something about honduras

I really, really, really must write something about Honduras. I have been procrastinating in a lot of areas, such as making corrections to a journal article, stopping to take time for myself, and getting sleep...and writing about Honduras. May as well at least do one of those finally!

One of the many lessons I learned while in Honduras was about poverty. One of the many lessons I learned when I returned back from Honduras is how people think they understand poverty. I don't think anyone truly understands it. If they did, I don't think it would exist because people would work hard to prevent it, stop it, and reverse it. Here's my experience with it:

My team and I traveled to La Acequia, Honduras, which is about an hour and a half bus ride from San Pedro Sula. It is in the middle of a flat, dry valley of fields and is surrounded by some of the most gorgeous mountains I have ever seen - very lush and perhaps even more beautiful than those in Whistler or Banff or even Austria. La Acequia itself is pretty flat and dry, too. As we drove from San Pedro out to La Acequia, I saw loads of homes shoved into any available space by the road. Homes, I should mention, consisted usually of about a 10 or 12 foot square edifice, usually with a little bit of a covered porch area, all roofed with tin. Some of the homes had poured concrete walls. Many had walls made of additional pieces of tin tied together, or whatever other materials had been fortunately gathered. Most homes had a curtain for a door. A few homes had a window or maybe two.

La Acequia itself is filled with these homes, probably about 300 of them. Within this community there is a range of wealth, which is an incredibly strange thing. It is strange because even the "rich" people...are not at all rich. Even the rich families pretty much have just enough to get by when they're lucky. The longer I stayed there, the easier it was for me to adapt to this jaded view of wealth. It seemed like there were some pretty well-to-do families there. They could usually buy bottled water, they had food, they had few leaks in their roofs, their clothes had few holes or stains. And somehow this became the picture of "wealth." ...What then, of people who could afford to ride on airplanes and had clean clothing every day and brought along digital cameras and had air conditioning and wore shoes? Extravagance.

Two interesting things happened one day that snapped me back to the reality of the situation. I had spent the week in La Acequia and had not experienced any other areas of Honduras. On Saturday we took a day trip to San Pedro Sula to buy some additional supplies and check email. On the bus ride back (P.S. the "bus ride" means sitting and/or standing on an old school bus that drives along unpaved roads) we rode through Naco. La Acequia is kind of a suburb of Naco, Naco being probably about five times its size. Naco had many markets and other symbols of slightly more wealth. However, as I gazed out the window, I realized that people here still wore entirely donated clothing. You can tell because there are all sorts t-shirts that say something about so-and-so's high school spring dance or the 8th annual Bingo tournament...all in English and with American cities. Even with this "wealth"...the people could not afford their own clothing. The second interesting thing that really stabbed me in the heart was that as we paused in Naco to pick up some more passengers, Phil Collins' voice came out of the speakers of the radio, "Oh, think twice. It's just another day for you and me in paradise."

I just about bawled.

I realized that the poverty I saw was not just in La Acequia. It wasn't that we had stumbled upon a tiny, secluded, poor rural village. We were in the middle of an ENTIRE COUNTRY that was poor. It was kind of strange to think that I could travel for days and not get to ANYWHERE that was even near rich.

It's a bleak picture, poverty. And yet there is a lot of good, even in desperate situations. People enjoy their families. People enjoy each other. People laugh. Children play. There are celebrations. Life is more basic, which in my opinion can be good - although quite admittedly a lot more work. For example, every day our hosts would bake tortillas. First they needed to find firewood and then build up the fire. Then make the tortilla dough, and finally form the tortillas and bake each one on the stovetop. And every day they made probably 100 tortillas for the household to eat. I learned how to make them, and I made about 5. One I dropped in the dirt when I tried to form it. In all, making 5 took me about 15 minutes. I was told that one tortilla could be sold for 1 lempira, and 19 lempira are one US dollar. I would not be making very good money if I were selling tortillas in Honduras... The point, however, is that there is a lot of work needed to meet the basic needs of everyday life. It's a lot more eco-friendly that way, as far as energy use goes.

