Feeling Like a Rock Star

Today, quite simply, rocked. My phone rang at 7:00 this morning with a 202 area code, and since I knew one of the fellowships I applied for is required to be announced before March 1st, I had a good feeling.

And now I have a great feeling because I HAVE A FOUR YEAR FELLOWSHIP FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.

That's right, my friends, I am a newly-named Jacob K. Javits Fellow, and my tuition, fees, and living stipend will be paid for by YOU, the taxpayers of our great nation, for the next four years.

Did I mention how much that rocks? With the California budget in such a sorry state of affairs, it is such a relief to know for absolutely, positively certain that I have funding until I finish my dissertation.

Rock.

In other news, I got my hair cut today! I finally bit the bullet and went super short. I think it's a pretty good Berkeley grad student haircut, don't you?

It kind of freaks me out how much I look like my mom in these pictures.

Ok, there are too many boys rough-housing in this room and I can't concentrate anymore, so I have to go!

Rain, rain, go away...

Ok, Northern California. I get it. You rain a lot. I know my impressions of you have been unjustly skewed because I arrived here during a drought year, but now that it's been raining for the past four days, I believe you. The "wet season" does exist after all. You win. Rainy winters. Ok. Can you cut it out now?

Seriously. It's been raining for a few days now, and I'm kind of ready for a break from it, but I feel bad saying that because we really, really need the rain. This is the first time it's actually rained for more than a few hours at once since we've been here! And once we hit March/April, it probably won't really rain again until November. So I should just suck it up and deal with it and stop being so selfish. But I had to take the bus to the grocery store in the rain today because we were almost completely out of food and I couldn't put it off any longer, and it was pretty nul. Plus, the department's hosting a linguistics conference this weekend (did I mention that before?), so I've been forced to be out and about and my pants and socks and shoes get all wet, and then I'm cold all day.

Waah, waah, waah, I know. Here are some good things about my life.

I got to see George yesterday! For anyone reading this who has no idea who I'm talking about or why I'm so excited he's in town, George (and Matt and Dan) are my best friends from studying abroad in France, and I miss them all terribly. George is doing a graduate program in French literature at UC Irvine right now, and he and his friend drove up here Friday night to visit San Francisco. So I met them in the city yesterday for lunch, and then we went to Ghirardelli Square and got massive ice cream sundaes drenched with chocolate that we couldn't finish. It was drizzling in the city too, but we hiked up a HUGE hill and stopped at the top and looked out across the Bay. Alcatraz was right in front of us, and I pointed out the clock tower on campus waaaay in the distance, in the Berkeley hills, and the clouds were beautiful. We don't usually get interesting clouds here; most days, the sky is either completely blue or completely flat gray. Sometimes we get white little wisps of cirro-nimbus clouds drifting across the sky, but very rarely do we have the big, marshmallowy cumulus clouds we had yesterday. And the colors were great too - grays, blues, purples, and even pinks as the sun was setting.

So we stood on the side of the hill in the rain for a few minutes, looking at the landscape, and then we walked down Lombard Street ("the Crookedest Street in the World") to their hotel, so they could give me a ride back to BART (the train back to Berkeley). We weren't on the crooked side of Lombard Street, though; we walked down the other side, which is perfectly straight, but still not boring. It's still on some kind of crazy 45 degree angle or something.

I don't know what else to say. We don't have class tomorrow, but our conference is still going on, so I have to go to that in the afternoon. I hope the rain will let up in the morning so I can run with my dogs. Then I'll take a hot shower, drink some tea, and enjoy my warm house while I get some work done before I head in to campus.

Sounds good to me.

Excited

Today is a great day so far!  Here is why:

1) While running with the dogs this morning, we got caught in pounding hail.  No joke.  It was honestly laughable, it was so ridiculous.  Just out of nowhere - sunny when we left the house, 30 minutes later we're getting pummeled with hard rain and ice chips.  Bizarre.  Then by the time we were soaked to the bone and I was bright pink, it let up and there were blue skies again.  So we kept running.

2) I ran into Tera on campus this morning!  I noticed her right away because she looked so cute in her bright blue jacket with her pretty red hair!  We might do something this weekend, but she's always so busy and I have a lot to do this weekend, too... but if that doesn't work out, I was still really glad to see her.

3) I have another potential experiment in the works.  Maybe.  So the Illinois conference didn't work out, because I decided not to pursue that syntax project I told you about, for now at least.  But today I went in to be a pilot subject in a experiment one of our 5th year grad students is working on, and afterwards I stayed and talked to him about it, and we came up with some good ideas.  He doesn't really have time to do it, though, so I might jump in and partially take over.  Maybe.

4) I have another potential experiment in the works.  Maybe.  This is not the same one as #3.  My experimental phonetics class is really, really fun, and we're starting a new unit next week that I'm excited about.  I have a cool idea for an experiment for that class, too, so if I get my act together, I may get to run my VERY OWN subjects for that one.

