BOOM

It's my class!!!

Nobody's enrolled yet, but I think they will be soon...

Edit, 2/12: Who's got 4 people signed up for their course in the first day of registration?  THIS GIRL.

good (non-productive, oops) weekend

There were so many things I was going to do this weekend, and yet, here it is Sunday night, and how many of them got done...?

Well, one, at least.  I accidentally started my dissertation today, I think.  I was going to write an abstract, but instead it came out too long and detailed, and I think it's now an introduction.  So hey, that's pretty awesome.

One of my good friends and her husband were also in town, and I got to hang out with them today, eat delicious Nepalese food, and talk to her about my dissertation experiment.  She's a great artist, and also a child language researcher, and she has agreed (happily, it seems!) to draw the pictures for my dissertation experiments.  I'm teaching words to preschoolers, so I need lots of fun, colored pictures of real words and the ones I made up for the experiment, and I think my friend is uniquely qualified to draw those for me.  They also helped me brainstorm about games I can play with the kids to teach them the words, and we came up with some really good, workable ideas.  So that was actually pretty awesome too.

And oh yeah!  I received the news today that the course I proposed has been approved for summer semester 2013, which means I'll be the instructor of record for a course on Language Acquisition for Berkeley undergrads this summer.  No direct supervisor, no one else in charge of organizing, giving lectures, deciding on course material and readings, just little ol' me.  I am teaching my very own class at UC Berkeley!  And I am ridiculously excited about that!

And I went out for Ethiopian food on Friday night with Jevon and another friend, and it was so so so good.

So really, I had an excellent weekend.  And it wasn't even that un-productive, I just... wanted to get some other stuff done and didn't quite make it.

Oh well.

useless

If I had known how utterly useless my brain would be today, I would have spent the day watching Six Feet Under instead of trying to get reading done.  I can not concentrate on anything.  Criminy.

Now I have to walk the dogs before I head in to campus, because the final exam for the course I'm teaching is tonight, and I have to be in some random room from 7:00 to 10:00 pm.  Hopefully I'll at least be able to get some work done then, but I woke up with a gross head cold this morning, and now it's starting to come back, so my chances are looking somewhat slim.  Bleargh.

On the bright side, my dissertation prospectus was approved last week, and I'm getting ever closer to actually having a specific set of studies planned for my dissertation.  That means that the stressful part of this semester is over; now all I have to do is write two Portuguese compositions, take my Portuguese final tomorrow, and write two responses to articles from my psycholinguistics seminar.  The problem is that I have little to no motivation to do any of these things, and I just keep spacing out and taking breaks to play the piano.  Or nap.  Or eat toast.

Not the most productive day in recent memory.

barreling through

it smells like rain and
maybe a new beginning
is this really fall?

*****

Oh my goodness, I am so excited about today.  I'm serious, I feel like there are endless possibilities, and they're all magnificently boring, and it's the greatest thing.  My plan is to get caught up on some of the most important things missing from my life for the past 3 weeks.  By this I mean: drinking tea, listening to NPR, playing the piano, going grocery shopping, cooking, taking a nap, watching Six Feet Under, doing laundry, and maybe even reading something that doesn't have to do with phonotactic probability.

I turned in an incomplete version of my dissertation prospectus yesterday.  I still have a lot to add to it, but the structure is there, and that's the most important part.  Now I'm taking the day off (mostly, probably).  It seems like everyone had a really rough week this week.  Thankfully I ran into F in the hallway yesterday around 5:00 (I was admittedly trying to run into him, by going by his office) and we booked it over to Jupiter for a beer.  I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it was probably the greatest beer I've ever had.  We sat upstairs by the window, overlooking downtown Berkeley in the fall twilight, and munched on olives and mused on life.  After a while at Jupiter, we headed to the Albatross and met up with a small group of people who also had a rough week, and we somehow stayed out until 1:00 am or so.  We were a little haggard and pathetic, I think... it seemed like most of us were at least partially falling asleep at some point... but it was so nice to be with friends, laughing and not thinking or stressing about getting my paper done.  It's definitely close enough that I can take today and tomorrow off, I think.  Then I'll work on it all day Sunday and Monday, and it'll be done for real.  Done.

