Before and After: the Kitchen

As promised, kitchen pictures! Unfortunately I don't have any "before" shots for you because my computer is off in Apple never-never land, where computers go to wrack up ridiculous and obscene repair charges that their owners can't afford.

Anyway. The upshot of sending my computer out for repairs is that I have very very little to do. Except paint! Here is my beautiful new kitchen:


Well, beautiful except for all the crap on the counter, but let's be realistic, that's just part of my kitchen. Look at the pretty red!


Oooooooh, ahhhhhhh.

I'm very pleased with it. It took way longer and way more coats than I expected, though. I kept doing one more coat, thinking, "well, surely this will do it". But no, 2 days and 4 1/2 coats later, I'm finally done. I think it was worth it, though!

All of my painting made me work up an appetite. And plus now I have this lovely background for food porn. So here is what I had for lunch just now:


(Are you reading this, George? That one's for you.)

I think my next painting project may be the entryway, but I don't quite feel like starting in on it yet. That's going to take the longest of all, and I kind of need a break from the painting for now.

So, this morning kind of sucked. Well, first, some background. I took my computer in to the Apple store on Monday to have it "diagnosed", because the screen recently started doing this weird flashy thing. Not a huge deal, but somewhat annoying. The guy there said he couldn't tell if it was the graphics card itself or the connector between the graphics card and the screen that was acting up, so he'd have it sent in and replaced and I should get it back within the week. And it would all be covered by my warranty!

So great, excellent news. No computer for a few days, but the flashing would be gone. Fast forward to this morning, when I check my email and get this little gem from Apple saying they found "evidence of liquid damage" on the inside of the computer, which is not covered by my warranty, and which will cost no less than $755 to fix.

Excellent.

I begged, I pleaded, I cried a little, all to no avail. I told him to send it back unrepaired because I don't have $755 to spend on a problem that's only moderately annoying.

But jeez! I was so mad!! Mostly because I KNOW there has NEVER been any liquid anywhere NEAR my computer, unless it is carefully and entirely stored within a container.

Except then I remembered that one day when I got caught in a light rain without an umbrella. :( I guess that's got to be it, right? Gah, I don't know. So I was already bummed about that, and then I moved on to our heating bill...

I will spare you the gory details, but let's just say I had to go for a long run this morning. I wasn't planning on it, either. I was planning on taking the day off from running, because my legs were feeling kind of tired. But I realized I had some stress issues to work out, and absolutely nothing to do today anyway.

And you know what? It ended up great. I went up into the hills, and the ground was wet from the rain last night, and the sun was peeking through the trees, and it just smelled fresh and new. I was looking down at the Bay, and I ran down this road I've never been on before, and there was this amazing canopy of twisting branches with a backdrop of clean winter light, and I just thought, "okay, life is good". I mean really? Life is pretty darn good. So I have to wait a little longer to get my computer back in tip-top shape, and our heating bill was higher this month. I still have a perfectly fine computer, and a roof over my head and a heater to keep me warm, even if our insulation is pretty worthless. No, I don't like spending money, but really, it's just money. Just. Money. And I have a family and friends who love me, and two crazy dogs that get me out the door every morning, and a month off of school, and a bright red kitchen. So what's not to like?

I also was reading this book yesterday that my friend Michelle got me for Christmas, called "Zen and the Art of Running". It talks a lot about how the only thing that is responsible for your emotions is your mind. There is nothing inherently frustrating about having to pay $755 to repair a computer. That is simply a fact, a state of affairs. And I can choose to act with frustration, or I can choose to be kinda bummed out and move on. My reaction to the situation does not in and of itself change anything; the only outcome of me being frustrated is... uh... me being frustrated. So why not stop being frustrated?

I know all of these things, but I think it's handy that I happened to read part of that book last night, before I got the Apple email. It can be hard to be zen-like in the moment, when you're getting yourself all worked up. I'm not saying there aren't things that are worth getting upset over. But most of the time they're not. Life is way too short.

On that note, I shall sign off. A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! Check back in a few days for more crazy paint colors!

Before and After: Bathroom Edition

I guess there are lots of things I could tell you, but the only thing I really want to say right now is, look at this! The Before and After Bathroom Edition!

Before:

After:

I love having bright colors around me, and I've been gathering painting ideas for our house since we moved in. I finally got the okay from our landlady this past week, and my mom got us a gift card to Home Depot, so I picked up some awesome paint yesterday and started in!

