An Adventure

The older I get, the more I relish a good adventure. I used to be kind of timid and hesitant to really break out of my comfort zone, but these days I really get a charge out of it. I like doing slightly crazy things, just to keep people guessing and to keep myself feeling alive. There's something very invigorating about doing something you've never done before.

I've been mulling this over for a while, and today I took the plunge. It all happened faster than I thought it would, but it was quite the adventure, and I even took my camera along so I could show you a little bit of what I saw today. Come with me on my adventure and see if you can guess what I did before you get to the end!

* * * * *

I left the house at 9:00 this morning, even though I've been fighting a little cold and going to bed around 8:30 the past few days. I went by the ATM and took out several hundred dollars, then I got on the bus and went to downtown Berkeley. I was kind of nervous with all that money in my pocket!

In downtown Berkeley, I got on BART and took it across the Bay to San Francisco.

Once in San Francisco, I walked down from the BART station and picked up this awesome little car from City Car Share. It's a Scion xD - I really loved driving it! It has quite a bit of pep and is a great size. Maybe if we get a car I can convince Roger it's a good one... plenty of room for doggies in the back!


I drove all the way through the city. (That was an adventure in itself.) Here I am on Broadway Ave, if I remember correctly.


Once I got to the northwest edge of the city, it was time to get on Highway 101. That is - the Golden Gate Bridge! You can't see it too great from here, since I was being a not-entirely-unsafe driver and wasn't actually looking through the camera when I took the picture. I just turned it on and blindly took a shot out the window.


Just in case you didn't believe me, here I am driving across the honest-to-goodness Golden Gate Bridge. It was amazing.


I don't have any pictures of Marin, but you'll just have to believe me that I drove up into Marin county, where I got lost. My Google Maps directions were wrong, and I had to wind around in the hills for about an hour before I arrived at some very nice people's house. We chatted for a long while, they gave me some tea, and eventually I got back in the car and was on my way home.

I got stuck in traffic in the city, but it really wasn't so bad on a day like today.


I was waaaay late bringing the car back. Between the hour of being lost, the nice nice people in Marin, traffic, and then having to stop for gas and getting kind of lost again (this time in the city), I was an hour and a half late. I called City Car Share three times to try to extend my reservation, but their system was down every time. I did find out no one needed the car until 1:30, which is when I got it back, so I didn't feel bad, at least. I just hope I can talk them out of charging me a bajillion dollars because I was so late.

After I dropped the car off, I headed back to BART. A really cute French guy stopped me and asked me where Chinatown was. I could tell he was French by his accent, so I started talking to him in French. He thought I was French too!! I totally still got it. That made me feel even happier.

I finally made it back to BART and headed back into the East Bay.


Then I made it home, cargo intact, around 2:30, I think. Huck and Rye were playing it all cool, but I know they missed me.


I took a look at our living room and noticed how asymmetrical the area by the door looked. I was glad I went to retrieve my cargo, because now our living room will be just about complete.


Did you guess what it is yet??

Ok, here, look what I got from those nice people in Marin:


Pure awesomeness is what. This baby goes for almost a thousand dollars new, and I got it for waaaay less than that because their 13-year-old son had outgrown it and he just wanted to get a reasonable amount of money for it to offset the cost of his new one.

I am a speed demon, baby. I'm going to ride this thing all over the Bay Area. It is so fast and light and totally worth however much City Car Share charges me for bringing their car back so late!

Did you like my story??

Big Sur, Here I Come!

I signed up for the Big Sur 21-miler last night! I'll be driving down with my new running buddy, Sara, to run the race on April 26th. I am SO excited. Do you see that picture? Lordy, lordy.

Also, a public service announcement before I do some homework: the inaugural Illinois Marathon (in C-U!) needs more volunteers!! If they don't get enough by April 1st, they'll have to cancel the race!! I'm looking at you, central IL folks - help out all those runners and spend part of your Sunday morning cheering them on!

Even Quicker Update

Static palatography pics from phonetics today. You paint a mixture of charcoal and olive oil on someone's tongue, they say a word, then you take a picture of the roof of their mouth to see where the charcoal rubbed off, i.e. where their tongue touched the roof of their mouth when they said the word. How awesome is that?

Quick, Quick, Quick Update

I really shouldn't be writing this - I have homework to catch up on - but I realized I haven't updated in 10 days, and that seems like a long time, so here we go.

Our prospective students for next year were visiting over the past few days! I liked them, and I think we'll have a good crop for next year. It was weird to be on the other side of it, though (extolling the virtues of Berkeley rather than worrying about whether they can fund me if I come here). Hanging out with the department over the past few days just reinforced how much I really like our department, though. We have some great folks here (professors and grad students) and all the great recommendations I made about this place were 100% true. So hooray for that!

My left exterior shin muscle was pretty sore by Monday night after my 16-miler, so I decided to stick with the original plan and not sign up for Big Sur. But I'm definitely signing up for San Francisco once I get paid. (Especially after I looked at these videos.) Hooray for that!

I'm getting really excited about my research projects, and I would love to tell you about them, but now is not the time. Maybe next time.

I'll leave you with this lovely quote that really hit home tonight. I was talking to George, reminiscing about old times a Paris and how we're both sad we don't have anyone to cook with anymore. Then I checked this blog I really like to read, and I saw this, which was so perfectly appropriate. (I'm also going to make that bread recipe tomorrow.)

