I love my mom...
Carol: I just discovered the emoticons :D
there's no stopping me now :P
me: oh goodness
you are making me laugh
and my ribs hurt!
Carol: And on that note, I'll say goodnight. :-/
me: good night mama
<3
Mom: Love you <3
20 April 2011
18 April 2011
the world is blossoming
At the risk of incurring another foot of snow, it appears I survived my first New England winter. The snow is melted, it's been raining daily, and within the last week the trees have started to bud and blossom. Early spring is always my favorite time of year-I think because those first signs of life are something you need so badly at the end of winter. I'll put up pictures a little later-I couldn't take any today becacuse of the rain.
And so four months into my life here, I am alive and well. Work is great, after the first few weeks on a very steep learning curve I'm patching like a champ and almost done with my first data set. I love the project, the lab, my boss-of course there are frustrations and late nights and days when I write "SORROW AND RAGE" in my lab notebook, but on the whole it is good and satisfying. I'm still adjusting to being a lab where the attitude is to work hard, do good science, and have a happy and healthy life outside of that. In my old life, it was more do good science and just because it is Sunday doesn't mean you can leave before six. So that is awesome.
I am remembering how achingly slow it is to build a life in a new place, particularly if you are a cold-natured person like me. There are certainly days of crushing loneliness. But I'm doing the things you are supposed to, and I have faith it will come in time. I am going to take some continuing ed drawing classes at the art school in the fall. I transferred my church membership, although I have only attended services a few times, because 10 AM is early, y'all. I joined the department intramural softball team. Twenty-four hours after the first practice, my body feels like there must have been a part of practice where I was run over by a truck and then everybody hit me with bats and I blocked out the memory of it. There are little things that are settling into routines of friendship-the grad student in the lab and I cook dinner together once a week, and others have started joining us on occasion. We're all having easter dinner on Sunday.
I still love my apartment, but am completely overwhelmed by making it mine and have sort of stalled on unpacking the last five or so boxes. It is still very empty, although I am hoping to paint and buy furniture for the living room in the next month or two. I have no idea what I am going to do design wise-I love doing this stuff but am paralyzed by the blank slate. Guest room, I hope to get set up maybe later this summer-so I'll be ready for visitors soon!
And so four months into my life here, I am alive and well. Work is great, after the first few weeks on a very steep learning curve I'm patching like a champ and almost done with my first data set. I love the project, the lab, my boss-of course there are frustrations and late nights and days when I write "SORROW AND RAGE" in my lab notebook, but on the whole it is good and satisfying. I'm still adjusting to being a lab where the attitude is to work hard, do good science, and have a happy and healthy life outside of that. In my old life, it was more do good science and just because it is Sunday doesn't mean you can leave before six. So that is awesome.
I am remembering how achingly slow it is to build a life in a new place, particularly if you are a cold-natured person like me. There are certainly days of crushing loneliness. But I'm doing the things you are supposed to, and I have faith it will come in time. I am going to take some continuing ed drawing classes at the art school in the fall. I transferred my church membership, although I have only attended services a few times, because 10 AM is early, y'all. I joined the department intramural softball team. Twenty-four hours after the first practice, my body feels like there must have been a part of practice where I was run over by a truck and then everybody hit me with bats and I blocked out the memory of it. There are little things that are settling into routines of friendship-the grad student in the lab and I cook dinner together once a week, and others have started joining us on occasion. We're all having easter dinner on Sunday.
I still love my apartment, but am completely overwhelmed by making it mine and have sort of stalled on unpacking the last five or so boxes. It is still very empty, although I am hoping to paint and buy furniture for the living room in the next month or two. I have no idea what I am going to do design wise-I love doing this stuff but am paralyzed by the blank slate. Guest room, I hope to get set up maybe later this summer-so I'll be ready for visitors soon!
05 April 2011
100 books-March
I had high hopes for March, but as I am now basically competent at my job, I find myself expected to "know the literature" and "produce data", activities that limit my reading time. And so, March was a bit of quiet month for reading...I"ll have to work hard to catch up in April!
22. Great House Nicole Krauss This book makes you work for it, but I think it pays off in the end. It is a lovely, winding meditation on memory and permanence.
