FemaleCSGradStudent

Release

2008-08-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

To graduate from the University of GradShitTownVille, I had to fill out a "release form." I think the title of the form referred releasing equipment and keys back to the university. But I really think it referred to releasing me out of my pen.

But I knew that another release would happen. I would have to experience the emotional release that would come with leaving GradShitTownVille. I half-expected that I would cry across Nebraska like I did when I was driving east. But it didn't happen.

Instead, it happened in Powell's bookstore. In the children's section. I had been there just a few months before with my friend Moira and her little daughter. We were traveling together in Portland for a conference. Now I was in Powell's alone, far far away from my good friend and her little daughter. While GradShitTownVille had brought so much challenge into my life, it had also brought great friendships. And I cried looking over the Newbery award winners.

The tears mean that time of FemaleCSGradStudent is done. Thanks to everyone who helped me graduate successfully. Every post, e-mail, and comment propelled me forward.

I introduce you to my new blog

What really happened

2008-07-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Day 1: Defend. Unconditional pass.
Day 2: Pack belongings with help from two friends.
Day 3: Boyfriend and I shove belongings in an 8 x 6 x 5 container.
Day 4: Close on house. Make minor revisions to dissertation.
Day 5: Deposit.
Day 6: Leave. Drive.
Day 7: Drive.

Currently: Relaxing in a hotel room 1100 miles away from GradShitTownVille.

Admittedly, my previous insane schedule was replaced by an only slighly less insane schedule.

Now....clearly the name of this blog is all wrong.

All but the "d"

2008-07-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

D is for defense. It went well.
D is for deposit. 1 more day in hell.

I'm Ready, Fashionably Speaking

2008-07-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

Hair: ironed. I don't look like Dotty Dog today.

Good luck necklace from my dear friend Iu.

Cute, short sleeved top, white, from Banana Republic. A medium. With camisole. Mrs. Clock would approve.

Navy linen trousers.

Dansko wedges, in toast.

Rage: firey.

Two hours to go.

Vocabulary

2008-07-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

One of my greatest frustrations with research is the politically driven vocabulary. Often, mediocre researchers use their own made-up terms to describe simple concepts; they seem to do this to claim these concepts as their own invention.

Look over there, it's a brown horse!

No no no. What are you talking about? As I published in 2001, that over there is a four-leg sepia callubuster or FLSC. From now on, you really ought to refer to it that way.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a really good piece on how to write with style. He advises to "keep it simple" and "sound like yourself." Moreover,

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child.

I think this is why my dissertation writing style offends academics. I grew up in blue collar. I use simple words and vulgar metaphors. I won't talk about FLSC's. I just talk about brown horses.

Dear Diary

2008-07-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

Four days to go.

My body is a Six Flags Amusement Park. Roller coasters of emotion tear through my clenched guts: tears over missed friends, panic about signatures, anxiety over moving boxes, anger over lost years, terror of a new job, joy at being almost done.

My mind is a Pomeranian. Ditzy and fierce, latching on to trivial thoughts with the jaws of my neurons and grinding them down for hours until they are nothing. I thought I lost my sweater on the train on Saturday. I worried for two hours about how I would ever find another black sweater as cute as that one. Then I found it under my seat.

I have this tight schedule that many doubt I can complete:

Fri: Defend.
Sat/Sun: Pack.
Mon: Close on house. Deposit.
Tues: Leave town.
Sat: Arrive in Portland.

People ask, "What about revisions?"

Fortunately, I wrote my dissertation for me. It's written in an informal, conversational style, a collection of 13 essays about my research. It was fun to write. I make metaphors between my work and blackberry jelly. I compare my advisor to Oscar Madison.

I say "fortunately," because my dissertation is just a diary. A couple of committee members read a couple of chapters about two months ago, but since I gave them my full draft three weeks ago, I've not heard a single peep. Given the history of my group and the defenses that have come before mine, I don't expect revisions. My advisor cashes out of his students once they get a job. I have seen him six times in the last five months.

I don't know what will happen this week.
But I hope to be home soon.

Letter from Dad

2008-06-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

A letter from Dad came in the mail today:

I am so glad your prison sentence in the state of hell is finally going to be over. You have finally reached your goal you had set for yourself so many years ago. It will be well worth the effort and grief you had to go through. The grief part should never had to be a consideration if there weren't people in places of authority that make you wonder how they ever got there or why they are allowed to stay. I am very proud of all that you have accomplished in that hellhole on your own.

Nice. I'll admit, though, it wasn't always on my own. There was desperation and loneliness. There was destructive behavior. But I also had an army of people to help; it just wasn't always the people it perhaps should have been.

She winks at ironies

2008-06-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

Cassandra Wilson interview in PASTE magazine this month. The interviewer asked her if she sees herself differently now than earlier in her career. She replies with,

I'm a lot more confident. More sure of what my work is as a musician. I have a clear idea of what I want to accomplish, even if it's still an impossible task. Because you never find what you're looking for. That's the thing. You always get close to it--but I feel more confident about getting closer to it now.

I was really lucky; I got to see her in concert in GradShitTownVille a few years ago.

Very American

2008-06-11T22:33:00.001-07:00

I've decided to dedicate my dissertation to my dog. I write this as she snores loudly at the foot of my bed.

A Gem of a Short Story

2008-06-11T22:18:00.000-07:00

From the book I'm reading, Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davies.

"Enlightened"

I don't know if I can remain friends with her. I've thought and thought about it -- she'll never know how much. I gave it one last try. I called her, after a year. But I didn't like the way the conversation went. The problem is that she is not very enlightened. Or, I should say, she is not enlightened enough for me. She is nearly 50 years old and no more enlightened, as far as I can see, than when I first knew her twenty years ago, when we mainly talked about men. I did not mind how unenlightened she was then, maybe because I was not so enlightened myself. I believe I am more enlightened now, and certainly more enlightened than she is, although I know it's not very enlightened to say that. But I want to say it, so I am willing to postpone being more enlightened myself so that I can still say a thing like that about a friend.

And the cover is brilliant. It looks faded, but with a perfect photograph of a fly; it is so perfect that the clerk at the library was startled, and tried to brush it off.

Today's Theme Song

2008-06-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, parts I and II

Those evil natured robots, they're programmed to destroy us. She's gotta be strong to fight them, so she's taking lots of vitamins. 'Cause she knows that it'd be tragic if those evil robots win. I know she can beat them.

Favorites

2008-06-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Probably three years ago, maybe more. My dad is visiting for the summer. I'm telling him about some professor who hasn't been very nice to me. He says, quite seriously,

"You want me to go down there and beat the shit of him for you? And you know, if I beat the shit out of him, he ain't gonna walk for six months."

Happy Father's Day, a little bit late.

Go Ahead, Make My Day

2008-06-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

My friend Moira is about a week away from her defense. She is very stressed, understandably. The defense is a huge deal; it is the end of a six year struggle against inner and outer demons. Freaking out is a natural response.

I am 38 days away from my defense. I sort of wish I were freaked out. Instead, I have this weird serenity; the same serenity that comes from hiking 20.5 miles around Waldo Lake. I'm exhausted, but looking back on a great achievement.

I feel a bit like Dirty Harry: Clint Eastwood's cop role. Dedicated moviegoers must remember the scene. Dirty Harry has been chasing this evil-doin' punk through streets and traffic and city rooftops. The punk is cornered. He's on the ground. Harry's got a .44 magnum in his face. Did Harry shoot 5 or 6 times? Is there a bullet left in the chamber? And Harry says,

But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Had lunch with a friend today. I was trying to explain that I really ought to be more freaked out than I am. I should be like Moira. I should be working 10 hours a day finishing up all these tidbits and loose ends. I should be trying to publish one more paper. I should...

But somewhere between the DickHeadAdvisor, the weekly acts of sexual discrimination, and living in a over-pollinated, narrow-minded hell on earth, I'm just too tired to care. And then I said, surprising even myself,

"They are just going to pass me. Of course they are. If they don't, they better know that someone's gonna get pushed down the stairs."

Ask me again when I've got 10 days to go.

Being Bad At Arithmetic Has Heart Healthy Advantages

2008-05-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

My first year of graduate school was the year I got a cellular phone. It was also the year I met my friend Iu. She's from Eastern Europe, and is fantastic at doing arithmetic figures in her head. She told me, "We were too poor for calculators, like Americans have."

That first semester, she and I met weekly to do our computer architecture homework together; she teased me about my inability to divide in my head. I tried to get better at it. The day she brought marshmallow cookies to share was the same day I got her phone number from her. So, in my phone, her name is "Marshmallow."

I really hated the interface for my clunky old phone. It didn't have a good way of getting to a certain name; it just listed stuff alphabetically. As I listed new contacts in my phone, I assigned their name according to how often I called them. Three phones later, I still do this. People I call a bunch are A-B-C/W-X-Y-Z. People I don't call much are in the L's and the M's. My mother is "Labor Pains" because it took her 14 hours to give birth to me. We don't talk much on the phone. Marshmallow and I tend to keep in touch over e-mail. My boyfriend is "B Guy" or Buddy Guy, one of the Blues kings. My friend Amy, with whom I arrange a bike trip every weekend, is wAmy because the A's and B's got full.

Last weekend, during our bike trip, wAmy told me about this book she's reading, "You: Getting Younger" by those two smug sons-of-bitches doctors who are on Oprah once a month. She knows I don't care for them too much, but she likes to give me health snippets from the book. Wearing sunglasses. Omega-3s. Heart health.

She told me that one can easily measure cardio health:

1. Calculate your maximum target heart rate, or MTHR. It's 220 - Age.
2. Work out at 80% your MTHR.
3. Time how long it takes to go down 66 bpm. If it's less than two minutes, that's great news.

So for my experiment: I work out at 152 and time how long it takes to get to 86 bpm.

I tried it. I can drop 66 bpm in less than one minute. Eh? What? That means, according to wAmy's book, that I'm in "primo cardio health."

I surprised myself. I wondered how I did it.

Bad arithmetic.

Last year, I bought a heart rate monitor to help with my weight loss. I was going to the gym, but I wasn't working out effectively. Now I try to work out in "the zone" for at least thirty minutes. It's interesting data and it's motivating.

But when I entered my "target range" in my monitor, I did the calculation in my head. And I calculated wrong. So, whenever I'm at the gym, I'm working out at about 90%.

Broadening and Narrowing My Fashion Horizons

2008-05-17T10:59:00.001-07:00

I met my friend Sk. about 4 months before I moved to GradShitTownVille. We met at the shoe store where she works. I'm not Imelda Marcos, but I do have a healthy collection of shoes. Six years later, Sk. and I are still close despite the miles in between; when I'm in Portland, we still hang out at the shoe store where we met.

I am about 40 pounds lighter than I was three years ago; it hasn't sunk in. I think I have an reasonable self image. Over 50% of the time, I seem to like what I see in the mirror. But all the other days, I feel squishy, ugly, and whiney. The boyfriend gives me his frownie face on these days.

I visited Sk. in Portland last week, between attending a faculty meeting (!) and surprising my mom for mother's day. We went shopping.

Scene 1. At her shoe store.

Sk. "Try on these wedges."

I give my skeptical face.

Sk. "Just try 'em."

I've never liked wedges really, but I'm happy to try on shoes. Sk. brought me my regular size 39. They were huge, but super super cute!

Me. "I like wedges?"
Sk. "Your feet got smaller?"

I bought these in the 38:

Scene 2. At Ann Taylor, shopping for "non-dowdy professor" clothes.

Sk. "I don't think you are the size you think you are. Try this dress on. Don't look at the tag, just try it on."

Me. "But it's a 10. I wear a 14."

In my defense, I was at least no longer wearing my size 16 jeans.

Sk. "Just try it!"

Yeah. It fit. It's probably a fluke. Or I'm deluded. Either way, I'm really looking forward to seeing Sk. more often again.

Networking

2008-05-17T09:55:00.001-07:00

For many, I think that "networking" is like flossing. It's good for you, but it's time-consuming and it makes your gums bleed. Unlike flossing, which is pretty easy, networking seems mysterious, magical.

I'm reading "The Girl's Guide to Kicking Your Career into Gear," and the authors make the following statement about how not to network:

Don't tell someone you're networking even if you are. Networking should be a somewhat organic exchange between two people who like each other or at least have a lot in common professionally. If you don't click personally, it just won't go anywhere. It's like dating--you know there's the possibility of sex, but you don't talk about it.

Don't start out asking someone what they do. That should never be the only thing that defines you, and if someone is focused only on your career, it leaves you feeling pretty cold.

Introduce yourself when you meet someone new, not five minutes into a conversation.

I think my buddy at W3C2 could benefit from the last one.

Temper, temper!

2008-05-15T10:39:00.001-07:00

Walking down the street to the coffee shop, I was giggling out loud to myself. It was my evil giggle, the one that slips out when I'm thinking about my recent evil doings.

* * *

Today there was a meeting on my campus for the World Wide Women In Computing Conference. The W3C2 is a fake name, but the meeting was real. Since it's on my campus, I volunteered to help out: driving a shuttle bus, fielding questions about ATM locations, and taking meeting notes. I try to be a good hostess, which generally involves keeping my cynical mouth shut.

Fifteen minutes before today's meeting, I approached the W3C2 representative to let him know I would be taking notes.

I said, "I was sent down here to be your scribe."
He replied, "Oh great! I'll assume that you don't know what we're doing."
I said, "I'm a graduate student in computer science, I think I'll be okay."
He said, "Well, you may not know that W3C2 is ..."
I stopped him, firmly, "I'm very familiar with your institution."

And then he explained their topic of conversation, which is where I wished he had started. He never bothered to learn my name.

I was very mad. Shaking hands mad. Here is a representative for an institution trying to get more women in computing, and he did the very thing that makes me feel invalidated and invisible. He assumed I didn't know.

Of course, I took beautiful notes. I know the area of diversity in computing quite well, so it wasn't hard to keep up with the conversation. I've also seen many of the attendees at other conferences, so it wasn't hard to add names to the things that were said. But all the time I felt like I needed to swat this guy gently on the nose.

After the meeting he came up to me to arrange to have the notes sent to him. After I got his e-mail:

I said, "I hope you've learned your lesson."
He asked, "What's that?"
I said, "When a woman is standing in front of you, don't assume she's a secretary."
He stammered, "I didn't assume that...I...I just assumed that you didn't know what we were doing."
I said, "Given that you are in W3C2, it's very important for you not to make these kinds of assumptions."
He stammered, "Yes, I'm learning that
I said, smiling, "Have a safe trip home."

At least he faked being receptive to his lesson. Let's hope he learned.

10

2008-04-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

In 10 minutes, I will definitely have to pee.

In 10 hours, I will finish painting my attic, part three of "get the house ready for sale right now!"

In 10 days, I will be on a secret mission (more to come).

In 10 weeks, I will be practicing my defense 8 days in advance.

In 10 months, I will be in full swing of Spring 2009, living in Portland, OR.

In 10 years, I will have hopefully decided between a life of "eccentric spinsterhood" or "eccentric motherhood."

How I Got A Job

2008-04-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

I said it before. The best advice I ever got in graduate school was from Dr. Shellie who advised, "The best way to graduate is to get a job." I did just that; on July 18th I will defend my dissertation. In late August, I will teach my first class as an Assistant Professor.

People have asked me, "How?" I'll try to recreate the steps and the rough time line.

Step 1: Get a mentor.
September 2006

Some graduate students are lucky: their advisor is a great mentor for the job search. For me, this is not the case. I have spent my graduate career forming an army of mentors who can advise me on topics ranging from family-work balance to handling misogyny. Resources have been incredibly varied: old co-workers, assistant deans, professors in other departments.