What has bothered me the most now that I am back in the States is what I hear so many people saying when I tell them about the poverty. Time after time after time I hear them say - no, rather ASK, as if they're seeking a confirmation from me, seeking someone to reassure them in their apathy - "They're poor, but they are still happy even though they don't have much, right?" I think what they mean is that the poor people are not entirely hopeless, that people still tell jokes and have fun. Well, sure. And in a lot of way I think they are more content than all of us complainy rich people who always need more more more, newer newer newer, faster faster faster. These US folks nod in a satisfied manner when I admit it, and then they go on their merry lives feeling good about themselves and not having to worry about the poor people because poor people still can be happy. So the US folks will just continue being content sending a few dollars here and there to poor people (and at the same time donating thousands to research aimed at stopping diseases that kill only a small fraction of the people who are dying in the world...) and thinking they're really doing their part by providing so much.

But that's not really what makes someone...filled. Smiling now and then, having money...neither of these can make anyone joyful. That's exactly what the US folks are pointing out with their rude question: even though the poor folks don't have money, they're still finding some happiness. But what they fail to also recognize is that, just like money, felicity does not complete a person. A person can laugh and joke and party as much as they'd like, but that is not what fulfills them.

One lesson I learned about the complex problem of poverty while I was in Honduras is that true poverty is when people have no purpose or ability. The friends I made in La Acequia...they have dreams. They want to do something. They are intelligent, they desire to learn, they want to fix some of the problems with the natural resources in their town, they want to impact their community and maybe even world. But the tragedy is that they CAN NOT. The resources are not there, the ability to carry out their purpose is not available. This is a separate tragedy than a similar phenomenon observed in wealthy nations -- where people who can do whatever they want to simply DO NOT. This is, in my opinion, self-inflicted poverty. There's not a whole lot I can do to help that. But there is a LOT I can do to help people who have the desire but not the resources. In that way, I - and everyone - can make a difference in the problem of poverty. It won't solve the problem, but it will make a difference.

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.

returning "home"

I'm back in the U.S. after about two weeks in Honduras. Much, much more to come about all of that, including some about a much ignored topic on this blog of late: knitting! The strangest thing about returning to my "home" was that it did not at all feel like home. Having only lived in State College for less than a month before departing for Honduras, it was really strange riding in the car from the airport to the only semi-familiar hills of Happy Valley. I got back to my apartment and was surprised to find that I had left it fairly clean and that I really liked the way I had set up the furniture. It didn't feel like my home at all!

I got back to the apartment about 3:00a.m. on Friday morning, then went to sleep for a few hours before heading in to work. When my alarm went off, I found myself incredibly confused about where I was. The bed was comfortable, and it was warm. Was I in La Acequia? Was I in Roatan, an island I had visited off of the east coast of Honduras? Was I in the airport? No, I was in my bed at the place that is now my home. After some work, where my boss told me I should go home and get some sleep (it's never good when you LOOK like you need sleep...), I took a nap on the couch and then was even more confused. It's definitely going to take some adjustment to get into the swing of things back here in my place.

In a lot of senses, "home" seems to me to be more about people than about places. IN that vein, the following might be a good representation of home for me.

"vacation"

Many people take a break after they finish their PhD. They travel the world, relax on a sunny beach, or hunker down in their favorite local coffee shop. I, on the other hand, went to work. Apparently that is my favorite thing to do.

However, now that I've been at my new job for three weeks, I'm headed off for as close to a vacation as I get: a mission trip to Honduras for 10 days. It occurs to me that I think I haven't written about this much/at all on the blog, but I've been planning it since last September. A group of 10 of us are headed down to a rural village where we'll be doing a lot of stuff like getting kids excited about learning, helping the community get a vision for the development of their area, sharing the love of Jesus with the community when possible, and encouraging the churches in the town. I will also be doing two things I absolutely love: checking out the situation of the water and teaching women (or men, I guess...whoever shows up) to knit and/or crochet. I have one suitcase that is half-filled with YARN and NEEDLES and HOOKS. I am so excited about this part. We will also have a day or two of "fun" in Roatan, which I'm told has lovely beaches and snorkeling. My suitcase is too full of knitting stuff to fit my snorkel gear. Ah well. I'll support the local economy with my payment for rental gear.

So...I'll be gone. We return to the US on May 29. Don't count on me until after then.

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!

back on the wall

Three years ago now, I took a rock climbing class and had a blast. I'm not sure that I was ever very good at it, but I enjoyed rock climbing because it's an activity that is both physically and mentally demanding and has a set endpoint. You're not trying to beat another person or team, you're not trying to be the fastest or most graceful - you're just trying to get to the top of a wall any way you possibly can.

