light

One of my favorite things about this time of year is celebrating Advent. In the four weeks (or six, depending on which church calendar one is using) leading up to Christmas, I think it's great to take a little time to light a candle, meditate on the weekly themes of Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace (or whichever colors the particular tradition uses).

It's especially nice because this time of year can be really busy. I know it's been true for me this year!!

I learned something new about Advent this year: traditionally, it is a period of fasting and penitence while waiting for the 'coming' (which is what 'advent' means). I feel like the way my world's spinning around so fast, fasting and penitence are the last things I have time for! So I've been grateful for the moments I've taken on the weekends to light the candles one by one and pause for a bit.

The Advent candle lights are just one of the lights I love about Christmas. I enjoy lights on trees, candles in windows, the welcoming glow of a home filled with friends hosting a Christmas party. And a cozy fire.Warmth, cheer, and security are held in light, especially on fReEzInG cold days like today here in central Pennsylvania.

a very great birthday

Not long ago Not Joe asked me what my best birthday was. I thought hard and realized that my favorite one was nothing flashy or full of "partying." It was my 21st birthday - and no, not because I got trashed at a bar. Some of my dearest friends gave me thoughtful gifts, and then my dad came and picked me up from college when my classes were over and we went to my first Detroit Red Wings game where I got to watch Dominik Hasek play goalie. He drove me back home, I went to bed, and the next day it was Saturday. I'm not sure if in that question Not Joe was trying to get some ideas for something nice to do for me, but if he was I think he probably didn't get much. ...Sorry!

My birthday is October 12, and this year it was on a Sunday. I think that it ranks up there in the top Best Birthdays I've had. I spent the weekend in Pittsburgh because Relient K was playing a concert there on my birthday -- PERFECT! As if that weren't enough, I felt like I was blessed the whole weekend long: Saturday I drove from State College to Pittsburgh through 2.5 hours of gorgeous tree-lined roads, all ablaze in their best fall colors; I spent the day with my dearest friend Michelle and then dined with old pals from the 'Burgh; Sunday I got to go to my old church and hear a sermon that calmed my fears about the crazy stock market; something I had been waiting for for a long time finally occurred; I was served brilliant Indian cuisine by my friend Poonam and received reassurance about some struggles at work while I was at her place; and Relient K played some of my all-time greatest songs AND finished their performance with a encore of "Deathbed," which, since my first hearing of it, I have thought would be amazing to see live (I was right). The drive back to State College took until about 2a.m., but that was okay.

Monday I was gifted with a joint-birthday dinner hosted by a good friend for myself and 2 other pals with birthdays within a week of each other. It was splendid to be served a lovingly prepared meal and play fun games with good folks.

My busy weekend schedule (and the fact that other things were going on Thursday and Friday before my birthday) caused Not Joe to do "his birthday thing" with me the Wednesday before. This entailed getting all dressed up and going to a very lovely Italian place. It was great. He asked me if I felt old now. I realized that I'm 28 and that does seem rather old in some ways. While "being old" at the age of 28 may be arguable, I have to say that I didn't exactly feel young when I got to the Relient K concert; the median age was approximately 14. I often ask myself, "What do I want to be when I grow up?" but perhaps I need to face the facts and conclude that...I am grown up.

:-)

fun with my shoulder

I began visiting a chiropractor about a year and a half ago. It has been a very delightful experience. The original issue that led me to the chiropractor has been solved through lots of very wonderful and skillful manipulation on the part of "Dr. Josh," but since then other issues have developed. The biggest and most persistent one is with my right shoulder.

I believe that the shoulder issue is mostly due to doing a lot of work on the computer and not doing so in a very ergonomic way. After making a few adjustments to my workstation (which, in many cases, was simply my LAP...certainly not a good way to be doing work for hours on end) during the writing of my dissertation, my problems subsided. However, then I moved away from Pittsburgh and adopted some new bad habits with the computer and also started talking for long periods of time on the phone and endured a lot of stress. The combination of these and probably other factors led me to a morning when I awoke and sat down on the couch and could not bear to put enough pressure on my upper back to get myself off of the couch - my shoulder and neck were in a HUGE amount of pain.

Thus, I found a new chiropractor. She's not the same as Dr. Josh, but she's okay. The shoulder certainly feels a lot better after I visit her. I ought to do some more exercises and stretches to make it so I don't HAVE to go see her to feel all right, but I am admittedly lazy and have not been very diligent in this matter.

Last week I had to cancel my Friday appointment with her, which meant that I went more than 7 days without an adjustment. By Sunday I was in pretty dire straights, so when I went over to Not Joe's to bum around and watch football at the bachelor pad he shares with 3 other guys, the pain had crept further down my spine so my lower back was also hurting. This all made me realize that I should absolutely not sink down into the couch cushions. Instead, I decided to be a good patient and lay on the floor with my legs bent and elevated. It was kind of weird, but it made me feel much better.

Eventually I was feeling okay enough to sit upright, so I carefully settled on the couch. My shoulder still wasn't quite right, but I set to work with some gentle knitting (yes! amazing! i'm knitting something!). I could tell something was just not in the right spot with my shoulder joint. After a few rounds on my circular knitting piece, I slowly lifted up my arm, and there came a huge "POP."

The guys looked over at me warily, and I smiled and said, "Wow, my shoulder feels a LOT better." It did. It felt perfect, in fact.