But for initiating the job search, one stands out. On MentorNet, I found myself a mentor who had similar interests in balancing research and teaching. She listened to my existential crisis about "having a life" vs. "being the golden researcher." Above all, she was fantastic at kicking my butt. As I fretted over whether to graduate this year or next, she wrote,

DON'T LINGER. You will realize as soon as you are out of there how little this last year really meant to you.

Step 2: Go on tour.
July 2007

With my butt properly kicked, I scheduled summer visits with four professors at three different universities to discover the kind of institution that fit with my own philosophies of education, research, and community. I called it my “Summer 2007 Tour.” I needed to answer some questions. Would I be happy at a small university where I got my bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering? Or would I prefer a large state institution like my current one? Something else entirely? After six years of misery and cage fighting, it was my top priority that I find a place where I could be happy.

So I browsed the web, found some people at various universities in the Pacific Northwest, my target geographical location. I sent out e-mail to folks my mentor suggested. I sent out some e-mail to people I had never met before. For example,

Dear Professor,

I plan to be in the Seattle area this July. Given that our research interests in reliability are closely related, I would like to meet with you to have a friendly chat about our current work, about your experiences at Seattle U., and hear your advice about the academic job search.

A note to those of you afraid to network: All of them replied.

My first meeting was with a woman who had been an instructor at a large state school, and now works at Pacific Lutheran University. She said that what she liked best at PLU was that she was no longer the best teacher in her department. She enjoyed being surrounded by a community of educators who put their students first, and who challenged her and guided her to become a better educator.

At the smaller institutions I visited, I was impressed by the real sense of community felt by students and faculty. Faculty talked about how they enjoyed working with their colleagues, how they enjoyed multiple opportunities to teach small cohorts of students. During a campus tour I attended at Seattle University, there was a sincere pride expressed by the student tour guides who talked about their math lab, writing center, and personal attention from their professors.

My summer tour showed me that I would contribute most successfully and happily to an institution that values teaching excellence, emphasizes a sense of community, and seeks to educate the whole person.

But my summer tour also presented a huge stroke of luck. I met with a woman who had been hired by my undergraduate institution in 2005. We were talking about general job search advice, and she stopped, "You know we are hiring this year, right?"

What?! THE school. The very school that I loved so much as an undergrad. I can remember talking with my friends in room 103 of the engineering building about what we'd do when we grew up. I said, "I'm going to be a professor here."

So it was sealed. I would apply.

Step 3: Make a support group.
September 2007

Another stroke of luck. I had a tight group of very accomplished friends who were all braving the job search. Applications would be due in November-January. In September, we started writing our application materials. We read each other's materials. Gave each other feedback. Talked about the rumors and stories we heard about the job search. Helped each other remember stuff we did that would look good on the C.V. "Don't you remember, you moderated that panel, what, second year?" Took each other out for ice cream when we were freaked out about never getting a job. Gave each other pep talks. "No you are not going to be here next year!" Listened to each other's practice job talks.

Step 4: Practice the job talk in front of a live studio audience.

It didn't make sense to me to practice my job talk in front of most professors at my university. These were top researchers who wanted to see a job talk which demonstrated a contribution to the field. They wanted me to say stuff like, "I invented gravity!" Wrong audience.

I was going to interview at small teaching schools. My interviewers wanted to know if I could teach. So I practiced my job talk in front of professors at my university who had worked at smaller schools. I practiced in front of undergraduates at my university. I practiced at another teaching university about two hours away. I videotaped a practice and sent it to my mentor. I got lots of good feedback.

It was funny in a way. All my friends applying to research institutions had to prove they could do research. Having gone to a huge research university, the smaller institutions assumed I could do research. I had to prove to them that I could teach. I only talked about my research for about 2 slides.

* * *

In the end, my job search was:

12 applications. 4 phone interviews. I did an on-site interview at my top choice in January, and they gave me a job offer right away. I didn't feel it necessary to interview anywhere else. I had gotten the dream job I wanted since I was 19 years old.

Other resources:

The Journey to a Teaching Oriented Faculty Position by Tammy VanDeGrift and Janet Davis.

How to Get a Teaching Job at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution by A. Malcolm Campbell.

Sweetheart

2008-04-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

Played a lot of Sarah White on the radio show today. She won 2007 ‘Best Song’ for the Mountain Stage New Song Contest for her latest EP's title song, "Sweetheart"

Sweetheart, if you knew the pace at which you fall from grace you'd slow down.
Sweetheart, if you knew the pace at which you fall from grace you'd come down.

Sweetheart, what you need to know it's me that will keep us apart.
Cause my heart doesn't really want to know all that pain you hold in your heart.

So leave, take what you need, go with good speed, the traffic is light.
So go, take what you feel, you need to be real, I'll make it just right.

Sweetheart you think I'm giving up. You think I 'm waking up right on time.
If my heart to you was worth a dime you'd roll me every time.

I'm not 100% sure on the lyrics, but the song is really pretty.

Phase 1 Complete

2008-03-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

I have purged all clothing and linens that have not been used in the last sixth months. Moving onto phase 2: furniture.

Let's do the time warp again!

2008-03-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

I've been working on reducing. When I moved east, I moved all my belongings. It was a headache. Now I'm about to move west, and I plan to move very little. I am tempted to just burn my house down as I back out of the driveway, headed for 80-W.

She won't. Arson is illegal and she should want to make some money on her investment.

Every couple of weeks, I donate another pickup load to the Habitat for Humanity. I take another box to the library. The last trip I took a file cabinet, a kitchen island, two outdoor chairs, and a box of glassware.

The file cabinet was a Saturday project by itself, because I had to empty it. Its contents were a freakish and undesired time warp of the last 12 years of my life. Things that are now shredded and in the recycling bin include:

1993: 6 love letters from high school boyfriend; I did not reread them.

1993: Parts of a high school journal that depict loving tales of the high school boyfriend, who--in the end--left me for a much thinner girl named Rebecca.

1994: Speech from high school graduation. So. Sappy.

1995: Tax return. How did I live on $7564.00?

1996: Job offer letter from my first engineering internship. I was paid a huge $11 an hour, which allowed me to buy food every day.

1994-1998: Perkins loan promissary notes with a wide variety of addresses depicting how much I moved as an undergrad, always trying to find a cheaper place to live. These also included repeated threats from the government about what might happen if I didn't repay my loan.

1997: The first letter I ever wrote to two boyfriends ago.

1998: Sallie Mae coupons from my student loans that, 10 years later, are still unpaid and living in magic deferral land.

1998: Photograph from two boyfriends ago.

1999: First mortgage, including all the payment coupons.

1999: Sticker from the 1999 Jetta: my first and last new car.

2000: Receipt and limited warranty for my Natuzzi leather couch.

My 2-drawer vertical file cabinet has been reduced to a small Rubbermaid office solution. There's a lot more to reduce before I head west, but I'm happily making dents every week.

We can be heroes, just for one day.

2008-03-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

I'm having nightmares. Their theme is that I have to be somewhere far away, but I am running late. It began six months ago. In the dream, I'm on a Tri-Met bus, trying to get to PDX for a 9 pm flight to Spain. In the next dream, I get smarter, and ask my brother to drive me. But again, we are running late, he's driving 90 mph around a curve, and the car rolls three times. Tonight, it was even more violent. I murdered someone to get to where I was going.

The nightmares are a transparent outlet for my daytime anxiety.

Good news first!

I got a job. A very smart scientist gave me this advice: the best way to graduate is to look for a job. So I looked. And I got one. In fact, I got my dream job at a small liberal arts school on the West Coast; it has an engineering-based computer science department with a gender-balanced faculty. This was the school I wanted to be at for a decade of dreaming about becoming a professor. This school was the reason why I chased a Ph.D.

I started my job search last summer when I went on a little tour of liberal arts schools on the west coast. I had to know one thing: Had I romanticized the "teaching university" after my sentence at GradShitTownVille? I talked with professors at three different schools. Some took me to coffee. Some to lunch. They talked about their favorite parts of their job. The warned me of their biggest challenges.

The result: I knew, despite the cons, that I still wanted the teaching university. I had some great new friends. I had some news of upcoming job openings. And the dream school was one of them.

Fast forward to now.

The nightmares are a transparent outlet for my daytime anxiety. I have roughly four months before I should head west to start my new job. I have lots to do. I have no interest in doing it. I procrastinate by remodeling the bathroom.

Admittedly, the bathroom needed remodeling to increase the sale value of the house. Yet, that's how I procrastinate. It's why my house is so clean.

The stress of doing very little has lead to three illnesses this month. Certainly, the nightmares will stop once I leave GradShitTownVille. The fever and throwing up will stop once I begin working diligently again.

That starts tonight, bitch.

Getting things done.

2008-02-13T14:04:00.000-08:00

1. Figure out a more productive daily schedule.
2. Avoid situations where I have to endure the phrase "top 10."
3. Skip group meetings more often.
~~4. Be more enthusiastic over the phone.~~
~~5. Go to the post office.~~
6. Stop being sad.
~~7. Find a place where I can be myself without being punished.~~
8. Write an Eclipse plug-in.
~~9. Think of two more things.~~

9a. Refurbish the bathroom to improve the sale of the house.
9b. Schedule the defense.

Everything's gonna be alright

2008-02-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

Strange. Past two months, I've almost been enjoying school. I have no paper deadlines; I don't have to make a mountain out of my teeny result-molehill. I see my advisor only once a week; his crazy-talk bounces off my brain like cartoon bullets. I'm diligently working on my two projects, making progress on implementation and measuring results.

I saw a female faculty in the hallway the other day. Last time I spoke with her, I was in poor shape (you, dear reader, might remember). She'd given me some advice on the preliminary exam, finishing the degree, and getting a job. She asked, "How is the prelim going?" I said, "All done." She said, "Wow! Do you plan on graduating this summer?" I said, "I've got some job offers already."

This is how I thought graduate school was supposed to be. I'm working independently on stuff I enjoy. I'm learning new things. I see a clear end. I know what I need to do to get out.

Instead, the first 11 semesters were torture; I got through them with rage, depression, therapy, and tenacity. The last 2 look like they'll be decent.

I've quoted her before, but she's worth repeating. From Annie Proulx's "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World,"

The main thing in life was staying power. That was it: stand around long enough, you'd get to sit down.

One question: What do I call this blog once I graduate?

Thaw

2008-02-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

Easy. Changing a car battery which expires 8 months early.

Hard. Changing a car battery which expires 8 months early in mid-February the night before temperatures reach -9 degrees F.

The close ties between rap and country music

2008-02-05T09:05:00.001-08:00

There is a lot in common between the lyrics of Reba McEntire's 1990 song "Fancy" and Eminem's "Lose Yourself."

She says, "She said here's your one chance Fancy don't let me down."

He says, "You only get one shot...this opportunity comes once in a lifetime."

Sure, there's the clear generation and gender gaps. He lives in a mobile home. She lives in a rickety shack. He's broke. She's poor. He wants to be made king. She charms a king.

Perhaps this isn't such a crazy idea: hick hop.

How little I know

2008-02-05T08:47:00.001-08:00

Scene: It's Super Bowl Sunday. I am at home; I flip on the TV to see if my favorite show has started. I poke my head in the boyfriend's room.

Me: "How many parts in a football game?"
Boyfriend: "Four quarters."
Me: "Dang. I guess House won't be on for a while."

Brassage rhymes with Sausage

2008-02-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

Arsenio Hall*, back when he had a talk show, featured a segment called "things that make you go hmmmm." This item would appear on the segment:

Brassage is the first and only wellness bra. As you move, imperceptible massaging bumps (about the size of a quarter) in the side panels stimulate circulation in the lymphatic area. This important area processes 80% of the bodys lymphatic drainage of toxins and impurities from the breast tissue. Doctor-designed. Breathable blend of 90% Swiss organic cotton and 10% spandex. You may experience tenderness during the detox process.

You can buy the brassage on sale!

*Hall is represented by William Morris Agency and is currently developing a television vehicle.

My new favorite site.

2008-01-30T19:00:00.001-08:00

The 20x200 Project

Ten Things To Do

2008-01-30T18:41:00.001-08:00

1. Figure out a more productive daily schedule.
2. Avoid situations where I have to endure the phrase "top 10."
3. Skip group meetings more often.
4. Be more enthusiastic over the phone.
5. Go to the post office.
6. Stop being sad.
7. Find a place where I can be myself without being punished.
8. Write an Eclipse plug-in.
9. Think of two more things.

A better list is here.

Unfocused

2008-01-30T18:29:00.000-08:00

"But life changes on a dial, in a garden, a clinking of beetle wings, a shrimp bush and dry pink petals of chinese lanterns dangling. Once I thought: I'll just plant things until there's no time to be afraid. But storms are furious in their own way, green lightning and bullets as big as hail in the desert, as frogs."
-- Taken from "Attempts At A Life" by Danielle Dutton.

Drive-Thru Coffee

2008-01-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

Oregon boasts a number of drive-thru coffee joints. On Salem's Mission Street, I saw the "Bikini Coffee Co." Drive on in, and see baristas in bikinis make you a latte. No word on if the baristas are all female.

Snapshots II

2007-12-31T11:42:00.000-08:00

Time-travel bowling with my brother: The only updates that the Northside Bowling alley has seen in the last 50 years is the Coca Cola logo. By frame 3, my brother's score is 4 times greater than mine. When I hit at least 1 pin, I do victory dances to Abba's gold.

Running alongside the Willamette River: The recent rains have put the river at toe-level. I run the trails at Minto Brown Island Park, wearing shorts and a long-sleeved top, noticing how Oregon's 32 degrees F is so much warmer than GradShitTownVille's 32 degrees F.

Snapshots

2007-12-28T17:49:00.000-08:00

Five movies in two days: including "Once." This was a movie I missed in the theaters, partly because it got bad reviews and partly because I was immersed in work. Holy crap! I'm sorry I missed it in the theatre, because the music is fantastic, and it would have been great to hear it on proper speakers. If you don't mind slow-paced movies like "Waking Life," and you like Indie music sung by handsome bearded men and a gorgeously feisty Czech woman, I recommend "Once." I splurged and bought the album.

Lessons from under the hood of the 1984 Toyota pickup: Installing a new battery in my dad's truck, wrestling with the aged lead battery terminal clamps. I'm sawing away at the lumpy bits, trying to get the clamps to clamp. There is lead shrapnel everywhere. Dad tries to clean it up and says, "It's hard to blow with gum in your mouth."

It's been a while since we've had a little allegory

2007-12-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose parents had died, and she had to be sent to a boarding school. Her parents had been kind people, and taught her right from wrong, and how to live a decent, multi-faceted life. They taught her how to grow tomatoes, how to snuggle babies, how to ride a bicycle, how to be angry and sad, and how to get over it.

The people in charge at the boarding school were much different. They taught the children how to make stained glass windows. At first, it was very difficult. She cut her fingers on the glass, and often broke pieces in her projects. The people in charge were very disappointed. They said,

"You should be like Jenny. Jenny is our best child, all grown up now. She has made hundreds of beautiful stained glass windows all over the world."

The little girl improved over time. Her stained glass windows were medium-sized and nice looking. The people in charge at the boarding school sold them to tourists and hotel corporations looking for cheaply-priced art to adorn their walls.

Still, the people in charge were very disappointed. They said,

"You should be like Jenny. Jenny is our best child, all grown up now. She has made hundreds of beautiful stained glass windows all over the world."

The people in charge rarely mentioned other things about Jenny. Jenny lived alone. Jenny couldn't keep houseplants alive. Jenny ate too much salty food. Jenny was mean to waiters. Jenny spent so much of her time making beautiful stained glass windows, she hardly had time for anything else. The little girl heard rumors about Jenny, but the people in charge spoke only of her stained glass windows.