But after the class, I climbed once more (on an actual rock outdoors - very sweet!) and then didn't any more. I don't know why. I guess it was mostly because I didn't have anyone to go with me to belay (a.k.a. hold the rope at the ground so I don't die if I fall), and I while bouldering (basically climbing horizontally across a wall instead of vertically up it) is fun...it's not the same. And I think I was also discouraged to continue climbing because it cost money (although it was at the gym at the University, it was not included in regular gym privileges) and because getting to the wall required first climbing a very large Pittsburgh hill.

i've posted this before, but since it's such a glamourous picture of me climbing, i'll show it again. look - it's me climbing a real, live rock!

And now I'm in State College. Strangely enough, Penn State does not have a rock wall. I heard that there was a push to get one within the past few years, but apparently nothing has come to fruition. Nevertheless, my interest in rock climbing somehow got retriggered in the process of me moving here (the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour helped a bit), and I actually utilized Facebook to locate someone in State College who listed rock climbing as an interest...and then it turned out that the guy works in one of the labs I'm doing my project in. However, he was not in fact the person who finally got me back onto a wall.

I have been meeting a lot of new people over the past two weeks living here, and it's amazing to me how every one of them strangely fits into some other aspect of my life. Many of the new folks know the few people I already knew here. One of the people I work with knows all the natural food store secrets of the area. The network administrator I met to get access to the chemical engineering computer system loves to grind his own coffee and has a pot available for anyone who would like it any time of the day (yes, please). And a gal I met at a Bible study on Tuesday (who, also strangely enough, hails from Pittsburgh) loves rock climbing and goes to the one and only wall anyone seems to know of in State College, which is at the YMCA...which just happens to be about a quarter mile away from my apartment! Sick.

And that is how I ended up on a wall this evening. (...And if you'd like to know the whole story, is how I met another researcher at Penn State who has ties with my current boss...and an undergrad who is working in a lab I've been really interested in and gave me the scoop on the funding and job-opening situation... I'm getting used to the fact that everyone pretty much just knows everyone here...) Back on the wall. I was astounded by how...awful I was. I know I haven't been working out in a loooong time, but I didn't realize just how incredibly negatively that has affected my upper body strength. I also have forgotten a lot of the basic technique tips that I learned in my climbing class and which are really quite useful. I wasn't entirely bad - I did get up the wall several times and bouldered a bit. But I wasn't going up the wall on any marked routes (i.e. I was doing it the easy way and not the challenging way), and I wasn't nearly as "good" as I was three years ago.

Boo. I was expecting that a three year lapse would have not affected my performance capacity in the least. Hee.

I'm looking forward to going back again soon, hopefully next week. Although the gal who originally invited me along will be gone for the summer, some of her pals will be around and can go with. Plus there are lots of instructors there whose job it is to belay - woo hoo! No need to worry about that!

Hooray! A resurrected hobby. Very nice.

that's why they call it a stash

One thing I've discovered in the process of moving from Pittsburgh to State College is that I have entirely too much "stuff." Some of it I wouldn't part with, like my quadrillion books, many of which I have not and probably will never read...but they sure make it look like I'm intelligent all sitting there pretty on the bookshelves. I have a living room full of chairs, which is sort of silly because generally it's me, myself, and I in the apartment along with Joelle, but she's not allowed on the furniture. A butt can only be in one seat at a time...so unless I become more hospitable (which I ought to do) it seems rather ridiculous to have so many places to select from to sit down (...or throw extra junk, as the case may be). Nevertheless, the books and the furniture and all the other things I have way too much of (...including cleaning supplies...) have lots of potential for use without too much of a time or effort investment.

However. There is one Thing that I'm not going to run out of anytime soon - partly because it will take time and effort. But mostly because there's so much of it: YARN.

I got a little embarrassed as some folks were helping me move in when I said out loud, "Wow, I have a lot of boxes labeled 'yarn,'" and one of them replied, "Yeah - I see lots of yarn, but not many things made out of yarn." In my defense, I have indeed made a lot of things out of yarn, many of which were packed in the boxes labeled "clothes" and many of which have been given away to various people. But it's true...there is a lot of yarn that isn't used.

