random Sunday thoughts

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

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

My favorite sign of hers looks something like this:

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


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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, rice is almost done.  Bye for now.

o hai, VOT measurements

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

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

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

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

Saaaaaad faaaaaaaace.  :-(((((

o hai, dissertation chapter

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

So... on to the next one!

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

I'm me! I'm me!

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

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

It's a good day.

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

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

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

To work!

Happy 200th Post-iversary!

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

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

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

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

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

ch-ch-ch-ch changes

Holy moly...

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

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

(from xkcd)

checkmark for Friday!

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

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

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

whine whine whine

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

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

On Being Home (reprise)

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

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

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

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