The little girl worked very hard to improve. Her stained glass windows now were large-size and very detailed. They were interesting to look at, and real artists hung them in their big white galleries with yellow oak floors.

Still, the people in charge were very disappointed. They said,

"You should be like Jenny. Jenny is our best child, all grown up now. She has made hundreds of beautiful stained glass windows all over the world."

It had been many years since her parents had died. And the little girl was all grown. Some days, she thought of the lessons that her mother and father had taught her about living a decent life, about right and wrong, about growing tomatoes and snuggling babies and riding bicycles. And other days, she thought about Jenny. And
sometimes when she thought of Jenny, only sometimes, usually in the dark of night, she was envious of all those stained glass windows that Jenny had created.

28 degrees Fahrenheit tastes a lot like butter.

2007-12-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

It's cold in GradShitTowneVille. There's snow on the ground; the sidewalks with unshoveled snow have been transformed into bumpy Slip 'N Slides. I've been keeping up with the dog's walks, but I feel like the 25 minute adventures in the sub-freezing temperatures have thrown my body into some kind of hibernation mode. Eating a whole stick of butter sounds like a great idea, which disturbs my rational half.

Handmade

2007-11-29T19:48:00.000-08:00

I just spent 24 minutes chopping 1.5 cups of walnuts and pecans. They are for the Mexican wedding cakes, or polvorones, that I'm making as thanks to a collection of friends and colleagues who are writing letters of recommendation for me.

I bake a lot. I treat it like research. I take pictures of the food I make. I keep a journal and photo diary of what I made, so I can remember what worked and what didn't.

I bake a lot: so much, that one might be suprised that I don't have a food processor. What is 24 minutes of chopping with a 5" Wustof Classic serrated knife versus 20 seconds of pulsing?

The cookies don't taste better. These mexican wedding cakes would probably offer a more "melt-in-your-mouth" experience if it weren't for the random chinks walnut my knife didn't cleanly slice.

And certainly, it's not because I'm stingy with my equipment. Sure, I have a second-hand coffee table bought from a garage sale for $10. The bookshelf was $30. The oddball collection of chairs littering my house are from City Liquidators; they amount to less than $5 a chair. I even have a second-hand dog. But my 8 year old Chantal stockpot was $125. The matching saucepan was $80. And my good friends give me great kitchen gifts. I have a lovely heavy duty wooden spatula from Moira, a beautiful Chef's knife from the boyfriend, a Le Creuset dutch oven that my friend R. claims was "really on sale," and my mother has given me every one of my mixing bowls.

What then?

I'll tell you.

Ritual.

Ritual for me. Much of my "old life" has been deferred or abandoned since coming to graduate school: making pop-up Christmas cards, hiking, inhaling art, gardening, feeling confident. Spending 24 minutes chopping nuts is a small bit of leisurely time that I get to reclaim. It is a quiet rebellion taking place in my yellow kitchen with the ugly floor.

And ritual for them. This small army of people has dedicated a lot of time telling a group of strangers nice things about me. Their time must be repaid with my time: 24 minutes of chopping nuts.

The Ron Jeremy of Gingerbreadland

2007-11-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

Find him at Williams-Sonoma.

Nerves could be contagious

2007-11-17T12:25:00.000-08:00

Thursday. 6:00 am. Four hours to the prelim, and I'm hunched over the toilet, throwing up the entire contents of my stomach. Funny thing about throwing up: it's an oral diary of the last few meals. The baked potato for dinner. The orange juice for breakfast.

I stumble back to bed after tossing my favorite pants in the dryer. The boyfriend says, "Are you okay?" Not really. I don't think I can do this today. But I can't stand the idea of postponing it either.

I say, "I think I have food poisoning or something." He says, "Maybe it's just nerves."

I've never had a problem with nerves, but I conceded. I slept right up to 9:30 am, and the boyfriend drove me to school and dropped me off at the front door.

I don't remember much about the prelim. I spoke for 40 minutes. My advisor spoke for 15. One committee member asked two questions. Another made a comment. Another said nothing at all.

I passed.

The boyfriend was in the audience, along with two of my research group members. The boyfriend says he couldn't tell at all during the prelim that I was sick; my acting performance made it hard for him to understand why I napped lethargically the rest of the day. Between naps, I took trips to the bathroom, surfed the internet, concluded I had stomach flu, and worked on my research proposal due that night for a post-doc position.

He went to the store and bought me juice. He took care of the dog. He remade the bed while I half-slept in it.

Saturday. 6:00 am. The boyfriend is hunched over the toilet. Poor guy.

P & P

2007-11-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

I had a pelvis exam today. My preliminary exam is tomorrow. It seemed appropriate for me to schedule them in the same week. Really, a preliminary exam is like a pelvis exam. It's something I dread, it's an uncomfortable process, but I'll most likely pass.

I wonder how far I can take this metaphor? How similar are gonorrhea and proposed work?

Stay tuned.

Theme Song

2007-10-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

From the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Everything is everything
What is meant to be, will be
After winter, must come spring
Change, it comes eventually

I wrote these words for everyone
Who struggles in their youth
Who wont accept deception
Instead of what is truth
It seems we lose the game,
Before we even start to play
Who made these rules?
We're so confused
Easily led astray
Let me tell ya that
Everything is everything
Everything is everything
After winter, must come spring
Everything is everything

Sometimes it seems
We'll touch that dream
But things come slow or not at all
And the ones on top, wont make it stop
So convinced that they might fall
Lets love ourselves then we cant fail
To make a better situation
Tomorrow, our seeds will grow
All we need is dedication

Because it seems wrong to feel hopeless 6 days before my 31st birthday.

Bad Mood

2007-10-05T08:48:00.001-07:00

Three scenes indicating that I'm very angry.

Scene 1: I created the following "Prelim Playlist."

* * *

Scene 2: I'm talking to the boyfriend, telling him about my terrible day.

Me: I yelled at Jenny today during our meeting. I feel terrible.
Him: Jenny? Jenny? That's like yelling at a nice, happy puppy.
Me: I know [hanging head]

* * *

Scene 3: I hurt my hand on the dryer, and then cry uncontrollably for 30 minutes. The boyfriend walks in,

Him: What's wrong?
Me: Lots of things.

* * *

I know exactly why I'm so angry. What's strange is that it's because of something that happened six months ago. I usually don't hold onto anger this way. I'm like a firework. I explode immediately; it dissapates and I usually forget why I was angry. This anger is different; it has turned into firey stones that I carry in my shoulders, brain, and belly.

Scene 0: I'm talking to my advisor about my preliminary exam.

Me: I think it's time for me to prelim. I've published another paper, and we agreed that after I published another paper, it would be time.

Adv: You aren't ready. Let's say this, you can prelim when your boyfriend prelims.

Me: Um... What? I don't think that's appropriate. I mean, we aren't married or anything...

Adv: Why not! Why aren't you married yet?! [20 minute lecture on marriage and children ensues].

* * *

I'm really tired of this hell. I'm really tired of being slapped in the face for having tits. I need to get out of here before all this anger does permanent damage.

I think I'll get back to work on that prelim.

Leaking is Bad.

2007-09-27T14:13:00.001-07:00

I went home last week to attend a wedding. It was a fantastically-timed trip. I had just submitted two papers in two weeks, and I was finishing up a camera-ready version of a third. For a few days, the panic attacks subsided. At the wedding, I saw some old friends, including one civil engineer who was very excited to hear that I was living in GradShitTownVille,

"Do you know that GradShitTownVille is the leader...THE LEADER...in landfill liners?!"

I didn't.

I also got to go camping.

Signs from an Overcast Sky

2007-09-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

The advisor speaks,

You have made great progress on [ponies in edifices] and published accordingly. I would suggest you starting to prepare your prelim based on your current and planned publications

"I Just Knew"

2007-09-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

I see this in movies all the time:

Scene: A 110 pound daughter and her equally thin mother, probably played by Diane Keaton, are rummaging in the attic when they come across the mother's wedding dress.

[Daughter]: "Mom, how did you know dad was the one?"
[D.K.]: "I just knew"

Or it's like in Sleepless in Seattle,

[Mrs. Reed]: "It was like magic."

In movie life, and sometimes in real life, there is this "just know" part of people's brains. They know how to jump to the next step in life: husbands, wives, new jobs, kids, cross-country moves, trips to Hawaii.

It's similar to the "always know" group or the "since I was little" group.

I always knew that I wanted to jump out of a plane while eating peanut butter so I could break the world record in tryptophan consumption at 5000 feet.

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to get married the same hilltop as my grammy Ada.

* * *

I have no "just know" ability. I have no idea how to move into the next phase of life. I slept on my college futon until this year. I was with a guy for five years, but never got married. I think the only time I ever "just knew" was when I picked up my dog 8 years ago from the Humane Society.

This is realy bugging me right now because I'm trying to figure out when to graduate. May? Next December? Next May? Many of my friends, also sixth year graduate students, are getting their C.V.'s and teaching statements ready to apply to academic jobs in the next few months. They seem quite confident that they will be done by May. But since I have no "just know" gene, or brain cells, or whatever, I ask this of the blogosphere: How do you know when you are done?

Batting Average

2007-08-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

Taken from Wikipedia:

In modern times, a season batting average higher than .300 is considered to be excellent, and an average higher than .400 a nearly unachievable goal. The last player to do so, with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting championship, was Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, who hit .406 in 1941, though the best modern players either threaten to or actually do achieve it occasionally, if only for brief periods of time.

Spring 2007. Three papers submitted. One paper accepted. My batting average: 0.333. Not much worse than Babe Ruth, so I'm feeling okay.

Unleash

2007-08-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

A full confession: I went on a rare beauty product shopping spree last week. For $30.53, I bought three hair products, a round hair brush, and mascara. Now I have moisturized, glossy, kinky hair, stylized with the round hair brush. The topaz mascara makes my blue eyes "pop:" so says the packaging.

Last night's spree was a desperate rebellion against my own rules of conduct. Since 1994, I've coped with being in a male-dominated field by disguising my femininity. Since coming to GradShitTowneVille, I've been more extreme in my covert acts. I say the f-word four times a day. I talk about changing my break pads. I talk like a big dog. I wear pants, never shorts; skirts are reserved for 101 degrees F.

Just last week, I was marvelling at how much ass I kick. Wearing an old pair of my dad's overalls, sweating in 90 degree heat, I was fighting the grass with my vintage push reel mower. After two hours of pulling and panting, battling the weed eater, and admiring my developing biceps (thank you weight-lifting), I had a front yard that could be a decent backdrop for a live local news broadcast.

Broadcaster: I'm standing in a North GradShitTownVille neighborhood where we are getting reports of a young graduate student who is holding her advisor hostage in her attic. Sir, can you tell us about the events taking place this explosive Friday afternoon?

Yeah. Like that.

But that's not the frustrating thing. That's not what I'm rebelling against. I'm fantastic at being masculine. I'm great at doing "guy" things. I'm horrible at giving myself permission to be a woman.

Ideally, I'd live in a world where there aren't "girl things" and "guy things." I would live where there are just "people things," and people do what they like. None of these other graduate students who tell me I should have a baby or ask me how my boyfriend's research is going. None of these predatorial professors who waaaaay overstep boundaries. Just me. Just "cs grad student" instead of "female cs grad student."

But after so many years of pants, what used to be a tiny inkling of femininity has lately turned into the rioting oppressed. She is demanding to be unleashed.

I don't know how this will resolve itself. Other women I know have different ways of being in this place:

"Emma's" voice drops a half-octave whenever there are men in the room, including her husband. I'm not sure if she knows that she does this.

"Jenna" takes charge of the room. She says she's more apt to be her bossy self with men present. She wears a t-shirt and jeans most days.

"Tina" replies to most comments or explanations with an uninterested "sure." She paints her fingernails and wears heels to class.

"Claudia" just acts like herself. She's cutesy and fun in her skirts and Keenes, proclaiming her love of graph theory in front of a class of 28 guys.

Lots of approaches, but I'm still not sure what's right for me. How do I assume my role as a woman in science, rather than a woman-in-disguise in science? I don't know. For now, I'll keep wearing pants, but with topaz mascara.

Ovary Twitch

2007-08-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

My friend Cheryl taught me the phrase, "My ovaries are twitching." We'd be in a park, walking the dog, and we'd see some super cute kids who want to play with the dog. They'd be polite, and sweet, and fun. For a brief moment, the ovaries would twitch, and we'd want to have kids. Of course, we'd quickly recall the pain of childbirth, or realize that neither of us have husbands. The twitching would stop.

Wait a minute, Cheryl got married last weekend.

That's not really the point of the story, is it?

My neighbors have been in the process of moving. For the past few days, they've dropped off their 2 year old son at my place for an hour or two, so they can move heavy furniture or clean the house. I don't really have any toys at my house, so the first day, I took him down into the basement to play with nuts and bolts and measuring tapes. He's just learning how to categorize things, so it's fun to sort the big bolts from the small nuts. It's funny how boring things can become toys.

When I was little, my favorite toy was a washrag.

The next day, we were coloring in the front room, when he proclaimed,

"I want coffee."
"What? Coffee?"
"Yes. Coffee. Let's go coffee!"
"Coffee?"

Keep in mind that this kid speaks three languages, and he's not great at always speaking the one I know. So I figured "coffee" was some Chinese word that I didn't know. It just happened to sound like coffee.

He grabbed my hand and lead me into the kitchen. Then down to the basement. And back to where we had been playing. And I realized he had been putting nuts and bolts into a big plastic coffee cup.

Smart kid.

So, yeah, my ovaries are twitching.

Oh shit.

The Neat Thing That Happened While I Was Gone

2007-08-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

The bathroom on the floor in my building on campus has "feminine hygiene" wastebaskets in all the bathroom stalls. Yay!!!! I don't have to tote a balled-up fist of toilet paper and tampon around the bathroom anymore!

Final Vacation Highlights

2007-08-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

Three Amtrak train rides. $72

Three Sound Transit bus rides. $8

Four tanks of gas. $120

Effortless Shopping. > $100
- Olive linen jacket.
- Oversized linen sheer sweater.
- White camisole.
- Black Pat Benetar-esque t-shirt.
- White notched t-shirt.
- Textured button down shirt.
- Flattering jeans.
- Comfy cardigan.
- Gifts.

Most relaxing moment. Laying in a field in Discovery Park, soaking in the sun, letting the bugs sleep on me.

Luckiest moment. Getting a $400 travel voucher to volunteer to take another flight three hours later. Having a great friend in "The Big City" to put me up for the night.

Foodiest moment. Eating a demi-poulet with mayonaise at a hip French restaurant near Capitol Hill in Seattle. Sharing a taste of it with the boyfriend who is eating baked fish in a lentil ragout.

Funniest moment. I'm telling a story about this couple I know to my boyfriend and his friends. The story is about the woman who takes care of the kids, the man who does nothing with the kids, and the nosy co-worker who tells him he's a bad father during a staff meeting. My punchiline, "It's important to marry well."

One of the boyfriend's buddies asks, "Well? Doesn't that mean rich? What are *you* doing with a graduate student?"

I'm suddenly unable to speak English. I stutter, "We aren't mah...'Well'...by 'well' I mean, you know...not..."

The boyfriend leans back and proudly says, "She means well-hung."

Honorable Mention. Eating a sandwich on the train back to GradShitTownVille; the sandwich my friend Iu made for me while I slept in this morning.

Family Statistics

2007-07-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

Number of songs my dad whistled while we drove to Albany to play miniature golf: 3.

Their titles:
- The Little Drummer Boy.
- The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow (from Annie).
- The Brady Bunch Theme Song.

The Golf Game Score: Me-56. Dad-48.