I remember realizing this the last time I moved, in June/July of 2006. Back then I had a Big Trunk, a Little Red Trunk, a few bags, and a couple boxes of yarn or projects on needles. ...Now I fear...I have more!

Some people have a yarn closet. Due to the fact that I don't have an entire closet to spare for yarn, I have to "hide" it in multiple places. And thus far in my unpacking, that has included the following locations...

on the shelves of the coffee table
in one corner of the bedroom closet
in the other corner of the bedroom closetsmushed into the big, black trunk
in this little cabinet
in the bottom of this shelf...and just in case i run out, there's the drop spindle and pencil roving so i can make more yarn...

It kind of reminds me of what my Mom always told me when I went on a long trip: put a little money in a number of different places (purse, backpack, suitcase, pants, etc.) so if one of those gets ripped off, at least you'll still have some. ...Right, like someone's going to bust into my apartment and steal the coffee table so they can get that pretty German sock wool, eh?

I feel like trying to find places to enclose the yarn is sort of like trying to hide an addiction. And I think that's how a "yarn collection" turns into a "stash."

So, I guess the question now is...what to do about it? Do I just try to do more knitting? Do I sell it? Do I bring it with me on my mission trip to Honduras in a couple weeks where we're helping ladies start a knitting business? I don't know. All I DO know is that I ought not to buy any more yarn!!!!

And I've also concluded that, despite my yearning to learn how to quilt and the fact that there's a quilting shop a couple miles from my apartment, I really ought not to do that either. There are so many pretty, pretty fabrics that it would be lovely to quilt with...and you know those will just end up thrown in a drawer or cubby somewhere, too!!

Yuck - I feel disgusted with my more-more-more attitude!! Perhaps it's time to down-size. Or at least stabilize!! Or even better: utilize.

having fun after new work day one

No incredibly huge disasters occurred while at my first day of work, so that was good. It did, however, rain all day. I still managed to force myself to walk to and from work, although I wised up on the way home and went and bought myself some bus tokens, which were useful because my trip home was actually just so I could pick up my Social Security card, which I did not know I would need but in fact did, and I had to then go back and forth to work one more time...which I did on the bus.

Anyhow, the day wasn't awful, but I was certainly motivated at its conclusion to stop by the corner grocery store and buy a gigantic bag of Reese's pieces and some Dove dark chocolate promises. New jobs will do that, I guess.

My friend Sarah recently did this, and since I'm feeling like vegging and know that the first thing on my to-do list is to pay bills, here is an insert-your-name-into-Google-and-report-the-first-hit game:

Q: Type in "[your name] needs" in the Google search:
A: Perhaps it was a reminder that God's power is what Ruth needs to heed, not man's shallow disdain, as Mr. Benson taught her.
(Nevertheless, the next hit is "Ruth needs a husband.")

Q: Type in "[your name] looks like" in Google search
A: Ruth looks like she might have some to spare!

Q: Type in "[your name] likes" in Google search:
A: Ruth likes a partner who is mentally alive and keeps her guessing.

Q: Type in "[your name] says" in Google search:
A: Ruth says update your blog!
(The next line is "And when Ruth tells you to do something...")

Q: Type in "[your name] wants" in Google search:
A: RUTH WANTS TO BE BOXER

Q: Type in "[your name] does" in Google search:
A: Ruth does not come to the Lord because He is the Lord.
??huh??

Q: Type in "[your name] hates" in Google search:
A: Ruth hates studying.

Q: Type in "[your name] goes" in Google search:
A: Ruth goes with Naomi.


Q: Type in "[your name]" in Google search:
A: The first hit is Ruth's Chris Steak House. Why in the world is it called that, anyhow?? Couldn't they just have one first name??

Q: Type in “origin of [your name]” in Google search:
A: Ruth is of Hebrew origin, and its meaning is "friend, companion."

home

I have moved.

It took nearly 20 days to get everything out of the Pittsburgh apartment and into the State College, PA, apartment 3 hours away, but it has now officially been accomplished and I no longer live in Pittsburgh and I don't have keys for anything in Pittsburgh and I am a real, live State College resident (although now I have to change my voting registration thing again, I guess...grr...).

Whew!

