Before and After: Melinda Version

Here's a picture of me right after I got my hair cut a few weeks ago:

And I here I am after I got bored yesterday:

I'm a redhead on the inside anyway, I think.

I should get back to work, but I'm (still, again, always) working on putting together stimuli for my QP perception experiment, and you can only stare at lists of made up words for so long. Bowp, chuss, pake, beel, mide... starts to drive you crazy pretty quickly.

So the only other thing I will add is that I got a group of friends together to play Ultimate Frisbee on Friday afternoon, and it was so fantastic. I think everyone had a great time, and I certainly did, and I can't wait to do it again. It was so freeing - running around in the grass with friends on a sunny afternoon. There are few better things in life, in my opinion! And at the end it was starting to get a little muddy, so a bunch of us took off our shoes and I could feel the cool, soft grass underneath my feet and the mud squishing between my toes. So good.

The only embarrassing part is that I am still sore! From frisbee! All of that changing directions and jumping up and down and chucking a disk around... much higher impact than I'm used to, and different muscles, I guess. Then I ran 20 miles yesterday (last time before my race!) and that actually made some of the soreness go away, except I'm just slightly tired and hungry and out of whack today.

So now I will go back to drinking my tea and staring at made up words.

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!