Number of pans of clam roll ups my mom made for dinner: 4.

Number of boxes of raisinettes my brother bought me for the 10:15 am Harry Potter showing: 2.

Vacation Panic

2007-07-12T01:36:00.000-07:00

It's 1:30 in the morning. I just finished eating peanut butter out of the jar in the dark kitchen of my father's house, hoping the tryptophan might alleviate my inability to sleep. I've reached that point in my vacation where I've turned it into an optimality problem. How do I schedule my time so that I can appropriately balance it among all of the people I want to see in the Northwest, while at the same time finding time for myself to relax?

Over the years, I've gotten better at vacationing at home. I think my first visit home after going to graduate school, I had everything scheduled in 30 minute blocks. Five years later, I try to force myself to be more relaxed and fluid, but there is still a little choke of panic here and there.

* * *

So far, here are the vacation highlights:

In which I realize that my favorite yogurt costs $3.19 in Seattle. It costs $5 in GradShitTownVille!

In which I go to the Bellevue farmer's market and enjoy strawberries, raspberries, rainier cherries, and baby carrots.

In which I go on a four hour hike with my boyfriend, and he doesn't mind that I insist on taking 6 liters of water.

In which I buy my first digital camera as a gift to myself for submitting three papers in one semester.

In which I go on two bicycle rides with my father on the rural roads of Lebanon, OR.

In which I get an update from a friend back in GradShitTownVille that my dog is getting several man hours of attention every day.

In which, hopefully, I fall asleep tonight before an important meeting with a liberal arts university professor to discuss job search advice.

In which, hopefully, I don't screw it up.

No really, good things happen in GradShitTownVille

2007-06-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

I ordered two bras online. They were both on sale. They both fit.

What do you want to hear first?

2007-06-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

The good news? Or the bad news?

Good news

The grant that I wrote for my advisor was accepted. That's right, rather than spending time actually relaxing over Winter break, I was a stress-case about an NSF proposal. Fortunately, it paid off. Now I can relax a little more during my god-damned-well-deserved summer break in July.

Bad news

I got a paper rejection last week. One of the reviewers gave the classic 4 line,

"This paper is inadequate. It is only a survey. It's not awesome enough for the awesome journal of awesomeness. I do not recommend it for publication."

Where do people learn how to write these reviews?

As a result, I'm feeling a little stuck. I don't feel inspired to work on my paper due in September. I don't feel inspired to rework this rejected paper and resubmit it. I'm not inspired at all.

Given such lack of inspiration, instead of working on research today, I spent five hours installing track lighting at the community radio station. Turns out, being the daughter of an electrician, I'm one of the most highly skilled volunteers at that place. At one point, someone asked,

"Could I have the wire cutters?"

I replied, "You mean the diags or the Kleins?"

Confused look.

At least I have another fall-back if this PhD doesn't work out.

Awesome functions

2007-06-20T13:46:00.001-07:00

Over the phone, the boyfriend and I laugh at horrible research proposals.

Me: I think I'll work on writing a "Do-Over" system, so that when something bad happens in the computer, it will just do it over, and everything will be fine.

Bf: I'm going to write a "No Take-backs" function that will increase security of a system and enforce safety protocols.

Me: I'm going make a "Triple-Dog-Dare" function that will cancel out your "No Take-backs" function.

Dilbert-Style Management

2007-06-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

I was in industry for a handful of years. Back then, I didn't read Dilbert for the same reason I don't read the Ph.D. comics today. These comics that others find so funny, I find utterly depressing. They just reflect things in my life that I find miserable. I had the pointy-haired boss. I was Alice, always trying to manage my temper. Now I have the demanding advisor. I watch people piss away several years trying to graduate. Why sit and read a comic about my own pathetic life? I'd rather spend my time trying make change.

In this place, I still see pointy-haired bosses. Advisors manage their groups using the same management style that I saw in my first job after graduating in 1998. I quit that job after two years.

Consider a small subsidiary of a huge company. The small subsidiary has to make enough money to be viable, otherwise, the huge company will close the subsidiary. Cut its losses. Hand out the pink slips. Reduction in force, or RIF, is what they called it at my subsidiary. I think they call it "denied tenure" here. Worse, my subsidiary had to suffer the decisions of the huge company, and yet we had to make money based on those decisions. Their decisions pitted us against Intel.

Question: How much money does a subsidiary of 45 second-rate engineers and 5 good ones make when competing against Intel?
Answer: $27.50.

Whenever we got a customer (which was once every three months or so), we had to completely reorient all our goals. Qualcomm signed a contract, so suddenly everything we did was about cellphones. I started work on a soundcard driver. Then Wacom, and everything was about tablets. That only lasted a couple of weeks, then they cancelled the order. Then Nintendo gave us a look, just a look, and we were immediately simulating Mario Bros games on our hardware. I worked on a flash memory driver.

I never finished a project at that company to any successful degree. Admittedly, the soundcard driver limped along, and I could at least read and write to flash memory. I was miserable. I had four bosses. People asked me "howseitgoing?!" all the time. I got in trouble once for yelling at one of my bosses.

"ASKING ME HOWSEITGOING EVERY HALF HOUR DOES NOT MAKE ME WORK FASTER!"

Got a letter in the file for that one.

Like I said, I quit after two years. Then I worked for the best place in the world: Dragonfly Consulting. That Dragonfly Consulting doesn't exist anymore. In the wild, dragonflies only live about four months. In a capitalist economy, it's five years.

I miss that job. Had it not been bought by an evil corporation, I might still be sitting in my little cube, working happily on hardware. I worked on small focused projects until I got them done. I learned a lot. I wrote software that brought a computer to the C-prompt: TLB handlers, boot loaders, memory partitions. I could read Assembler as fast as I could read English. I could debug anything with just two LEDs. I worked with five very smart people. It was the perfect combination of great pay with a grad-school-style working environment. Except that they insisted nobody work more than 40 hours a week. West Coast hippies.

Eight years later, history repeats itself. Again, I am suffering from the "1-big customer" management style. Again, I am miserable with meaningless work that changes faster than I change air filters in the furnace.

Except this isn't a job I can quit.

Let's just hope I can catch another Dragonfly.

Walker Percy and His Moviegoer

2007-06-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

Last time I was this bored, I ended up dyeing my hair orange.

These days, I am a moviegoer. Ticket stubs litter my wallet. Away from Her. Mr. Brooks. Oceans 13. I try to draw lines around what I won't see. I divide the garbage from the acceptable mediocrity. Then a day comes when I am especially bored and I have to renegotiate. Hence, "Oceans 13." I hope that I can hold out against Shrek 3.

Typically, I like summers in GradShitTownVille because it's so desolate. The thousands of undergraduates have gone home. The coffee shop isn't packed with laptop surfers. Not every night is douche-bag night. But there is a price. Summer is also the time that friends typically go on internning adventures or take their final bow. My boyfriend is at Microsoft until August. My favorite movie buddy has graduated and left town. I'm left trying to figure out which of my remaining friends will put up with me. Trying to figure out if I should make new ones, or just build a hermitage.

Boredom doesn't mean a lack of work. There's plenty to do. I have two more papers planned for a September deadline. Boredom means a lack of engaging human contact. A lack of new things to see. Even when I dyed my hair orange two years ago, I had a friend to keep me company in the bathroom. She's in Chicago, wondering when I will tear myself away from work to come visit. Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to graduate as soon as fucking possible.

I bought myself a half-dozen roses tonight at the 24 hour grocery. I wasn't cheery enough for my favorite Gerber Daisies. The roses seemed elegant, dark and somber, a nice complement to my movie-going self.

Agenda

2007-06-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

Taken from "Affectionate Technology" by Philip Agre

On a humorous, but nevertheless significant note: A friend of mine created a computer "character" that you could converse with in written English. One of the things he found that was crucial to making it seem human was that it not listen to you very carefully. It had its own agenda and invariably it would bring the conversation around to, say, its sick grandmother living in Arkansas. No matter what you talked about, eventually the grandmother that lived in Arkansas came up. It is rare that computer scientists have not-listening as a design goal--but it is a human characteristic.

Letting Go

2007-06-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

I went on a little adventure to a nearby city last weekend, taking the opportunity to listen to the old cassettes that haunt my glove box. The pick of the drive was Tina Turner's 1983 release, "Private Dancer" which won the Album of the Year award in 1985.

I noticed the cassette cover art was essentially a thumbnail of the vinyl album artwork pasted into the top two-thirds of the cassette. Despite the cassette being rectangular in shape, the graphic artist could not let go of the square form factor of the original album. Even today, with iTunes cover art, one sees the same artificial form factor. There is nothing particularly "square" about an mp3, and yet that is how iTunes cover art is displayed:

Stepping away from that artificial form factor proved fruitful for Stefan Sagmeister who won a grammy for the design of the Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime Boxed Set.

In fact, stepping away from the artificial structures is how a lot of effective research can be done in many subfields of computer science. Because software isn't bound by the rules of physics, or materials science, or practical cost--because one can do "anything" in software--computer scientists have to create their own artificial structures in order to make sense of things. There's no real reason that there are seven layers in the networking stack, somebody just made that up.

These are my approaches to research: to examine those artificial structures with a skeptical eye, to redesign them in the context of a specific domain, or to throw them out completely. I believe I'm good at this because I've always been good at letting go of material goods. I bought a new car. Hated it. Sold it. Bought a sensible used one in its place. I bought a house. I was accepted into graduate school in another state. Sold it. No big deal.

I was at the nursery on Friday looking for some perennials for my shade garden. I considered buying some annuals, but I caught myself thinking, "I'll get them next year when I sell the house." Already pushing myself to get out of here. Already getting reading to let go of the material goods that have accumulated in my stay in GradShitTownVille...

...and I still haven't prelim'ed yet.

Fuckers.

Scientiae Seven: How We Are Hungry

2007-05-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

Growing up, it was the four food groups, swimming lessons, and playing outside.

My body at 30 has more complicated needs than when it was seven. Now it's alkaline body chemistry, weight-bearing exercises, calcium absorption, omega-3 fatty acids, iron-rich foods, target heart rate, LDL cholesterol levels, glycemic indices. And the food pyramid, though its look has changed a bit since I last saw it.

That thin slice of yellow? That's flan.

Pyramids have long been a way of expressing hierarchical relationships. There's the wellness pyramid, the $50,000 pyramid, the Maslow Hierarchy, the thin plot-lines of the Da Vinci Code, and wedding favors to keep those bridesmaids in their place. If the older generation computer scientists were more creative, the Networking Stack would have been a pyramid.

So it is with a pyramid that I express the hierarchical needs of our scientiae bloggers: how we are hungry.

* * *

Maslow had it right. At the bottom of our pyramid are the necessities. (Rosa's Organic) food, sex, bathroom breaks. And sleep. Jane of See Jane Compute can certainly attest to the importance of sleep these days. Beautiful and Brave Baby Jane is keeping her up as newborns do, but Dr. Jane and Mr. Jane appear to be adjusting well. But Maslow forgot tea. As fundamental as a good number two, Jenny F. Scientist reminds us that a hot cup of tea is what lures her out of bed.

When basic needs are met, we hunger for more, for jobs that pay money. And at those jobs, we want to teach ourselves to work effectively. Kate is inching closer to a system in which she balances her four projects, and even leaves space for the mysterious "Sun Fun Time."

Between eating, sleeping, and working, we hunger for leisure time. Skookumchick details her reading wish list and Lab Cat laments the lame characters in "Size 12 is Not Fat." Zuska's leisure is the outdoor kind, and she points out using her garden of irises that the women's march towards contributing equally in science has not been a steady one. Rather, it's been like a game of Sorry; it starts and stops and sometimes has to begin all over again.

Still, to return from a leisurely lunch hour with a full tummy, a book tucked under the arm with a fistful of flowers, we are still left with an ache. Where are the engaged co-workers, the professional friendships? Where are the lively discussions about Kalman Filtering? Where are the collaborators who bring out our best work? Kat on a Wire describes her emotional isolation at work.

Most of all, though, our bellies growl angrily for recognition. Emma highlights her heroines demonstrating her hunger to see other women receive their deserved recognition. To recognize all people as potential contributors to science, Twice tenured discusses the delicate matter of single-sex events as she hungers for equality. Addy and Elli want to be recognized simply as REAL SCIENTISTS instead of graduate students, or secretaries, or "scientists-in-training."
But recognition is not just Turing Awards and social change. It can be a simple act, like Astrodyke's proud display of merit badges

At the very top of our pyramid? Good public relations and a functional and funky bag.

Fallout

2007-05-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

Spring 2007 is finally over in fcsgs-stan. In an effort to make my publication list "worthy," I submitted three papers this semester, with numbers 2 and 3 submitted last week. One might call that an academic death march.

After three days of movies, sleep, and retail therapy, I arise from the ashes to resume my workaholism. Here are the highlights from the three-day fallout:

Took the package to the post office I'd been meaning to send for a month. It was a return on the bras I'd bought online. Both were the exact same size from the exact same company of the exact same bras I'm already wearing. One was too small. One was too big.

Paid my bills.

Watched "Waitress," "Pirates of the Carribean 3", and the first sixteen episodes of "Heroes." Ratings: Good, Confusing, Addictive.

Spent the "Linens & Crap" gift card I got for my birthday (yeah, last year). Thanks to Moira for a new mesh strainer!

Went to the vet to refill the dog's prescriptions.

Went to a bar with the boyfriend's friends. The duchess and I kept each other company while the boys talked about oral sex and unification.

Went to the bank.

Lost three "stress pounds" in 4 days.

Bought a fantastic pair of pants that met 3 of my 4 pant requirements: i) drape nicely on my bottom; ii) comfortable; iii) funky.

Bought Miranda July's newest book with the Borders gift card I received last January for participating in a study. I don't normally buy books, but I really like this gal!

Planned two parties. One going-away. One birthday.

I just did a quick calculation. Between walking the dog and riding my bike, I've burned more calories today than I've consumed. Hm. I think I'll have a latte!

How We Are Hungry

2007-05-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

I've been an off-and-on contributor to the Scientiae carnival of female bloggers in the STEM fields. I'm the host for June 1st, and I thought I'd take a moment to mention the theme:

"How We Are Hungry."

Interpret it as you like. I'm looking forward to the posts. While you are thinking about ideas for posts, check out the #6 Scientiae Carnival.

And if you are looking for some good fiction, check out David Eggers book of short stories of the same name.

scientiae-carnival

Dish Licker, Not Washer

2007-05-13T22:52:00.000-07:00

I Can Leave My Attic Now

2007-05-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

I have a photo of a group of friends, 12 minutes before a big final exam in December of my first semester in graduate school. There are 16 people in the picture, 11 of whom are no longer here. Only three left with their intended degree. The rest are "drop-outs."

Drop-out? Isn't that the kid who dropped out of high school, is living at home and working at Payless Shoe Source to pay his cell-phone bill? No. These drop-outs are all living fabulous lives: enoying fun jobs in big cities, getting married, making large sums of money, and having babies. They are making what my friend K. calls "Life Progress."

I'm not a drop-out; I just finished my fifth year of graduate school. Yet, I'm the loser. I have $607.40 in my checking account. I'm an unmarried homeowner with a greying dog, an empty refrigerator, and unfinished knitting projects. My front lawn hasn't been mowed in two weeks. I haven't called my mother today.

Still, things are looking up. The boyfriend mowed the backyard just before he left for his summer internship. I have a paper draft for a paper deadline that just got postponed one week. If I squint hard enough, I can kind-of-sort-of see a small light at the end of this tunnel.

So says Annie Proulx in "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World."

The main thing in life was staying power. That was it: stand around long enough, you'd get to sit down.