I am far from being "settled in" to the new place - there are boxes that will provide me with a pseudo-Christmas for the next month or so as I explore what is inside of them all. Incidentally, I do know where my fake Christmas tree is AND even the location of all the decorations...maybe I'll put it up just for kicks.

And then there's Joelle.

Poor gal. Over the past few weeks her favorite hiding/resting spots have been taken away one after another. First it was the bookshelves...then the pink chair...then the bed...then the silver chair... One day I found her stolidly laying in the past home of the silver chair. You can still see the imprints of its legs in the carpet.

maybe if i wait here long enough, it will come back...?

I drove her to the new place on Wednesday after having set up the living room and half of the bedroom.

i can sit!

i can sleep!
...what i'm not showing you is what these places look like now a week later...with boxes filled with clothes stuffed under the bed and 6 of the 7 available seating locations piled high with miscellaneous stuff i don't know what to do with yet

After she moved in and her house was rebuilt and put into is new location...I promptly locked Joelle in the cage and left for 36 hours...! I returned Friday with all the rest of the stuff from the old apartment crammed in my car (I really ought to have taken a picture of that - it was pretty funny...but not something to be proud of), including all of the cleaning supplies I had used the night before to leave the old place spic and span. For someone who doesn't clean much, I sure have a heck of a lot of cleaning solutions - why??? - I filled three 1'x1'x2' boxes with it all!

And so now...the Jo and I are home here in Happy Valley, the cute little name given to the region containing and surrounding State College...centered around the Pennsylvania State University, which will be my new workplace starting tomorrow!, and extending via beautiful, rolling farm fields to the bases of the Appalachian Mountains.I like.

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:

primary primary

I voted in my first primary election today, having finally joined a party! Wahoo!

I realized today as I was voting that there is a very interesting phenomenon occurring in the voting machine situation these days. Yes, there is a lot of controversy over the electronic voting, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I find most intriguing is how people are instructed to vote.

When I walked into my first voting booth about a decade ago, everything was on those manual machines where one got to slide over little tabs and then when all finished making selections push some magic button or pull some lever. I recall being entirely freaked out by the whole thing. To this day I still am uncomfortable with the whole deal. I'm never quite sure if I'm sliding over the correct tab and if I've gone through all of the different categories. It totally stresses me out, and it actually makes me very less inclined to go out and vote if I know the monster machine is waiting for me.

On the other hand, I find the electronic, touch-screen voting machines in my current district to be entirely simple to use. It tells me exactly what to do: touch where I want...review when I'm done...push "VOTE"...poof, it's over! I've never had any doubt about how to use the thing.

However, it's astounding to me how uncomfortable so many people are with this option. Not in the anonymity or the accuracy of tabulation - just the very fact of using a computerized method for making selections. I was in and out of the voting place in about 30 seconds today, whereas the lady who had started before me was still laboring over the thing when I left. Perhaps she was having trouble deciding between various candidates, but from what I've gathered it seems like most people are more affected not by indecision but by incompetence in utilizing the voting apparatus.

What is most striking to me is that when I get to the voting place these days, a nice man tells me exactly how to go through the voting process. He tells me exactly what to do with the touch scree. There's even a tutorial if I don't get it. I totally ignore everything he says to me as well as the tutorial, because to me it's like "DUH...this is not rocket science, people!"

As I was daydreaming through the nice man's spiel today it struck me that I would have really appreciated such instruction on the manual machines. Why didn't anyone ever include that as standard voting protocol?? And then I realized that all the people I see having issue getting through the touch screen are at least 20 years older than I am and are entirely used to the manual system. They did not spend the majority of their lives doing everyday tasks with computers. By the time I reached voting age, they had been using the manual machines for years and years, and just as I think it's ridiculous to tell people how to push buttons on a self-explanatory screen, nobody apparently thought that it might be necessary to inform new voters of how to use to presumably idiot-proof manual voting system. Well...they, IMHO, were wrong.