I had a glorious run in the rain just now.  Absolutely beautiful.  Not particularly far, but it was so nice to get out of the house, get some blood flowing, and just feel wonderfully, primally alive.  When I sit at my computer all week, reading and writing and thinking, I start to get antsy and dissatisfied.  People were not made for sitting at computers all day, and some part of my caveman brain knows that and gets grumpy if I suppress it for too long.  Anyway, I woke up around 7:15 this morning, because apparently I have accidentally retrained myself that hey, 5 1/2 hours of sleep is probably enough.  (It is not.  But I digress.)  And I just had to go.  So me and the dogs did a little loop up and around campus, and it started drizzling about a mile in, but it was this nice, soft, spring rain that makes everything smell fresh and dirt-y and new.  By "dirt-y", I mean it literally smells like soil, and I love that.  Then I came home and actually cooked myself breakfast and made some tea, instead of subsisting on coffee and baked goods, as I have been for about two weeks now.  I turned on NPR and sat down and ate my eggs and it was good.

You know what it is time for?  Piano.  And then a nice warm shower, and then lazing about in flannel pants and my Illinois hoodie, watching Six Feet Under until the rain lets up.  Then there will be groceries and listening to music and cooking, and (nearly) all will be right with the world.

delirious conversation with myself

me: You know what will be nice?

me: Lots of things, but I think I know which one you're referring to, me.

me: Yeah, I'm thinking about Thursday night when this dissertation prospectus is turned in.

me: True.  Actually, I was thinking about Friday morning, when you don't have to get up at 4:00 am and write about syllables.

me: You're right, me.  I'm not sure which one will be nicer.

me: You know, maybe you should go to bed, since it's only 8:40 pm and you're already typing up a conversation with yourself on your blog.

me: Yeah, probably.  Guess that Boston pictures post will have to wait until later this week.  Good night.

I'm only 27.

And yet I've apparently turned into one of those old people who wakes up at 4:00 am after about 5 hours of sleep.

I did not intend to get back on a schedule that includes waking up at 4:00 am every morning, but that seems to be the inevitable result of not being able to force myself to get work done after 6:00 pm.  I worked on stuff for nearly 14 hours straight yesterday (ok, maybe only 4:30 am to 6:00 pm), and then partially against my better judgment went out to my favorite bar in Berkeley and played Boggle.

And then I woke up at exactly 4:00 this morning (without setting an alarm for then, mind you) and laid in bed for 2.5 hours thinking about stuff.  And then I remembered that I had leftover pancake batter in the fridge and a Portuguese test today, and I obviously wasn't sleeping any more anyway, so here I am.  Pancakes and blogging at dawn, which is only 7:00 am these days.  (The end of Daylight Saving Time will be nice in that respect.)

I'm going to see the San Francisco Orchestra tonight, and I hope I can get a nap in before then.  If not, then I should be able to sleep in tomorrow and/or Sunday before I head to San Diego for a few days.

San Diego!  And Boston!  In 2 days!  Ooh, I should remember to pack my camera.

Here comes the sun, and I say, it's all right.  Time to start my day for real.

It's the Melinda show!

Sometimes I feel like Tuesday is the Melinda show.  I have to go teach for an hour, then I'm presenting a paper in my graduate phonetics seminar, and then I'm presenting a paper in my psycholinguistics seminar.

All of these things are good for me and I enjoy them, but it's just weird to be explaining things to people all day.  It simultaneously makes me feel somewhat competent and like a poseur.  ("Don't listen to me, I don't actually know what I'm talking about!")

time marches on

Oh my goodness, how is it the middle of September?  Oh my goodness, I'm going to be leaving for San Diego and Boston and needing to prepare a poster and a conference talk and turn in my prospectus-question-musings before I know it.  Oh my goodness, I have so much reading to do and I should be grading right now instead of blogging.

