a list of things that are happening

I never know how to spell the word 'happening'.  I guess that's right, because my spell checker isn't underlining it, but doesn't it look wrong with two p's and then the one n?  I always want it to be 'happenning."  But nope, there goes the red spell check line.  And I guess it looks even more wrong like that, anyway.

I'm tired, but my cold is finally almost gone.  I've been sniffly for nearly three weeks now, and it hasn't been a lot of fun.  I've felt mostly fine all this time, but I've had a stuffy nose and a tickly throat for a while now.  I haven't been running since September 10th, in fact, and I know that because I've starting keeping track of my mileage again.  19 days without a run!  I don't even know the last time that happened.  Probably when we first moved here, over three years ago, and I was too claustrophobic to go running on the sidewalk.

I'm going to see Robert Plant tomorrow!  (Robert Plant!!)  Do you realize how amazing that is??  I'm leaving right after phonetics tomorrow, taking the train to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and seeing Robert Plant for free.  So cool.

I'm feeling guilty because I told my friend/research collaborator I would send her some stuff by today, and I still haven't sent it.  I'm trying to psych myself up to work on it, after I put it off a little bit more by making this blog post.

I have a Portuguese test tomorrow, which means I need to do my workbook exercises.  Portuguese is going really well.  I really love it, and I would love to stick with it to the point where I can actually speak it.  It's like Spanish + French + Russian, and I'm getting to the point now where I understand most of what my instructor says, and I'm even figuring out the phonetics enough to be able to pronounce it properly.  I still have a little bit of a hard time going from written Portuguese to the right pronunciation, because so many of the words are so similar to Spanish, so they automatically come out Spanish-sounding, which is pretty wrong.  But I'm getting there!

I'm about to drink my last cup of my favorite tea.  It was Trader Joe's winter seasonal blend from last year, and I'm hoping they get some more of it in soon.  It tastes kind of like Thin Mints, but not that chocolatey.

Did I mention I'm going to Portland in January?  I can't remember, but I'm really excited about it.  I got a paper accepted at a conference with my friend, based on the stuff we did in Paris over the summer, which is what I'm supposed to be working on right. now.

I had lunch with my friend from high school today (finally)!  It was so great.  We really need to do it more often.

This is turning into one of those semesters where I wish I could just fast forward to the end of it.  Or at least until I get these two conferences and my prospectus writing done, in mid November.  If I could skip forward to November 11th or so, that would be fine by me, I think.  But one certainly shouldn't spend one's life wishing for it to go by more quickly.  That's just plain silly.  So maybe I take it back, but I would like to wave a magic wand and have everything for the next two months prepared, if not presented.

It's almost my birthday.  I'm almost 27.  :D

Huck is barking because Rye stole his bone.  I think that's my cue to go regulate.  And then maybe I will force myself to do some work.

cozy sleepy day

It's raining!  I accidentally left the kitchen window cracked open over night last night, and now I'm sitting at the dining room table with a big bowl of delicious steaming coffee with a lip-smacking swirl of creamy milk in it, listening to the rain sprinkling against the pavement.  I can't believe it's raining!  September in Berkeley actually feels like September is supposed to feel, à mon avis, because it's this weird transition time between the dry season and the rainy season, and it's our Indian summer, so it's usually a mix of genuinely hot days and the usual chilly foggy days, and now we even have rain, so it's like... weather.  A little.  It's great.

Well, I updated my department webpage the other day and am rather proud of it, so I'm going to put a link to it here.  I'm supposed to go into one of our departmental professional development classes this week and talk to them about how I made my webpage, so I thought it would be nice to revamp it.  That, and I went to a meeting about "the academic job search" last week, and one of the more forthcoming (read: snarky) professors in our department was looking at people's webpages and CVs and critiquing them, and it made me think a lot more about the purpose an academic webpage is supposed to serve, which led to many changes.  I still have to finish updating my CV and put it up there, but I'm pretty happy with the format, anyway.