Not Joe's jaw dropped. "That was your shoulder?!"

It's nice to know that I can amaze guys with my fun joint noises.

defining

This is a little randomocity (that's not really a word), but here goes.

I love words. And over the past week I've been struck with multiple moments of love towards them. Today when it occurred it was enough to send me over here to blog about it.

Every day I receive in my emailbox a note from Anu Garg who publishes A Word A Day. He includes a word, its definition and etymology, and a few examples of its use. Today's word is one I've not heard of before but am entirely grateful that it exists. It's a word that describes something that I find very difficult to put into words: a feeling of resentment and hostility accompanied by the lack of means to express or act upon it. The word is "ressentiment," pronounced Frenchly ruh-san-tee-MAH with the final syllable being nasal. How many times have I felt this way and wanted to say that's how I feel but have been entirely unable to say so?! Wooh! I love words that can succinctly and accurately describe things!

Anu also includes a quote, which has nothing to do with the word. Today's quote addresses a question I've been pondering recently: What is love? (Yes, every time I ask this question the song come into my head... It's a bit distracting.) Here's what essayist Michel de Montaigne has to say about it: "If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I." Ah. So sweet. So accurate. Love is not reasonable and is not able to be reasoned, so it certainly cannot have a definition that really is definitive.

My final thought for the day is that there are words that don't exist but we think they do. Just yesterday I was going to write the word "strategery" - you know, cunning, tactical skill, the quality you must employ in order to successfully carry out a good strategy. But...it turns out that it's not a word. So why in the world do I think it is?! Do you know who made this word that is not a word? A fake George W. Bush. James Downey, writer for Saturday Night Live, created it for a skit poking fun at Bush's invention of and misuse of words. Sad thing is, the fake word has actually now been adopted by the White House. Yow. And all of this tricks me into thinking it's actually a word. No fair!

...Can someone explainify that to me!?!

on campus

Not only are students prevalent these days on the Penn State campus, the regulars are here, too. All summer long I've been greeted day in and day out by rabbits and squirrels bustling about in the grass and underbrush. These things are the tamest wild animals you can imagine. They can be pretty funny, too: one day Not Joe and I were walking down a path when all of a sudden a trash can started making noise - and out popped a squirrel!

One of the other graduate students in the lab told me that there's a "legend" about the squirrels and rabbits. They are reportedly reincarnations of devoted alumni who now get to live out their days on the university campus they hold most dear. I like this tale simply because it gives an explanation for the 5-toed paw print that is one of the emblems representing the Penn State Nittany lion. I had been befuddled by this print for some time because felines do not have 5-toed prints. In fact, when I looked into it, only small mammals such as minks, otters, and RABBITS and SQUIRRELS have 5 toes showing up in their tracks. So, there you have it - the 5-toed print is actually that of the Penn State alumni-turned-lawn-crawler!

I was astounded the other day on my walk back from Afternoon Coffee to see another wild animal casually hanging out on campus, fittingly seated on a branch in a tree in the Peace Garden.Way cool! I love my neighbors here on campus!

school's on

Woah.

I moved here to Penn State at the end of April, which happens to be the end of the school year. I watched undergraduates dragging their feet and begrudgingly going to final exams. And then they were gone - SUMMER!

But now... Now, my friends, they are back. And with a vengeance!

Suddenly the population of the town of State College roughly doubled. What was once a sleepy town is now bustling. Traffic has picked up in all senses of the word: there are more cars, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians. Part of me thinks I ought to start getting up earlier and reaching campus before it becomes too crazy in the mornings (another part of me really likes to sleep).

It will take some adjusting, to be sure. Also what is sure that, despite the fact that busy-ness around me can be a bit stressful and annoying, I am glad that the "kids" are back in Happy Valley. It just seems right.

silver and gold

I have been extraordinarily blessed in my move to State College to have met some really great people and to have quickly become good friends with a couple of them. I spend time with one friend or another pretty much every day. Nevertheless, some days are really hard and seem almost lonely, despite my being with other people. The reason is that, even though these folks are "friends," I have only known them for about two months, and that is a far, far cry from the friends in Pittsburgh whom I have known for 6 years. I know that friendships take a long time to develop and mature, but living in the microwave-age, I really dislike that and wish that I could somehow zap deep friendships into being and make six-years-worth of friendship be squooshed into two months and give quick results!

That is why I have to remember my "gold friends" - the ones who have been around for three, six, fourteen years! They know my personality, likes and dislikes, modus operandi, and history. I don't have to give them the back story just to get them to understand the situation at hand. They bring normalcy and familiarity and acceptance, and that means comfort.

At the same time, I'm realizing that gold friends don't become gold friends until they've already been "silver friends." Silver friends have a shininess because they are new! That's exciting! But they need to be polished quite a bit. Polishing is all a part of the process, unfortunately. It's hard, but it's good in the end.

Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
And the other's gold

dinner parties

The term "dinner party" seems so grown-up and stuffy to me. But man, oh man - do I enjoy them, as I have recently discovered.

In my move to State College I realized that it was high time I make it a point to build relationships with people. To be fair, I guess I have been doing this for a long time, but now it was time to step it up a level: be hospitable. I've been getting really good at meeting people for coffee...but certainly never in my home. Part of the reason for this is that I am a chronically messy person and my home is rarely in a presentable state. But...with a new place to live and a large bedroom in which to throw all of the clutter when people are going to come over, it is now more possible. ...And maybe, just maybe, I'm learning (through exciting experiences like The Fire...) that cleanliness and organization are important things and worth the effort.

