're stuck in the moment (as I generally am when I have coursework to think about), time can easily pass you by. I can't believe we've been here for five months already!

I was ready for a break, though. I had a very busy semester, and while I've gotten a lot better about not stressing out when I have an interminable list of things to do, you can only keep it up for so long. So I was very relieved when it was time for a break, and I've been having a lovely time doing absolutely nothing. The great thing about a semester break, though, is that it's usually long enough that I'm ready to go back to school by the end of it. Like, ok, that was nice, but I'm ready to feel productive again...

So I'm starting to feel that way now, and that's lucky for me, because I start class on Tuesday. Part of that feeling is undoubtedly due to the fact that Roger's working now (more on that in a bit), which leaves me with very long days of walking the dogs, reading, and running little errands when I feel like leaving the house.

The Bahamas was (were?) great! Jimmy didn't win the tournament or anything, but we both had a really good time, I think. He was very happy to see his friends, I had a good time meeting them all, and it was really nice being able to spend some time with him - in such a gorgeous setting, no less! I'll post some pictures soon, maybe later today, even.

Roger loves his job. He has so much to do, and he loves being so productive and taking on such an important role in his company. He's already accomplished so much, and he's only been there a week and a half! He's got the payroll and the pensions in order, he's been working on the budget and ordering supplies, and apparently his boss referred to him as the company's controller in an email, which further supports Roger's theory that he's already looking at a promotion in the (relatively) near future. He's gone a lot now, especially since the commute is 75 minutes one way, but that's only temporary; his main task starting in about March will be to find a new office for the company in downtown San Francisco, and once they get moved in (in July or August), his commute will only be 30-45 minutes. In the meantime, I think we're both okay with him being gone a lot. And I don't mean that in the mean way it sounds! I'm starting class soon, he's thrilled to have stuff to do and really enjoying working, he's really fun to be around when he's home because he's in a great mood, and now that we'll have money, we can actually do stuff on the weekends, and I'll be able to do stuff with my friends during the week. He really likes his coworkers, too - one guy is actually from Downs, IL, which is pretty crazy, if you think about it, and there are a few other guys he seems to be getting along with well, too. They've been out to lunch a few times already, and I think once we get our house more in order, we can invite them over here.

Payday is Friday, and we've been conferring on what we should buy first. The first order of business will be repairing our fence. Yesterday morning, I let the dogs outside and made my coffee. I was going to drink it out on the deck because the weather has been fantastic the past few days, but it was eerily quiet when I walked outside. Well, to my horror, I soon realized the gate to our fence had finally given way, and the dogs were nowhere to be found. Freaking out, I set down my coffee and went running down the sidewalk in my pajamas and sock feet, whistling and yelling at the top of my lungs. When I quit screaming my head off for a second, I realized I could hear them barking and wreaking havoc just one street over, so I whistled and yelled louder, and pretty soon the two rascals go streaking down the sidewalk across the street. I yell "HEY!!!" so loud that they actually stop and look at me, followed by a very "wow, she really means it" rendition of "GET OVER HERE". So they come running back across the street right up to me with these elated looks on their faces of "man, that was AWESOME". I was so angry and relieved at the same time, but of course all I could hope for them to understand was that they were good dogs for coming home when I called them, so I loved on them a lot and gave them lots of treats for coming home.

But holy cow, that was freaking scary. So since payday is Friday, as I mentioned before, the first order of business is to have the fence completely repaired and improved so that that never happens again and we can put them back there confidently, knowing there will be no impromptu jaunts around the neighborhood. Hmm. I hope they didn't like, kill any cats while they were out. I hadn't thought of that until now.

So I emailed the landlords today to see if they'll be willing to help pay for it, and I've been looking around online for contractors to do the work. I found this place that specializes in deck repair, and there were some gorgeous before-and-after shots of decks, and that got me thinking - if we're paying to have the fence repaired, and we're hoping to start cleaning up the property anyway, maybe we should take the opportunity to have them stain the fence and deck while they're at it? Just an idea, but it would go a long way toward making the backyard look nice, which is the eventual goal.

We've been talking about other stuff to take care of, too, of course. I think we're going to swap our bedroom and the extra bedroom and finally get a desk for Roger so he doesn't have to sit at an ironing board in the living room, although it does kind of make me laugh. (You do whatcha gotta do, y'know?) Also, that reminds me: Roger's company gave him a "new, kick-ass laptop" on his first day, which is obviously great, and apparently they're getting rid of their old laptops, so I might get one of those for really cheap, which would be beyond excellent. I need a new one for this semester, so that's also near the top of the list of purchases.

I feel like I'm yammering on and on, but I guess that's sort of the point of a blog...

Anyway, we're both very very very excited and will be going out to dinner this weekend to celebrate the start of our real adult life, where we can like, actually do things. I couldn't be happier, and the year is certainly off to a wonderful start.

I'll try to post some pictures soon. Much love to all of you, and I hope your 2009 is off and running with a bang, too!

Good news all around!

My mommy has informed me that this blog is in need of update, and she is right. I am just chock full of good news right now!

First and foremost: Roger has been hired at the job he interviewed for last week! (Hooray!!) We are both beyond excited and relieved, and he can't wait to start work. He starts January 5th and will be making the commute to Daly City every day, which maybe isn't ideal, but definitely tolerable; it's about 75 minutes one way, but that's actually pretty good for around here, I think. I guess the place also said there'll be an opportunity for telecommuting in the future, which means he may get to work from home sometimes.

Less excitingly, I'm done with my first semester of grad school! (Hooray!) I handed in my last paper on Monday night, then did absolutely nothing on Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, I went for a run on Wednesday, I think. Then on Thursday I started cleaning the house, and yesterday I already started to get bored and decided I would learn to work with the Natural Language Tool Kit over break. This involves learning some programming, but I've needed to do that for a while, so I think it's time to dive in.

Today I'm going to take the dogs for a run, eat some oatmeal, and grade my last set of papers. I might even do some laundry. Tomorrow I'm going to clean some more and I don't know what else, and Monday, my mommy will be here! The next few weeks should be really good, I think.