Don't tell the dogs!

But I'm going to be extremely selfish in a minute here and go for a run by myself. I know, I'm an awful dog mom, but I haven't been on a run by myself in (literally) months, and today just feels like a great day for it. I heard this song by Bon Iver again today (scroll down and click on the "Listen" link if you want to hear it), for the second time, and I have decided this is the next album I need to buy. But it put me in such a nice, melancholy little mood, and with the clouds rolling in on a chilly December afternoon, I just want to run around town by myself for a while. Campus will be deserted, the leaves are all still lovely, drooping, and yellow, and I'd like to have nothing else to think about except my own feet pounding the pavement.

In other news, I'm still enjoying having nothing to do, and I've taken the opportunity to read non-school things and watch movies so far. I've also been cooking and have decided I need to make a greater effort to eat healthy. It's easy to eat nothing but sweets around this time of year, and I've definitely hit the point where I feel kind of gross and don't want anymore. So I've been loading up on veggies and am trying to find interesting new things to do with them - if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

So after I finish this blog post, I'm going to hit the road for a while, then I'll shower and get dressed (in my new clothes!), then the one thing I want to get done today is to write a letter to Michelle. Are you reading this, Michelle? I am going to write you a long overdue letter today. I'm thinking about going to Barnes and Noble to do it, just to get out of the house for a while and have an excuse to treat myself to some yummy tea or a Frappuccino or something. Oh right. Eating healthy. Maybe I'll stick with the tea.

The other things I guess I should update you on are as follows:

- I checked my grades the other day and am very pleased with them. Hooray for a successful first semester of grad school! (Not that grades matter that much anymore, but it's always good to get positive feedback.)

- Since I got some money for Christmas, I went clothes shopping the other day and bought some much needed new jeans, as well as some corduroy pants that were on sale and a few cute tops.

- I am leaving for the Bahamas on Friday!!

Since I haven't been very good about taking pictures lately, I hope this will suffice. I wrote it a few weeks ago. You can consider it a belated Christmas present, if you like. Here's to the end of a very interesting 2008!

* * * * *

Berkeley in November

is a failed watercolor

(the kind no one wants because the colors have all run together).

More than that: nothing even matches.

The earth is a parched and dirty brown,

but the trees have somehow regained their lush green

just in time to signal the transition to fall.

(Think of a broken traffic light

that switches on and immediately turns a garish yellow.)

And the sky! Who would think to swirl together such hues of

rose

burnt orange, dirty white

charcoal and cyan?

Frankly it’s all a bit too Thomas Kinkade for my tastes;

the houses glow with luminescent warmth,

the purplish hills come alive with twinkling lights

as the sun sets into the sea.

I just don’t buy it –

the real world is not rendered in such a palette.

Good news all around!

My mommy has informed me that this blog is in need of update, and she is right. I am just chock full of good news right now!

First and foremost: Roger has been hired at the job he interviewed for last week! (Hooray!!) We are both beyond excited and relieved, and he can't wait to start work. He starts January 5th and will be making the commute to Daly City every day, which maybe isn't ideal, but definitely tolerable; it's about 75 minutes one way, but that's actually pretty good for around here, I think. I guess the place also said there'll be an opportunity for telecommuting in the future, which means he may get to work from home sometimes.

Less excitingly, I'm done with my first semester of grad school! (Hooray!) I handed in my last paper on Monday night, then did absolutely nothing on Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, I went for a run on Wednesday, I think. Then on Thursday I started cleaning the house, and yesterday I already started to get bored and decided I would learn to work with the Natural Language Tool Kit over break. This involves learning some programming, but I've needed to do that for a while, so I think it's time to dive in.

Today I'm going to take the dogs for a run, eat some oatmeal, and grade my last set of papers. I might even do some laundry. Tomorrow I'm going to clean some more and I don't know what else, and Monday, my mommy will be here! The next few weeks should be really good, I think.

Happy, happy day

No, Roger doesn't have a job yet, but today, this is almost just as good: my wonderful husband fixed our furnace!!

The story is, our furnace didn't work when we first moved in, but we didn't care, obviously, because this is California. The guy who came to turn on our gas when we moved in said the valve in the furnace would need to be replaced, but we were in no rush, so I didn't worry about it. I thought we might even be able to make it through the winter without central heat. Well, suddenly in the past week or so, it has gotten a little on the cold side. Compared to how it has been, it actually feels cold, but I'm trying to keep a good Midwestern perspective on things. It still only gets down in the 40's overnight, and has been heating up to the mid-50's during the day. But since our house is pretty much the same temperature as it is outside, I just haven't been able to warm up. We've been trying to tough it out, though; we have a space heater, so I just put it on in the office while I do work, and it's fine... but it's just kind of... yucky and inconvenient.

