Adventures in the Colonial 'burg

Last post

2010-08-19T14:39:00.002-04:00

So this is it for the 'burg. I've left and am back in the north. We're still in Rochester (no internet, so I'm at a cafe right now while C continues to unpack), and will head to the city Sunday. It's been a crazy week with packing, visiting Brandi and the kids in DC, moving and unpacking, and I haven't the energy to go through it all.

I haven't decided if I will continue blogging, but I probably will. It's at a new place, so check with it in the near future. I'm sure something will appear there when I appear in the Bronx:

Uptown and to the right

Now I'm ready for a nap.

Alright, you win, SYTYCD

2010-08-13T09:54:00.002-04:00

I have to say, we were skeptical about last night's finale for So You Think You Can Dance. They kept hyping up some "big special guest," and the entire time we were ready with the fast forward button, to skip the stupid guest that was going to show up. But then, it happened, and we saw this:

In other news, I turned in my keys yesterday, so I'm no longer going into the office. We are doing so well with the packing that there's not much more to do. This is good since we're heading to DC tomorrow for the day to see Corbett's sister and her fam. Good times.

Coming so fast

2010-08-10T09:53:00.002-04:00

Our place is looking rather depressing. The pictures are (mostly) off the walls. Bookcases are empty (and in one case, taken apart). Boxes line every room, and all tables are covered with things to go into some as yet unspecified box.

Have I mentioned I hate moving?

The worst part isn't even the packing. It's somewhat fun (except seemingly endless, since we've started really early so as not to rush, it feels like all we are doing is packing), and I like it second to the unpacking part. That's actually really fun because you get to set everything up.

It's the actual moving. Next Monday we have people doing all of the loading for us (yay!), and Tuesday we drive to Rochester. Wednesday there are people unloading Corbett's stuff and we then unpack for a bit before driving to the Bronx on Sunday. (We're going that late because although my stuff may be in the Bx on Friday, it's unclear as to whether or not that is the case, so we'll just go when we're assured of it.) Once my stuff is unloaded on Monday, the 23rd, I'll be happier. There's still a million things to do after that, but the rest is not reliant on a bunch of things all falling into place.

Of course, the part that sucks is that once that happens, shortly after Corbett will have to leave me and Dante to go get ready to work. I don't really like thinking about that part, so let's give you a little fact. The congressional district that I'll be moving to is the second poorest in the country, first is you exclude Puerto Rico. This is as of 2008, where the poverty level was at 39.7 percent. Comparatively, the 'burg is 406th (including Puerto Rico and other territories, out of 437), with a poverty level of 6.4 percent.

To miss or not to miss

2010-08-04T11:13:00.002-04:00

There are so many things I will miss here in the 'burg, and quite a few things I will not. Of course there are a bunch of friends and coworkers I will miss (and a couple of coworkers I won't), but as for things uniquely 'burg-ish:

Things I will miss:

Going into stores that are huge and never ever ever crowded (grocery stores, Target, etc).

Air conditioning by default everywhere you go.

Seeing 18th-century "folks" doing 21st century things.

Being able to show up to a movie right as it starts and still get good seats.

Having a car.

Things I will not miss:

Hyper-air conditioning everywhere you go.

The drivers and their insistence on going less than or equal to the speed limit.

A speed limit of 25 everywhere.

Not walking anywhere.

Driving.

Listen to that voice...

2010-08-03T13:50:00.002-04:00

You know there are those days when you should listen to that voice in your head in the morning. The voice that says, "Just stay in bed. Nothing good is going to come from you getting up." I admit I hear this regularly, but every so often it's correct.

Today was one of those days, and that's all I will say for now.

Wrapping up

2010-08-02T10:02:00.003-04:00

Things are just getting depressing now. This weekend was filled with things we did because the end is near.

On Friday we had a group "happy hour" and then dinner with Kostas (and Andre, Erin, and Stefan), to say goodbye and have one last "hurrah." Of course afterwards we had our Psych viewing, which is just a necessity, even though I think Corbett will be happy to not have to watch it every week.