About 10 months ago I drove with a friend to a place in West Virginia, and during our travels I complained about how there was no time for other people even though I wanted to be with them and build friendships. She pointed out that everyone needs to eat and suggested that eating with someone else would be a practical way to spend time with others but not terribly cramp my schedule. ...Very wise. Now, finally, almost a year later, I'm taking her advice!

I still haven't perfected this, because even though it seems easy enough to just eat and split, it seems like eating with another person or two automatically means that the meal will last at least twice as long as normal. I haven't done exact calculations, but the length of the meal-time seems to be directly mathematically correlated to the number of people in the dining party. My best guess is that one additional person makes the meal 2-times as long, and for each additional person I can plan to tack on about 15 minutes. ...So, for a party of 8, a meal that would normally take 45 minutes suddenly becomes a 3 hour ordeal. Fortunately, I only own 6 chairs, so the maximum time for a meal in my apartment will only be 2.5 hours, and that's not nearly so bad...although it still certainly wouldn't work if the goal was to still have a night left afterwards for being productive.

Another part of dinner parties that I have yet to perfect is the fine art of making everything be warm when it gets to the table. What I've read suggests that with a bit of planning one can time the cooking of all dishes in the meal to be done at about the same time and thus all be warm. I like this idea because I love planning and find it an exciting and fun challenge to figure out how I can coordinate all of the cooking steps to beautifully work together. I run into a few problems because my lack of cooking experience means that I often grossly under- or over-estimate how long it will actually take to prepare certain dishes, but I'm getting better as I cook more often. There are a few other tricks I've picked up along the way, including selecting dishes that are fine to sit in a warm oven without shriveling up or that retain their heat nicely. But one thing that foils my plans is the people. As usual, the one aspect I cannot control is the people... Will they arrive on time? Will they dawdle when I call them to the table? Will they "thoughtfully" bring something else to add to the menu that I then need to do final preparations for? Never know.

The funny thing with all of this eating-together that I've done here in State College is that...even though I wanted to have an activity that didn't at all mess up my schedule and dining together takes so much more time than dining solo, I find that I actually still have all the time I need to accomplish everything that is important. And slowly but surely I am able to value the time with the people much, much more than my own agenda.

mean girls

This past weekend I finally got around to watching the movie Mean Girls. I thought I would like it because Tina Fey wrote the screenplay and I like high school social antics. I enjoyed it. It was a good reminder that there's something in us females that makes us more than just a little bit bonkers sometimes, particularly when it comes to dealing with other people...especially other females.

It all reminded me of a story...

Once upon a time I liked a guy, and the guy liked me. I soon found out, however, that the last girl the guy had dated was now really serious with another guy...and the guy I liked was rather upset by the whole thing. I then found out that the guy I liked was largely upset because the girl had been mean and hurtful and kind of crazy. At least that is what he said. Well, he didn't say she was kind of crazy...I got that on my own based on her reported behavior and words. A mean girl towards guys. And she probably didn't intend it, but it happened. And I understand how a girl can really hurt a guy and yet not really know it, because...girls do that. It's unfair that mean girls can go from hurting one guy to being serious with another one while the victim gets left alone. And that injustice is indeed how the guy I liked felt.

I hadn't ever met this girl. I realized she wasn't an altogether evil troll, but there was a distinct gruffness towards her because of how affected the guy I liked was in the aftermath of her mean-girlness. And then I saw a picture of her. Out of some very ungood part of me came the following thoughts: "Ew. She's not even that pretty. The guy I like would be getting a WAY better deal by being with ME compared with if he got stuck with HER. I hope she sees us some day - I bet she'd feel really stupid that a hot girl like me ended up with the guy she was so trashy to. And I hope all of her friends who she told that the guy I like was so bad will see us too and realize that he can't possibly be so bad if he's got a great girl on his arm. Justice shall be served!!!"

Yes, yes, there's quite a bit of vanity in those thoughts as well as some level of twisted jealousy and judgment and pride. But the point isn't to tell me how yucky I am in my thoughts - I already know that. The point is that I, too, have some mean girl in my heart. And don't we all.

And I also like to believe that I'm not the only one woman who has some inexplicable sliver of desire to be something of a "trophy wife," for better or for worse. Be honest. It is weird, I know, but it is true...

The more ironic part of it all was that after I thought all of those things, I realized that the girl would NOT in fact feel at all embarrassed or guilty for hurting the guy I liked just on account of my pretty face next to his. What she actually would think is, "Wow, what a trashy ho! Flashing her beautiful self all over and seducing that poor, stupid guy. I knew he was a shallow loser."

So...we can't win. When we try to be mean to another girl, the girl is just mean back to us and we're no better off than we were to start with - perhaps, even, we're worse because now we feel even worse.

The trouble is comparison. We girls always want to be better, prettier, smarter, thinner, kinder, cleaner, whatever than the other girl. Why do we DO this? Is it simply insecurity? Does a girl not realize that no matter what she does someone will always be something-er than she is and that somebody else will always be wishing to be something-else-er so to be more like her?