But oh! I have a piano again, and I can't stop playing it, and it suddenly feels like fall for some reason - despite that fact that it nearly always feels like fall here - but there's something about the light and the breeze and the (subtly changing) leaves that makes me just want to go for a stroll in my Illinois hoodie, drink some tea, and hang on to this fleeting "season" for a little longer.  I remember complaining to one of the older grad students when I first came here that there are no seasons to speak of, and she told me, "No no, we have seasons, they're just subtle."  I will still complain all the live long day that there are no seasons to speak of, but I also know what she was talking about now.  Something about the last week has started to feel like fall, which makes me think of how it's almost my birthday again, and I'm in my fourth year of grad school now (fourth!) and time just keeps marching on.

I ran into a very dear friend of mine from high school in the grocery store the other day (well, she ran into me, as I was trying to decide what kind of chocolate to buy) and it was so good to see her and we talked about how it's so silly that we don't get together more often, but it's partially a problem with time, and not with us.  We talk about getting together for lunch, and I know we both honestly intend to, but then we blink and six more months have gone by.  Oh, time, you silly thing.

Speaking of time, I finally got my haircut, after about four months that somehow flew by since the last time, and it feels so nice!  I would put up a picture, but I haven't taken a shower yet today, so it's kind of greasy and unimpressive right now. ;)

I suppose I should also mention that I taught my first sections of phonetics last week, and I had a really good time doing it!  It's funny, you just act like you know what you're doing, and people assume that you actually do.  I feel like that's a very useful life lesson to have learned.  I also think part of "knowing what you're doing" is convincing yourself that you do, in fact, know.  There I was, standing in front of a room full of undergraduate students, explaining how the vocal tract works and realizing that I do actually know a fair amount about that, and that most people don't, so in that case it wasn't too hard to fake it.  It's a little weird to hear yourself explaining things with some intellectual authority and seeing that people are writing down what you're saying, and may go back and study it later for a test on what you told them.  But I think they can sense my enthusiasm for the material, and so far, that seems to be keeping them somewhat engaged.  I hope that trend will continue.

Well, speaking of phonetics, I should grade some homework.  Happy Fall and much love to all.

new good things

After reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (which is a really great read, whether you like running or not, but probably especially if you like running), I decided to cave and buy some Vibram FiveFingers shoes.  McDougall makes a really convincing (to me) argument that humans evolved to run mid-to-long distances, and they did it without all the fancy footwear we have today.  In fact, he presents a lot of scientific studies and statistics suggesting that running shoes tend to encourage bad running form, which ultimately results in more running related injuries.  The idea is that running shoes are so padded that you can run in them however you want and not feel the impact you should be feeling from your terrible form, so your biomechanics are sloppy and unnatural and it's bad on your body.

Anyway, I just picked these up at Any Mountain in Berkeley:

Vibram FiveFingers Bikila, the new model designed for running.

I know, they're totally goofy looking, but you know what?  They feel really good on my feet!  I've always loved walking around barefoot, and my favorite piece of footwear has long been a pair of flip flops, so it makes sense I would like these.  I'm planning to walk around in them for a week or so, play some frisbee in them and see how it goes, and then maybe I'll take them for a few quick spins around the block.  You're supposed to ease in to barefoot running very slowly, so I'll probably just add a few little one mile jaunts in these puppies to my normal mileage and see what happens.

Which brings me to another new good thing: we're playing frisbee at 3:00 today!!  Yay!  Lots of people said they're coming, and it'll be so fun to play again!  And the sun just came out, practically on cue for our game, so I'm getting really antsy and ready to run around!

In other New and Good news, our annual department meeting is tomorrow, classes are starting on Thursday, all of my friends are getting back into town so people are having "welcome back" get togethers, and I'm probably playing and singing at the Starry Plough open mic on Tuesday night with some friends.  This is a great week, and it's only Sunday!

QP approved!

Hey!  My QP was approved!

That is so great!

I mean... that doesn't make it any better of a paper.  (There are still plenty of things to fix.  In the future.)  But now I can check that off my list, and I just have to take my exam on Tuesday.

I'm strangely not that nervous about my exam.  In fact, maybe I should be more nervous, so I'll study/prepare more.  But... I'm feeling pretty good about things.  My exam chair said there will be about an hour of discussion about my QP, then about an hour of discussion about the annotated bibliography I submitted to my examiners, then about an hour of discussion about what my "dissertation plans" are shaping up to be.  And "if you could prepare an outline of your dissertation plans, that would be very helpful - the more you prepare, the better, since that will give us more to talk about".  Uhh yeah.  I have some ideas, and I know the general direction I'm going, so I can talk about that, but I am in no way prepared to make up an outline.