5) The fact that these potential experiments have got me so excited, even though they're just cute little ones that aren't going to be earth-shatteringly interesting or anything, makes me happy about being in grad school, and makes me happy about going into academia.  Sometimes when I have a lot of work, I start to think "Ugh, is this really what I want to do with my life?" but other times, I get so excited that I know this is the right place for me.  I also really enjoy the flexibility of having an academic life - I always have work to do, so I'm never bored, but really, I can do it whenever I want.  This works really well when Roger's working full time, because I can run errands and do fun things interspersed throughout the day (get groceries at noon, get coffee with friends at 2:00, whatever fits my class schedule), then walk the dogs, cozy up with a cup of tea and read.  As long as I don't let the workload stress me out, it really is a pretty awesome life.

6) It will be an even awesomer life if I get a fellowship from the federal government for next year!  I'm starting to get anxious to hear back from the two I applied for, but I probably won't hear for another month.  If I don't get either of them, I'll be teaching next year, and that's exciting too!

Life is good.

Oh! and 7) George is getting into town tonight, and we might meet up for lunch or dinner tomorrow and/or Sunday.

Well, time to get some reading done on this gray, chilly, drizzly, cozy day.

Wistful

I'm not exactly sure why, but I've been feeling wistful the past week or two. Like, starting to get subtle yearnings for home. There are several factors related to this development:

- I was looking at the webpage for the inaugural Illinois Marathon the other day. Man, I really want to run that race sometime. Maybe next year? But silly me, I traced over the whole course map, and it really made me miss running with Second Wind. A lot of the course follows the old marathon training runs. It's funny how grids of streets on a map can bring back so many memories.

- I've been reading James's blog (hi, James :) ), and his photography has developed this really dreamy, impressionistic view of C-U. Since we ran in a lot of the same places, I think we had a lot of the same visions of Urbana, and his pictures jar those images in my memory, like seeing the town pass through my peripheral vision during a twilight run.

- I miss all of you whenever you leave me a comment on these blog postings.

But anyway. My classes are still really good, and I become more and more sure that this is the right school for me as time goes on, which is a great feeling. I'm so glad to be solidifying in that direction, and not the opposite - if I were becoming more and more sure I don't want to write my dissertation here, I'd be pretty miserable!

Hey, speaking of being miserable in graduate school... my friend George will be in town this weekend! I'm so excited; I haven't seen him in almost a year, and it'll be fantastic to catch up. On a whim (the combination of my wistfulness and the knowledge that George is coming), I was looking back through old journal entries from Paris tonight. Here's part of one about our trip to Greece that made me laugh:

So we got in to Athens around 12:30 the Thursday night before break, and it was surprisingly easy to find the bus to the port, where our hotel was. I had my first experience of being paralyzed and having to ask George to say things for me when we bought tickets, which was odd, but fine. We get on the bus and this guy immediately asks the three of us, in French, with a Greek accent, if we’re French. Maybe because I was wearing French clothes and I might be pulling off the European look these days? Who knows. But we weren’t even speaking French at the time, I don’t think. So we tell him we’re not French in French, and George says something to him in Greek, so he says something to me and Matt in Greek when George goes up to validate his ticket, and Matt and I tell him in French we’re sorry but we don’t speak Greek, and then George comes back and says something in either English, French, or Greek… I forget, I just know the guy kept getting more and more confused, until he eventually says in French, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I understand where you’re from….” So we explained that we’re Americans studying abroad in France for the year, that Matt and I only speak English and French, but that George speaks Greek too. The first of several interesting language situations.

So we’re on the bus, headed for the port, surprisingly not tired, especially considering I was up the entire night before writing my stupid paper for my Paris IV class that I ended up not even being able to turn in because there were manifestants [protesters] outside of Malesherbes [the school building] because of the whole CPE thing [proposed new employment policy] and no one could get in. Anyway… we’re clipping along at some ungodly speed, dodging other vehicles as though on a moped, when we finally get on the highway that goes around the perimeter of the city and the traffic up ahead is at a standstill. The bus driver pulls up on the sidewalk for some reason… it seems in retrospect that it might have been to let ambulances and police cars through, but I honestly can’t say whether I’m making that up so it’ll make more sense or not… and just stops. This guy in the very back of the bus starts yelling at the bus driver, who starts yelling back, and Matt and I have no idea what’s going on, but George is laughing and promising to translate in a second. Then the doors of the bus open and everyone but us files out and starts smoking. It turns out the guy was telling the bus driver if he was going to be an idiot and just pull over on the sidewalk like that, he might as well be reasonable and open the doors to let him go out and have a cigarette. Apparently everyone thought that was a good idea. Eventually the bus driver started yelling at everyone to get back in again so we could go, and we made it to the port and to the hotel around 2:00, I think. It was a perfectly Greek start to things. I really like how everyone yells at everyone else, but it’s like… good-natured. It’s cool; that’s just how they talk. They get excited about things.

I'm not sure why I wanted to share that, but I did. Ok, it's late, I'm tired, I have to run the dogs in the morning, so I'm going to bed. Love to you all.