It is a problem, and I haven't figured out any way to fix it other than ignoring all other messages other than what Jesus tells me: He loves me more than anyone ever, ever, ever will and thinks I'm awesome the way I am!

ugly baby

I am grateful for the internet and the tools it provides to keep in contact with people who are far away. All of these "social utilities" and "networking" websites can get a little crazy, but really...they do have some use and have been especially helpful for me as I move to a new place and as other friends have moved to other places. It's good to keep in contact with people. But the other beauty of the internet is that one is able to keep ENOUGH distance from the semi-uncomfortable situations of friends.

For example...

Lots of people are having babies! An old pal of mine recently had her first child. A bouncing baby girl. Old Pal is obviously very exciting, and since it is the First Child, Old Pal's social-networking-website is suddenly flooded with pictures of the baby. And people post their comments. All of the typical things, "So cute" ... "Beautiful" ... "Looking good."

But, folks, let me just tell you...this baby is NOT cute. Okay, okay, so maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And I have no doubt that Old Pal a.k.a. The Mom thinks her newborn is the most precious thing ever. But...no. Call me critical and insensitive, but there is no part of me that thinks First Child is cute, sweet, adorable, anything like that. Just...weird-looking.

This is where being in contact only via internet comes in handy, because...I am not obligated to add my comment to the photo gallery. If I were by Old Pal's side and visiting First Child in their home, I would be forced to think of something savvy to speak. "What a unique baby you have!" "She's so special." "I've never seen anyone like her!" Can't lie, you know. And face-to-face it's just not right to say nothing. New moms, I think, feel quite offended when their galfriends don't say anything praiseworthy of their new bundle of joy. But...since all I am doing is viewing photos online in the comfort of my own living room...I don't need to say anything at all.

Whew.

I do hope that the poor First Child grows out of this weird-looking-baby stage (and soon). Then I supposed I could say, "Wow, she looks even cuter now!"

tall

I cannot remember ever being short. I have always been tall. I've stopped growing, and for the past 10+ years I've been 6'0". As I was growing up, I jokingly but semi-seriously said that it was "my goal in life" to be 6-foot. I made it! Unfortunately, what seemed like such a cool thing at one time turned out to be not quite so great once I got there. For example, it's kind of hard to find jeans or other pants that are long enough. And it's not just my legs that are long - so is my torso and my arms, so it's also hard to find shirts that cover my tummy and sleeves that reach down to my wrists. In a lot of ways, I grew up wearing what's in fashion now: cropped pants, 3/4-length sleeves, and midriffs. But...they weren't in fashion then, so it was not really very enjoyable.

Recently, various circumstances have made me feel really uncomfortable about being tall. Being tall sometimes makes me feel like there's something wrong with me...and that I make others feel strange when they're around me and that other people wish I weren't towering over them. I read an article by Zoe Williams in the Guardian, and she described some of that weirdness as "feelings of unfeminine giantitude." Here, here.

This afternoon I left work quite early because I've been feeling dead tired and I needed to just get away and rest. Not sure that I really accomplished that goal, but somewhere along the line as I lay on the couch I realized that sometimes I wish I were not so tall. And that struck me, because it's not so good to not like the way I am, particularly if it's not something I can do anything about.

And so I thought...maybe a big part of my uncomfortableness is simply due to the fact that I am not okay with me being ME, which includes being 6'0". I think there are a lot of times that I try to seem not so tall - a strange, almost unconscious apology for the way I am. I tend to slouch. I lean against things when I am standing up and talking to short people. If there's nothing to lean on, I sit down or step back so as to decrease the angle at which heads need to be bent to make adequate eye contact. These tendencies are especially true when I am around men. I also don't wear heels, but...I don't think they're very good for one's posture, so I'm not sure that this choice really has much to do with my height.

But you know what? Never has anyone ever complained about my being too tall to talk with or play games with or eat with or even dance with. Nobody has ever said, "Hey, could you please sit down, it's scaring me that you're a foot taller than me!" And I would never think to suggest to a short person, "Why don't you stand on this box while we converse, because I can barely see you down there" -- that is just RUDE and also demeans they way that they naturally and uncontrollably ARE.

So...why am I so hard on myself?

I think it's high time I live comfortably in my entire 6 feet. No apologies. I think that just as some women feel ashamed about their natural beauty and thus hide it, I feel ashamed to show my height...which is actually something a lot of women really admire and/or desire. I'm taking little steps to come to grips with my height: a couple weeks ago I even went so far as to actually purchase some cropped pants (as opposed to the full-length pants that only come up to my shins, which is what ended up happening when I was a kid...).

Being comfortable with one's self is often easier if one knows she's in the company of others. So...who else out there is six feet? Well, here's a list of some folks you may know. For better or for worse, they're my height...

• Lots of actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, James Van Der Beek, Val Kilmer, Luke Wilson, Shane West, Christan Bale, David Duchovny, Denzel Washington, Jimmy Fallon, Steve Martin, Hank Azaria, Matt Dillon (too bad it's not Matt Damon; he's only 5'10"), Jason Bateman, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Tom Hanks, Laurence Fishburne, Rowan Atkinson, Bruce Willis, John Stamos, Matthew Perry, and even both Mark Paul Gosselaar AND Dustin Diamond.
• Superman on t.v.: both Dean Cain and the original - George Reeves!
• A wide variety of musicians: Josh Groban, Vanilla Ice, Elvis Presley, Boy George, 50 Cent, Justin Timberlake, Neil Young, Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees, Barry Manilow, Frank Zappa, Tim McGraw
• Presidents (and an interesting combination, at that): John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon
• Another politician: Tony Blair
• People you may find humorous: Dave Chappelle, Jeff Foxworthy
• Movie directors: Oliver Stone and Michael Moore
• Some of my favorite people ever: Wayne Gretzky and Charles Schultz

And some neat-o women, too!