So far I've only done the bathroom. But I bought the colors I want for the kitchen and entryway, and I finally decided what I want for our bedroom. So, good thing I've still got some money on that gift card and another few weeks to burn. :)

Merry Christmas to all!

Before and After

I've been a busy bee around these parts! Let me show you what I've been up to over the past few days!

First, Roger's uncle Steve gave us this bench when we first moved out here last year. He had a bunch of furniture and stuff to get rid of, and we had literally nothing, so we took it and have been stowing it for over a year. It's mostly been used as a surface for holding boxes up until now.

Basically I decided that I would start making our house into a home over break. The problem is that we still don't have a bunch of money to go out and buy furniture. We're doing okay, don't get me wrong, but when you move across the country with nothing but a mattress, it costs a lot of money and takes some time to re-accumulate the amount of stuff you take for granted when you've been somewhere for a while.

Anyway, I decided to reupholster the bench. I was intimidated by the idea at first, but it's really not hard at all. You just need a staple gun, fabric, and something to pry out old staples with. And some time. It takes a while.

I found some nice, slightly funky but classy fabric. To complete the look, I decided to also paint the legs, put on some cutesy trim, and use mismatched buttons for the top. The buttons are what's taking forever. I'm almost done threading them through the fabric and cushioning, but each one takes a few minutes. After I get them all threaded, I'll have to secure the cords underneath to get that nice dimpled look on top, but you can see how it's going to turn out:

So yay for that!

Even better, though, is that I decided to finally do something with the front entry way of our house. Until today, it's just been a coat rack with some boxes that we didn't know what to do with. We still don't really have anywhere to put the boxes, since we don't have any cabinets or shelves to store things in/on, but I hid them somewhere else and went to town on the front room. Here it is in its "before" state:

I guess I should note that we moved that big table and chairs in from outside for Thanksgiving. It's really more of an "outside" table, and we've used it for grilling up until now, but we needed more seating/serving space for guests, so we brought it in and it hasn't made it back outside yet. Anyway, here, look at the after shot:

I haven't decided what to put on the wall above the chairs yet, but it's sure crying out for something. I might be adding more snowflakes to the ceiling as time goes on, but what I really want to do is paint. I have all these really great ideas for painting, but I haven't gotten the go-ahead from our land lady yet. I think she'll be okay with it... I hope so! I'm getting really excited about it, so I hope it works out!

Well, I'm tired, for some reason. I think I'm going to sit in my new sitting area and watch TV on my computer or something.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Much Ado About Nothing Much

Partially against my better judgment, I'm going to make a blog post! It's almost 10:00 a.m. as I sit down to write this, and I have to leave to go to Phorum soon (our weekly phonetics-phonology discussion group). Today is going to be weird... I have a weird schedule lined up. I already did my morning run with the dogs, and I normally have French practice on Mondays from 9:30 to 10:30 or so, but my conversation partner canceled on me today, and I now I don't quite know what to do with myself.

I have a ton of reading to get through this week, so I should probably be taking this 40 minutes to get to work on it, but I don't know if I could really get into a concentration groove enough to make it worth it. Phorum is 11:00 - 12:00, then I guess I'm going to come back home and do some reading, then there's a talk this evening from 4:00 to 5:30, followed by a wine and cheese reception. It's always hard to sneak out before the reception, so I'll probably hang around at that for a while and then come home to walk the dogs and do more reading.

I have a big paper due in the next two weeks that I'm so not ready to write. That's what all the reading's about. If I actually do background reading this week, writing the paper next week won't be quite as painful. I hope.

I had a good long weekend. Hardly did any work, which probably wasn't the greatest idea, but it was nice to just hang out. Roger picked up a new router and two new video games at Best Buy, so he hooked up his Xbox to the router and the video projector and played video games all day Sunday. It was strangely comforting, having video game background noise!

I wasted some time at Barnes and Noble on Saturday, stopped by Joann Fabric and bought some new yarn, and started making myself a hat. This was probably also not the greatest idea, because now I'm slightly obsessed with finishing my hat (and scarf! and gloves!) right when I should be doing a lot of reading. But it's going to be so pretty and match the raincoat Roger got me for my birthday...

I also made a huge pot of chili yesterday, which totally hit the spot. Unfortunately, we're out of saltines, but it's been pretty darn good, just the same.