21. The Children's Book A. S. Byatt. I should say that I rarely finish a book that I am not enjoying while reading. Unless it is for PSBC or one of those good-for-you, suffer through it classics, if I start to feel like the book is becoming a chore, I usually put it down. So any book I finished is one that I felt deserved to be read all the way through, and that is an endorsement by itself. That said. This book was SO LONG. and had SO MANY CHARACTERS and SO MANY STORYLINES that I wondered if it had been edited at all. Parts were magical and engaging, while others seriously dragged. It took me over a week to read (part of the reason for my slow progress this month). A week! I read books in hours or days, not weeks!
20. Room Emma Donaghue This was more like it. I got the book from the library on a saturday, came in, sat down in my reading chair, opened it and didn't get up until I turned the last page two hours later. Excellent
19. The Lady Matador's Hotel Cristina Garcia I've loved Garcia since Biffy and I read Dreaming in Cuban for PSBC last year. This one didn't blow my socks off like that one did, but it is a nice quick little read.
18. The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall I liked this much more than I thought I would. Going through it I really didn't know what to make of it, but at the end I thought "huh, that was really good" It's an offbeat but sweet book about grief and love
17. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee Sort of the opposite-a brisk engaging read, but at the end I wasn't sure I really liked it
Previously
16. The Wordy Shipmates Sarah Vowell
15. The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America's great Migration, Isabelle Wilkerson
14. Little Bee Chris Cleave
13 Fool Christopher Moore
12. A Dirty Job Christopher Moore
10. Lolita Vladimir Nabakov
9. Super Sad True Love Story Gary Shteyngart
8. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
7.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood.
6. Faithful Place, Tana French.
5. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman.
4. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri.
3. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
2. Bite Me, Christopher Moore.
1. Devil in the White City Eric Larson.
22. Great House Nicole Krauss This book makes you work for it, but I think it pays off in the end. It is a lovely, winding meditation on memory and permanence.
21. The Children's Book A. S. Byatt. I should say that I rarely finish a book that I am not enjoying while reading. Unless it is for PSBC or one of those good-for-you, suffer through it classics, if I start to feel like the book is becoming a chore, I usually put it down. So any book I finished is one that I felt deserved to be read all the way through, and that is an endorsement by itself. That said. This book was SO LONG. and had SO MANY CHARACTERS and SO MANY STORYLINES that I wondered if it had been edited at all. Parts were magical and engaging, while others seriously dragged. It took me over a week to read (part of the reason for my slow progress this month). A week! I read books in hours or days, not weeks!
20. Room Emma Donaghue This was more like it. I got the book from the library on a saturday, came in, sat down in my reading chair, opened it and didn't get up until I turned the last page two hours later. Excellent
19. The Lady Matador's Hotel Cristina Garcia I've loved Garcia since Biffy and I read Dreaming in Cuban for PSBC last year. This one didn't blow my socks off like that one did, but it is a nice quick little read.
18. The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall I liked this much more than I thought I would. Going through it I really didn't know what to make of it, but at the end I thought "huh, that was really good" It's an offbeat but sweet book about grief and love
17. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee Sort of the opposite-a brisk engaging read, but at the end I wasn't sure I really liked it
Previously
16. The Wordy Shipmates Sarah Vowell
15. The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America's great Migration, Isabelle Wilkerson
14. Little Bee Chris Cleave
13 Fool Christopher Moore
12. A Dirty Job Christopher Moore
10. Lolita Vladimir Nabakov
9. Super Sad True Love Story Gary Shteyngart
8. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
7.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood.
6. Faithful Place, Tana French.
5. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman.
4. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri.
3. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
2. Bite Me, Christopher Moore.
1. Devil in the White City Eric Larson.
25 March 2011
Gloves are always an option
Things I got on my fingers yesterday, in order of painfulness:
1. molten plastic
2. 0.5 N HCl
3. Superglue
4. Rat Blood
1. molten plastic
2. 0.5 N HCl
3. Superglue
4. Rat Blood
23 March 2011
Favorites
Phoenix! A band from France? Either way, this is peppiest song about the depths of depression I have ever heard.
Florence+The Machine. I love The Dog Days (trippy video here), it makes me so happy! I also like some of her less-well know stuff- the rawness of Howl or the weird mythology of Rabbit Heart:
Help I'm Alive, Metric. More peppiness!!!!
Florence+The Machine. I love The Dog Days (trippy video here), it makes me so happy! I also like some of her less-well know stuff- the rawness of Howl or the weird mythology of Rabbit Heart:
Help I'm Alive, Metric. More peppiness!!!!