No (thank you) flying car

2007-05-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

With all the freakin' advances in technology, my needs are not met. I don't want a camera phone, an iPod, or anti-bacterial soap. All I want is an e-mail client that searches my sent mails for the word "attached." If there is no attachment, it should result in an error message, "You have the word 'attached' in your e-mail. Did you mean to send an attachment?"

This would save me months of embarassment.

Gadget-influenced Hypochondria

2007-05-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

I've locked myself in the attic until I finish a draft of the paper. I'm allowed downstairs for iced tea refills and cereal.

The days have been hot, and I've kept the attic windows opened to cool the house. The carbon monoxide detector has sounded its alarm a few times. I wonder if the doofer-neighbor smoking next door on his porch is the source. Still, I have this dizzy-nauseous feeling; perhaps I'm being poisoned by my own house.

If I didn't have a CO detector, I probably wouldn't feel dizzy-nauseous at this moment. I have little choice, since CO detectors are mandated by GradShitTownVille. I can't disappoint the fire fighters that stop by my place annually for inspection.

This is just to say that I'm a dedicated graduate student today. Even the threat of CO poisoning won't prevent me from finishing this draft.

Somewhere Else

2007-05-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

I envy the characters in Haruki Murakami's head. To them, it is everyday happenstance that their bodies melt into another place, that without much effort they can be somewhere else. They go, because they must, because it's what is done. "Don't look for me," they say; they return when they are ready.

Sadly, I am not one of these characters. My body is too physical; it is not gleamed from a page. When I crave other places, when I want to be left alone to do absolutely nothing, I've no magical realism at my disposal. I've only my little truck and miles of nighttime corn fields. My brain is given no demands. My autopilot drives the little truck, and there is nothing to see. It's the closest I have to sitting at the bottom of a well.

Tonight, not even the little truck will help me. A paper deadline is ominous, and every moment is spent thinking about it, or my pathetic CV, or my ever postponed prelim, or my right butt-cheek that's been strangely clenched for two weeks. Nothing is fun when there's a paper to be written.

Tomorrow, when I mow the lawn, I'll look more closely for an abandoned well.

Eavesdropping

2007-04-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

Things overheard at a party I recently attended which confirmed that it had a high computer scientist attendance.

I just learned about algebraic multigrids. They're really cool.

We met in our formal verification class.

Don't look at me, I study fish ears.

It's useful, not like formal methods or anything.

No not that one. What's the name of that other guy who is dropping out of the PhD program?

So what's with Malaysia?

I think that some of the folks at this party are the target audience for this McSweeny's List about first dates.

How much further?

2007-04-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

A cool article on "Inside Higher Ed" highlights Princeton's recent family leave policy for its graduate students.

A comment by "Science Prof" shows how so very much further we have to go.

The fact that women have a “biological clock” means nothing. The issue is still one of people making choices and accepting the consequences.

In my graduate program, I would much prefer to have grad students who have no children. They are willing to work harder and will not be whining about having to be home by 5 p.m. Graduate school is extremely demanding — my graduate program often requires an 80+ hour/week commitment. Grad students who have children are often unwilling to make that sort of a time commitment and they often fall behind or flunk out.

This is simply the nature of graduate school. Attempting to make it more “family friendly” will 1.) Reduce the academic standards of the program to accomodate students who cannot make the required time commitment and, 2.) Raise the costs on everyone else — especially students without children, who will likely end up paying more in tuition to subsidize those who do have children.

In 30 seconds, I thought of 11 faculty members at my university who could have written this.

Scientiae Carnival, A Logo

2007-04-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

There's been a neat blog carnivale going on these past few weeks. It's called "Scientiae" and it features "Women in Science" blogs. They made a call for a logo, and I've got a first draft:

I didn't so much emphasize the "Science" part as I did the "Women Blogger" part. Given that it's a carnivale, and we are masked bloggers...Ok, I'll admit the result is a little cliche.

But I'm not playing!

2007-04-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

Walking back from lunch, I tell the boyfriend the good news about my friend K.

"K. is defending on Monday."
He thinks about it, "Because the best offense is a good defense."
He thinks about it more, "And we know that CS majors are offensive."

* * *
I was a mean big sister. Was. In 1992, my brother puberty-ed up to 6 feet, and I became the nice big sister that I am today.

Back when I was a mean big sister, I played competitive games without my brother's knowledge. We'd be walking to the car, and I would quietly walk a little bit faster, knowing I'd reach the car (store, house, tree) first. "I WIN!" I would declare. He'd cry, "But I'm not playiiiinggg!!" And I would laugh in my mean big sister way. Horrible. I realize that I deserve the bad things that happen to me.

*
The University of GradShitTownVille is exacting my brother's revenge. They are playing a competitive game against me. Unlike my brother, I know they are playing. Thing is, I just don't want to play. There's a variety of names for this game,

Publish! Get the biggest pile of publications and work at a Top 10 school!
Buzz! Lie to your colleagues about your accomplishments, and make people think you are better than you are!
Plagarize! Steal from old publications and put them in your own!
Intellectual Starvation! Need things other than CS Research to make you happy? Forget about it! You need to focus to get that Top 10 job!!

[ages 22 and up]

Because I'm not playing, people often tell me, "You are losing. You aren't good at this game. You aren't going to win if you keep this up."

Well, that's not exactly what they say. Their messages sound more like, "You don't have enough publications to get a good job. You aren't going to get a good academic job with this publication record. You can't prelim with this few publications."

And yet, I get all these recruiter e-mails. Google. Lockheed Martin. Wind River (which is a funny one, since they laid me off in 2002). They tell me they are interested in me. They tell me that my skills are a good match. They say nice things about me. I feel like that 13 year old girl with low self-esteem sought out by the 26 year old man. Perhaps you know her. She makes public phone calls to Dr. Drew Pinskey.

Working at a radio station late at night ensures conversations with drunk callers

2007-03-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

The phone rings. My co-host answers it, "Request? Let me give you to someone else, she knows the music better."

He hands me the phone. I greet the caller with, "WXYZ, 103.2, how can I help you?"
"Yeah, you guyssh take requests?"

I glare at my co-host. He's handed the drunk call over to me. Fine. Let's have some fun.

I reply, "Sure, we might not have it, but we'll do our best."
"Okay. How about Distant Early Warning by Rush."
"Sure." I have no intention of playing this.
"What are you doing down there tonight, baby? You guyssh partying?"
I winced at the b-word. "Nah, not really. Just playing music."
"You like it around here?"
"No. I hate it."
"What?"
"I hate it."
"What?"
"I hate it. Hate. H-A-I-G-H-T."
"Oh you aren't from around here?"
"No. I'm from the west coast."
"Ah, California, that's nice."
"Nope, not California."
"Huh? Uh. Washington?"
"Nope, one more try."
"Ontario?"
"Yep."
"Ah yeah, that'sh nice...you here for school?"
"Yeah, I'm going to the Cosmetology college on main street."
"Yeah?!"
"Yeah, I want to do make-up for the American Idol show."
"What?"
"American idol."
"What? Oh. What about hair? You do hair?"
"Nah, just make-up. You gotta specialize these days."
"Ah, that'sssh pretty cool..."

A heart to heart

2007-03-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

I asked the boyfriend,

"Do you think I'm mean?"
"No."
"...not to you, but to other people."
"Yes, but only to people who suck."

Learning to write

2007-03-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on three papers. On one, I'm second author. I'm mentoring the junior first-author on writing research papers. It's been a long process, but we've got a working draft, and I'm seeing the reward of mentoring.

I've noticed that my first author suffers from the "Cheever Fever" that Ethan Canin describes in his essay, "Smallness and Invention." He wants to make great, poetic conclusions, but does so without giving his reader any concrete details. Canin points out the following passage from Cheever's "The Pot of Gold,"

... Alice strode to the door, opened it, and went out. A woman came in, a stranger looking for the toilet. Laura lighted a cigarette and waited in the bedroom for about ten minutes before she went back to the party. The Holinsheads had gone. She got a drink and sat down and tried to talk, but she couldn't keep her mind on what she was saying.

The hunt, the search for money that had seemed to her natural, amiable, and fair when they first committed themselves to it, now seemed like a hazardous and piratical voyage. She had thought, earlier in the evening, of the missing. She thought now of the missing again. Adversity and failure accounted for more than half of them, as if beneath the amenities in the pretty room a keen race were in progress, in which the loser's forfeits were extreme. Laura felt cold. She picked the ice out of her drink with her fingers and put it in a flower vase, but the whiskey didn't warm her. She asked Ralph to take her home.

Of this passage, Canin gives insight,

I discovered two things: first, that Cheever's great, epiphanic leaps were almost invariably preceded (and followed, it turned out) by paragraphs that accumulated small, accurate detail.

I'll leave it to you to read the rest of the essay, which appears in The Eleventh Draft.

* * *

Mentoring my first author does not mean that I know how to write well. I realized I couldn't write when I was 16. I got a "C" grade on my first essay for my American History course. Devastation. Through the rest of the semester, the teacher tried to cure my own Cheever Fever. He fought against my long sentences; encouraged me to write like Hemmingway instead of Faulkner.

(True, good Faulkner is good. Badly imitated Faulkner is criminal.)

I'm editing my own article today. I see that I still have bouts of Cheever Fever. Take a look at these "Before and After" edits:

*

B: "The current media climate surrounding the issue of declining enrollment and lack of diversity in the sciences ought to peak the interest of today's scientists and educators."

(Pique. As Inigo would say, "I do not think that word means what you think it means")

A: "The faces of today's computer science community do not reflect those of the larger global community."

*

B: "we highlight the means by which participants were initially attracted..."
A: "we highlight how participants were initially attracted..."

* * *

To the delight of my friend Moira, I'm also learning how to use a semicolon. Trimble says, "If you can replace your semicolon with a period, your construction is OK, but if you can't, substitute a comma for it."

Embarasada

2007-03-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

Over at "On Being a Scientist and a Woman" there is a good debate going on regarding "Why Women Leave."

I wanted to point out a really good article related to this post, namely about women "choosing" to leave the workplace. It says,

On a variety of basic policies—including parental leave, family sick leave, early childhood education, national childcare standards, afterschool programs, and health care that’s not tied to a single all-consuming job—the U.S. lags behind almost every developed nation. How far behind? Out of 168 countries surveyed by Jody Heymann, who teaches at both the Harvard School of Public Health and McGill University, the U.S. is one of only five without mandatory paid maternity leave—along with Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.

The article is entitled, "The Opt-Out Myth."

Spring means mixtapes and Disney characters

2007-03-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've been going to bed later, getting up later, and having trouble sleeping. It's either the depression, or the asthma medication I resume taking in the spring. Either way, it's the perfect set up for bedtime antics.

Last night was all giggles. The boyfriend and I were trying to think of the worst romantic mixtape ever. It wasn't just enough to say the title of a song, like "Reunited by Kool and The Gang," because the boyfriend can't remember artists and titles. Instead, I'd say,

"What about the song from Ghost?"
"Song from Ghost?"
"Yeah, the song they make out to when they're makin' clay."
"Is that the...I can't help fallin' in love with you..."
"No no. That's Elvis, but covered by UB-40. Which version?"
"Definitely Elvis."
"Ah. No, the Ghost song is Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers."
"I don't know."
"oooooo...myyyiayyyy loovvee....my darrrlin'....I hunger for..yourrrr toucheh!"

And so on. Keep in mind, I can't sing. I assume the voice of an unknown cartoon character when I sing.

And now that Spring is here, the pajamas are evolving for increasing warmth. We are calling each other "Mickey" and "Donald."

Google Ain't Green

2007-03-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've been obsessed with "target heart rate" lately. I'm trying to streamline my exercise program, and at the same time fall off the stupid weight plateau I've been trapped at for 9 months. So what if I lost 25 pounds, I want to lose MORE. And don't worry that your beloved FCSGS might be anorexic. When you start at 205 pounds, there's plenty of room for loss.

Big shopping trip today. The bike is back from its Spring tune-up. Bought new athletic shoes, and a heart rate monitor. I'm going to the gym tonight, so I wanted to make sure the monitor worked. I've got it all set up and enabled. I'm at my expected resting heart rate of 70 bpm. As I continue with this post, we'll see how close I get to my target heart rate just by being pissed off.

* * *

Google has been in the news lately with their Google Bus system they've deployed for their employess. The Google bus isn't new. It appeared on their blog in 2004, reporting a total 155 riders per day. A testimony to Google's increasing size, their modest transit system now has 1200 riders per day.

For Google, I'm not convinced that the bus is about being Green. It's about aggressively getting improved worker productivity. The key is this,

And Google can get a couple of extra hours of work out of employees who would otherwise be behind the wheel of a car.

I'm currently a victim of Google's aggresive hiring tactics. I was a finalist for one of their scholarships a few years back. Ever since, my e-mail address has been on the bathroom stall of their recruiters. A recruiter contacts me every month, at which I send a polite, "Thank you for the opportunity, please leave me alone."

But it's not the e-mails which set my heart on fire. It's the swag.

Every six months, I get a 16 x 16 x 6 box from Google. It contains some silly thing with the Google + Female symbol, plus a note that says, "Let's Keep in Touch!"

I now have a t-shirt, a bathrobe, and a blanket. Of course Google's notion of "Extra-Large" or "One Size Fits All" makes me feel like a giant. Even in a Google XL baby doll, I look more like Baby Huey.

My mantra as an environmentalist is the classic "reduce, reuse, recycle" with "reduce" being #1. I didn't need (or want) a bathrobe or blanket or t-shirt. I already have a big pile of t-shirts from my industry days, all of which I use to wash my car.

I wonder if I can file a restraining order against Google's mailing department.

* * *

Hm. Good workout! 37 minutes. Max heart rate 103. 73 kCalories burned.

Death and Shame

2007-03-06T13:55:00.000-08:00

I got a letter from my Dad yesterday. It was mainly a report of the two relatives who had died recently. I'm related to both only through marriage, and actually had never met one. Dad also mentioned in the letter that he had to clean up the apartment of my "cousin" because all the other family members were too bereaved. Or lazy.

I got a package from my Dad today. Sheets. Just sheets shoved in a box. No letter of explanation. I'm guessing they are my dead cousin's sheets. He was cleaning up her place. Came across some perfectly good sheets. Figured I needed some new sheets.

Now I have my dead uncle's VCR and roasting pan, and my dead cousin's sheets.

Seems that perhaps there should be shame in using the mediocre household items of the dead. I've never been particularly ashamed of things that make others ashamed. I'm not easily embarassed, except by the site of naked Barbie dolls. I talk freely about body parts and eggs. I'm not phased when my international friends ask me to explain "Douche bag." I go to the gym looking like a homeless person. I wear second-hand clothing. I own third-hand furniture. I use my dead uncle's VCR to watch movies.

Instead, I carry around shame about things I did 10 or 20 years ago. I was a stupid kid. I did stupid things. I'm still mortified about them. Like the time I cheated on my English homework in Mrs. Hansen's class. I got caught. It may be why I'm so sensitive about cheating today. I still remember the horrid pink cardigan she was wearing as she was lecturing me. Or the time I screwed up as Stage Manager of the "Bye Bye Birdie" production at my high school. I didn't show up to some important meetings. I'd been given the calendar of meetings, but did a horrible job of keeping track and staying organized. Mr. Putnam was pissed. It bugs me that I have this stupid teenage shame that I can't shake. Seems like a stupid heavy load to carry for so long.

Maybe I should streak at the next conference

2007-03-04T19:27:00.000-08:00

Over and over again we are told by our department that to get that top tenure track position, we should "Get Noticed." And yet, little is done to help students get noticed. To get noticed they advise: do groundbreaking research; attend lectures and ask smart questions; give interative talks at conferences; attend the same conferences year after year. So much advice. Very little action.