• Miss America 1945 Bess Myerson
• Actresses Allison Janney, Kristen Johnston, Terry Ferrell (Dax on Deep Space 9), Geena Davis, and Brooke Shields.
• Models like Elle Macpherson (with whom I also happen to share 2 of 3 curve measurements...we'd be identical except that I have a big, huge butt)
• Cool people like Maya Angelou
• even Mary Queen of Scots!

Not too bad. I like of like the kindred spirits of the 6-foot persuasion...

I guess it's not so bad, after all!

hot...but not stupid!

It's REALLY hot.

It's 7:50p.m., and it's 86 degrees F outside. The high today was 90.

Technically, this is cooler than it was in Honduras. However, it certainly feels hotter. Partly because of the humidity - Honduras was much more dry heat and sometimes reminded me of a sauna; here it feels like any moment it could downpour, and I really wish it would. I think it also feels hotter than Honduras because this is PENNSYLVANIA and not Honduras and what is the weather doing being so incredibly hot in Pennsylvania?

The shops downtown (downtown being the two streets directly across from the University) are having lots of fun sales. The optical store is having two sales: the "It's so freaking HOT" sunglasses sale and "I'm squinting at the optical store sign" sunglasses sale. I don't quite get it either, that's just what the signs said. I also walked by the Corner Room restaurant which had a large sign telling passers-by that it's too hot to cook at home, come in and eat in their air conditioning.

And speaking of air conditioning...

That is what is lacking in my apartment at the moment. I'm thinking that it hasn't worked at all since I moved in, but I tend to not run the A/C unless I have to, so I hadn't really used it until it got unbearable with the 90+ days this past weekend. The beauty of living in an apartment is that when something doesn't work, you just call and tell someone and they fix it. So I called about the A/C problem today.

In the lab where I did my graduate work, there was a saying amongst my coworkers that once one gets his or her PhD, he or she tends to lose all common sense and can't think intelligently like most people. I promised them that I would try my darndest to not do that. I don't claim to always know everything, but I try to at least not disregard lab safety, University rules, and federal laws as some people I know seem to think they can do just because they have a PhD. I think that my coworkers' insights are an exception to the more commonly held view that PhD's are exceptionally bright. I'm not saying that either of those opinions are entirely accurate. However, sometimes I wonder if the random people who communicate with me would treat me differently if they knew I had a PhD. They might think that I know kind of what I'm talking about, give me a little credit. Maybe they wouldn't tell me ridiculous things like the person who came to check on my air conditioner today.

I got home from work after my stroll through HOT downtown and HOT residential neighborhood and HOT shopping area and was happy to find that there was a note under my door indicating that someone had indeed responded to my service request. That was quick! Good! The poor Angora rabbit with way more hair than any innocent animal should be expected to have when it's 90 degrees outside (Joelle) really deserves the decency of a semi-controlled climate even if her owner can get by in the heat by just closing the shades and taking off her clothes. But as I read through the note on the service report, I realized that it was going to be yet another long, sweltering night for both of us.

poor, hot jo

"I checked AC. It was off at the thermostat. I turned it on and AC was working OK. I left it set to 75 degrees."

Said individual was even so kind as to write on my wall above the thermostat in red pencil where the different settings for my heating and cooling controls are. In case you need more than a PhD to figure that out.
There was, indeed, a fan thing making noise throughout my apartment, which might in fact indicate that the central air was working.

However, if you look at the picture above, you will notice that it was STILL 80 DEGREES. After the thermostat had been set to 75. And the "air conditioning" had been running all afternoon.

Maybe I am at fault for not going into detail with my complaint to the apartment folks. I had just told them that the AC wasn't working. I didn't tell them that what wasn't working was that it wouldn't go below 80, and that this indicated to me that the cooling part of the AC coolant system was not working although the fan obviously was. I also did not explain that the fan mysteriously turns on every now and then even when the AC is set to off. I also did not say that since it was probably just running up my electric bill to keep the fan part running and wasn't even doing anything useful, I had turned the thermostat to OFF and realized that this would certainly mean that no cold air would come out of the vents. I guess I had figured that someone who knows about fixing air conditioners would be as capable as I, who knows next to nothing about air conditioners, to notice that when the AC was on and the fans were going, the air that was coming out of the vents wasn't cold.

But apparently the obvious problem was that the resident was far too much of a nincompoop to realize that the air conditioning in fact needed to be turned on.

Blah!

I don't know; it's probably just me, but if I were the one checking into the complaint, I would assume that they person had already tried to turn the thermostat to COOL. Since it had been a bazillion thousand degrees all weekend. And that's how you get the air conditioner to work. It would seem like most people would know that the air conditioning does not magically turn on all by itself and that you need to actually turn it on.

I assume too much, I guess.

