Ow. I rock. Ow.

You guys! I ran a marathon today! And it was awesome!!

I must say, I finished today's Nike Women's Marathon feeling the best I ever have after a race that distance. I mean, it hurt at the end, but really not that bad. I think that means I could've pushed it harder, but you know what? I am very, very satisfied with my performance and my pacing. Play-by-play in a minute, but first, there's this:

When I went to pick up my race packet in Union Square on Saturday, I saw a ton of women gathered outside of Niketown. They were all pointing and taking pictures. So naturally, I'm like, what is going on? There's this big wall, all along the side of the building with these pink lines all over it. On closer inspection, look what I found!

Me! I've been on the exterior wall of Niketown in Union Square for who-knows-how-long. That's pretty cool! That also had some pretty nifty posters for sale with everyone's name on them in teeny tiny print, which is really impressive given that this race draws around 20,000 people, but I decided against buying one. Partially because I wouldn't know what to do with it, and partially because this whole race was one, big, commercialized, Woman Power Extravaganza. Still not entirely sure how I feel about that, but I'm leaning towards "annoyed".

So, let's see what I can say about the race that might not be boring. It was a really great race! The course was really nice, and different enough from the San Francisco Marathon that I'm glad I did it. The main thing is that the first half of the course is disproportionately harder than the second half. I think that's better than the other way around, since you have more energy at the beginning, obviously, but it made it hard to figure out how to pace myself. The weird thing was, I was feeling a little worried throughout the first part of the race, because it was hard. And when you're running a marathon, you're constantly doing this weird "body check" thing. It's like you're running, and you're going, "Ok, how are my feet? Feeling okay. Am I chafing? Little bit. How's my hydration level? Probably ought to get some Gatorade at the next pit stop. Am I out of breath? Can I keep this pace up for the next 19 miles? Should I push it harder, maybe? Ooh, calf twinge, definitely need to hydrate. Do I need to pee bad enough to stop?" etc. etc. ad infinitum. And things were just not particularly coming together for the first half of this race, which is odd. Usually the first half is when you're feeling really good, because you've got all the adrenaline going, but I did have a little calf twinge around mile 9, and I've struggled a bit with calf cramps in my last two marathons, so it seemed like that was a very bad sign so early on and I should run cautiously and hydrate early.

You know what, though? I started feeling weirdly good right around 10 miles. It has never before taken me that long to get warmed up and get into the groove of things, but something just clicked right around 10 miles. Once we got through the hills in Golden Gate Park, we had several long, slight downhills, and I just kicked it in and never looked back. I was nervous about doing that so early on at first, but I was feeling so good that it seemed like a waste not to. But my pacing was so screwy - I finished the first half in a little over 2:00. And since my goal is always to come in under 4:00, this was not a particularly good sign. Plus, it's rough to run negative splits in a full marathon, I think. So I briefly prepared myself for the mental disappointment of coming in over 4:00, and I knew it might be a reality I would have to face. I thought if I could come in under 4:05, I could still be fairly happy with that time, since it was a fairly demanding course.

But I just kept getting faster and faster. It was so weird. In past races, I've started to have leg cramping issues around 21-22 miles, but not at all this time. Granted, the weather was very cool, and I was pretty careful with my hydration (not too much, not too little), but I just powered it all the way in. I was even able to put in what felt like a pretty darn good kick at the end, which has never happened to me in a marathon before. Usually I'm just trying to hang on to my pace as best I can, but I picked it up a fair amount for the last 1.5 miles, and I easily came in under 4:00. Something around 3:56 or 3:57, I think, but the official results haven't been posted yet. I couldn't believe how good that second half went! And I really couldn't believe how good I felt at the end. I mean, it hurt, it always hurts, that's why we do it, but none of that debilitating, ready to collapse-and-or-puke stuff that usually happens. I grabbed a big bagel and wolfed that sucker down (usually I get really nauseous at the end of a long race and can't eat anything substantial for quite a while), and I guzzled the most amazing, delicious bottle of chocolate milk I've ever had (and likely ever will have) in my life.

And oh! The firefighters! At the end of the race, there are firefighters in tuxedos that give you your Tiffany necklace (instead of a medal). It was pretty funny, and they were pretty cute. I found this picture online.

There were also foot massages and other goodies at the end, but I just wanted to get the heck out of there. More on that in a minute.