Yesterday was really fun.  So now that I have a piano, I proposed to my friend who had lent me his piano over the summer that we work on a duet together.  There are some really great classical piano duets out there, and that's one thing I've never really done before; the one time I played a duet was when my friend Laurie and I accompanied the school choir back in... 6th grade?... and the piano accompaniment was a duet.  We had such a blast practicing and playing it, and I've been having such a good time just being able to play again, so I thought it could only get better if I brought a friend in on the equation.  Playing music is great, but playing music with other people is even greater, and it's been so very long since I've done that.  So anyway, my friend came over yesterday and we worked on this piece (which has been stuck in my head for several days now) and it was really fun and a little goofy and I learned some new French vocabulary.  (French music vocabulary is just silly, in case you were wondering.)  It's weird to run through a duet for the first time, because you've been practicing the parts separately, and then you sit down to play it with someone else and it's really surprising and distracting.  Like, oh! that's how those parts fit together!  Really fun.

And then we went to a housewarming party for some other friends, and there was a cookout, and lots of good food and great people and a little too much drinking, and then I slept in until 10:30 (!) and woke up feeling like my cold was back full force, but now that I've got some water and some food and some coffee in my system, I feel okay.

(Another nice thing about having someone over yesterday is that I cleaned a little bit, which always makes everything feel nicer and homier!)

So, today.  Today I am not going to play frisbee, because it's raining and I don't feel that good anyway, so I think I'm going to grade some homework, maybe do some reading, and maybe finish knitting my current sweater project while I watch some Six Feet Under.

I've missed the rain.  What a lovely day.

time marches on

Oh my goodness, how is it the middle of September?  Oh my goodness, I'm going to be leaving for San Diego and Boston and needing to prepare a poster and a conference talk and turn in my prospectus-question-musings before I know it.  Oh my goodness, I have so much reading to do and I should be grading right now instead of blogging.

But oh! I have a piano again, and I can't stop playing it, and it suddenly feels like fall for some reason - despite that fact that it nearly always feels like fall here - but there's something about the light and the breeze and the (subtly changing) leaves that makes me just want to go for a stroll in my Illinois hoodie, drink some tea, and hang on to this fleeting "season" for a little longer.  I remember complaining to one of the older grad students when I first came here that there are no seasons to speak of, and she told me, "No no, we have seasons, they're just subtle."  I will still complain all the live long day that there are no seasons to speak of, but I also know what she was talking about now.  Something about the last week has started to feel like fall, which makes me think of how it's almost my birthday again, and I'm in my fourth year of grad school now (fourth!) and time just keeps marching on.

I ran into a very dear friend of mine from high school in the grocery store the other day (well, she ran into me, as I was trying to decide what kind of chocolate to buy) and it was so good to see her and we talked about how it's so silly that we don't get together more often, but it's partially a problem with time, and not with us.  We talk about getting together for lunch, and I know we both honestly intend to, but then we blink and six more months have gone by.  Oh, time, you silly thing.

Speaking of time, I finally got my haircut, after about four months that somehow flew by since the last time, and it feels so nice!  I would put up a picture, but I haven't taken a shower yet today, so it's kind of greasy and unimpressive right now. ;)

I suppose I should also mention that I taught my first sections of phonetics last week, and I had a really good time doing it!  It's funny, you just act like you know what you're doing, and people assume that you actually do.  I feel like that's a very useful life lesson to have learned.  I also think part of "knowing what you're doing" is convincing yourself that you do, in fact, know.  There I was, standing in front of a room full of undergraduate students, explaining how the vocal tract works and realizing that I do actually know a fair amount about that, and that most people don't, so in that case it wasn't too hard to fake it.  It's a little weird to hear yourself explaining things with some intellectual authority and seeing that people are writing down what you're saying, and may go back and study it later for a test on what you told them.  But I think they can sense my enthusiasm for the material, and so far, that seems to be keeping them somewhat engaged.  I hope that trend will continue.

Well, speaking of phonetics, I should grade some homework.  Happy Fall and much love to all.