We’re never truly alone in the kitchen even as we may slice a squash in quiet solitude to saute in olive oil and basil. Almost every single thing I cook reminds me of a place or of someone I miss. This could be a reason why those of us who love to cook are so drawn to it (and, conversely, perhaps a reason those who don’t enjoy it abstain). As I punched down the dough and kneaded it into a silky, elastic ribbon in my own small San Francisco kitchen I was, for a little while, back in that tiny, cluttered kitchen along the New England coast. I thought about how nice it would be if we’d all been cooking together: me patting down the bread to tuck into a warm corner for its second rise, Emily pulling a pan of roasted potatoes out of the oven, Kurt cooking down some greens on the stove. We’d probably be nibbling from a cheese plate and sipping a glass of wine or two …

Good night, and love to all.

Hooray/Ugh

Hooray, my 16-miler was great! I really like Sara! I'm not even that tired! We're doing 17 miles in Golden Gate Park in two weeks!!

Ugh, I really shouldn't do Big Sur, though... right?

Right?

Approaching Normalcy

I am having a great weekend! Here is why:

- I sold my bike. A very cute girl came to pick it up yesterday, and she gave me $275 for it. I was pretty sad to see it go, but I decided to sell it for a few reasons. It was taking up so much space just sitting in our living room, and it was too heavy and cumbersomely shaped to hang it from the ceiling, like we did with Roger's. So it's just been sitting there, and our living room has been so cluttery, and the reason I haven't been riding it is that since I took Roger's awesome, incredibly lightweight, super fast road bike for a very short spin, I've been jonesing for an awesome road bike of my own. They're so expensive though, so I hadn't really thought about buying one yet... but I just realized last week that since we kind of have some money now, if I sold my bike, I could actually get an awesome new one in the near future. And what I really want to do is go for long, long rides up to Marin county with Roger on Saturdays. That would be a really fun thing for us to do together. So, up on Craigslist it went, and this girl contacted me. She was completely in love with it, and so so happy to come pick it up yesterday, so I'm glad it went to a good home, and to someone who will appreciate more than I have been lately.

- So yesterday, there I'm sitting with $275 burning a hole in my pocket... and just having got my City Car Share key a few days before... clearly time to go buy some stuff at Ikea. So I reserved a Prius and drove out to Ikea and got us some actual furniture for our house. I spent all the money... but our house is becoming a real people's house now! Here's the stuff I got:

(Office chair and desk for Roger.)


(Dining table and coat rack for the living room/entryway.)

*I'm* the most excited about the dining table, I think. That's not the exact one we got - ours has slightly darker wood, so it looks a little nicer - but it's just this cute little thing that'll fit perfect in the spot where my bike used to be!

That's not the exact desk I got Roger, either - his is dark brown/black on top, but just has four silver legs on bottom instead of the drawers. He made me laugh (to myself) yesterday. His "desk" thus far has been an ironing board in the living room. He's been sitting in our Ikea chair we got for $25 when we first moved in (it's like a cross between a lazy boy and a folding chair) with an ironing board next to him with his computer on it. At first it made me a little sad that he had an ironing board for a desk, but y'know, you do whatcha gotta do. We would make jokes about it at first like, "Rye, get out of Roger's office!" Anyway, I've been saying how I couldn't wait to get him a real desk and get the extra bedroom set up as an office for him, and he's been saying "no no, I'm totally fine like this! I even like it! it's more comfortable!" Well, yesterday when I dropped off the stuff at home, Roger wasn't here. But by the time I got home 20 minutes later, Roger had gotten back from the store, busted open the boxes, cleared a space in the extra room, and almost finished putting together the desk. Partially just because he's such a good little husband, but partially because I think he wanted a real person desk too.

So we put together everything but the dining room table and chairs last night, and our house is starting to look like a real house! It's very exciting. Once we make it the rest of the way there (i.e. straighten up the living room, get the table up, and get Roger all moved in to his new office), I will be un-embarrassed enough of our house to take pictures of it in its current state. :)

- Ok. I wanted to say one more reason why this weekend is good, and that is because I found a marathon training partner, and I'm meeting her for the first time today! I've been trolling Craigslist for a new running partner for almost two months now, and I saw this girl's ad, emailed her, and she emailed me right back with her phone number, so I called her, and we talked for like 10 minutes! It was so fun - I really like her, even though I haven't met her yet, and I'm meeting her for a run today.

Should I tell you the details of the run? ...I'll tell you the details of the run.

As you may know, I've been thinking about/wanting to train for the San Francisco Marathon this summer. The race is in very late July, so I haven't started ramping up my long runs quite yet. I did 13 miles about two weeks ago, and it was great, but that's the longest I've been since we moved here.

I saw this girl's ad, and she's training for her first marathon in April. She's running Big Sur, which is amazingly gorgeous. Here, you've got to see this: Big Sur homepage.

I definitely want to run this before we leave California, but I wasn't planning on doing it this year. Anyway, this girl is farther along in her training than I am, since the race is in April, so she's scheduled for 16 miles today. So... I'm gonna give it a shot. I think I can do it, and if I can't, I can always stop and walk. She said she's on the slow side, so I'll just take it easy and see how far I can make it. (I should be able to make it!) It's such an exciting day, though, because I'm taking BART to meet her in this little town I've never been to before. She's a florist in Walnut Creek, which is on the other side of the hills, away from the Bay, and she's doing a wedding there today, so I'm taking the train to meet her, and we're going to this trail I've never even heard of before. So much new stuff! So much adventure! I can't wait!

I think that's pretty much everything I wanted to say. Wait, no, we might be hosting a prospective grad student starting a week from today, and that's exciting too! I hope we get good new grad students for next year...

Ok, that's all. Maybe I'll have pictures of our house for you soon?

Happy March! Happy spring!

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.