I kind of want to talk about running, so bear with me. The weather here is so unbelievably fantastically perfect for running, and I've been doing a lot of lit lately. Well. "A lot" is all relative, now isn't it? My mileage is still considerably lower than when I'm marathon training, because that one 15+ mile run every week makes a big difference in total mileage. But I'm doing 5 or 6 days a week, usually 4-6 miles at a time with one slightly longer run of 7 or 8 miles. Yesterday I did just shy of 7, and it was so nice. The fall leaves are just now starting to be really vibrant here, and the mornings are crisp and chilly, and something about the low angle of the sun just makes me feel... special when I head out for a run. I know that sounds really weird, but when I'm running with my dogs through the chilly, leafy Berkeley neighborhoods in the early morning, when hardly anyone else is out and I can see my breath and feel my skin tingling, I kind of feel like, "All of this is mine," like the fact that I'm out appreciating the beauty of it all means it belongs to me, and like I could conquer the world one run at a time if I really set my mind to it.

I'm getting much better at the hills, too. I used to avoid the hills at least a few days a week to give myself a break, but that's really hard to do around here. The only way to avoid them is to stay within a half mile radius immediately north and west of here, and that gets boring pretty quick, let me tell you. Also, all the rich people live in the hills, so that's where all the nice neighborhoods with the pretty leaves are. It also means fewer major streets and less traffic up there. So anyway, I've been hitting the hills almost every day, and I can feel it working different muscles and slowly getting easier. On the way up, I can feel it in my calves and my hips (running uphill strengthens your hips, isn't that funny?), and on the way down I feel it in my quads, since they do the bulk of the shock absorption.

But it's kind of like starting running all over again; maybe that's why I'm learning to love the hills. Running is hard at first. I remember starting out and only being able to go for about a mile at a time, and then being so sore and even sick to my stomach afterwards! I'm so stubborn, though. When I first started, I went every single day, which is pretty much the opposite of what you're supposed to do when you're starting out, but I was 15, so the rules are probably different. I would run down to the end of the street, which was about a mile, and then walk back. Then I got to the point where I could run down, turn around, and come back about halfway. Pretty soon, I could run all the way down and back, and then I had to start branching out.

I remember what it's like when you first catch your breath while you're running. When you first start out, it's miserable hard work, and you can't fathom how anyone could ever enjoy it. And then, one day, you're running, and you realize you've managed to catch your breath. And suddenly it all makes sense - this is why people can keep going for so many miles - they're not completely miserable the whole time!

It's easy to become complacent, though. On the one hand, I still love it that I can just head out for a run, and I feel very lucky that I find it so enjoyable and easy. On the other hand, it's very easy to quit pushing yourself. You find a comfortable pace and a comfortable distance, and that's where you stay. I put in my 4 - 6 miles every day, right around an 8:45/mile pace, probably, and that's that.

So the hills are good for me. Working different muscles and getting out of breath (even though I'm starting to catch my breath on the hills too!) is good for me. I am a big proponent of shaking things up.

Well, it's time for me to get ready to go. Lots of reading to do this afternoon, lots of chili to eat and tea to drink. I hope you're enjoying your fall too.

(micro-post)

Since I don't have time for a proper post, and I wouldn't know how to organize right now anyway, here are some things on my mind right this very second:

- I'm so glad my grandpa is doing better. He's been in the hospital for almost two weeks now after having a heart attack and maybe a small stroke, but last I heard, he was recovering very well and will probably get to go home soon.

- I like that the sun rises earlier now, but it is a little bit of a bummer walking the dogs in the dark at 5:30.

- I am living off of cream of broccoli and leek soup, and it doesn't show signs of getting old anytime soon. Yay food processor!!

- I have way more reading to get done tonight than I'd like to think about right now. Monday evening through Tuesday evening are usually pretty hectic.

- I still don't know what I'm writing one of my final papers about. Ugh.

- Our house is so warm and toasty right now. Must be the contrast caused by the fact that it's finally somewhat chilly outside - 45 degrees this morning! Fantastic!

- I didn't ride my bike today because the back tire keeps going flat. I should test it out tonight before I try to ride it to campus for my 9 am class.

- Thanksgiving is coming! Roger's birthday is coming! They're on the same day! I think that means I have to make a pumpkin pie and a key lime pie.

I guess it's time to walk the dogs now...

I live by the Bay.

And here is a picture to prove it:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

hello/how are you: imashna zhata kangi

I'm fine: alizha mikani

do you speak Quichua?: kang rimangi runa shimipi?

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

goodbye: ashta kashkama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Being Home

I think everyone who reads this knows by now what my "secret" was, but in case I have somehow attracted anonymous internet stalkers who need to know, the secret is out: I was in Illinois last week! (And it was wonderful!)