In a College of Engineering that consists of thousands, or at a conference that consists of hundreds, there's not much I alone can do to get noticed or, as one former faculty called it, "Create Buzz" My feeling is that there are things that a department can do to help its students get noticed. For example, as Crispin Taylor describes in his essay, "Heeding the Voices of Graduate Students and Post-Docs"

I did my PhD in a well-funded institute that many prominent scholars wished to visit. Moreover, the faculty encouraged the students to select and invite on seminar speaker each semester and to host that individual when she or he came to give the talk. Imagine our suprise when we learned that distinguished scholars were more inclined to accept a speaking invitation when it came from students!

Like Crispin notes later in his essay, informal, one-on-one conversations have significant value. The best experience I ever had at a conference was when I shared a 40 minute cab ride with one of the grandfathers of my field. Imagine the value if I were given the chance to pick up a lecturer from the airport, chat with them before a lecture, or take them out to dinner. Maybe then I could finally get that elusive "external member" for my committee.

I suggested this idea to my department leaders once. They replied with, "Oh but distinguished lecturers wouldn't answer your e-mail." Another kick in the head. Me talk booga-wooga crazy talk.

* * *

Another good idea to help students get noticed comes from Ronald Breslow of Columbia University. He writes in his essay, "Developing Breadth and Depth of Knowledge,"

Scientists need to speak and write well. Graduate programs should make efforts to help their students develop these skills. For example, students should deliver several public seminars, both on their research and on topics from the research literature."

Even better, what about a "Senior Graduate Student Seminar" series in the department that students can take for credit? If I know what the senior graduate students are doing, I too can help them get noticed. Imagine if I'm at a conference, and the subject of databases comes up. I can say,

"Oh yes, there is Michael J. Rumpenstuff at my department. He's doing some fantastic work on databases! Maybe he could give an invited talk for your research group? Yeah? Here's his e-mail."

It's true that I present to my group about once every three weeks. But, during my presentations, for every minute I speak, my advisor speaks three. Admittedly, he's giving me feedback, but this isn't the same environment that I'll have when I'm giving a job talk. What if I suggested a "Senior Graduate Student Seminar" series in my department. Would it just be more of my booga-wooga crazy talk?

* * *

From Alvin Kwiram,

There is today a serious mismatch between the nature and purpose of the doctoral degree and the demands and expectations of the academy. Imagine spending years training an athlete to learn the intricacies of playing football, and then once he finishes playing college call, assuming because he is a well-trained athlete he can immediately be appointed head coach. This is essentially what we do in the academy.

Be the Big Dog

2007-03-04T19:19:00.000-08:00

I've received some good feedback on how to be the big dog. I also spoke with the boyfriend about my frustration with being a little dog, and it was interesting how he misunderstood my use of the phrase "big dog." He understood it as "top dog" and that the conversation was really a power struggle. I explained about my "yipping" and he correctly pointed out that I have a tendancy to overexplain, to chat up my feedback or my questions. He said, "I try to say things in as few words as possible."

Or, as David Byrne puts it,

You start a conversation you can't even finish it.
You're talkin' a lot, but you're not sayin' anything.
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.
Say something once, why say it again?

I tried this out at a seminar the other day. I raised my hand, and in as low, slow, and calm voice as I could muster (given the inflammatory topic), I asked my question. The speaker replied with "Oh that's a very good question, but I'll get to that later." He never did answer my question. Sigh.

I asked a later question, again using the big dog recipe. He asked for clarification, and I explained in big dog terms.

All on a day when I didn't have Dottie Dog hair.

Dottie Dog and the Get Along Gang

2007-02-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

All day yesterday I had Dottie Dog hair. It happens when I let my hair air-dry, and it puffs up into what look like two curly, wavy dog ears perfectly framing my face. Well, like this:

I kind of wish that this blog wasn't anonymous, because then I could post a picture of myself, and you'd see for yourself that I really do look like Dottie Dog. It'd be a startling resemblance and we'd all laugh.

I don't post that picture, because I value my anonymity too much.

Many of my favorite bloggers who blog under their own names have recently abandoned the blogosphere for reasons somewhat related to their un-anonymity. This includes Brian, and Kortney whose posts I really enjoyed. Sadly, there were some pretty crappy, mean, and belligerent commenters on these blogs, and very understandably the bloggers got burnt out. Recently, Geeky Mom posted that she was considering retirement as well because she felt less comfortable expressing herself. I, of course, lamented the potential loss of another ethereal pal.

I've always wrestled with my identity on this blog. I'd say my blog is mostly anonymous. There are many readers who know who I am, because they are my friends that I trust and told, or they just figured it out. There are other readers who I don't know. Looking at Google Analytics, it seems there's a readership in Hawaii.

Aloha!

I've put a link to my blog a couple of times on my homepage, only to regret it and take it down a couple of hours later. Even with my faux anonymity, I never blog about anything I could get in trouble about, in particular the dirty details of my advising relationship or the names of my offenders. I feel I was lucky with the choice I made. For now, I feel it's a good mix. I censor myself only a little, which probably produces better posts in the long run. Otherwise, there'd be 200 whiney posts on how I'll never graduate. There's enough of those already.

It felt appropriate that I looked like Dottie Dog yesterday, given that I was acting like a little yippy dog. I had 4 meetings, during two of which I needed to talk. When giving feedback in a meeting, I generally talk louder and a little higher pitched than I would talking to a friend or into the mic on my radio show. I suppose I do this because I want to be heard, and we all now what a fight it is for air space in this department. At one meeting, after I yipped like a little dog, a friend of mine was giving his feedback. He was a big dog, just calmly stating what he thought, and asking good insightful questions to get better material from the speaker. I thought to myself, "Man, I want to be more like that."

At the second meeting, I made a statement, and used some data to back it up. Someone else interrupted me to say, "I don't think that's true." My reply, "Well, I just have data, that's all." There, I was a big dog, but the topic was something I felt much more comfortable with.

Again today, though, I was a little dog, to the point of a Taco Bell Chihuahua. In part, it was because I'm not terribly good at hiding my frustration. Anger yes, frustration no. I was really frustrated in a meeting, and I wasn't getting a straight answer from the speaker. I put my hands to my head to smooth back my Dottie Dog hair, and said, "Look! I'm just trying to understand, do you mean A, B, C, or ..." And of course, I didn't get to finish my question, further exacerbating the yipping I already was doing.

In general, I feel really stupid after being the little dog. I regret not having handled myself better, and wish I didn't get so frustrated here with the fight for air space. I wish I just kept my damn mouth shut, but that's not a possibility. That was my initial strategy in my early graduate years, and I was chided for not contributing.

My question to you dear readers, is, "How to be the big dog?"

World View, Bubble Burst

2007-02-27T09:04:00.000-08:00

I sometimes think I'll get tired of saying this: "Larry Summers was a fool."

But I doubt it.

Larry Summers, a person in a seat of power saying idiotic things. Larry Summers, an economist, a Harvard President, trying to say intelligent things in a public forum about subjects he knows nothing about; biological gender differences, cultural influence on education, and women in the workforce.

What's astonishing to me is that he said these things three years after Maria Charles and Karen Bradley published a paper in 2002 called, "Equal but Separate? A Cross-National Study of Sex Segregation in Higher Education" Their cross-national study of male overrepresentation in Computer Science starkly demonstrates the huge cultural influence on a woman choosing a field. The degree of male overrepresentation in the Czech Republic is three times that of Turkey, the country with the most gender-integrated computer science program.

Hey Lar, where's your world view?

But what infuriates me most of all about this blowhard is that he has daughters. What is he teaching them?

There are women in my department who went to undergrad in some of the countries where they report that CS is "about 50-50." A friend of mine from Kuwait still hasn't adjusted to the severe male overrepresentation in our department. She said, "In Kuwait, CS is a desk job. Women do desk jobs." Another fried of mine, from Israel, hadn't noticed the US gender disparity until I mentioned it to her yesterday. She was asking me advice about selecting a PhD program after she graduates with her Masters degree, and I mentioned CMU as the current leader for diverse academic culture in computer science with regards to gender.

"It's about 10 percent here," I said.
"Really? I thought it was higher?"

With so many women in her group, and so many women in her undergraduate program, the gender problem had not presented itself to her. In a way, I felt sorry that I had burst her bubble. I wish I could take it back.

My own bubble burst at the age of 26. It was the year I came to graduate school. Until then, I knew that there weren't that many women in engineering and computer science, but I chalked it up to, "Well, we're just catching up after the feminist revolution. It's only been...50 years." Despite evidence from the other fields that had been male dominated were now more equal, like family medicine, pyschology, and biology, I held firmly to that idea. I had been the only girl in my electrical engineering class. The only woman in my product group. One of four women on the plane to San Jose for the Embedded Systems Conference. But everyone had always been nice and supportive. I had friends and mentors. I had the support structure I needed to be successful. I worked in fun programs for girls in science to do my part to boost the numbers, to give back. The gender disparity hadn't really punched me in the face yet. Not like it has in graduate school. Again. and again.

My hope for now is that I can return to a place where those support structures exist. Where the diverse contributions of many are appreciated, and folks are generally just nice.

I Miss Knitting

2007-02-26T09:28:00.001-08:00

From, "Landing an Academic Job" by Jonathan A. Dantzig:

No one is able to teach three courses per semester, manage a $250,000/year research program, supervise seven graduate students, write four important papers per year, go to five national meetings per year, serve on six committees, and do an excellent job in every category. Nevertheless, there are institutions that expect this kind of performance. Do you want to work for one of these?

Nope.

Minnesota Gift Baskets

2007-02-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

A recent conversation with the boyfriend, not at all related to Minnesota Gift Baskets,

I say, "My brother sent me a video today."
"Like on UTube?"
"No, a video."
"Like in an e-mail?"
"No...a tape."

How quickly the old technology gets forgotten.

The first time I ever heard Bjork's song "Isobel" was on a telephone. The local paper had done a review of her album. Following the review was a small blurb, "If you'd like to hear a track from the new album, dial 503 555 1212." At that point, I hadn't yet heard of TMBG's "Dial A Song," but it was a similar idea. "Dial a song" is much different these days.

How quickly, indeed.

And yet, the really very old continues to be revered. An Australian website was recently launched, providing high school teachers with resources to discuss careers in science. The graphic design and writing style suggests that it might also be intended for a younger audience. Among other things, the site features Australian Nobel Prize winners:

To me, this is a corrollary to what I mentioned recently regarding the stock photo diversity poster. This line-up of white dudes in dated frocks is an equally unrealistic reflection of what science looks like. In high school, I was presented with similar line-ups, though Marie Curie was usually involved, and I always felt so far away from the excitement of scientific inquiry when faced with those grainy black and whites.

So what's the answer? You don't like the diversity poster. You don't like the Nobel Prize winners. What would make you happy?

A better alternative can actually be found at the same Australian website. There, we see a list of scientists, both men and women, ranging from biology to engineering, from geology to scientific journalist. I feel this is the most engaging part of the website, but I really wish it were expanded. Perhaps, I dunno, adding pictures of these real people would really brighten things up. It's so much easier for a kid--a potential member of the scientific community--to relate to a "Scott Burgess: ecologist" or "Suzanna Turk: engineer" than it is "Old white dude: Nobel Prize winner."

Time Travelling with Scrooge McDuck

2007-02-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

So say the boyfriend,

I can't believe it's 11:25 am on a Saturday, and I'm already pissed off at the department today.

Okay. Let's back up.

I attend panels. I don't know why, because 90% of the time, the panels I've attended are less than mediocre. They are generally made up of four people with the exact same perspective. They are all the same because whomever was given the task of organizing the panel did so at the last minute. Moreover, the panel moderator doesn't moderate, and instead talks more than the panelists themselves. The result is a panel that answers 3 questions in 1 hour, and thanks for coming folks!

There have been one or two panels that have been really valuable. The panelists were caring, informed people with good ideas, and the panel was well-moderated. Maybe that's why I keep going. It's like the time I did a really awesome flip-turn in the pool. I keep trying to do flip turns, thinking back to that awesome one, but I usually just get water up my nose, and push myself into the floor of the pool.

Ow.

I'll be honest. My perfect panel would consist of multiple clones of myself that had made very different life choices and gone forward in time to live out the next 10 years of their lives. For the panel, they return from year 2017 to report back to me what they'd seen. I'd ask questions like,

"So, "fcsgs B," who decided to get married but stay childless. You now work at Carnegie Mellon. How are things for you? You published 10 papers this year? Wow! But, do you have enough time to do the things you want, like practice yoga and write your novel? Do you regret not having kids?"

"And you, "fcsgs A," who quit school, had two children by 36, and started a successful chain of self-serve dog washes in Seattle. Do you feel intellectually fulfilled? How do your children feel about your upcoming divorce?"

"How about you, "fcsgs C?" You are still single. You haven't published in two years because of all your teaching responsibilities at University of Portland. Are you hopeful that your sporadic research will make an impact on the field? Is it important to you to make such an impact? Did your shoulder ever get better?"

And for some reason, Alan Young of the original Time Machine would be there as moderator, entertaining us with his Scrooge McDuck voice acting.

Okay, I didn't say "ideal" was at all "realistic," so I keeping attending the panels of this world, hoping to catch a glimpse of my own future clones. I haven't found them yet. It's been a little wearying, really, not having anyone that I can talk to about this. It doesn't even have to be a clone. I'm just searching for someone with an open mind. Someone who doesn't want me to be just like them. For most people here, students and faculty, any mention of not applying to the Top 10 is received with scoffing. "Why wouldn't you?" Or, "At a small school, you'd be teaching all the time, you don't want that."

I don't?

In an effort to have a real conversation about this, I got a membership at MentorNet. It's a website bringing together people who are looking for mentors with people who would like to be mentors. I decided to be more proactive in looking for this magical person I've described. I decided to find that human being interested in mentoring, one who would give me advice about the small school vs. big school issue. A person who'd been through something other than working like a dog and making sweet love to the University of GradShitTownVille.

At MentorNet, members can configure their profile, including setting preferences for a mentor. The preferences are things like,

Field of Study
Education
Work Sector (e.g., private, government, university)
Gender
Alma Mater
Employer
Geographic Location
Ethnicity
Professional Memberships

My only preferences were "[Computer Science or Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering] + PhD + University." And MentorNet reported,

Unfortunately, there are no mentors that match with your preferences at this time.

Sigh. In fact, the only PhD's in MentorNet in my preferred field of study, are these five people that all work at Texas Instruments. I appreciate that they've volunteered, but I don't need to talk about industry, thank you.

Here at University of GradShitTownVille, there's been a lot of attention lately paid to graduate students getting academic jobs at the top schools. Perhaps by "attention" I should say "propaganda," which is honestly getting quite old. Recently, a "club" was started for students interested in academic jobs. I inquired with the club president that perhaps a panel would be of value. Perhaps a panel of people who could candidly discuss the pros and cons of working at the small liberal arts school versus the Big Top 10 University. The question was essentially ignored, translated into this defensive "Why not work at top 10?"

To these people, when I ask questions like that, I may as well ask, "Explain to me the benefits of breathing in and out, versus not breathing at all."

And so, with telling the boyfriend that whole story, comes that quote,

Mr. Loaf speaks for Dr. Moore

2007-02-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

I've been in close touch with my brother lately. In part, because it's Valentine's Day, and we always send each other Valentine's cards. In part, because I know from Mom that he's having trouble with his girlfriend these days, and I thought he'd need the pick-me-up.

My brother and I have always been pretty close. We fought like rabid dogs after my parents got divorced, but once he hit 6 feet, it all worked itself out. Mainly, because I realized he'd seriously would kick my ass if I kept bugging him. Usually, when my brother and I are together, we make random allusions to stuff that happened to us as kids. For example, I sent him the following picture in my last e-mail to him.