So... I need to think about that some more this weekend, and make up a little outline of issues/questions that came up in my QP to help organize my thinking some more.  And write a conference abstract by Sunday night.  And probably at least start on my poster that has to go to the printer on Wednesday.  (I'm leaving for Seattle next Monday - yikes!)

But!  For now, there is graduation tomorrow, and it's breezy and sunny and I'm going to curl up with some more reading and some tea.  One of these days, I'll read a novel or something, but for now it's more articles about bilingualism and lexical access.  (I just ordered a statistics/programming book off of Amazon that I'm intending to read over the summer.  I never thought I would be perusing statistics books in my free time... of my own free will... partially because I want to.  But I kind of like it.)

QP (re-)submitted

Well, I turned in another version of my qualifying paper tonight.  Every single day this week, I really thought I would get it done.  I mean, it was already done, how long could it take to make some revisions, right?  Wrong.  Decidedly wrong.  It could take 7 days straight of working on it 4-7 hours a day, in fact, if you were wondering.  Including 8-12 and 2-7 today!  But: it is mostly done.  Unless I totally messed up the statistics (which is by no means impossible), it might - might - get approved in its current version.  And that would be great, because then I can stop rewriting this paper at least for a few months, and come back to it this fall sometime with fresh eyes and new data and no looming due date.  Oh how nice that would be.

Now I just have to prepare a short presentation for my meeting about our Paris project at Stanford in the morning (and I get to catch the train at 7:27!), but I think I'll have plenty of time to throw it together on the train(s).  And then I have to get my annotated bibliography ready for my meeting with the chair of my exam committee on Tuesday (lord help me with that... the bibliography, not the meeting, the meeting will be fine), and then I have a week to prepare for my qualifying exam, which will be on Tuesday the 17th.  And then (then!) I get to throw together my poster for the conference I'm going to in Seattle, because it has to go to the printer on the 18th.  (Oops.)  And then I have 4 days to get my Paris experiment ready before I leave for Seattle, then 5 days in Seattle (which I'm really looking forward to, especially once my poster is sent to the printer!).  Then 4 more days at home getting stuff ready for Paris, I guess, including a second poster which will have to go to the printer while I'm actually in Seattle, come to think of it (oops).  And then, before I know it - Paris!

Lovely, lovely Paris.  I'm so excited, but there's so much stuff to get done between now and then.  I decided I'm not even going to try to work on my conference presentation until I'm actually in Paris, because I'll have 14 days while I'm in Europe to work on it, and I think that should be plenty.  It would be nice if I could collect some more data on my kiddies before I leave, but I'm not gonna hold my breath on that.  Because that would have to be sometime this week (when I should be studying) or sometime at the end of next week, when I might be scrambling to get my Paris stuff ready to go.  We shall see.

Shoot, it's 11:00?  Where does the time go?  At least I got to play some frisbee tonight!  It's so great that it stays light so late now - we played frisbee from 7:00 to almost 9:00 tonight, so that was an excellent break.  I am so glad this frisbee thing has been working out.  I look forward to it every week, and I'm going to miss it this summer!

Oh well, time for bed.  G'night.

blah blah blah

I am so tired of reading!!!

Since there are no classes this Monday for Presidents' Day, my Stanford class is meeting twice this week.  That means that not only do I have to go down to Palo Alto again today after just being there on Monday, but I also have twice the amount of reading to get done this week.  I'm trying to do it all, I really am, and I'm trying to concentrate on it and actually get something out of it, but dude.  I am so tired of reading this stuff.

I also really need to get a finalized version of my qualifying paper in to my readers so they can give me suggestions and we can try to get it approved really soon, but I still need more preschooler data before I'm comfortable reanalyzing and updating my paper.  Because I don't want to go through the trouble of reanalyzing, drawing conclusions and re-writing the whole thing only to find that I have to do all of that again once I get more data.