The "secret" aspect was because we (read: my mom) wanted to surprise my Grandma. So Jimmy and I "secretly" flew into Bloomington last Friday morning and went straight to Grandma and Grandpa's house to "surprise" them. No heart attacks were had, but there was some crying and lots of hugging, and thus began my lovely weekend back in Illinois.

I got to see lots of people I had missed very much, and I spent the rest of my time soaking up the delicious Midwest-in-the-summer-ness of it all. I loved the heat and humidity of August; the sweat that drips down your back from just walking around outside, how much more tasty a glass of cool water is, and the way the air is just cool enough after the sun goes down. I took every opportunity to drive through the country and admire the long stretches of open farmland, the corn still lush and green before it starts yellowing and gets harvested, rolled down the windows and drank up the stillness of summer nights with clear starry skies and the droning hum of cicadas and crickets in the fields. Yes, it was very good to be home.

Honestly, I was worried about coming back to California. There's just so much wonderful, beautiful space in Illinois, and I remembered the claustrophobic feeling of first moving here and never being able to get away from people/things/cars/houses EVERYWHERE. Row upon row of little California bungalows set so close to the street that they just make you want to scream!

But get this: it's nice to be home in California too. I couldn't believe it - now that I'm back, I love being back, and it really feels like home too. Sure, I miss the wide open spaces and the homey familiarity of Champaign-Urbana, but it's absolutely gorgeous here right now. I love that it's just chilly enough in the mornings and evenings to warrant a jacket or a sweatshirt, but that when the fog burns off in the middle of the day, it's getting up into the 70's now, with big blue sunny skies and a clear view of the Bay once you get up the hill just a little bit. I love that it smells like flowers just walking down the street, and that the Berkeley farmer's market in August has to be just about the greatest thing in the world.

But maybe most of all, I love our new house. It was so very nice to come home to. So very nice, in fact, that I thought I should share some pictures with you now that we have our stuff everywhere. And I decided to take pictures without cleaning so you can see what it actually looks like. So without further ado: House With Stuff.


Entryway, looking towards the kitchen and dining nook.

Kitchen, looking towards the dining nook and front windows.

Rye enjoying the sunspot created by our skylights. He'll follow it across the floor all day if you let him.

Bathroom. I decided to go with curtain panels rather than curtains for here and the big room, since they filter the light without blocking too much out.

Our room. Nothing special. It's small but does the job - room for our bed and two dressers, which you can't see in this picture. I used all of our pictures/decorations for other rooms, so it's very zen right now. I decided to go with it and bought a shelf for some candles. I might keep it minimalist; it's actually kind of nice.

My office. Whoo! We finally got my desk and bookshelf put together the week before I left for Illinois, and I put up some fun decorations. I like it. :)

Other side of my office. Pictures of Paris on the wall above my bike.

Roger's office nook in the big room.

Huck sleeping on the couch below my curtain panels. There are enough black ones to cover all the windows, so we can use our movie projector! That's it sitting on the shelf above the couch.

Rye chilling in the backyard. That dog loves sleeping in the sun.

Huckleberry posing for the camera.

Our apple tree! This thing just doesn't stop. It's actually three different species grafted together, so we have Golden Delicious, Macintosh, and something else (maybe Gala?), but they ripen at different times. So the Golden Delicious are pretty much done now, but the Macs are ripe for the pickin'. I've already made two big batches of apple butter, plus multiple apple pies, though. Other ideas for things to do with apples?

Looking at the back of the house, Huckleberry, and our "grillin' table". Now all we need is a grill!

This always happens: I had other things to tell you, but now I'm tired of typing. I hope you all are well, and I'll try to update again soon. Classes start on Wednesday!

Secret-secret, I've got a secret

(Do you know that song? I have no idea who sings it. Anyway, it's true, I do have a secret, but I can't tell you what it is yet. If you don't know it already, you will find out very soon.)

More exciting things going on in life! As of this week, I have been named the new coordinator for our department's Phonetics and Phonology Forum ("Phorum"). I am very excited about this, but a little weirded out. I have the habit of saying, "I dunno what' going on, I'm just a first year!" But now I'm in charge of organizing this thing, and I'm also the treasurer for the Berkeley Linguistics Society, and it makes me feel like I should probably know what's going on.