07 March 2011
Sister weekend
I went to Minneapolis for the weekend to see my little sister. It was a whirlwind visit, involving four take offs and four landings and slightly less than 48 hours on the ground, but so worth it. I reverted to my old self and took very few pictures, alas. Highlights included, columbian plantain pancake breakfast with her friends, a tour of her non-profit's shiny new building. As director of client services, she has an office with a door that locks, which is evidently quite the status symbol. To fulfill our family goal of never, ever taking a vacation without learning something, went to the Mill City Museum. We went to the Midtown Global market and admired the booths of crafts and food set up by latino, asian, african, and swedish vendors (it is minnesota, after all). From there we went to Minnehaha falls, which was frozen solid and pretty awesome.
We were not brave enough to go down to the falls like the people in the picture. There were treacherous, snow covered stairs, and we are not particularly coordinated girls.
We made pizza and went to the bar for the most midwestern of foods, Totchos. That's right. Tater tot nachos. Also note that this photo demonstrates two things. 1) that we are incapable of taking cute pictures together and 2) we look nothing alike.
Also at the bar, dinosaurs, lizards, neurons, mice, and opposums were drawn on napkins as part of a spiraling game of telepictionary .
Sunday was brunch in Uptown, the art museum, a few vintage clothing stores, greek food for lunch, a trip to Target-although not the two story target with the shopping cart escalator, just the normal neighborhood Target. Then it was off to the airport and sister separation once again. My flight back was kindof a nightmare, delayed and almost missing my connection, which was also delayed and had poorly working airvents and smelly hipsters, and had to make three attempts to land due to wind and then had to sit twenty minutes and wait for a gate. I got back to my house around 1:30 AM this morning. I am, of course, beyond tired.
Someone in Biffy's hippie neighborhood nailed a bunch of wooden hearts to the trees on her street. It is a protest, she says, perhaps against Dutch Elm Disease(?!?!), or turning the street into a bike boulevard. I didn't see it until we were leaving for the airport, so in my mind it is a protest against having to fly away from those you love.
We made pizza and went to the bar for the most midwestern of foods, Totchos. That's right. Tater tot nachos. Also note that this photo demonstrates two things. 1) that we are incapable of taking cute pictures together and 2) we look nothing alike.
Also at the bar, dinosaurs, lizards, neurons, mice, and opposums were drawn on napkins as part of a spiraling game of telepictionary .
Sunday was brunch in Uptown, the art museum, a few vintage clothing stores, greek food for lunch, a trip to Target-although not the two story target with the shopping cart escalator, just the normal neighborhood Target. Then it was off to the airport and sister separation once again. My flight back was kindof a nightmare, delayed and almost missing my connection, which was also delayed and had poorly working airvents and smelly hipsters, and had to make three attempts to land due to wind and then had to sit twenty minutes and wait for a gate. I got back to my house around 1:30 AM this morning. I am, of course, beyond tired.
Someone in Biffy's hippie neighborhood nailed a bunch of wooden hearts to the trees on her street. It is a protest, she says, perhaps against Dutch Elm Disease(?!?!), or turning the street into a bike boulevard. I didn't see it until we were leaving for the airport, so in my mind it is a protest against having to fly away from those you love.
02 March 2011
100 books-february update
My reading quest continues! I am slightly off pace, but February was a short month.
16. The Wordy Shipmates Sarah Vowell
15. The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America's great Migration, Isabelle Wilkerson
14. Little Bee Chris Cleave
13 Fool Christopher Moore
12. A Dirty Job Christopher Moore Funny, funny, funny. I love Christopher Moore. He's biting and irreverent and bawdy, but still treats his characters with a deep tenderness. There are two of his best, I think
10. Lolita Vladimir Nabakov An interesting book. Certainly a disturbing subject told by a monstrous and unreliable narrator who stays just a few steps away from being likable. A hard book to read-of course in terms of subject, but also a very high reading level. I can't remember the last time I had to look up words while reading a novel. An engaging story and exquisite use of language, which I'm always a sucker for.
9. Super Sad True Love Story Gary Shteyngart
Previously:
8. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
7.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood.
6. Faithful Place, Tana French.
5. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman.
4. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri.
3. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
2. Bite Me, Christopher Moore.
1. Devil in the White City Eric Larson.
16. The Wordy Shipmates Sarah Vowell
15. The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America's great Migration, Isabelle Wilkerson
14. Little Bee Chris Cleave
13 Fool Christopher Moore
12. A Dirty Job Christopher Moore Funny, funny, funny. I love Christopher Moore. He's biting and irreverent and bawdy, but still treats his characters with a deep tenderness. There are two of his best, I think
10. Lolita Vladimir Nabakov An interesting book. Certainly a disturbing subject told by a monstrous and unreliable narrator who stays just a few steps away from being likable. A hard book to read-of course in terms of subject, but also a very high reading level. I can't remember the last time I had to look up words while reading a novel. An engaging story and exquisite use of language, which I'm always a sucker for.