Anyway, so I finally caved on Thursday and emailed our landlord to have him send someone to fix the furnace, and he talked to his wife about scheduling someone to come out next week. But the great news is that Roger was troubleshooting today and discovered that the wiring between the furnace and the thermostat wasn't hooked up properly. He re-wired it, and voila - wonderful, wonderful heat. We have returned to civilization!

So it is now an extremely cozy day. It's raining pretty steadily outside, and I'm huddled up in my office drinking tea and writing my last paper of the semester. Ahhhhh.

As long as I'm rambling on, I'll just add that the job outlook is still positive but uncertain. Roger said the two guys he interviewed with have been saying very promising things along the lines of "we'll be in touch next week about an offer for you", which clearly seems to suggest they're going to offer him the job, right? Otherwise it would just be like "we'll be in touch" or "thank you for your time" or something. Anyway, they're supposed to get back to him by Wednesday, so we are keeping all of our fingers and toes crossed.

And my Mommy is coming a week from today! I was mentally preparing an email along the lines of "Dear Mommy, make sure you bring extra clothes, because the overnight lows this week will be around 35..." but now we will all be warm and cozy together for Christmas. Yay!

Ok, back to writing my paper...

Another relatively boring morning update

I guess it turns out updating my blog in the morning is what I do when I haven't quite gotten up early enough to have time to motivate myself to do homework. ;) It's winding down, though! I think today, I need to write my two short response papers and start labeling words for my phonetics project. Tomorrow and Friday I need to study for my final and write my paper, Saturday is my final, and my last paper is due Monday. I'm gettin' there!

Roger's interview went "really well" yesterday. He said he seemed to have a good rapport with the two guys interviewing him (the CEO and the COO... Chief (something) Officer) and that he had lots of chances to show off what he knows. I'd hope so, it took almost two hours! They're supposed to let him know within a week whether he got it or not. I wish they'd just call, like, now and offer it to him. I can't wait 'til he starts working! I know I won't see him as much, but I know he'll feel so much better on so many levels, plus he just looks so handsome when he puts on a suit. :D

Let's see, what else... Mommy and Jimmy are coming for Christmas, and I'm so glad! I was worried she/they wouldn't be able to come, and that was making me sad, but they're both coming, so I'm very excited. Our new guest bed is supposed to get delivered tomorrow, and I bought us some brand new flannel sheets for our bed that are sooo cozy, so we can put our old sheets on the guest bed.

Huck really likes the new sheets. It's funny - the more time passes, the more Huck becomes a Melinda dog, and Rye's a Roger dog. Huck is such a little mama's boy these days. Sometimes it's really lame, but sometimes it's just heart-meltingly cute. Roger always makes fun of me because I like to go to bed early; I'm almost always in bed by 10:00, and I got up at 5:15 yesterday to do homework and did 5 miles with the dogs in the late afternoon, so I was ready for bed by 8:30. I was back here on my computer wasting time before I could (somewhat) respectably call it a day (let's face it - going to bed at 8:00 is pretty ridiculous), and when I went back to our room to get ready for bed, Huck was lying with his nose right up against the door looking SO SAD that he wasn't allowed to go to bed yet. Roger said he'd been lying there just whining very softly since like 7:30 and he couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. I knew. He wanted to go to bed! I know because I wanted to go to bed at 7:30 too, but I have human inhibitions and I couldn't let myself do that. Sure enough, as soon as he saw me, he was so relieved. I opened the door, he jumped up on the bed, and we cuddled up and went to sleep. I think it was 9:00 by that point, so I don't feel too pathetic.

Well, it's probably time to start my day. I'll let you know as soon as we find out about the job! Gros bisous à tous.

Grrrr...

This makes me a very unhappy camper. I was hoping for a kick-ass long run tomorrow, but running 10 miles would probably not be considered "limiting outdoor exertion". Pollution sucks. Maybe I'll hit the gym. :-P

Roger's interview went really well on Wednesday! He has his in-person interview this coming Tuesday, and he said the guy was dropping hints on the phone that they want to hire him. It's still looking good!