I got a call (okay...a recorded message) yesterday from Barack Obama, and I was impressed that he said, "If you need a ride or want to learn how to use a voting machine, call blah-blah-blah." It made me realize that there are a LOT of people out there who face many impediments to being able to vote. Whether is unfamiliarity with computers, fear of big huge tab-filled machines, a family full of under-five-year-old kids, no car to get you to the school where voting occurs that is located up the gigantic (and I do mean GIGANTIC) hill that no bus system would ever route a line, or something else, it's no wonder that so few Americans who have the opportunity and liberty to participate in a democratic government actually exercise their right to vote. I feel that the Obama campaign, despite all the criticism it's gotten as being "elitist," has been extraordinarily aware of many of these hindrances, which often affect the most non-elite in the country. I'm glad that somebody has finally made some effort to bridge this gap in "equal voting rights."

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...

introducing...dr. ruth!

Woo hoo! I did it!!

Friday was my dissertation defense and "final examination." I don't know why they call it a final exam, because it's not really an exam. It just has the feeling of a final exam because it's such a big thing, it's the last thing before you're officially a recipient of your PhD, it's the last thing that happens before the committee signs the forms that magically transform you from being a bachelor or master to a doctor. The final exam is a question and answer session, an "oral exam" of sorts, but the questions (at least for me) were much more of a "what's your opinion" sort than a "what's the absolutely correct answer." Probably because in reality science has very few absolutes, so best-guesses are as good as it gets.

Anyhow...that is over, and it was very amazing to wake up on Saturday and realize...hey...I don't have to work on polishing my dissertation or practice my defense presentation or review the literature to have potential final-exam answers fresh in my mind...EVER AGAIN!!!!!! That was really the best part: it's over.

Just so you know, the correct abbreviation for Doctor of Philosophy is Ph.D. (or just PhD). Big P, little H, big D. The cake decorator did indeed write big and little letters as instructed. However, the end result wasn't quite what we had anticipated.Just goes to show how underwhelming it probably is to most of the general public that I have earned my PhD: they don't even know what it means!! Oh well.

countdown

I am in the final stages of preparation for my PhD dissertation defense on Friday. My main concerns are that

• I won't be able to come up with decent answers to questions people, especially my committee members, ask
• My committee will not pass me and will make me do more work
• There will not be enough room in the room in which I'll be presenting for everyone to fit. A lot of people have been saying they'll come, and I couldn't get the larger room that I had hoped for. But at least it's bigger than the one that the one administrative assistant kept telling me would be fine -- it seats about 30 people and contains a seating area with comfortable couches as well as a kitchen area. Apparently she's never been to a dissertation defense, because at least twice that many people generally seem to show and it's entirely unprofessional to give the biggest talk of my life in a room that looks like a living room and includes a food-preparation station!

I'll try to let you all know how it turns out. I have other news, too (it's not too exciting, just amusing), but I am rather focused on something else right now. Thanks for bearing with me!

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.

feel-good games

I'll be honest:

1. I am utterly horrible at video games, particularly ones in which the object is to destroy other creatures/objects. Video games are the one and only thing I have every received a "D" in -- and I seriously did! When I was in college my suitemate had some game I have no idea what it's called on an older Sega (I think), and it was not really very hard. Once you lost all of your lives, it gave you a score based on how well you did. I had to play with someone else (2-player) in order to actually make it through the first level. Even then...I always got a D. I think there were also F's, which I probably got if they were available.

2. Sometimes I like to use games to escape from reality. Give me Internet Hearts sans internet anytime. Pinball, Free Cell, Minesweeper -- the best! And of course there's my love affair with the Sims, which I hadn't played for over a year until a couple weeks ago...proving that I am not addicted! It is so nice to watch someone else's life unfold in that game; much nicer than the stresses of my own, at times! And if by chance one of the Sims catches on fire while cooking mac 'n cheese for dinner...just quit the game without saving and it will all be okay. If only life were like that. Since I'm being honest, I'll also admit that lately my Spider Solitaire games have been on the Easy level...just because it's nice to know that at the end of the day I can win SOMETHING, even if I haven't won the battle for a well-behaved rabbit or work environment or hair-do.

Since games are such an escape and since I'm so awful at video games that depend more upon button pushing rather than logical thinking, I particularly enjoy computer games that don't make fun of me too much when I am awful (like...giving me D's and F's!). Games like Whack-a-Wolverine and Traveler IQ Challenge and the Pinguin game and pretty much anything over at Homestar Runner. That's why I was quite happy when the lovely other Ruth directed me to Flight of the Hamsters. The hamsters were so nice when I ended up with a grand total of...30 points...! Oh my goodness...