Despite my satisfying performance and my overall very respectable time, there were unfortunately a few things that kind of sucked about this race, and that keep me from recommending it wholeheartedly. For one - and this is not the fault of the race, obviously - it was raining. At first, it was just a few drops, right around the time I hit Golden Gate Park, near the middle of the race. Then it became a drizzle, and that actually felt kind of nice. Then it steadily picked up until the end of the race, when it really was legitimately raining. This wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't about 58 degrees out, which is a little chilly for rain. It was definitely tolerable while I was still running, but as soon as I stopped, I was pretty miserable. Now, where I take issue with the race itself is because it finishes on the very west side of the city, along the Pacific Ocean, which is cool and all, but there's not much public transportation out there. So they provided shuttle buses back to the east side of the city, except the buses were not there when I finished. Instead, there was a huuuuuuge line of people waiting for buses, most of whom said they had been waiting over an hour. There was no possible way I was going to stand in the cold rain for over an hour having just run a marathon. (Flashback to Big Sur last year.) Thankfully, I brought a change of warm clothes, so after I managed to locate my bag, I was able to put on a dry long sleeved shirt and a thermal fleece, along with some flannel pants, and that felt much better. I also put on one dry sock, but it was actually pretty hard to bend over and get my shoe off at that point, and as soon as I managed to get my shoe back on, my nice dry sock was completely soaked from my sopping wet shoe. I should've seen that coming, but I wasn't really thinking clearly and was so tantalized by the idea of dry socks. So I didn't even bother with the second one. Instead, I wore soaking wet shoes and socks until I finally managed to get home about 2 hours later.

The other thing that was weird about this race was that it's really mostly geared toward middle aged women running a half marathon. Apparently it's "the 10th biggest half marathon in the world". And it's all about "girl power" and "strong women" and "you are beautiful and powerful"... which... okay, I'm all for empowering women. And I'm all for people getting out and getting some exercise. But really? It was kind of annoying. Like, can you please stop walking five abreast with your fanny packs and CamelBaks and stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures, because actually, y'know, there's a race going on, and I'm trying to run it. At one point we went under an overpass, and this woman behind me starts yelling, "yeah girls, let's make some NOOOOIIIISE" and I'm like, "really? really?? what is this, 6th grade? can I please just run through a tunnel without my eardrums being shattered by inexplicably boisterous fanny pack-wearing, pink-clad women?"

So... yeah. It was kind of weird when we split off from the half marathoners, because it suddenly got really quiet, and way less crowded. It was nice and peaceful at first, but then once we hit the Great Highway, which runs along the ocean, it was just this seemingly endless stretch of gray, and it might have been nice to have a little more... energy. Thankfully there was entertainment every mile or so, so that helped break it up. My favorite was either the breakdancers or the really gay dudes in rose-pink body suits jumping up and down yelling "San Francisco loves you!"

So now I'm home and I'd love to share pictures with you, but they're not up yet, and neither is my official race time. And also I'm hungry again and Roger's home, so I think I'm going to make some popcorn and watch Mad Men.

But today was really great, and I'm already thinking about my next race. Maybe I'll do the Marin Marathon in March... it winds through wine country in the spring, and it looks really gorgeous and peaceful and pastoral, and probably more my style in a lot of ways.

I leave you with this shot of me I nabbed from the Oakland Half Marathon I ran back in March. I think it's the only halfway decent shot of me running I've ever had taken. Race photography is such a weird phenomenon, and I try to not really support it by never giving them my money. So this is the thumbnail version I stole from their website.

Oh, funny, I just this very second got an email from Nike saying I finished in 3:57:12, which is a 9:03 pace. I also apparently came in 377th (not bad!) and my split times got significantly faster (29:03 for the first 5K vs. 25:58 for the last 5K). I was dodging tons of people for a good 5 miles at the beginning of the race, so there's that to consider too, but it's hard to argue with a sub-26 5K at the end of a marathon!

Now. If I can just stand up.

I am a caricature of myself.

Probably homeless woman in the grocery store parking lot: Got a few extra bucks?

Me: (lying uncomfortably, as I always do) No, I'm sorry...

PHWITGSPL: (looking at my groceries, then at me, somewhat disgustedly) You don't smoke cigarettes, do you?

Me: ... No.

It is true. I had a grocery cart full of fruits and vegetables, and I'm wearing running shorts and Chacos. I do not smoke. This was apparently quite obvious.

This reminds me of a funny conversation I had with some friends a few weeks back, about how it sucks to realize you're just part of a "demographic". We were talking about how we love Trader Joe's, but we hate that we love Trader Joe's. TJ's is a grocery store (the one I was at today, actually) that sells what I would describe as cutely packaged, fun convenience foods for a generation that revels in Americanized ethnic food.