He got a good laugh out of that. I won't go into the gory details of that one. Maybe another time.

Anyway, chatting so much with my brother makes me think of Meat Loaf, the singer/actor who appeared in award-winning films such as "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Fight Club."

His name was Robert Paulson.

The year that Meat Loaf released his "Bat Out of Hell II" album was the same year my mother married her third husband. My mom's third husband wasn't a particularly nice guy, so my brother and I were usually holed up in my brother's bedroom. He had a TV and Super Nintendo in his room, so many hours were spent playing Super Mario Kart and listening to music.

For Christmas of 1993, my brother and I each got our own copy of the "Bat Out of Hell II" cassette, though I think what actually happened was that my brother got two copies and gave one to me. Or that's what happened with the Cake album. Hell, I don't really remember. Anyway, "Bat Out of Hell II" was the album that had the 12 minute song, "I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won't Do That." The joke between my brother and I was always, "Do What Meat Loaf? What won't you do?" Though, I think everyone in America made that joke.

I'm trying to write a workshop paper right now (with 1 week's notice) and with all this thinking about my brother, it seemed like the "Bat Out of Hell II" was just the right album for working like I'm on fire. Lots of bad-ass rock ballads about Rock & Roll, wasted youth, bad sex, cheerleaders, and motorcycles. If that isn't inspiration for a crappy workshop paper, then I dunno what.

The lyrics for the songs on this album are freakin' great. For example, in his "Life Is A Lemon, and I Want My Money Back," Meat Loaf declares,

What about your school?
Its defective!
Its a pack of useless lies

What about your work?
Its defective!
Its a crock and then you die

True genius.

Jim Steinman wrote the lyrics to the songs on this album, as well as to some of the mega-hits from 80's goddess Bonnie Tyler, but damnit it's Meat Loaf who knows how to deliver.

For the past few days, I've been reading a really well-written and informative research paper written by Moore and Boyer in 1985. It tells the story of integrating a linear decision procedure into a theorem prover. Moore and Boyer do two things right with this paper. First, they do a good job of raising general issues of system integration, using their case study as a motivating example. Second, they write the paper in a tone that's entertaining to read. It's like I'm having a coffee with Moore, and he's just telling me about his adventures with a particular theorem prover. And sometimes, they've got a little bit of snark that is so professionally delivered,

Readers troubled by our selection of such a simple and old-fashioned decision procedure are invited to reflect upon the fact that an instantaneous oracle for deciding linear arithmetic problems like those above would increase the speed of our theorem prover on typical program verification problems by less than 3%.

Admittedly, I'd like to see a research paper written by Meat Loaf. The above passage from Boyer and Moore, if written by Meat Loaf, may be something like,

Readers who think we ought to be fast,
Have got a hell of a lot to learn,
And can shove it up their ass.

Art of Explaining

2007-02-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

At the physical therapist today. With my shoulder, I have "achey days" and "okay days." I've tried to describe what "aches" to the therapist, but it's hard. There's no pinpoint of pain. The explanation is simply, "My whole arm hurts."

Until today, I'd say, "My arm hurts," and she'd associate it with the pain in the tricep that is usually associated with the rotator cuff muscle injury. I'm not good at explaining body parts, so it makes total sense that's what she heard. Today, though, I was lucky. I'd had a horribly achey day, and with all the pain sensations shooting through my arm, I was able to more articulate what was happening.

I said, "I've been really achey. I've had this burning pain in my bicep."
She replied, with furrowed brow, "Bicep?"
"Yeah, and, well, sometimes, it hurts in my elbow."
"Elbow?"

She immediately got to work, kneading and feeling and trying to figure out what I was talking about, for, as I discovered today, the bicep and elbow have nothing to do with the rotator cuff. She found what felt like a frozen pea deep in my bicep, and another at the top of my armpit. She also found what is typically called "tennis elbow."

She asked, "Is that tender?"
I replied, using the technical terminology learned from my ancestors, "Like a son of a bitch!"

With the discovery of these other muscle injuries, it's clear there's lots of work ahead of us. However, on a more positive note, since muscles are vascular systems, they are a lot more responsive than dried up, yucky tendons. With today's breakthrough, I'm more hopeful about my shoulder, erm, arm. More than ever, I feel it's possible that I might be doing a real "Stick" in my Sun Salutation (see Step 6) sometime again soon.

The lesson that I hope readers get from this is TAKE CARE TO AVOID REPETITIVE STRESS INJURIES. I've been sitting in front of a computer for over 10 years, and only now have I spent the money for the right chair, the right keyboard, and the right mouse. What's $200 now compared to hundreds and hundreds in medical bills later?

But this also points to a bigger challenge I've been facing lately. I can't seem to get my ideas across to people. I feel like I've lost my vocabulary, and I can only see the pictures in my head of how I understand a topic, with little access to the words that go with the pictures. This has been especially challenging in recent meetings with people who are more mathematically inclined than myself, and my inability to say things with precision just generates more furrowed brows. But, in this charged environment where people constantly interrupt each other, it's hard to be able to pause and reflect on the right phrase to convey an important research idea. I can't blame the enviroment entirely. I need to be more patient with myself, and more assertive with others. If my audience doesn't understand an idea the first time, I need to ignore my rather irrational embarassment, and just explain it again a different way.

Depress, Unimpress, Cold Compress

2007-02-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to figure out the word to use when one's esteem of another decreases. For example, I previously felt neutral about someone, and now I consider them to be a liar. Is that "to unimpress?" To unimpress suggests that I was not impressed by them, but it does not seem to suggest that my esteem of them has decreased. Is it "depress?" I mean, I'm certainly familiar with depression, but this isn't it.

I recently discovered that a faculty here at GradShitTownVille plagarized really quite heavily on a tech report he wrote just a few years ago. I'd actually looked up his tech report on a subject to get a second explanation of a particular topic. Instead, I realized he'd simply copied the first explanation I'd already read. And by "heavily plagarized," I mean that there are whole paragraphs that have been copied, with just a little editing.

Let's say that the topic is...ponies.

Original work:

"The simple pony barn addresses the general problem of trying to house a pony in a discrete and controlled edifice that is governed by the linear stochastic difference equation..."

Tech report:

"The pony shed addresses the general problem of trying to house a pony in a discrete and controlled edifice that is goverened by the linear stochastic difference equation...."

*Totally* different. I know.

So far, what I've learned about being a "top" professor is that you have to:

1. Befriend graduate students to get your name on a paper for which you did absolutely no work.

2. Write research papers about the research your student has conducted, but without listing the student's name on the paper.

3. Heavily plagarize.

Sadly, I don't think I'm "top" material. These days, the following is looking good as a potential employer.

Still, browing over the thesaurus doesn't give me good verbs for the act of "lowering one's esteem of someone else." Any suggestions?

Brand New Doofer, Regina Spektor, and Cheerleaders + Math

2007-02-10T16:02:00.000-08:00

The house adjacent to mine is a little green house with a long gravel driveway. A man named "Terry" owns it, and he rents the rooms out to people; usually single men in their forties. The turn-around rate is pretty high. Terry is working on a project; singing the whole bible in the garden shed behind his house that he calls his "studio." Terry asks me about my relationship with the lord. One time Terry dug a trench in his yard using a hand drill and an auger bit. I try to ignore him.

My dad helped me move to GradShitTownVille. We drove across the states from Oregon. The second day we were here, Dad had already dubbed Terry as "The Doofer." So, my neighbors are the "Doofers" and the leader of the Doofers is Terry Doofer. With Terry renting out his place to so many Doofers, it's hard to keep track. There was Dan the Taxi driver and the "Indian guy" who needed a place for two months before he graduated. There was "Glasses guy" who didn't appear to have a job, but smoked all the time on the porch. There was "Frank-That-Worked-At-Kraft," who liked to "help" me but usually just caused more problems. Like I said, hard to keep track.

A new Doofer moved in today. He brought his few belongings in a rented U-Haul van. I'll wait for a few days before I name him. He might be one that stays for a while, and I don't want to just name him willy-nilly.

* * *

I [heart] the new Regina Spektor album. I had her previous album, "Soviet Kitsch," but lost it when my last laptop died. Damn you iTunes. I *wanted* to like her previous album, but it was too grating, too weird. Though, "Ode to Divorce" was a particular favorite. This new album, called "Begin to Hope," has a smoother feel. Some of the tracks are silly and fun, and some, especially "Lady," has some definite blues influence, particularly from Billie Holiday.

* * *

This note from an old friend who reads the blog. The edits are mine:

I just wanted to let me know that you have ~~corrupted~~ enlightened me in at least one way.

I was watching Heroes, when the pretty, popular, blonde cheerleader met her real mother, an also attractive, 30 something, blond woman, for the first time, the first thing that they estabilished as their common ground was that math is hard!

I was immediately annoyed and thought of how you would like that. I wanted to write an email to the show thanking them for perpetuating the stereotype and telling all the girls out there that even if you have the ability to regenerate any injury and are otherwise a pretty smart character, math is still hard and too much for your
pretty little head to handle. Just stick to cheerleading and looking good while pulling large pieces of metal from your chest after you jump off a building.

Old friends are my favorite.

Die-Khat-Oh-Me

2007-02-09T22:31:00.000-08:00

I am dang jealous of the boyfriend today. He's been in Seattle the past couple of days, interviewing with Bbbbilll! We spoke on the phone tonight, talked about how his interview went, his $24 shopping spree at REI, and his Baja Fresh intake. His most interesting comment about the interview was,

"It was strange to me that whenever I talked to a man, I was talking to a researcher. Whenever I talked to a woman, she was a non-researcher."

That wasn't a comment on his attitude towards women in science, it was what actually took place. Only the recruiter and the HR rep. were women. The five or six people that interviewed him were all men.

It's too bad that Microsoft appears to suffer the same problems of diversity that many universities around the country do. Though, if you look at websites alone, you'd think there were women EVERYWHERE. I do appreciate what academic institutions are trying to do with these photographs, but it really seems quite contrived. For example, the following picture has a diverse group of people doing something obviously technical,

I have an engineering degree, but I have no idea what they are looking at. Moreover, I wish someone would just give that girl a step-ladder. I can see the thought-bubble above her head, "Almost....allllmoosst."

Other pictures seem less contrived, like this one of a woman in a clean room. Though, I don't think visual inspection alone can pass a silicon wafer out of quality control.

MIT seems the most honest with this photo from a recent EE freshman orientation,

Still, I'm always quite suspicious of these pictures, no matter how realistic they are supposed to seem.

Why do you always have to be so paranoid?

Sigh, you again? Well, for the past two years, there have been some "Diversity Posters" hanging around the hallways of my building. It's a photo montage of about 6 people; including a Latino man, a couple of African American woman, and this other woman who looks like she could be Rene Russo.

Can't you just be happy that there are female icons in your building, even if only in paper form? The department is trying to make an effort!

That's just it. The women in that particular poster are just icons. I realized this one day when I was visiting the Planned Parenthood website. One of the African American women depicted in the "Diversity Poster" was also in the photo montage on the P.P. homepage. Either this woman is a high-profile computer scientist AND birth control pill user or ...

Damn you, stock photography!

Can't even find enough "real" female computer scientists to make a stupid poster?

Alanis Morissette, voice of the graduate student

2007-02-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

Many of my life's milestones have taken place in the desert. My mother took my brother and I to the desert for our first post-divorce vacation. I witnessed my grandmother's burial in the desert. I travelled to the desert to say goodbye to the leave behind the girl who dated that awful jerk, and hello to the woman who would become this graduate student. My most recent trip to the desert was five years ago, to visit my auntie in Las Vegas. I had just bought Alanis Morissette's "Under Rug Swept" album. I listened to it on my portable CD player as I walked the neighborhood streets, in a time that did not yet know the iPod.

Back then, Alanis songs always represented to me some unresolved anger at some stupid boy that had treated me badly. I know all the words to each song assigned to these boys. These days, thanks to having a decent boyfriend who doesn't call me bitch and who does his own dishes, I've not really listened to her albums as regularly. Today, I got out the "Under Rug Swept" album. It's been a bad 10 days, and I needed something for a structured screaming exercise. Upon track 2, I suddenly wondered if Alanis had ever been to graduate school. With all my frustrating faculty issues lately, it didn't seem appropriate anymore to think of old boyfriends when I hear lyrics like these:

The faculty members who won't let me finish my sentences:

Dear narcissus boy I know you've never really apologized for anything
I know you've never really taken responsibility
I know you've never really listened to a woman

Dear me-show boy I know you're not really into conflict resolution
Or seeing both sides of every equation
Or having an uninterrupted conversation

The faculty member who did that not-so-appropriate thing:

We'll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you've washed your hands clean of this

The faculty member who turned me away for advising:

Wait a minute man
You mispronounced my name
You didn't wait for all the information
Before you turned me away
Wait a minute sir
You kind of hurt my feelings
You seek me as a sweet back-loaded puppet
And you've got a meal ticket tast.

Weird.

I got a lot of "grrr" in me right now, in part due to the 12 hours of meetings I had last week. 12!?@#$What the$#@!? I'm trying to keep perspective, but it's tough, as I feel I've hit a local minimum with my research. My advisor is unhappy with my progress and wants to shut down my project. Grrr. Right now, I'm trying to recollect and try a new strategy to get him to listen to me. Without. Interrupting.

Still, I'm learning more and more. I've noticed that there are fewer and fewer things that folks say that sound like alien language, which is great progress for a EE in CS. Even the formal methods boyfriend hasn't stumped me for a while. That's something...right?

* * *

To keep things light-hearted, I'll end with a good boyfriend story.

These past couple of weeks it's been dang cold in GradShitTownVille. I whine about the cold at least three times a day. I thaw myself in the bathtub every night. I take heat-cuts through three buildings on my way to lunch. During one of my whiny moments, the boyfriend said,

"Whaddya mean it's cold? It's 261 Kelvin!"

Pile of Wood

2007-02-02T06:41:00.000-08:00

Suzuki-san travelled far to meet Koke-sensei, to learn the ways of stacking wood. She had heard the stories of the great wood stackers, their intricate patterns and their bright intelligence, and she wanted to follow in that path. Upon meeting Koke-sensei at the School of Wood Stacking, he said,

"All you must do," as he pointed to 100 logs, "is stack that wood."

For two years she worked at stacking the wood. Without any instruction, only studying the wood stacks that sprinkled the grove of the School of Wood Stacking, she was able to stack 40 logs in a precise manner, as the woodstackers before her.

Koke-sensei approached and said, "No longer does that wood interest me." He pointed to another pile of 100 logs, and said, "You must now stack this wood."

For two years she worked at stacking the wood. Without any instruction, only studying the wood stacks that sprinkled the grove of the School of Wood Stacking, she was able to stack 80 logs in a precise manner, as the woodstackers before her.

Koke-sensei approached and said, "We have a new student Suzuki-san. Please help Yamamoto-san with his stack."

For two years she worked at stacking the wood, helping and mentoring Yamamoto-san. Without any instruction, only studying the wood stacks that sprinkled the grove of the School of Wood Stacking, she and Yamamoto were able to stack all 100 logs in a precise manner, as the woodstackers before them. With all 100 completed in the stack, she was very joyful, ready to graduate from the School of Wood Stacking.

Koke-sensei approached and said, "Good Yamamoto-san. You may go." He turned to Suzuki-san and asked, "And what of your stack?"

And that, Mr. Clock, is why it takes so long.