Phorum meets once a week in the Phonology Lab, and all the people who study phonetics and phonology (grad students and professors) get together and we have a speaker on a cool and interesting topic. Well, it is now my responsibility to find cool and interesting speakers and arrange for them to come talk to us. This is very cool because it means I can invite whoever I want, but it also means if I can't get someone scheduled, I have to figure out how to fill in the gaps! Our first meeting is going to be August 31st, and I have a grad student from the Neuroscience Institute scheduled to give a talk on auditory cues for gender identification in humans and animals. She usually studies birdsong, but has been working on a project on human speech. Then I scared one of our undergrads into presenting her senior honors thesis, but she's very bright and her thesis was great, so I'm sure she'll do fine.

And, my classmates and I are currently working on putting together this year's meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. My job there is primarily to secure funding for the conference, which consists mostly of applying for grants and writing letters. We're also in the process of inviting speakers for that, too, and we've had a good time coming up with our themes for this year; our over-arching theme is "Writing Systems and Orthography", and our special session theme is going to be "Language Isolates and Orphans". Language isolates are languages that are not known to be related to any other living language, and I guess orphans are languages whose history is unclear, or which are the only remaining member of a language family. (We made that last term up.)

Anyway, I think it's going to be a very cool conference, and I think we're going to have some very cool Phorum talks, so I'm excited about this semester.

I'm trying not to think about the fact that I only have two semesters until I have to take my master's exam. Eeep. But then I will (probably) have an M.A. in linguistics from UC Berkeley, and that's pretty cool!

Also, I have an idea for my dissertation, but I feel like that might be kind of absurd. I think I want to look at differences between little boys' and girls' speech before they hit puberty and try to figure out how much of them are due to differing anatomy, and how much are learned behaviors. It's language acquisition, it's hardcore articulatory phonetics and anatomy, it's fine-grained acoustic differences and how people perceive them... it's basically everything I'm interested in rolled up in one (potentially huge) project. I haven't run it by my advisor yet, and he might laugh at me for coming up with a dissertation topic after my first year, but it's never too early to start tossing ideas around!

Well. I probably need to get off of here for now. Sorry, this was way more boring than I anticipated. Next time I'm going to try to tell you about our new neighborhood and how much I like it. :)

Moving and running and visits, oh my!

This update will probably be all over the place. I'm sitting in the office on campus, where I'm technically "on duty" but have nothing too important to do. The LSA Institute is still going on (2.5 more weeks!), and I'm on technology duty, which means I go around to all the classrooms at the beginning of the class period and make sure everyone's computer/projector is working, and then I sit in the main office for the rest of the shift in case of any major breakdowns. In which case I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to fix things, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't come up!

Anyway, the last two weeks have been crazy. Crazy. We're moved in, and most of our stuff is put away, at least to a respectable extent. I'm still way behind on laundry, and I don't know when that's going to be rectified, but I'll get there in the next week or so, I guess. The first few days we were there (a week ago now), I was really good about doing a little bit of arranging/putting away every day. But then Roger's dad got here on Thursday night, and we hung out with him for a few days, and I ran my marathon on Sunday, and now it's back to the ol' grind and it's already Tuesday!

I may type up a proper race report in the future, but for now, suffice it to say that the race was great and really really fun and I'm very glad I did it. I was a little worried going in, because my training went something like this:

February: start running with Sarah and building up long runs from 12 miles to 17 or so.
March and April: keep building and get up to 20 miles. Run Big Sur at the end of April.
May: recover from Big Sur for two weeks, then do one long run.
June: two or three more long runs.
July: plan far more long runs than I actually do. I don't know if I actually did any really long ones in July. Get worried that I'm not ready... then... marathon!

It really snuck up on me. Between the 4th and moving and the Institute, suddenly it was time for the race and I realized I hadn't done a long run in about a month. It actually turned out great, though, because it was enough time to get well rested and fully recovered but not lose too much fitness.

And the race itself was great. I came in at 4:00:08, which is just over a 9 min/mile pace. I was secretly hoping to come in under 4 hours again, but not being very optimistic about it, since SF is a considerably harder course than Columbus (my last full marathon). But to my surprise, I definitely had the fitness to do it - I would've easily made it if I hadn't gotten trapped behind hundreds of people on the Golden Gate Bridge. Since I waited until the very last minute to sign up, I was given a late start time (about an hour after I should've according to my pace), which means I started with all the people hoping to finish under 4:45 instead of under 4:00. So I was already dodging and passing a lot of people for the first few miles, and then we hit the bridge, and there was only so much I could do. The lanes were very, very narrow, and I did my best to pass people without being a jerk and pushing them out of the way. On the one hand, it was good in that it made me reign it in so I wasn't completely dead at the end. On the other hand, I was only 8 seconds over 4 hours, and it would've been nice to have that 3 at the beginning of my time!