"Why yes, Trader Joe's," I concluded ruefully. "I am a 20-something white person who likes bright colors, convenience, and Thai food. I cannot resist you."

It's weird to realize how much the culture you've grown up in has shaped your identity, and also the fact that there is an entire super market chain directed at you and all of your friends.

Time to go play frisbee!

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!

Before and After: Melinda Version

Here's a picture of me right after I got my hair cut a few weeks ago:

And I here I am after I got bored yesterday:

I'm a redhead on the inside anyway, I think.

I should get back to work, but I'm (still, again, always) working on putting together stimuli for my QP perception experiment, and you can only stare at lists of made up words for so long. Bowp, chuss, pake, beel, mide... starts to drive you crazy pretty quickly.

So the only other thing I will add is that I got a group of friends together to play Ultimate Frisbee on Friday afternoon, and it was so fantastic. I think everyone had a great time, and I certainly did, and I can't wait to do it again. It was so freeing - running around in the grass with friends on a sunny afternoon. There are few better things in life, in my opinion! And at the end it was starting to get a little muddy, so a bunch of us took off our shoes and I could feel the cool, soft grass underneath my feet and the mud squishing between my toes. So good.

The only embarrassing part is that I am still sore! From frisbee! All of that changing directions and jumping up and down and chucking a disk around... much higher impact than I'm used to, and different muscles, I guess. Then I ran 20 miles yesterday (last time before my race!) and that actually made some of the soreness go away, except I'm just slightly tired and hungry and out of whack today.

So now I will go back to drinking my tea and staring at made up words.

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.

Someone is murdering bunnies!

I'm sure animal control just loves hearing from this person.

The 'random pictures with phone camera' thing is working out well so far, don't you think?

I've had a pretty great weekend. It feels so much like fall here, which is somewhat surprising considering it pretty much always feels like fall here. But right now is especially fall-like. September and October have got to be the best months in Berkeley, because it's generally pleasantly cool instead of slightly unpleasantly cool. And there's even the possibility of it being actually warm, which is a bonus. Although I've heard that our weirdly cold weather is going to continue... but it's supposed to get up to 78 today, so I'm hoping that continues.

I had a great run yesterday! I was a little worried because a small group of us went out on Saturday night partly just for the heck of it, partly for a friend's birthday, and I was out until 11:30 and did a little too much celebrating. I only had like 2 or 3 beers, but that's actually a lot when you're supposed to run 20 miles in the morning. Then I woke up at dawn on Sunday and couldn't get back to sleep, so I eventually figured I might as well get out of bed and hit the road and see what happens. I was a little woozy, but I drank some water and ate a pancake left over from Saturday's breakfast and decided to go for it.

I've been taking the dogs with me for part of my long runs lately. It works out really well because they're good and tired after 10 miles or so, and then I can stop by home to drop them off, get a drink, maybe change clothes, and do some more. And then for the second half I don't have to worry about dogs and I can either let my mind wander or listen to music. Yesterday I had mapped out a run down and around Lake Merritt in Oakland, which comes to about 14 miles. So I decided to do 6 miles in North Berkeley with the dogs and then do the Lake Merritt part by myself.

I was a little worried at first because my stomach wasn't very happy for the first mile or so, but then I started feeling really good and finished the first 6 feeling great. Dropped the dogs off, ate some pita chips (mmmm salt), filled up my water bottle, and hit the road again. Let me try to find a picture of Lake Merritt...

There you go. That's what it looks like from up above. It's really pretty big - one lap along the water's edge is a little over 3 miles. And it's about 5 miles from my house to the lake, so running down and around it and then back home comes out to about 14. It was totally and completely worth it, though. When you run down College Avenue and then Broadway towards Oakland, it's mostly slightly downhill, so you see the small patch of tall buildings in the distance and then as you get closer to them, you start to see the lake and the beautiful trees and parks surrounding it through the buildings, and suddenly you're in this lovely little oasis in downtown Oakland.

I told you Oakland is nice!