Our former roommate Alex might be coming to visit in about two weeks, which would be very fun. Alex works in LA now, and he was supposed to be transferred to a different office in LA, but it turns out there might be a job opening in Oakland, so Roger's doing his best to convince him to come work up here. My immediate reaction was something like, "I don't really want Alex to come live with us." But then I realized that him moving "here" doesn't mean he'd actually be moving here here; he'd have his own place, of course, duh. I guess I just associate Alex living somewhere nearby to mean like... in a different part of the same house as us. Anyway, it would be great if he moved up here, so that will be really fun if it works out.

I'm excited on many levels right now, but partially because I just ordered this bed yesterday. Now people will have a real place to sleep when they come visit, and it will be a huge space saver for our extra bedroom. I think it's nice enough that we don't need another bed, which means we can basically make that room into an office for Roger and keep the bed in the closet until we need it. So that combined with the possibility of this job, combined with the fact that I'm really tired of doing homework, means I had fun looking at the Ikea website yesterday and coming up with ideas for fun stuff to get for our house. I can't wait to be able to make it look nice!

Ok, I should probably get ready for class. In 11 days, my semester will be effectively over, and I can sleep in, run with my dogs in the cool December sun, and hopefully fix up our house! Que la vie est belle.

Quick Morning Update

Ouf. Apologies for the lack of updates the past week or so; Thanksgiving was lovely, but now it is over, and I'm kicking it into 5th gear for the end of the semester. Just to make myself feel better (since the list of things is somehow not as overwhelming when I actually write it out), here is everything I need to have done by December 15th:

- Record my Armenian speaker for my phonetics project (Thursday)
- Write a 3-4 page response to a paper (Friday)
- Finish reviewing abstracts for the Berkeley Linguistics Society conference (Monday)
- Give a presentation on an article from the Journal of Phonetics (Monday)
- Turn in my last phonetics assignment (Monday)
- Turn in my syntax term paper (Tuesday)
- Write two reviews of papers for my pronunciation seminar (next Thursday)
- Study for my phonetics final (next Saturday)
- Turn in my phonetics project (Monday, 12/15)

...I think that's everything. It's really not so bad, and it's all spread out enough that I think I can manage it.

In less stressful news, I *finally* got a haircut yesterday, and it feels *great*. While no one will ever replace Kathleen at Hairbenders, I think I have found my Berkeley haircut lady, and she is wonderful.

And finally, I've been waiting to update about this, but I can't wait any more: Roger has a job interview this afternoon! The CEO of that place I mentioned last time is calling him today at 2:00 for a phone interview, and assuming it goes well, they're meeting in person on Monday. Cross your fingers and toes for him, but he's such a smarty, and he interviews really well, so I'm sure he'll do great. I'll let you know how it goes!

(a secret)

Psssst, don't say anything to Roger, but I wanted to let you know he is in serious talks with a start-up tech firm just south of San Francisco. They're moving to the financial district in the next few months, and they need an accountant/business manager to help them plan for expansion.

Do not, I repeat, do not get excited. This could fall flat on its face, in which case he will simply continue his search, which is actually going quite well these days. (He's found quite a few jobs in the past few weeks that he's been excited about and has applied for. This is just the first one he's heard back from concretely.)

I will now resume eating my oatmeal, drinking my coffee, and doing my syntax homework, because it's 5:30 in the morning and I need to get it done for class today. I will keep you updated. About Roger, not the stupid homework. :)

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH

Today is really weird, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I had a fabulous run with my doggies this morning. Here's where we went:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2409169

We ran up into the hills for a bit, then looped all the way down and ran along the Bay, where I discovered where all the other runners go on the weekends! It was a gorgeous morning, the dogs had a blast and are completed exhausted now, and I'm extremely pleased that I can still crank out a solid 10-miler. I still have secret hopes of running the Napa Valley Marathon in March, but I don't actually think that will happen. I think it's more realistic to shoot for San Francisco at the end of July...

Anyway, besides just feeling happy to be alive, running around town really makes me connect with this place. Every time I go out for a run, I put some more pieces into my mental layout of how the town fits together, and it feels a little bit more mine. That's one great thing about running that I think all other runners would agree about: you form a rather intimate connection with the landscape, and you really get a feel for the different parts of town.

So that part of the morning was great, and then I got home and made pumpkin pancakes with gingerbread syrup. Oh man. I'll be doing that again very soon, and I'd be perfectly happy to share the recipe with anyone who wants it. Everyone deserves to experience such deliciousness.