Anyway, after the bridge, I was able to pick it up quite a bit, and I actually ran negative splits for the whole race. (Non-runner translation: I consistently got faster from the beginning to the end.) The best part was that my legs didn't cramp nearly as bad as in Columbus; I learned my lesson from the first time and was careful to hydrate throughout the race. My right calf started bothering me around mile 23, but didn't get really painful until mile 24, and never really seized up as badly as in Columbus. I was tired the rest of the day on Sunday and went to bed early, and my quads were pretty sore yesterday, but I'm only a little sore today.

The main thing is that I need to try to get more sleep this week to let my body repair itself, and it's hard to make that happen when I have so much stuff going on. The dogs still need to be walked, food still needs to be bought and prepared, I still have to be on campus by 8:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, etc. I'm enjoying my classes, but I must admit, it will be very nice when they're over. And then I'll have a week and half before my "real" classes start.

Okay, I think I'm done for now. I'm going to finish my lunch and try to get some work done. More updates later!

Oh, P.S. to my grandma, Michelle, and anyone else who was wondering: the stairs in our big room go up to a second story. On the second story is another bedroom and a bathroom; however, our landlady uses this space for storage, so we just keep the door at the top of the stairs closed.

New House Pictures

We just got back from signing the lease for our new house, and while our new landlady admired Roger's bike, I was busy snapping pictures.

I'll be moving small things in this week, and we're planning on finishing up the big stuff on Saturday and spending our first night there that night.

Awesome rec room:


I think this will be the seating area. The half bathroom is on the right, and the laundry/storage room is on the left:

Looking through the kitchen towards the dining area:


Looking down the hall towards the rec room/backyard:


Bathroom (this shot is for my mom):


Entry area as seen from dining room:


Looking into the kitchen from the dining room:


Looking at the dining room from the entry area:


The Galapagos Islands on our kitchen floor:


Looking through the rec room into the backyard, from the hallway:


The other side of the rec room (can you tell this is my favorite room?):

Looking towards the hallway and laundry room. I'm hoping to fit the dog crates under the stairs:


Backyard:


I love it!

What is wrong with these people?

First let me state that I do not believe in watering lawns. If you live in a climate where grass is not supposed to grow, do not try to make grass grow. (Exhibit A: Arizona) Especially since California has been in a drought situation for the past few years! And we're in the dry season anyway, for crying out loud! We only have two seasons, and their names tell you when things are supposed to grow and when they're not!

I say this because I experienced another stunning display of Berkeley hypocrisy today. These people are all high and mighty about saving the environment, and yet they maintain their unnaturally lush, green yards year round. Today I was outside actually doing some gardening - trimming back a bush and doing some weeding - and my neighbor across the street (the one I particularly don't like) comes over and says, "You know, when you first moved in here, there was a sprinkler system that would come on and water the plants. We have one just like it, it's really simple..."

Awkward pause while he stares at me condescendingly.

"Uh yeah, I know," I say. "We turned it off because it was using so much water."

"Is it broken?"

"No, we just turned it off. It was really expensive."

"Did you turn the water down or turn off the timer? Because I know how the timer works. I can show you right now, if you want." And he starts heading for the side of our house!

I'm stunned. In retrospect, I should've countered his unbelievable rudeness by launching into the rant I started this post with and trying to make him feel guilty for deepening the drought with his ubergreen landscaping. Instead, I said something like, "It's in the backyard" to stop him from tinkering with our watering system. And then he offered to come over some time and turn it back on for us, and I said thanks and hoped that he would go away faster.

I can't believe these people are so obsessed with our yard! Being obsessed with how your own yard looks is weird enough, but other people's too? First the weeds, now the fact that our grass is turning brown. It's supposed to turn brown, you idiot. I refuse to water the grass for 8-9 months out of the year. I take that as a sign that we do not live in a climate that supports grassy lawns.

The thing that really gets me is that he's not saying it in a friendly way. It's not like he's genuinely concerned that we might not know how to work our sprinkler system. He's just informing us that he does not approve of the fact that some of our grass is turning brown, and he intends to do something about it. I would like to add that our front landscaping is really not that bad. The plants are still quite nice, there are absolutely no weeds (anymore), and there are lots of purple flowers. It's just that some of the grass has started to go dormant because it hasn't rained since March, and it's not going to rain again until November.