This Blog's Been Such a Downer Lately

2007-01-28T14:10:00.000-08:00

I've noticed this blog's been kind of a downer lately. People dying of cancer, moldy carrots, and identity crises. So, for a change of pace, I'd thought I'd blog a bit about the mundane day-to-day, to show that my life isn't all tears and trauma; because honestly, it's really not.

Three nights ago, I was laying in bed, writing up a presentation for a course I'm taking. The boyfriend came to bed, and I started zipping up my laptop in its case. He asked, "Time for sleeping?" I replied, "Nah, I gotta poop." He saw I was looking for a catalog to flip through, and he asked, "Is this going to be a 'Number 5?'" [I've been known for some fantastic craps.] I said, "Nah, just a regular number 2."

Three days ago I attended a talk by a woman from a tiny little college. Her talk was great, and afterwards I told her so. I told her, "I'm so used to the top 'distinguished lecturers.' They aren't at all good at giving speeches. Your talk was fantastic and your work is really interesting!" Her talk was especially engaging, because while she spoke about Markov chains and stochastic processes, she still connected her research to pop culture and recent events.

Two days ago I attended another talk by a guy from a big university. Lucky for me, his talk was also quite good, and I was pleased with getting two good talks in two days. He made some analogies to connect the audience with his work; and I was very pleased he didn't use stupid sports analogies. He was talking about a best-fit algorithm, and he said, "Who here is married? Well, for those of you still looking for the perfect mate, I'm sure you have that list of qualities you want from your mate. Maybe you want a blond, but she's a brunette but a great woman otherwise. Maybe you want a guy whose over six feet. He's great, but only stands at 5-11." At that point, I looked around and noted the male-to-female ratio was 40:1.

Today I had a radio show. I'm a DJ at the local community show, and in addition to my "World Music" show, I help out with a Sunday show from time to time. For the first time in a while, I had a great time. The music was great, I featured some local artists who'll be playing in town next week, and my announcing voice was smooth and sexy. Hopefully I can keep it up next week during my regular gig. If you're interested, check out the following folks:

Amelia. My favorite band out of Portland, it grey smooth sound evokes visions of rain clouds.

Martha Berner. Out of Chicago, "Down and Out in San Francisco" is my favorite from her recent Indie-Folk-Rock album "Ten Tiny Little Pieces."

Katie Herzig. Currently living in Nashville, she's recently produced her own album "Weightless" which is gutsy, soft, and poetic.

Sally Spring. A musician whose been around 30 years, played with the Monkees, and has a new rock-folk album featuring Glen Parsons and Marshall Crenshaw.

Kristin Diable. A New Yorker via Louisiana whose music is rooted in blues, folk and soul.

Rose Polezani. Said to evoke "early Liz Fair or Edie Brickell."

Persephone's Bees. Russian singer/songwriter Angelina Moysov, influenced by Russian Gypsy music and British Punk.

The Moldy Carrot

2007-01-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

Folks may not be aware that I'm currently on week three of physical therapy for a shoulder injury that I've been carrying around for about a decade. My New Year's resolution is to get it back to health. My therapist originally diagnosed it as two rotator cuff muscle injuries, but today she said, "Let me try something." She mooshed around the shoulder joint a bit and said, "There, does that hurt?"

yes!

Turns out, I have three, THREE, muscle injuries, ah ah. The therapy has been slow going, and I've been incredibly grumpy these past few days from my achy shoulder. Still, I did carry this injury around for ten years, so it's quite clear I have a high threshold for pain.

so that's not the only reason you are grumpy?

Gee. What insight.

I've been trying to figure out ways to work more productively. I recently read the book, "How to Organize and Your Work and Your Life." Overall, the book is okay, and can be scanned in one sitting. The exercises at the beginning, however, are really what motivate the reader to hurry up and get organized. In one such exercise, the reader is asked to write down everything she wants to accomplish in her life. Here's my list, in the order that the goals popped into my head:

live abroad; visit to New York; see the Atlantic; attend an Indian wedding; meet Nancy Leveson; graduate; obtain tenure; publish a novel; help my parents improve financially; backpack in New Zealand; have a happy, fulfilling partnership; donate a large sum of money to a good cause; work somewhere with a critical-mass of women and underrepresented minorities; bake a Pastel de Tres Leches; visit Mexico; live in a 'green' house; live in a big city; return to Tokyo; 'perform' in front of a large audience; bike a large distance; foster a child; hike a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail; do 5 pull-ups; like myself and my body; learn to ride a motorcycle.

Hm. Nowhere on this list do I see, "Win Best Paper Award" or "Write Outstanding Thesis" or "Work at Top-10 University."

I recently visited a fellow academic diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. She's gone bald from the chemo, and is facing her upcoming surgery. I asked her what she does during the day, and she replied, "I spend time with my son. I don't care about papers or proposals anymore." She also reports that her old colleagues have all been rather cold. Just like Penelope Leech in Status Anxiety, her view of work has changed dramatically. No longer is it a source of fulfillment, but rather a task in which one does as little as possible in order to do the things one really wants.

Lately, I've been wrestling with my own career path. Cutsy teaching school or top 10 university. Unlike many of my fellow grad students, I don't get much fulfillment out of the work that I do. To me, it's just work. There are days that I have to trick myself into being even vaguely interested in Kalman Filters or NSF.

All the cards are before me. The list of life goals, how moved I was by my fellow acadmic spending time with her son, and my ambivalence towards things computer science. One might think that would put me in a good mood. I'm a planner, and I derive joy in knowing the next step. But I still have a ways to go in the PhD. "10 papers in three years" says the advisor.

What the organizing book seems to presume is that completing individual tasks and acheiving particular goals will fuel one's energy towards more tasks and more goals. But it seems there are some other, underlying carrots as well. Do a good job on the report, and the boss gives you a raise. Finish the review on time, and you'll be in line for the next promotion. The PhD offers very few carrots such as this. For me, it's been the same carrot that it's been for the past five years.

graduation...

I don't get raises. I don't get promotions. It's just the same shit year after year. Admittedly, the carrot is getting moldy, and I am really having trouble even wanting the carrot anymore.

And so, all that there is why I'm grumpy.

For now, I will go and enjoy the Posole I made for dinner, and try to focus on the joy of the moment.

Don’t pout, your face will freeze that way and then you’ll be sorry

2007-01-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

Thinking back to my childhood, I can't remember if my mother ever told me that my face would "freeze that way" when I was pouting or grumpy. My mother had more memorable sayings like, "gahdamsonnuvabich" or "he's so dumb, he couldn't pour piss out of a boot." I'm sure I heard from television how my face could freeze into a permanent frown, or perhaps it was just one of those sayings that I absorbed one time when I went to McDonald's for lunch. However I managed to hear it, I've been thinking a lot about it. I've not been thinking about it in terms of lying to kids to get them to do what you want, but rather in terms of permanent changes from temporary behaviors.

I mentioned before that it's qual time here in GradShitTownVille. For those that have an oral qual, I tell people that in order to succeed one either has to *be* cocky, or be able to *fake* being cocky. Professors here are like a big litter of puppies; they'll maul the one that's not like them. If you can't exude that particular flavor of confidence--which, by the way, smells a bit like rotten orange peels--then you may be packing out of here with a masters degree, heading west for Google to make a fantastic wage. Poor you.

Personally, I'm not particularly cocky. I don't like to remind people of how much I know or how awesome I am. In fact, I maintain that I'm probably the dumbest asshole in my whole department. The good part is that I can at least *fake* being cocky and confident, smelling like rotten orange peels just like the rest of them. I'm a hermit crab, entering an abandoned seashell to protect my soft belly just long enough to last through a presentation, a conference, or a conversation with a faculty member.

I treat the faux confidence like a temporary shell because there are places in life where it does me absolutely no good. A yoga session, for instance, is not about knowing the poses better than everyone else. It's not about being a rock star. It's not about competition at all, in fact. It's about keeping an open mind, being able to observe how my body is responding to the pigeon pose: which, by the way, is sometimes just "Ow" instead of "Om."

I've seen graduate students here enter a similar hermit shell, but never come out. They've evolved from that cute and determined undergraduate who just wanted to teach, to a younger version of their workaholic advisor, working on a proposal the night his baby is born; all to be the next rock star in wireless ad-hoc networks using resource slicing to provide channel isolation. Or whatever. Basically, their faces froze.

I'd be fooling myself to think that I, too, haven't been changed by this place. I'm quieter now; less willing to talk. I'm more selfish with my time, unwilling to give any random request for help an unhesitant "yes." Perhaps those are good things. Hard to believe that I used to talk more than I do, and I'm more sane now that I'm working on my writing rather than helping some Tom, Dick or Harry move.

There has been some damage, too. I remember coming for the PhD just to be another fantastic professor at the little Catholic school on the Bluff. Anymore, I don't know what I what I want to be when I grow up. I cannot divide the messages I get about "Top 10 This" and "Top 10 That" from the things that I think will make me happy. Yes, I'm a clinically diagnosed workaholic. Yes, I want to do the best job possible. But can't I do that at a place where it's okay if I knit an hour every evening? Or where the choice is not "kids OR tenure?"

Hard to say.

All I know is that I'm done with that proposal, and I can get back to working on the things that will actually get me outta heeere.

My favorite moment during my two-week break in Portland

2007-01-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

Eating dinner with good friends Mr. and Mrs. Clock. Making small talk. Chatting and joking and enjoying the company of nice people. And Mr. Clock asks,

"So, when are you going to be done."

And Mrs. Clock, who has obviously seen this post, lunges across the table with her best mom finger and says,

"Don't you DARE ask her that."

Dang. Really wish I could have had her as my body guard all during my break.

The Screen Door Slams

2007-01-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

We begin with a dream sequence. It's 8:30 am on a Monday, and I'm currently oversleeping, risking being tardy for a meeting. My subconscious knows I'm taking risks, and because it would much rather sleep, I begin to dream that I'm in my meeting with Moira and a professor. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, meeting with exactly whom I'm supposed to meet.

Professor: Well?
Me: Ah yes, of course.

[I reach for my bag and pull out two $50 gift certificates for the coffee shop where we're meeting. The gift certificates are beautiful. Printed on 60lb paper with script handwriting, subtle rainbow security background, and a small hologram. Nothing like in real life.]

Professor: Thank you.

[And she begins looking at the gift certificates, which have since become a pamphlet for birth control. She turns to the page describing Ortho Evra, the patch that has long been removed from the market due to health issues. The professor points at the page, making a sound of disgust.]

Professor: Tsch.
Moira: I know. Bananas and water.

[And as I nod my head in dreamy agreement about how 'bananas and water' the patch was when I was using it, I start to realize that I'm not in my meeting after all and I really need to]

Wake up, only to find I've started my period. And I realize quickly it's going to be that two-tampons-at-once sort of day.

* * *
Three days later, and it's 4:00 pm and I'm sitting in my pajamas listening to Bruce Springstein, stifling back tears of absolute frustration. I'm trying to finish an NSF proposal I'm preparing. The professors, including my advisor, are all out of the country, and I'm suddenly a post-doc/secretary. It's one of those things where I'm proud to have been asked, but I realize the small damage it's doing to me. The proposal is due three days after a paper deadline I should have submitted to, but just couldn't put enough energy into writing them both at the same time, AND get a real Christmas visit with my family. I made the choice to spend time with my parents over the break, rather than in a coffee shop basking in the glow of the iBook. And so, my prelim is postponed yet again, but I'll have the experience of an NSF proposal. One of those, "Better that I did it, now I know better, but I wish I hadn't" sort of things. Like donating eggs, smelling a freshly-cut durian, or going skiing (and falling out of the lift).

* * *

My friend is about to take the qual. She studies 23.5 hours a day, and talks about it all the time. She talks about quitting and failing, like qualers do. Like I did. Of course I do not envy the stress she's going through. But, in a way, I envy very much the constant progress she's making towards a concrete goal. I think my current tears of frustration are coming from working dilligently, and getting nowhere, an old chevy, without a differential, stuck in the mud. It's a funny scene in "My Cousin Vinny," but not at all in the Ph.D.

It's all so just bananas and water.

6 scenes from three weeks

2006-12-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

11/24/06. In which our heroine watches through tired eyes as her dog begins to stand again.

11/27/06. In which our heroine, presented with grave news about a friend, questions the value of spending 70% of her waking hours working on research and obtaining a doctoral degree. She goes to hug her dog, still dizzy from vestibular disease.

11/28/06. In which our heronie's lower back is pleased to see the dog able to get up and down the stairs again.

12/6/06. In which our heroine walks along the beach of some exotic location after making only a mediocre presentation at a conference to a room full of male peers.

12/9/06. In which our heroine, pressured for time, edits an NSF proposal on an overnight flight from South America.

12/12/06. In which our heroine, buggy on cold medicine, sketches a blog post and prepares to head west for Oregon. Despite the piles of work and sinus congestion, she smiles inwardly knowing she'll be visiting beloved friends and family very soon.

The Pooh Glasses

2006-11-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

I admit to having a Winnie-the-Pooh phase in my younger years. I'll even admit to not really being out of the Winnie-the-Pooh phase, although the stuffed animals are in a box in the attic. And my father, usually desperate for ideas for holiday gifts, one year gave me the set of Welches Winnie-the-Pooh jelly glasses. Empty glasses. I can still hear him yelling at me, "You know how much jelly I had to eat for those!!"

I actually like the holidays. Our family, when we were whole and young, were always in our best form during the holidays. Aunt Celia hosted the Thanksgiving dinner in Portland, and on the drive there I was on the look-out for Ruldoph along the I-5 corridor. My brother and I played pool with our dorky cousin, and we tried to understand the intricacies of the pachinko game in the basement.

Christmas, too, was always very special in an Inspector Gadget sort of way, with my parents trying to keep my brother in the dark about what he was getting. One year, he systematically opened all his presents, and then rewrapped them. I watched in horror, the same feeling I have when I watch old CSI episodes late at night; the good doctor performing an autopsy. The following year, Mom didn't label any of the gifts, and then couldn't remember what was what. That was the year that my brother got a t-shirt with rainbow hearts and I got blue parachute pants.

My parents divorced in 1985. Aunt Celia died at 38 in November 1994, just two weeks before Thanksgiving. The holidays are more divergent now, but they aren't any less whole. These days, the holidays mean I get to wean myself off my asthma medication and hop on a plane for the cleaner, happier west coast. I get to see friends and family I don't normally get to see anymore. I get to wear a gortex jacket instead of four layers of wool, and I get to ride the light-rail, go shopping and dancing and hiking, and do all the things that make me feel like a whole person, rather than an underpaid research machine. This year in particular will be fun because I'll get to see two of my best friends in full pregnant form. And since they are my skinny friends, I will smile inwardly, knowing for a few months at least, I won't be "The Fat One."

Where was I?

Ah.

The complete set of Winnie-the-Pooh glasses are with me here in GradShitTownVille, reserved for very special occasions. This evening, while shopping for ingredients for a chocolate pecan pie, I came across one of the greatest things about the holiday season:

The nog.

Ah yes, my love for egg nog is freakish and horrible, and I've been known to splash a bit of the nog on my cereal in the mornings. This year my concern was that my love for nog would conflict with my new-found hatred of corn syrup. But no worries, the local store was clever enough to carry Horizon Low Fat Egg Nog, ingredients including egg yolks and tumeric (for color), but definitely no corn syrup. But this first glass of nog to bring in the new year isn't served in a Pooh glass. The Pooh glass is too reserved, too oppressive for that first gulp of thick, yellow heaven. This evening, in a 9 oz Gibraltar Tumbler, I marked the begining of the holiday season. The dizzy dog, snuggled in her blanket, munched on rawhide in happy approval. And with the first glass down, I ready the Pooh glasses for many future deposits on my arterial walls.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Let us raise our Pooh glasses and toast to all for which we are thankful.