So...we'll see what happens tomorrow. I left a message in the office again - they are of course closed by the time I return home from work - with a bit more detail about what is going on. I really, really, really, really hope that 80 degrees is not the absolute limit of the central air conditioning system.

real friends

The funny thing about going on a trip and then coming back is that one has to get back to normal life, and normal life has a way of overtaking things and making what happened on the trip and what was learned on the trip get shoved to the back of one's mind as new challenges arise. After returning from Honduras a week ago (Thursday night) and jumping right back into work Friday morning and social life Friday night, I am more convinced than ever that when I go on a vacation or trip, I need an additional two or so days just to process everything before proceeding with normal life. Unfortunately, I realized this TODAY, not last Thursday. Retrospect is 20/20.

What I'm trying to say is, "Sorry I am super-duper procrastinating on this writing about Honduras thing. I have sooooo much to say, but I want to share it all to the best of my ability, and that will require putting in a bunch of time and thought, and I don't seem to have either of those to spare at the moment. And since life continues to go on and I have other stuff to write about, here's the other stuff. Honduras will have to wait, even though I wish it didn't have to."

Thus, here is other stuff:

One of the things I find most most intriguing about life is that you really never know what will happen. I like to live a relatively controlled life. I like to have a schedule, I like to know where people are going to be and what I will be doing and what time everything starts. It takes me a lot of effort to deal well with people who do a lot of random stuff or invite me to come over in two hours (...I'd prefer a two day notice). I like to think that I'm slowly but surely learning how to be more flexible. In that sense I really don't like the fact that what will happen in life is totally unknown. But at the same time, I DO like that anything can happen! There is a world of opportunity for good news or good events or good people to cross my path at any moment. I never know when something crazy like giving a talk will lead to being asked out on a date or when unwillingly and hopelessly checking a website will show me a job opening that I get hired for pretty much on the spot or when a someone I knew vaguely a long time back will re-enter my life and we'll become good friends (all of which may or may not have ever actually occurred in my life...hee hee.)

Still, there's always the danger that life will throw a curve that is not nice. I realize that if I'm going to welcome the good randomness I can't abhor the bad randomness; I can't be choosy about randomness!! And when bad randomness brings about sad news or confusing things to think about or validation of answers I had hoped would not be true...that is when I realize who I really value as my real friends. Who do I immediately think about to call when ungood things arrive?

I was somewhat surprised by my answer to this question today when something unanticipated happened. I've been building friendships intentionally with a couple people here in State College, and I've felt pretty close to some of them. At the same time, I've felt a bit distant from many friends who don't live near me - time and distance can really do a number on relationships and openness and understanding. So, I'm kind of stuck in a bad spot here with only heart-close friends who live far away and distance-close friends who don't have that special connection yet. Which to choose?

It wasn't really a choice...the heart won out after only about 2.5 milliseconds of hemming and hawing. I find it interesting that even though it's faster to get support from people who live nearby -- immediate gratification/comfort -- I feel more comforted just knowing that someone who truly cares about me knows that I'm facing something difficult and feels for me even if he/she can't rush to my side and give me a hug to make it feel better.

ugh...work

Blah.

Now that I am (in theory) fully rested (or at least cannot use "I got back from Honduras on Friday so I'm tired" as an excuse because there's been sufficient time since Friday for me to catch up on sleep), I am back in the swing of things at work. Which is kind of going pukey-ly today. I had made a nice plan last Friday to start off my return to work with a bang and start some bacteria growing over the weekend so that today I could try out some new stuff. However, after making the plan I learned that we were missing a key component of what I wanted to do and nobody knew why we hadn't received it since it had been ordered at the beginning of May. So there went that idea. Back to getting NOTHING done.

When I get nothing done, I feel very inept. What I really need to do is to sit myself in the library for a couple days and immerse myself in a bath of literature about iron reduction and soil bacteria and chemical engineering and gene expression microarrays and the TCA cycle and anaerobic growth techniques. In a few days I'd feel not so inept. But I feel like I'm not getting anything done when I'm just reading. So I feel highly unmotivated to proceed as such.

And then I go try to be proactive and meet with one of our collaborators to talk about their part of the project, and the little sophomore undergrad turns out to be way smarter than me and asks all these detailed questions about my PhD thesis project. For a moment he even got me to thinking that he knew all about vaccine development and I really felt inept. But then he gave himself away with a comment about adenovirus and rhinovirus vectors, so I felt a little better. Nevertheless, he's a major smartie. Bugger.

Work is called work for a reason, I know. But there are plenty of times that I wish all I had to do in life was serve people like I did in Honduras, teach knitting, and spend time with people.

being social makes me sick

As alluded to in my previous post, everyone I've met here in State College seems to know at least one other person I have already met. It's sort of getting old. At first it was really funny, now it's just annoying. People tell me, "Oh, you should meet So-and-so, you'd really like him/her." And all I can say is, "I already have..." No fun.

I can't really complain, though, because what with all the Knowing People, I've been a regular social butterfly. This has been greatly helped by two particular people, E who is a gal I met through church and who knows my old roommate/dearest friend, and Dr (NOT Doctor, NOT D, I'm abbreviating him Dr) who is a guy I actually knew back in Pittsburgh but haven't talked to in years and randomly ran into at a different church. (Yes, and of course E and Dr know each other, too. When I asked Dr if I could invite E to a party he was having, he told me she was already coming. ...Also no fun!) Together, E and Dr have led to my Being With People 5 of the 7 most recent days, and that is a lot for me, who really enjoys quiet evenings at home (and also really needs to be at home unpacking...). I really, really appreciate the welcome I've received and have very much enjoyed getting to know both of them and all the other folks to whom they've introduced me.