And I was supposed to hear back yesterday from the conference I applied to in England, but they said on the website that the decisions will be going out today instead.  Except that it's 1:45, which means it's like 9:45 in England, so it's not looking good for today either.

Harrumph!

In happier news, we hosted our annual conference over the weekend, and it was really fun, but I got next to nothing done and am feeling so behind on everything.  I'm enjoying this semester and am excited about getting my QP finished, since I'm excited about the work I'm doing, but it will be really nice when this semester is over.

Nerding It Up

I just got back from a two-day symposium at Stanford. Man was it fun. It was very re-energizing, academically speaking. I guess it's been a while since I've been to a conference-y event, and it was so, so very cool to hear what these incredibly smart people are up to. I had a few passing thoughts that might be worth relating. Namely,

1) I feel so privileged to hang out with the people I hang out with. Everyone in the circles I run in now is so interesting and thoughtful. And a lot of them are even fun, too! There is nothing better than hanging out with fun, smart, nerdy, bright, hilarious people. This has several corollaries.

1a) The professors talking at this symposium ("Computational Models of the Mind: Comparing Connectionist and Bayesian Perspectives on Cognition and Language") are basically my heroes. No joke. I found myself thinking, I can't believe I'm in a room with all of these incredibly ridiculously intelligent people, with all their MIT, Stanford, University of California degrees and professorships. I love science. I have always wanted to be a scientist when I grow up, and being at a symposium like that makes me feel like I am actually on my way. Someday maybe that will be me up there talking about modeling cognition and emergent perceptual categories and la-lee-la. I sure do hope so.

1b) One of my friends from high school has just started a PhD program in Economics at Stanford, and I was able to meet up with him, and it was really great! It's so fun to catch up with people from high school, especially since it seems like we're all turning into real adults with academic careers and cool research interests, instead of just being somewhat awkward 15-year-olds. Oh, this leads me to a follow-up to (1a), which is that...

1c) ... I was imagining all the genius cognitive scientists as 15-year-old boys. And just realizing how incredibly awkward and unhappy and uncool they probably were in junior high, and now they are awesome. Pretty undeniably awesome, really. Sure, they were probably on the math team and the chess team and whatever, but now they're engineering models that get at the very essence of how the brain works, and they're giving talks in the greatest, most prestigious universities in the world, and they're certainly not lacking in confidence and even crack some pretty good jokes, but most of them seem down to earth and humble enough that you can still imagine what they must have been like as 15-year-old boys. I remember feeling painfully nerdy and like a weirdo misfit, and somehow just knowing I wasn't as cool as the "cool kids". But where are the cool kids now? Not giving or attending talks about cognitive science at Stanford, I can tell you that much! You always hear about how the nerds grow up to be the most interesting people, but it's like I'm watching it happen in real time, and it's pretty cool.

1d) I am loving being a grad student. When my high school friend and I were on campus, I bumped into one of the Stanford grad students who had been considering coming to Berkeley, and the Stanford linguists invited us over and I ended up hanging out with them the rest of the night. It was so fun! This brings me to my last corollary, which is...

1e) ... I keep realizing that these are my people now. You know when you start high school or college or a new job, and you're thinking, "Ok, these are the people I'm going to be hanging out with for the next few years"? Well, all of the grad students I'm getting to know in other departments are going to be my colleagues, like for life. I may very well be friends with these people, and hanging out with these people at conferences and meetings for the rest of my life. And I love that idea! I love these people! They are my people, it was meant to be, and I have some of the most fun and interesting conversations with them that I've ever had. It is so good to feel that you belong.

2) Palo Alto is weird, and I'm really glad I go to Berkeley and not Stanford. Don't get me wrong, Stanford is gorgeous and amazing and just reeks of money, but that's kind of the problem with it. It's so gosh darned manicured, and that's not necessarily a good thing. Berkeley is kind of grungy and rough around the edges, but that's what gives it personality. Sure, we can't just leave our office doors wide open all day long with all of our computer equipment sitting out in the open (which is what they do at Stanford - that blew my mind), but downtown Berkeley, for all its faults and oddities, is at least a hoot. You will not be bored walking down the street in Berkeley. And we're close to Oakland and close to San Francisco and our campus is all green and lush and Northern Californian. You can keep your manicured lawns and Spanish-SoCal architecture, Stanford. You know why? Because you're stuck in Palo Alto and that is lame.