I am so glad we're moving.

July is for new adventures.

A quick, picture-heavy update before I go to dinner. We're going for Ethiopian food tonight. Should be fun!

So one adventure I will be embarking upon in July is the San Francisco Marathon!! That's right, I finally took a deep breath and signed up today! I put in a good 20-miler this morning (12 miles with my new running partner and 8 miles with the dogs; it's good to break it up a little like that), and it went off without a hitch and I feel weirdly good right now. Not ravenously hungry, not particularly tired, and only a little stiff. So I think I'm ready! This will be me in one month:



Aaaahh! Races are so exciting! And a 5:30 start time in downtown San Francisco, plus running across the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn will undoubtedly be awesome.


Adventure #2 (which will actually transpire before Adventure #1) is, of course, that we're moving. I walked by the new house and snapped a few quick shots the other day. As I said before, it's nothing particularly lovely to look at from the outside, so part of me wants to not even post these shots, but I realize that curious minds want to know. :)

That last one is from a little down the street so you can see the neighborhood a little bit. We're both so excited to get moved in! Can't wait to be there, get settled, and show y'all what the inside looks like.

The only other thing I would add is that I've been working on a very cool art project that I'm extremely pleased with and proud of. Remember I told you about the Galapagos Islands in black ink on our new kitchen floor? Well, I've been contemplating decorating our little dining room table for some time now, and I was thinking of putting flowers all over it to go with the flora/fauna theme of the floor. But then I thought, y'know, as much as I love biology, I'm a linguist, and I should do something that reflects what I do while still complementing the aesthetics of the floor. So this is what I came up with:


Basically, I covered the table and chairs with the words "one language is never enough" in several dozen different languages. It was particularly fun because I haven't done an art project in a long time, and because I was able to come up with something original that actually turned out how I envisioned it! I'm particularly pleased with the the non-Roman scripts, e.g. the Chinese and Japanese you see in the last picture below. They were challenging because I free-handed it all; I printed off little strips of paper with the words I wanted, carefully copied them onto the table in pencil, then went over them and jazzed them up a bit with black permanent marker.




I actually have 2 or 3 more to finish, but the vast majority of it is finished.

Okay, I think I'm done for now. Love to all!

House!

We have a house!! I wish I had pictures to share with you, but I don't yet, so you will have to settle for a verbal description (edit: and a roughly sketched floorplan) right now.

So I posted a "housing wanted" ad on Craigslist a while back, and I haven't been getting much feedback as a result. This is undoubtedly because I specifically said that we have two large dogs and would like a house with a yard for them, if possible. That's enough to scare most landlords away, I assure you.

Yesterday, we helped my friend John move into his new place in Oakland, and it is really, really great. I know we were both feeling pretty jealous - it's this awesome, great apartment that's bigger than our house now and has fantastic windows, a widow's walk, and a sun room, up on the third floor. It wasn't that much fun actually doing the moving, but that's what friends are for, and we were happy to help, it was just a lot of stairs for one day.

Anyway, we got home all sweaty and tired, and I checked my email and had a really nice email from a lady saying she's a dog lover with a house for rent in South Berkeley that sounds like it might work for us. I called her up, she happened to be there, and I rode my bike over to have a look at it.

Now, it's not that fantastic looking from the outside. That's not to say it's in any way ugly, it's just wholly unremarkable. But as soon as I walked in the front door, I was immediately impressed. It is so airy, bright, and cheerful, and even though there's no furniture in it, very homey. Just inside the front door is a little living room/sitting area, and to the right is a little dining nook. The whole front part of the house has vaulted wood ceilings with these great skylights. Then to the north of the dining area (the upper right quadrant of the front part, if you will) is the kitchen. I love the kitchen. It's somewhat set off from the front part of the house, in that there's a wall between it and the living room area, but it opens to the hallway on one side, and on the side that leads to the dining room, there's a little bar with these cool wine racks on top. Hang on, I'm going to draw a diagram of the floor plan, because this is getting confusing.


And oh, the skylights! If I remember right, there are two skylights over the living room, one over the dining area, and a big one over the kitchen. It's so bright and sunny, I loved it. And, I love this part too, the owner is a biologist, and she has a design in the shape of the Galapagos Islands on the kitchen floor! It is so cool! (The Galapagos is where Charles Darwin did most of his research, and with Roger and me both being very science-minded folks, we both loved this.) She actually worked in the Galapagos for three years, and when she redid the floor, she thought it would be cool to incorporate that part of her life into her new house.