However, I think that has all backfired on me, because all of a sudden, I have gotten a cold. It's better than the flu, but it's struck full-force with achy muscles, sore throat, runny eyes, pounding headache, croaky voice, and it left me wading through the rainy Monday at still-quite-new work feeling like I could fall asleep at any given moment. The network guy who grinds the coffee...he wasn't in today. :-( No help there. But I made it somehow.

Now, what is the lesson to be learned from this experience? Ought I stop spending time with people?? Maybe I need to set up a curfew for myself? Wow, I never knew that being friendly could be so complicated!

more renewable energy

Do you like cats? Do you like engineering? Do you like You Tube? If so, or if not, please see the following short documentary:

fire!

(in which Ruth learns the value of cleanliness and the danger of multi-tasking...)

As if writing a PhD dissertation, finding a new job, and moving weren't enough to try to balance all at once, I apparently thought it would be good to have a Real Emergency throw into the mix for the fun of it. On Easter Sunday I woke up and wanted to have a hard-boiled egg because I needed something hearty for breakfast to sustain me through several hours at church. To save some time, I turned on the burner to start heating the pot of water+egg and figured I could jump in the shower really quick - by the time I got out the pot would be boiling and ready to take off for the hard-cooking.

When I got out of the shower a very few minutes later, I had a sense that something wasn't quite right, so I dashed to the kitchen dressed in a towel and without my glasses on (aka I was pretty darn blind). What I found was a scene sort of like I've seen in movies with the entire apartment FILLED with smoke. However, it was still quite apparent that there was something aflame on the stove. Based on the location of the flame, I realized immediately what had happened: I had turned on the wrong burner and something sitting on that burner had caught fire. Because, after all, a stovetop is a great place to set random flammable things, right? Of course not, but in the midst of the dissertation writing and other such things I had been quite remiss in actually cleaning up anything. Thus, the kitchen counter was filled with dishes, and that meant "stuff" was now being piled on the stove.

I didn't want to sit and ponder the stupidity of what had led up to this dangerous situation, but I did realize it was important to think clearly and not freak out. I immediately thought, "I don't know what's on fire, so I should not put water on it. There is a fire extinguisher just outside my apartment in the building's entry hall. I should go get that." I then immediately thought, "I don't have any clothes on, and I really ought not to go running out into the hall naked."

So I dashed into the bedroom and found my robe, then found my glasses, then grabbed the fire extinguisher, then put out the fire, turned off the burner (which was not so bright, because since the fire had just been occurring in front of the burner control knob, it was really hot, so I burned my thumb), and then stood back and surveyed the mess.

I would love to show you a picture of what had happened, but I was entirely in NO MOOD to take a photo to document the disaster. I was too overwhelmed by the stove and counter full of dishes which were now blanketed in the yellow fire extinguisher stuff...and the fact that without a doubt I would have to clean up this whole mess, which would not be fun. It didn't get much better when I went wandering into the other rooms of the apartment and found EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING...in EVERY room - living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom) sprinkled with ash that had evolved from the whatever-it-was that had burned up on the stove. And that was another troubling thing...I had NO idea what had burned. I could tell from the remains and the smell that it was plastic, but I couldn't recall anything plastic that I had had that would be the size that the large mass of goonk now carbon-fused to the burner element and stovetop represented.

ashes, ashes...

And Joelle...! Fortunately, she was fine and didn't seem too fazed by any of this. I found her and picked her up, and then she started freaking out. I realized that when she was on the ground the smoke was too high for her to smell, but when I lifted her up into the smoke, she was quite aware that something was wrong. So I decided she was probably in the best spot by just being on the floor. She did, however, get a little bit dirty from hopping around on the floor that was covered in ash.

the bunny feet are notsupposed to be black!

Next I opened the windows and door and turned on the central fan and the bathroom fan and stove exhaust fan. Oh, and after the fire had been extinguished the smoke detector finally started going off (...not very safe, eh?), so I had to deal with making that shut up. I put on some clothes and called some friends and everyone was at church because it was Easter so I left messages and so I started cleaning, beginning with Joelle's cage because I wasn't too keen on her eating the ash.

Fortunately, one friend called me back and came over to help clean the stove and kitchen. She really likes cleaning, so she was the perfect person to have over. By the time she left a couple hours later, the kitchen looked fairly normal except for the huge chunk of plastic melted onto the stove.

it's what's for dinner

By this time I was REALLY hungry since my breakfast had been long forgotten about (I think the egg actually was cooked, having been sitting next to a fire...but I didn't quite feel like investigating), so I hauled myself out to my favorite little diner where they made me some lovely eggs over hard with ham and a yummy Belgian waffle with grapefruit juice. No fires occurred. On the way home I picked up a huge supply of cleaning equipment and set to work little by little.

In the weeks that have followed I have restored the stove to its normal appearance. With the help of a razor blade and a lot of determination, I was able to scrape off the melted plastic, which I eventually realized had come from an empty Simply Orange container. This removal fortunately occurred before my landlord came over to assess the damage, so he wasn't too mad and only made me pay to get a new burner element - that was not something I was even going to attempt to clean. The fire helped me jump-start my leaving-this-apartment cleaning, so that was nice. It also helped me identify a number of spiderwebs that I had not been aware of.

spooky

All's well that ends well, and I'm thankful that I, Joelle, and all my stuff are safe. In the future I'll attempt to be more clean and only do one thing at a time...

nice little random free things

Aah... (That's a happy sigh, not a freaking-out one).