2a) Really, though, I felt a little bad for the Stanford grad students in that respect. I mean, yes, they get way better funding than we do. And their building and equipment and offices are considerably nicer. But... I like our department better. And I like Berkeley better. And I think we have more fun than them and they know it. So, I take it back, Stanford. You guys can come hang out with us anytime, and we can trade superiority-inferiority complexes and talk about language and brains, and it's win-win-win.

I drank too much hot chocolate tonight, got too little sleep last night, and went to too many talks today, and am consequently feeling roly poly and sleepy. So goodnight!

Rolling with it.

Indeed I am rolling with it. Even though my 20-miler last weekend (as in, 8 days ago) went swimmingly and I wasn't sore or anything, I decided to take the day off running yesterday. Just for the heck of it. I ran 5 days last week, only taking Monday and Thursday off, for a total of around 40 miles for the week. That's a lot for me. And then on Saturday night, I had a mini adventure with some friends and found myself thinking, "I don't really feel like running tomorrow." And since my 20-miler had gone so great and I'm feeling pretty ready for this race with about a month to go, I decided to take the lack of enthusiasm as a sign that my body wanted some rest, and I just plum took the day off.

About that mini adventure. My friend John and his girlfriend found this crazy little thing called "Forage SF", which is a group of self-appointed foragers that collect food in the Bay Area. Basically there are so many fruit trees and edible plants here that it truly is a shame to not take advantage of it, so this underground market thing has sprung up to ameliorate the situation. Roger said eating stuff that fell off of trees is pretty much "against everything he stands for"... and it is... so a small group of us went to check it out without him. It was fairly interesting, and quite good, but also fairly expensive and quite packed, so I have no plans to go back. Fun to do once, but not worth the hassle of doing it again.

Anyway, they had this sign there.

It made me picture little kitties in harnesses, pulling a plow or something. But I didn't actually catch a glimpse of any working cats, so I unfortunately can't fill you in on any details there.

We have a working dog, though.

I don't know if you can tell what that is, so I will explain. Roger accidentally broke the dogs' water container the other day, and threw it outside so it didn't soak the whole living room. Rye decided he liked the challenge of working for his water, so he's been lying down and sticking his little tongue in as far as he can to get at the water. He has a new water bottle, mind you, he just likes the challenge, I guess.

And this is one of those pictures that makes me wish I had a better camera with me. The light was so lovely this evening, with the pink fog settling on the hills as the sun went down. It truly, truly feels like fall.

Why am I so tired?? I got a good amount of work done today, so that's good, but I didn't get quite as far as I wanted to on one project, so I've been staring at the computer for several hours now. I recorded stimuli for my qualifying paper experiment today (exciting!) and then I managed to find some scripts that split the words up into lots of individual sound files so I didn't have to do it by hand. Maybe half an hour of fiddling with scripts, but it saved me several hours of labeling and naming by hand, so it was totally and completely worth it. Now I need to edit the files so that they're all the same length and loudness, and that's the part I'm having trouble automating. (And no way am I editing several hundred sound files individually.) I think if I tackle it with fresh eyes tomorrow, it'll be easier.

I took a break to do some cooking this evening, and it was really nice. I made an Italian-style fish and bean stew (friggin' delicious) and some pesto to go with the loaf of bread I baked yesterday. Miss Suzy Homemaker, right here!

Well jeez. I'm pooped. I'm gonna stretch out my legs and go to bed.

I made this.

Hey, look at what I just finished!

My first full size sweater!

In somewhat sad news, the awesome psychology seminar I was going to take got moved to a different time, and now I can't take it. But on the bright side, this means I should have plenty (?) of time to work on my qualifying paper this semester.

Crise Résolue

A minor update to my minor "crisis" post. I had a fantastic day today, for many reasons. It was the first day of classes, and it was just a breath of fresh air. I'm taking phonology with a professor I've never had before, and she is fantastic. I normally am not a big fan of traditional phonology (or anything traditional in linguistics, really), and I didn't get much at all out of our last phonology course, so I was a bit worried about this one. But I'm taking it because 1) they changed the requirements on us and I basically have to, 2) I thought it would be good for me, since if I'm going to be a proper phonetician I should know more about the big talking points in phonology, and 3) I've talked to this professor several times and really like her, but I'd never had the opportunity to take a class with her.