Now I'm wasting time before I jump in to some homework, but I also needed a second to readjust my brain. I guess part of the reason today was so weird is there was a big contrast between feeling great after running and then talking to my stepmom about my little brother. He's been in and out of the hospital constantly the past few weeks, and I am so frustrated, as are they. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him, she's losing her mind, and it really sucks that I can't even just stop by to say hello, or offer to babysit Amber, or something. Michael's going to see some specialists in Springfield tomorrow, though, so hopefully they'll figure something out and he'll get on the right track to recovery. That's what the "ARGH" is all about!

Ok. Now I'm going to do some homework. Oh, I didn't even tell you about going to the football game yesterday! It was really fun, but really bizarre because I've never been to a football game where it was a little uncomfortably warm and I had to worry about getting a sunburn. Football games are supposed to be cold! These Californians really don't get it. But we won, and it was a good (albeit very long) game.

Ok. Now it's time for homework. I hope this finds you well, and I'll do my best to update again soon; we have a long weekend for Thanksgiving, so I should have some time to say hello sometime in there!

Just thinking about this time last year...

... when I wrote this poem/thing. It's somewhere between short short story and prose poem, but in any case, I always liked how it turned out, and running with the dogs just now made me think of it. I hope you like it too.

Heart

We run north, towards the woods, and the colors are breathtaking. The change of the seasons has created a landscape collage of competing eras—the sky is saturated with the pastel blue of a Technicolor film, but the leaves and the earth are a rusty, sepia brown reminiscent of old family photographs. It is too late in the season for burning leaves, and the subtle smells of withering autumn register in my brain. I smell dirt. Soggy wood. The lurking cold that will surely have pounced on us before we get the chance to run again.

We chit-chat, but we both know that our words carry little importance. We are out for the sheer joy of being out, of being alive, of feeling the blood pulsing beneath our skin. We are strong and healthy, and we are looking at the world.

* * * * *

The human heart is divided into halves. The left side of the heart pumps oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to feed the rest of the body. The right side collects the body’s oxygen-depleted blood and channels it to the lungs so that it may be replenished.

These compartments are of course finite, and as one expands, the other must necessarily contract in order to make space. Like the joys and the sorrows it undergoes, the heart is at once consistent and fluctuating. As surely as blood rushes from one chamber to another, fullness and contentment inevitably cede to emptiness and melancholy.

Our whole lives are regulated by this constant circulation; our sentiments ebb and flow only because our ventricles propel and replenish as they should. We are machines with swirling emotions. We can choose to let our hearts beat quickly or slowly, and we can choose how much life we transmit through our bodies.

Breathe in—fill your chest with cold autumn air and beauty and joy. Breathe out— revel in the empty space, the hollowness. We are alone, and we cannot inhale forever, but we are strong, and we will inhale again.

* * * * *

We press on through the woods, the leaves crunching dully under our feet, my breath coming in regular puffs of dissipating fog. This is the last warm day of autumn, and already I anticipate the first warm day of spring. We will lace up our shoes and take to the road, relishing the stinging in our legs that comes from frosty air and rusty muscles. As surely as winter makes the earth inhospitable, spring brings us back amongst the trees, on our path. Autumn and spring, fulfillment and discontent, blood and oxygen, vacillating like a beating heart.

The bright side of writing my syntax paper all day today...

... is that it may result in me taking a trip to Illinois in May! Let me explain.

So we have a syntax paper to write this semester. Anyone who has ever talked to me about linguistics will know that I am not a big fan of syntax, to put it mildly. But I tried to pick a topic that I find somewhat interesting, and I wasn't too terribly bummed about it anyway. I'd rather write a paper than our normal homework assignments. The main thing is that we have a rough draft due Thursday, we have the day off school today for Veterans' Day, and I'm basically going to spend the whole day reading and writing (after I finish this blog entry, run with the dogs, eat, and shower).

The cool part is that the department here sent out a call for papers for a conference taking place at the U of I in late May, and my paper idea can very easily be adapted for presentation at this conference. So now I'm feeling more inspired; I can write the bulk of it today, fix it up for the end of the semester, submit an abstract to see if I can present at the conference in May (I think I have a very good shot of getting in for a variety of reasons - I can tell you more about that if you like), and then I'll just do a little supplementary work on the thing (which I have a really fun idea for) before hopefully going home to present it in May. Isn't that all very fun?

I will try to keep all of these cools ideas in mind today when I'm getting increasingly bummed out about spending the day writing a paper about syntax.

Here is where I'm going running in a minute: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2388662

Cool, eh? We're the very last house on Curtis street. If you zoom in, you can see the big redwood tree on the front/side of our house!