Things are coming together with this whole dissertation thing. I need to turn in my mostly-final copy to my thesis committee on Friday of this week. I nearly killed my brain doing nothing but working, eating some, and sleeping this past week trying to get everything pulled together, but it's paid off. An quick trip to the chiropractor helped to relieve a bunch of the pain that I had accrued in my neck and shoulders from doing computer work so intensely, and I've been able to sleep.

Of course, as soon as I had pulled all of my text, tables, figures, and references together into one file and sent it off to my advisor for a final look-through, a few non-niceties occurred. The journal article I had sent in for review got rejected. Bleh. I realized that I had a few more sets of data to analyze that require a statistics computer program we don't have in the lab and I've been borrowing the use of from a friend who has her own data to analyze and really doesn't need me stealing her computer any more. Blah. I finally read the formatting requirements for the University's electronic dissertation thingy, and it means I have to figure out how to do some new things with Word that I don't know yet and I have to shorten a couple sections of my dissertation because they're too long - being concise has never been my strength. Pooey.

Well, little by little those things are also getting untangled from the mess they seem to have created. My advisor has chopped up the one section I wrote to make it successfully fit into the allotted space (I have to read his revisions, but I'm thinking they'll be okay...he's pretty good at not being too wordy). I have a new plan for the journal article, and having written my entire dissertation already means that it will be semi-easier to put in a few extra parts that I had been trying to keep out of that particular manuscript...just cut and paste from the dissertation!

And the most lovely thing occurred with the statistics issue...I was Googling around trying to locate an online calculator that would do a Kruskal-Wallis test for me and having no luck and then started to give up on that and look into Bonferroni corrections instead since I am never quite sure if I have accurately taken them into account, when lo and behold the program I had been using at my friend's is available for a 30 day free trial. Yay!!! Now I can analyze as much data as I want to. I'm so geeked! I really, truly am. GraphPad Prism, the statistical package I am referring to, is so user friendly. I haven't been using it for its intended use -- it's technically a graphing program and makes pretty, pretty pictures with only a few clicks of buttons, and that is so incredibly wonderful. Now that I have it on my computer, I actually am inclined to make all of my dissertation graphs over again using the program, but I have a feeling my time would be much better spent doing something else.

I think...that this might all work out somehow. The dissertation defense date is April 4. ...Can I make it until then...????

everybody needs sleep

I recall quite distinctly the Sesame Street montage of "Everybody Sleeps." I thought the most wonderful way to sleep would be the little girl in the car seat (can you believe those were considered safe!?!?!) with the wind blowing through her hair. The second best way would be floating on an air mattress in a pool.

I've been reminded of the importance of sleep over the past couple days. I skimped on the sleep last Thursday, and I think that set me up for getting a coworker's cold/flu thing, because I'm feeling rather under the weather now. Bad time to get sick -- I have less than two weeks to get my PhD dissertation handed in to my thesis committee. AAAK! I have thus been working day and night at writing, rewriting, researching, making figures, etc. And sometimes that's meant I've forgotten I need to sleep.

But...thanks to my rabbit Joelle, I've remembered.
I have not often observed Joelle sleeping. In retrospect, this is probably due to the fact that rabbits are crepuscular and thus are most active in the mornings and evenings, which happen to be the times that I am at home and in the presence of Joelle. Over the past several weeks, however, I've been doing more work from home. When she's not chewing up my computer cords, Joelle usually rests in one of her favorite places. But even then, I had not really seen her sleeping in those places, although it's kind of hard to tell with all that hair. Either she's getting TIRED of me being home all the time or she's getting sick (let's hope not!) or she's exhausted because it's shedding season or maybe I've just been paying more attention -- but as the weeks have worn on, I've caught her sleeping more and more often!
Her favorite place these days is under the pink chair.
No, no - not on it -- UNDER it!
More rarely I've found her asleep in her "house" (cage).
Yesterday I thought I saw her sleeping but wasn't sure: she was twitching her ears and chewing now and then. It reminded me of the puppies I've had who would all but run while having a dream. She was indeed asleep, and Joelle was having a pretty intense dream!! I wonder, what do rabbits dream of...?

I'm thinking I'd better take a lesson from the wise bun and get some more rest myself. Sleeping is, after all, very necessary for keeping people and rabbits alike in healthy, cheerful, good working order. And I think it also contributes to cuteness, too.

changes, changes

I'm still here. Nothing hugely new to report on -- there was the temporary loss of my computer's functionality (and potentially my entire dissertation), but that got resolved rapidly when what was first diagnosed as a motherboard frying turned out just to be an overheating of the...some computer part that caused the whole machine to shut down and refuse to turn on.

I met with a mentor of mine on Tuesday, and we got to talking about politics. She and I are both life-long independents, I think because we can't wholly agree with any party (or any other sort of "institution," for that matter...). However, she shocked me by saying that in the heat of all this too-close-to-call of the Democratic presidential candidacy race she made the decision to register as something so that she can participate in the primary in April. If she can do it...so can I! At least for the primary season (is that bad? ...is that legal?). And so, assuming the voting people have processed my request, I am not an official party member. Don't count on that change lasting, though, folks! But, you never know.