So anyway, we had our first class meeting today, and I found myself getting really excited about the class. All of the topics we're covering are interesting, and she's chosen a great selection of articles that I know are going to be very helpful and interesting to me. I might even enjoy some of the readings!

Then I had a pow-wow with my advisor and it went so well. He is so great. As you know, I think, I had been waffling on whether to change my qualifying paper topic, and he was totally supportive and encouraging of my new idea and said I should go for it. And I am so relieved. I am so excited about this new project, and I think it'll be super interesting and much more in the direction I'd like to go with my "academic career". Because yes, my doubts about staying in academics are way down after my great day today, and I might even stick with the professor thing after all. (We'll see. I have to like, write a dissertation first.)

Also. Ok. This is totally silly, but I'm going to put it out there anyway. So we have this new grad student from France and he is so, so nice and seems really interesting, and I told my friend John a while back, "man, I really hope he's willing to speak French with me, but I don't want to be a weirdo about it." And all of that is true. I would love to be able to speak some French again, and I don't want to be a weirdo about it. I don't want the poor guy to think I only want to talk to him because he's French; that sucks. He seems like a really cool guy too, like in addition to happening to be French. But anyway, John and I were talking to him at the departmental meeting on Monday, and John totally outed me, saying, "Hey, Melinda really wants you to speak French with her, so I'm telling you that because she probably never will." And then I blushed. And I was like, "Ummmmm welllllllll yes. Thanks John." But when I passed him in the hallway today he said bonjour and it completely made my day. Like, to a ridiculous extent. I think I said this before, but I didn't realize how much I missed French until I started taking Spanish, and then the bonjour in the hallway today totally confirmed it. French, I have missed you.

Then I got home and one of my friends sent me a text message to say that apparently my syntax professor mentioned the paper I wrote for her class (2 years ago) in class today. I was really surprised because I hate syntax and I thought that paper was kind of crap, but apparently she wasn't just being nice when she gave me an A. So that was a pleasant surprise too.

And finally, I would like to direct you all to this website, http://lennonmurdertruth.com, which is all about how Stephen King killed John Lennon and the government has been covering it up but also leaving secret clues about it in nationally circulating periodicals for the past 30 years. This dude was rocking out on campus today, standing in between a guitar and a boom box blaring songs from the 60's, screaming along to them, with a sign that said "lennonmurdertruth.com" on one side and "DARE TO CARE" on the other.

Ahhhhhhhh Berkeley. I gotta admit, it's fun being back.

Melinda Woodley, M.A.

Oh good lord, it's been two months since I updated? That's ridiculous.

I have excuses, though, I assure you. Like for one thing, I have an M.A. from UC Berkeley now. Isn't that crazy? I just took my exam this past Friday - a two hour long oral exam that consisted of me standing at a chalkboard being asked questions by three professors - and despite the fact that I felt like an idiot, apparently I did pretty well! So maybe I do know something about linguistics after all, although I'm not sure the three days straight of studying really paid off...

Here I am with my honey and my hood!

And here I am with my M.A. graduating class. I love these guys!

I also churned out a 20 page paper that needs to be revised and beefed up for next week, so that they'll actually give me my master's, but I don't want to think about that just yet.