So I am definitely doing that run again. (And again.) I also had the nice surprise of making a running friend. I ran into him just after passing the Rockridge BART station, so just on the border between Berkeley and Oakland, and he smiled and said "hello! beautiful day for a run!" or something like that, and I said something like, "it is, isn't it? I'm headed down and around the lake, how about you?" And he was too, which was somewhat surprising because we were still about 3 miles from the lake at that point. He was going considerably slower that I was, but I slowed down a bit and he sped up a bit and we chatted for a while, and he was a very, very nice guy. Probably about 50 or so, big bushy beard and smiling eyes, and he's been running for literally decades. So we talked running, and then we talked life, and he asked me about linguistics, and we talked about the differences between Chomsky and Lakoff, because that was the only passing knowledge he had about linguistics. It's funny for me to talk about Chomsky and Lakoff. First because I think Chomsky's an idiot and a jerk, but he's usually the only connection people have to linguistics. And second because Lakoff is also... a controversial figure, let's say... although I'm much more closely aligned with him linguistically than with Chomsky. And third because I know George Lakoff, like we stop and chat in the hallway when we see each other, and I say this not for the name-dropping aspect, believe it or not, but because "George Lakoff" the philosopher-linguist-politician is a totally different person from George, the guy I chat with in the hallway, and it's hard to talk about him as "George Lakoff", if you know what I mean. So I found myself having this conversation about "Lakoff" where I couldn't call the guy by his last name, like you're supposed to when you talk about a Big Thinker's ideas. I'm like, "Yeah, Chomsky basically thinks A B C, but George is like, no no no, X Y Z." But then I felt kinda like a jerk for calling him "George" instead of "Lakoff". Like, I wouldn't call Chomsky "Noam". Whatever.

And fourth, this conversation was particularly weird because generally I don't care or think about Chomsky or Lakoff. That's just not what I do. But it's hard to explain to people that I'm interested in sound patterns and models of learning and category abstraction... kind of a conversation stopper, usually.

Anyway, Martin With The Bushy Beard was really nice, and we did a lap around the lake together and exchanged email addresses before I headed home, so we might get together again in the future. The miles go by so much more quickly when you've got company.

The rest of my run was fine too. Although the slight uphill for 4 miles back into Berkeley kind of sucked, and I neglected to fill up my water bottle before leaving the lake area, and of course didn't see any water fountains on the way back home. As I ended the uphill portion and turned west toward my house, I found myself thinking, "Hmm, I kinda don't feel that good. My stomach's a little upset and my legs are kinda tired." And then I thought, "Dude, I just ran 19 miles. If I were feeling any better, that would be positively weird." So with that perspective, I realized that I felt pretty fantastic and I could suck it up for less than a mile back to my house.

And I feel so good today! This was my first 20-miler of this training cycle, and I thought it would knock me out more, but I didn't even stiffen up at all yesterday and am only very slightly stiff today. So I don't know what happened, but I'm feeling totally ready for this race (knock wood) and like life is pretty sweet.

Now I should probably get off of the computer, because I need a shower, and I'm going to the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park today! Life is pretty sweet.

My Weekend (In Pictures)

I realized that one thing I really like about other people's blogs is when they post pictures. And I also realized that I have a perfectly fine camera phone. So I decided to try to take more pictures with my phone, just for fun, and to post them here.

I therefore present you with my weekend, in pictures.

This is just me playing around, waiting for the bus and pretending to be artsy and alternative. I like this time of year in Berkeley, when the summer flowers are still blooming, but the light at the end of the day is starting to make it feel like fall.

On Saturday I went to the farmers' market, and there happened to be a great little bluegrass duo playing at the park downtown. So I sat down in the grass for a while and enjoyed the sweet warm sunshine and the cool sea breeze and thought about how bluegrass sounds great no matter where you are.

Today I went to the Eat Real festival in Oakland with some friends. It's sort of like the Taste of Champaign, with an emphasis on (extremely) local foods and vendors. I snapped this pic of a sign at a bus stop in downtown Oakland. For the record, I really like downtown Oakland. I really like all of the good parts of Oakland, in fact. But it has such image issues. It's like... "Ohhhh, Oakland. You will never be as pretty as San Francisco and people will never love you, but *I* love you."

This is a HUGE vat of paella at Eat Real. I didn't eat any, unfortunately, because I had just finished running right before this and I was feeling kind of nauseous. All I wanted was cold, fruity, slushy things, so I had some melon sorbet and then some limeade, both of which really hit the spot.

Now, this is what you can expect to find at an "Eat Real" festival in Oakland. A vegan, gluten-free Indian food stand with a blender powered by a bike. I'm so not kidding.

And that was my weekend! Plus a party on Saturday night where I got to speak some French (and downed an impressive amount of wine, if I do say so myself).

Time to watch True Blood!

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.

