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?