Let me tell you about the Oakland Half Marathon, even though it was almost two months ago now. It was great! I decided I really like Oakland. It's definitely the red-headed stepchild of San Francisco. Not to be a hipster or anything, but it's a very... real city. The race was weird because it started downtown, which was great, but I can't think of how to describe downtown Oakland. There are a few tall buildings, but none of them are that tall, and they're all pretty concentrated in one little area. Parts of downtown look kind of old, but in a quaint, turn-of-the-20th-century way. Like you can imagine Jack London sitting in a cafe and people driving by in Model-T's or something, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, it was weird because we did a loop downtown, then circled around by Jack London square, but didn't actually go through Jack London square, and then we did this loop through West Oakland that might have been a little scary if there weren't several thousand other people and police escorts around. West Oakland is totally bizarre. There are lots of rappers from there, if that tells you anything, but it's in the beginning-ish stages of urban renewal and gentrification. So there are lots of old black people who have probably lived there forever, and then lots of hipster barrista 35 year olds who finally settled down and have toddlers with mohawks. That sort of thing. So we did this long, very industrial loop, and then we eventually hit the yuppier part of Oakland, just north of Lake Merritt. Lake Merritt is gorgeous but also totally weird, because it's this huge lake that sort of comes out of nowhere just north of downtown. But it's beautiful - it's a very nice part of town, lots of cute little bars and restaurants and lots of folks out riding bikes and walking around, and it was a very sunny day, so the water was sparkling and the sky was bright blue. Very nice. But I was hurting pretty bad by the time we got there. The last part of the course was a loop around the lake, so you're thinking, okay, just one loop around the lake and I'm done. But the lake is pretty big - the start of the lake part of the course was around mile 10, and it's easy to think you're almost done when you hit mile 10 in a half marathon. But I guess it's kind of like mile 20 in a full marathon; that's really where the race starts, in a way, because that's when you're fighting your body to keep going. It was also kind of mean that the half marathon course was very flat except for the very end.

Now, usually when I do a race, I have a realistic goal and a secret goal. The realistic goal is one that I can probably make, and the one that I tell people about if they ask. But the secret goal is one that I don't like to say out loud, because I don't want to commit to it. My realistic goal for this race was to come in under 1:50. I ran my first half ever in Mahomet in 2005, and I finished in 2:08. I ran my second one in Valparaiso in 2007 in 1:48, and I was totally stoked to come in well under 2 hours. I haven't been doing any speed work or timing myself at all since we moved out here, so I really have no idea how fast I usually run. I figured if I could come in around 1:50, that would be great, because that would put me at the same level of fitness as the last time, when I had been doing speed work. But my secret goal was to be faster than 1:48, and my secret secret goal was to come in under 1:45.

Well, I didn't wear a watch for this race, but I periodically asked people what time it was along the course, and I knew I was going to come in under 2:00. When we hit the lake, though, I realized it was a possibility that I could meet my secret secret goal if I really pushed it. It hurt, it really hurt, and I felt like I was going so slowly no matter what I did. But you know what? I rounded the last corner as we turned off from the lake and went back downtown, and I saw the clock, and I was so close to 1:45. I sprinted the last straightaway, and I was so close to coming in under 1:45. So close. So for a minute I was a little disappointed that I was so close but didn't quite make it. And then I remembered that I was going by clock time, not chip time, which means that I did make it. I made it! My time was 1:44 something, and I did the math and found that I averaged a 7:59.99 minute mile. So WHOO-HOO!! No wonder it hurt!

If I could run an 8 minute mile for 26 miles (which I won't be doing any time soon), that would be a 3:30 marathon, and that would rock and qualify me for Boston. So naturally when I got home, I started figuring out what marathon I should do this year. I think I really must be a masochist; that's the only explanation. Painpainpainpainpainpain where can I sign up to do that again? Anyway, I decided to put my name in for the San Francisco Nike Women's marathon in the fall, and I got picked! It's a lottery system because it's such a popular race, but I will be running my next full marathon on October 17th. Cripes, I need to get together a training plan.

There are lots of other things I need to do this summer, too. I'm taking Spanish, which starts in about a month. Before then, I have to finish that paper I mentioned, and I'm volunteering for this workshop at Berkeley called Breath of Life, where Native Americans from all over California come to learn about their native languages and the resources we have at Berkeley for learning about them and keeping them alive. The language I'm working on is Cahuilla, which is still spoken by some people in Southern California, and we have three speakers coming up to learn about the Cahuilla resources we have. So I need to learn lots more about Cahuilla between now and the first week of June.

For now, though, I really want a shower. So I'm going to leave you with some good pictures my mom took when she was here over the past week. The first one is the Golden Gate on a typically foggy day, and the second is me on the beach at Monterey. We drove down to see the aquarium, and it was a gorgeous sunny day, and the aquarium was pretty awesome.

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.