Okay, right, so, all the floors are hardwood. (Yay for no carpet.) Down the hallway is a full bathroom immediately on the left, then the two bedrooms right across from each other, and at the end of the hall is a huge awesome rec-room. It's like a big family room, and we are so so excited about it. There will be room to have one corner be an office area, then one part will be a sitting area (eventually we want to buy a cool projector so we can have people over for movie nights), and we'll even have plenty of space left over for the dog crates to be in one corner. Then there's a utility room with a brand new washer and dryer and storage space along the side, and another half bathroom with an awesome brand new shower stall. I think we'll keep the nice air mattress we have now, and use the rec room as a guest room when people come to visit.

So at the end of the rec room is a big, nice patio door that leads to the back yard. The house is on a very long, narrow lot, so there's a somewhat narrow but decent sized backyard for the dogs, and it extends all along the side of the house for a nifty little dog run area. The fence is very nice and we won't have to worry about it falling apart! And there's an apple tree and a nectarine tree back there too, plus a garage that we won't be able to use, but that's fine. The owner is using it for storage for her stuff, and she said she can make some room for us too, but we'll never be able to put a car in there or anything.

I wish I had pictures to show you. It is so, so great, and we are so excited about it. It will be ready for move-in by July 15th, and I'll be sure to take pictures then. Oh, it's also about a half mile northwest of Ashby BART station, so Roger will be able to walk to BART to go to work! And it's even closer to campus than our house now, so I can easily walk, bike, or take the bus to get to class, just like I do now.

Ahhhhh relief. It was just getting to the point where we were getting a little antsy, and now of course we're really glad we waited. I kept telling myself all along that we should wait until we really find the right place for us, and we did and now it paid off!

So. Our new address, starting in mid-July will be 1633 Ward St, Berkeley, CA 94703. (If you type it into Google Maps and hit "Street View", you can get a look at the front of the house, if you're so inclined.) Easy to get to by public transit, lots of room for entertaining, no excuses for not having visitors!

Hooray!

Heeeeere, house-y house-y house-y...

An update! Because I'm tired of scouring Craigslist for a place to live, but it's not quite time to walk the dogs yet.
Whaddya think? Maybe we'll just move to this here house in the Berkeley hills. Not a bad view, right? Let's check out the specs:

5 bed/4 bath
Rent: $14,800/month (not a typo)
Deposit: $28,000

Haha! Hahaha! Best part:

"Entertaining friends and clients in this unique and magnificent setting is a must. Are you a ROCK STAR, CEO or PRO ATHLETE? If so, this home is for you!"


Uhhhh yeah. We'll keeping looking for our 2 bedroom house with a postage stamp lawn that will still cost us a small fortune, thankyouverymuch.

In other news, um, nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm just wiling away the days reading random books and articles (but nothing important and/or related to school), running my dogs, and doing the occasional housework. I did laundry this week, that was exciting. Baked brownies and ate almost the whole pan by myself. Pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, and got a nice blister on the inside of my thumb.

The thing is, it doesn't even feel like summer. Yes, I'm languishing away, getting to that point in my boredom where even though I know there are things I could be doing, if I would try a bit harder to think of them, my motivation is flagging and I've gotten into a little rut of nothingness. And everyone knows that's what summer's all about. But summer just isn't summer without 90 degree heat and air that's thick and swampy with humidity. This Bay Area "summer" is just like Bay Area spring, and not really much different than Bay Area winter, to tell you the truth. Sure, it's only cloudy in the mornings now, and it blows out and clears up around 1:00 every afternoon, but it still only gets up to 65 during the day, and it's still cool enough to sleep with a blanket at night. I'm not complaining, per se - I do realize that would be rather ridiculous - but it's weird. I'm not used to wearing long pants and sometimes a sweater in June.

It's actually warmer today, though, and I think it's supposed to be in the 70's for the next few days. We might go into the city tomorrow and get croissants and coffee at some French bakery. Roger said someone from work brought in pastries from this place called La Boulange and the croissants were awesome - real French style, nice and golden brown and crispy on the outside and everything. So maybe we'll have a date!!


Well, I don't have much else to say. I will most definitely update as soon as we find a new place to live, though, and that should hopefully be sometime relatively soon. There are two houses I have my fingers crossed for right now, but I haven't heard back from either landlord, so that's probably not the best sign...

It's okay. Life is good and we will find something soon, and then I'll let you know all about it!