Petite Crise

Well dios mío, I managed to bring some heat back to California with me from Illinois! It is legitimately hot today, for the second day in a row! (Crazy!) I love it. Granted, I feel a little gross and a lot sweaty, but at least now I feel like we had a teensy bit of a summer, whether we end up getting some more heat in September and October or not (that's normally our summer here).

Anyway, Illinois. I tell you what, living in California for two years has turned me into quite the Midwesterner. It's like having the contrast makes me realize what it means to be from the Midwest. Not to wax poetic or anything, but summer in the Midwest means wide open spaces and grass and humming cicadas and humidity and corn fields and sweat dripping down your back and melty ice cream and lovely, dear friends and family that you have missed so much more than you realized. I'm not going to lie; it was really hard being home. Much harder this year than I expected. It just wasn't long enough... only long enough to remember how very much I love everyone and wish that I had a few more days to spend with them. This is probably because I only spent about three days in C-U and then two days in Chicago, which ended up being somewhat unsatisfying and temporarily minor crisis-inducing.

Here is a story that sort of sums it up. In Chicago, I went out to dinner with George and Matt, my two best friends from studying abroad in France. We've all been very good about keeping in touch the past few years, despite the fact that I usually only see them about once a year now. We went to this fantastic Moroccan restaurant. George and I used to cook pseudo-Moroccan food on Friday nights at the American dorm in Paris, so it was a really nice idea, and the food was fantastic. It was so normal just sitting and having dinner with them, and yet I felt this sort 0f simmering panic underneath it all. Just knowing that it was going to be over way too soon, and I didn't know when I'd see them again, and why did I drag my husband and dogs out to California again and do I even really like linguistics that much, etc., etc. Matt was leaving for grad school on the east coast the next day and somewhat freaking out about that, and we all just sort of looked at each other and said, "What are we doing??"

And what are we doing? Getting out and seeing more of the world, meeting new people and making wonderful new friends to love and keep with us forever, for sure, but also leaving wonderful old friends behind! The world is a smaller place with phones and email and Facebook and whatever, but there's something about physically being in a place with people you love that makes emotions more acute. It's not that I needed to talk more with anyone back home, per se, because I talk to them all the time in various forms. But I sure would have liked more time just being physically in the same place as all of those wonderful folks I love so much. That might have made me a little less emotional about the whole trip, instead of just cramming all of those emotions into a few days and then coming back to California and sitting around stewing about it!

In any case, I knew it would be much better once my friends got back and once school related stuff started picking up again, and it certainly is. It is so nice to see everyone, and I love all of these people too, and they make it feel like home too. They're my little linguistics family and we can sit around and be huge nerds together and have a great time doing it. Yesterday was our annual departmental meeting, where the whole linguistics department gets together and everyone introduces themselves and then we eat cookies and mill about for a while. I also took it upon myself to invite all the grad students out for pizza last night. No one has really been organizing anything for the new students for the past few years, and I wanted to make sure they felt welcome and also give us an excuse to go out together, so I emailed everyone and decreed that we should meet at my favorite pizza place at 7:00 last night. And there was a really good turnout! It was really fun, although I didn't get to talk to all of the new first years because they came in later and sat at the opposite end of the table from me, but it's okay, there will be plenty of time for that.

Afterwards Jess and I thought it would be fun to go bowling, but everyone was tired and only six of us ended up going. But it was fun! I hadn't been bowling since I was like 17, I think. I had a pretty dismal first game and came in dead last, but I somehow managed to win the second game, so it evened out, I guess. Not that the point of bowling is to bowl, really. It was just nice to be with friends, and the "rolling a heavy thing down an oiled lane towards a bunch of pins" thing is pretty secondary.

I think the only other thing I want to add right now is that I ran 18 miles on Sunday and it wasn't even bad at all. I'm not sure which part of that is crazier. My next marathon is October 17th, and I realized that that means I'll be running 26.2 miles on my 26-and-2-days birthday, which is ridiculous but seems to make sense, in a stupid way. Anyway, I guess it looks like I'll be ready by then, I'll just have to get in a few 20 milers in September.

Can you believe I'm going to be 26? I can't. But I say that every year now.

Well, I think it's time to go by the store and buy some ice cream, because I am hot. I hope you all know how very much I love you; the older I get, the more I realize that it's the people in your life that make it worth living, and I am thankful for each and every one of you, whether we talk often or not at all. I have a pretty great life, and no right to complain about any aspect of it, except maybe that whole thing about how meeting new great people entails changing locations and missing old great people. But that is a fairly minor crisis in the scheme of things, n'est-ce pas?