9. Super Sad True Love Story Gary Shteyngart
Previously:
8. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
7.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood.
6. Faithful Place, Tana French.
5. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman.
4. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri.
3. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
2. Bite Me, Christopher Moore.
1. Devil in the White City Eric Larson.
26 February 2011
Passive-Aggressive Maps
My upstairs neighbors helpfully left me a map of where I should park my car when it snows, or when it isn't snowy. They also printed a huge sign that said "DO NOT BLOCK DOOR" (My car was not, in fact, blocking the door), put it in a sheet protector, and taped it to the door. Then tried to pass it all off on the landlord (it wasn't-among other things, the landlord knows that there are supposed to be six parking spaces, not five).
My neighbors are assholes.
My neighbors are assholes.
15 February 2011
Birthday Weekend
I turned the big 2-8 on sunday, and had a wonderful weekend celebrating the oncoming rush of middle age. I usually do pretty low-key birthdays, and expected it to be more low-key than usual as I am in a new city and can count the number of people I know on two hands. But it was lovely, My lab surprised me on friday with ice cream cake at lab meeting, and some of us went out after work. On Sunday, I went to see The King's Speech and to dinner with a few people, and talked on the phone until I was hoarse.
In the meantime, I filled the weekend with the things I like to do-cooking, of course, reading, and curling up with the simple cat and the helper cat for some quality time
When I cook, I like trying things I've never done before, so this week I tackled two: ricotta cheese and croissants. The cheese was very simple, and way better than store bought. I used it to make lasagna for dinner:
Croissants were harder and very time consuming, but not as bad as I expected them to be. They turned out great, delicious and buttery. And now I have 6 regular croissants and 15 pains au chocolate (pains aux chocolate? I don't remember french grammar) wrapped in foil in the freezer to be toasted on those mornings when I need a treat just for getting out of bed! Happy birthday to me indeed
In the meantime, I filled the weekend with the things I like to do-cooking, of course, reading, and curling up with the simple cat and the helper cat for some quality time
When I cook, I like trying things I've never done before, so this week I tackled two: ricotta cheese and croissants. The cheese was very simple, and way better than store bought. I used it to make lasagna for dinner:
Croissants were harder and very time consuming, but not as bad as I expected them to be. They turned out great, delicious and buttery. And now I have 6 regular croissants and 15 pains au chocolate (pains aux chocolate? I don't remember french grammar) wrapped in foil in the freezer to be toasted on those mornings when I need a treat just for getting out of bed! Happy birthday to me indeed
02 February 2011
100 books in 2011
As a goal for 2011, I want to read 100 books. This should not be very hard for me, as I read pretty fast. So to make it more of a challenge I am not counting books I have read before (unless they are for PSBC, as we read deeply and in depth) or books written for teenagers.
My progress so far, with my notes:
1. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
2.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood. This one is so, so, so good. The Sequel/companion to Oryx and Crake, which I read in December. Margaret Atwood is maybe my favorite author.
3. Faithful Place, Tana French. Sort of sequel to The Likeness and In The Woods, which were beautifully written but bleak as hell. This one is cheerier (although still dark) and a better story, with the same lovely words.
4. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman. Funny! Not sure how enjoyable it would be to someone who doesn't read russian books, but I loved it.
5. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri. I read half of this in december, but it was hard so it counts.
6. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
7. Bite Me, Christopher Moore. Also very funny.
8. Devil in the White CityEric Larson.
My progress so far, with my notes:
1. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
2.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood. This one is so, so, so good. The Sequel/companion to Oryx and Crake, which I read in December. Margaret Atwood is maybe my favorite author.
3. Faithful Place, Tana French. Sort of sequel to The Likeness and In The Woods, which were beautifully written but bleak as hell. This one is cheerier (although still dark) and a better story, with the same lovely words.
4. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman. Funny! Not sure how enjoyable it would be to someone who doesn't read russian books, but I loved it.
5. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri. I read half of this in december, but it was hard so it counts.
6. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
7. Bite Me, Christopher Moore. Also very funny.
8. Devil in the White CityEric Larson.
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