South Africa

So to respond to a comment to an earlier post on this blog, I will be going to South Africa over the week of Thanksgiving to attend a friend's wedding. I had put off purchasing the plane ticket because it was so expensive and because I didn't have a job beyond being a graduate student research assistant (not high paying enough to afford the flight to S.A.). Well, I got a job and finally bought the ticket, which ended up being 14 hundred (can we say OUCH?).

I do have to say that one plus of the downturn in the economy is that the dollar is doing a lot better now. So though the plane ticket hurts, being in Capetown doesn't hurt as much. My friend pointed out that all of the sudden, he got a 33% off of his wedding in South Africa because of the falling rand. I guess he can consider it a wedding gift from the rest of the world to him and his fiancee.

The squishy pink dude

So not doing so well on the keeping to one thing at a time. Here is the squishy pink dude at the Asteroid belt.

BUT! In defense of me, I have limited myself to using the drawing of the squishy pink dude's travels across the universe as a reward for when I get some chunk of my dissertation done. (Don't ask me to define a chunk.)

I think I really deserved this reward. I got some dissertation done this weekend. Sent off an entire section of Chapter 6 to my advisor (this section consisted of 16 pages single spaced) and made decent headway into the next major section of Chapter 6. All this WHILE attending a full two day meeting in Seattle (I was acting as a supporting facilitator).

I think Squishy Pink Dude needs a name. Any suggestions? While we're at it, anyone have any suggestions as to where he should visit or go do next? It is preferrable if it can be easily drawn. Black holes, for example, are a bit difficult for me to do.

Life is quite different now.

In my new job, I get to travel a lot. Within the first 90 days of my probational period on this job, I will have travelled to 4 different cities/metro areas within the US and one in Africa (well, this last one is for a friend's wedding).

I'm learning lots of new things, one of which is how to eke out time every chance I get to work on my dissertation. This is actually not a bad way to go with my dissertation, except that I have this bad habit of losing my train of thought when I get disrupted. So that means I find myself looking at my dissertation and thinking,"What the hell was I trying to say here?" To remedy this issue, I have had to write little notes to myself all over my work to remind myself of my train of thought. Sigh, gone are the days of long hours trying to hash out one idea. Happily, gone are the days wherein I get so lost in one thought that I have trouble speaking. This used to be a problem when I would analyze my words before they came out of my mouth to make sure what i was saying would address critiques from various theoretical frameworks. It is very much a problem if all I was trying to do was ask my husband if he wanted to eat dinner.

Another thing I am learning is that sometimes people, neighborhoods, communities, even entire cities, can become stark raving mad if the right circumstances come along. Take for example the event: the Phillies have made it to the World Series. On the night this happened, I settled down to sleep at a reasonable hour (10 pm) and proceeded to drift off into sleep. At 11:30 or so (I can't recall the exact time because, well, I WAS ASLEEP!), I am jolted out of bed by this loud deep wail-like sound. In my sleep haze, I thought it might have been the hounds of hell, sirens alerting people of an impending attack, demons attacking city.... I realized that the noise (which in my estimation was going on for at least a 1/2 hour) was the city collectively expressing joy at the advancement of the Phillies into the World Series. One might wonder how one could mistake expressions of joy with hounds of hell, well, this is Philly. They express joy a little differently here, it seems. It has been known to happen that exuberant sports fans have reoriented cars so that they were parked on their rooftops rather than on their tires.

Life is quite different now.

Look what I made!

Instead of working on my dissertation or even folding laundry, this is what I did-->
I just used the paint program that came with my computer. I toyed with the idea of turning this into a whole series of pictures for an illustrated book. A squishy pink dude who goes on a tour of the universe and these are the photographs from his trip.
Well, we'll see. As one of my advisors said, I have to finish my dissertation first. Stick to one thing at at time.

A bad dream

Two posts in one day! Goodness.

Given how happy that last post was, I really needed to keep this topic separate.
I had a bad dream last night. In my dream I was very tired and wanted to take a bath. While taking a bath, I discovered I had rats in the house. The method of discovery was that two of them jumped into the tub with me!

Well, in the dream, I remembered that a friend of mine had discovered a mouse in his tub, WHILE HE WAS IN THE TUB!!! To deal with the mouse, he jumped out of the tub, got a pot, and found a way to seal the mouse underwater (using the pot) and drowned it. This actually happened in real life.

So in the dream, I wrestled with the two rats and held them underwater until they drowned. Of course they bit and scratched me. But, I thought I could go to the hospital and take care of the diseases I was sure to catch after I killed them. Well, in dreams, things get weird and don't always happen the way they are supposed. The rats didn't die, they just morphed into little slimy splotches in the tub. Which, if you recall the fact that I was sitting in the tub naked at this time, is particularly gross. Then I woke up and just felt really icky.

Moral of the story: If you are going to kill rodents in your tub, don't stay in the tub.

Old friends + good food = great times!

This past weekend we were visited by some old friends of ours. I guess they are considered old friends now that we don't live in the same state any more. They stayed the weekend and in return for our piddly air mattress they provided us with a four course meal complete with two bottles of wine AND clean dishes at the end of the evening. That was, by far, one of the best hostess gifts I have ever gotten. And to think, I was just excited by the fact that they'd schlep three hours up here to visit us!

The evening started with steamed artichokes with a lemon garlic butter and a bowl of olives. Then we transitioned to stuffed zuchinnis. That helped prepare us for pasta with a cream based roasted red pepper pesto. Two reds were served with the meal (a cab sauv that has helped me learn to like cab sauvs and a petit sirrah). The evening ended with a pecan cake topped with roasted figs (I think there was some cream sauce here too but I can't recall).

The bar has now been raised very very high.