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!

Henry W. Coe State Park

It's Spring Break!  Jevon and I had been talking for a while about going camping over Spring Break, but there's still snow in Yosemite, and we didn't want to be gone for too too long anyway, so we opted to explore a park in our own backyard: we packed up the tent on Sunday morning and drove down to Henry W. Coe State Park, which is around 90 minutes southeast of here.  I had no idea what to expect going in, but it was really beautiful, and we had a great time.  We went for a long-ish hike after we arrived yesterday afternoon, ate a camp food dinner (apples, peanut butter, cheese, hardboiled eggs, and a few hunks of bread), and then read until the sun went down, at which point we promptly crashed.

Then we woke up this morning, ate more camp food, and went for another short hike before packing up and driving back.  It was a great little trip!

There's our little orange tent, on the left.  What a campsite!

The barn by the Visitors' Center.

Looking down the Visitors' Center steps on the fog this morning.

More morning fog.

California poppies on our hike.

Cool tree!

Beautiful weather yesterday.

Look at this huge turkey!!

Parked at the campsite.

Morning fog, and Jevon sitting at the picnic table.

The fact that I'm leaving California soon makes it all the easier to appreciate trips like this.  This is a beautiful state, and I am so happy to have called it home for a time.

But it's time to see my other (real) home soon - I'm leaving for Illinois on Wednesday, and I hear a small mountain of snow awaits me!  See you all soon, my Illinois loves!

well would you look at that, Part II

Pssssst.  I think something may actually have happened in my dissertation experiment.  Maybe not - it's too early to tell - but I made some graphs today, and it looks like something interesting might be going on.

I'm whispering because I am not getting my hopes up yet.  Instead, I am going to go back to labeling sound files so that I have more data.  And then I will come back and try again for real sometime next week.

In other good news, my grant proposal is also trucking along.  I did the biosketch (including the personal statement, grumble grumble... what am I, applying to college or something?) and I finished up the project summary today.  Progress, progress!  And a Skype meeting with my sponsor tomorrow, who will hopefully have nice and helpful things to say, and then I'm headed down to Stanford to see a very dear friend defend her dissertation tomorrow afternoon.

Go go go!

well would you look at that

I've been putting many hours lately into writing up a grant proposal that would give me three years of my very own funding.  It would be my first big grant, and I'm really, really hoping I get it.  (I'm keeping my hopes squarely in check, though, partially because of this crap.  Don't get me started on how angry this makes me.)  The writing itself has been taking a very long time.  I've been writing for a few hours a day, at least a few days a week.  Most days it actually goes pretty smoothly, but there were two or three days last week that were just like pulling teeth.  Write, erase, write, read, write, erase, read, erase, etc.  For three days in a row.  That was kind of rough.

Anyway, I have the bulk of the research proposal finished now, and I think it's getting close to its final form.  But it just occurred to me this morning why it's felt like so much work; they ask for 11 point font, single spaced, with half inch margins.  So even though it's "only seven pages", I just realized that that's actually a ton a text.  Just for fun, and to feel like I've actually accomplished something in the past few weeks, I plugged the text into a new document and made it 12 point font, one inch margins, double spaced, like most papers are.  And this thing is 20 pages long!  I've been working on a 20 page paper, and I didn't even know it!

(As a sidenote, it's been interesting realizing that this is what my life is going to be like for the next few months.  Roll out of bed, make some breakfast, and sit at my desk and write and analyze data for a few hours.  I've taken to going for a run in the evening, to clear my mind and to get out of the house for a bit, and all told, it's actually not a bad life at all.)

There are so many pieces left.  I have to write up a "biosketch" of who I am and all my qualifications, with a personal statement about why I'm qualified to conduct this research.  And some stuff about why Penn State is a good sponsoring institution to conduct this research, what their facilities are like, and what my on-the-ground support will be like.  Thankfully, my sponsors have done this before and have a lot of that language ready for me (especially since I've never actually been to Penn State, and the only stuff I know about their facilities is what I've gleaned from their website, and what they've told me).

So there's a lot left to do, but the big, hard part is almost done now, and I just have all the niggling little bits and pieces to pull together.

Today, I am giving my workshop on R again, and I need to keep working on analyzing my dissertation data, and then I'm getting Ethiopian food with friends tonight.  It's going to be a good day!

brain freeze (but not from ice cream :( )

I am SO TIRED of working on this research proposal.

Blah!!!!!