Saturday was a Monticello day with Chris & Sonya. We had never been there before, and it's basically one of their favorite places. Since it's a two-hour drive, it's not something we were motivated to do on our own, even though for three years we'd been talking about it. We couldn't get tickets for the "behind-the-scenes" tour (sold out), but it was a pretty awesome day. We had a lunch of all-you-can-eat fried chicken (with a humorous exchange between Corbett and the waitress when he asked if she had small breasts, then was disappointed to realize that, as he said, "no, you have huge breasts"), and a fun time just walking all over the grounds and getting a tour of the house (with someone who looked just like Rose from Lost).

Yesterday we began packing and then went to Will's house for a barbeque (that I jokingly suggested he have when we had drinks Friday night). Of course it rained so it was an indoor BBQ, and it lasted a lot longer than expected....we didn't leave until half past midnight.

Now it's work time again. And it's kind of freaky that in two weeks, we're gone.

Focus

2010-07-29T10:56:00.003-04:00

I have work to do. And really, I want to do it. But right now, it's extremely hard to focus. For one, there's the impending move. Things are irritating with that, also. I'm someone who likes everything planned perfectly, and sadly since I'm the one doing the planning, everything becomes messed up, overly complicated, or just changed on an hourly basis.

The other problem I have is that I can't focus when I have things that are just waiting to go wrong. This is why I hate flying. The actual flight is fine, but I fret over everything before and after. Like, I'll be caught in traffic that'll make me miss my flight (this has never happened, and is practically impossible when flying out of the local airports as there is no such thing as traffic here), my name will all-of-a-sudden appear on the no-fly list, I'll be detained at security because of the fact that I looked snarky, or of course the standard, I'm at the gate and the flight is severely delayed so much that I miss a connection or whatever.

Then of course there's the stuff that goes wrong on the other end of a flight. In fact, I'm not truly relaxed until I get to my hotel and check in (because there's a lot that goes wrong there, too, you know). Sadly, there's a small part of me that always hopes for something to go wrong, and that way I can complain and maybe get free stuff.

Anyway, that's all on my mind, so work is falling by the wayside. Alas. Oh, and fair warning, this blog will actually disappear upon moving. I'll probably continue posting but on a new site, for all three of you that read this. The problem is that the address for this site is too specific to this location, and I should have made a more generic name. Making "burg" stand for something else just seemed too complicated (and honestly, lame)...

Orientate this

2010-07-26T10:23:00.002-04:00

I just got an email from my soon-to-be-employer, about an upcoming new faculty orientation. This is apparently an all-day event, beginning at 8:45 in the morning (groan), and culminating with an afternoon reception at 4:30pm that will last lord only knows how long.

The morning session,will have a panel where, the email informs me:

"You will have the opportunity to learn about [this university] and its distinctive pursuit of excellence in teaching, research and service and to join a conversation that is a rich part of our formation as teachers and scholars."

Then,

"Following lunch, there will be a brief presentation on teaching and learning resources, a pictorial history of [this university]."

I know the university has been around for a while, but I don't think the pictorial history will take place until

"The day closes with a reception at 4:30 p.m. at [SSS] Hall hosted by So-and-so."

Ah, the glorious wastes of time are being scheduled for me!

Realtor from hell

2010-07-20T11:06:00.003-04:00

So of the (admittedly far too few) places we saw while in the Bronx, one place stood out not for the unit itself (which was unimpressive), but for the person who showed it to us.

Her name was Cathy, and given my restrictions (max of 20 minute commute to work, by walking, train, or bus, and a dog), she had one place available. She told me it was in a great neighborhood that would even allow me to walk to work and there were tons of restaurants within walking distance.

Well, first of all, that was a flat out lie. It would have been a 45-minute walk to work, and barely 30 minutes to take a bus. Plus, the neighborhood was exceedingly residential, and nothing was close. But all of this is secondary to the point of this tale, and that is of our being kidnapped by this woman.

So she's not the best salesperson. After saying it was a short walk to the apartment, she met us at the subway station with her car to drive us. And saying this was a car is being pretty generous, as it was about to fall apart. Also, she couldn't have the a/c on because she was worried she would run out of gas.

She showed us the apartment, and in addition to the rent, security deposit and broker's fee (both equal to one month's rent), there was a $175 application fee and some other fee as yet to be determined by the landlord, if I wanted it. Besides the fact that the place was a hole in a crappy "I need a car to live there" neighborhood, that was a good way to end the discussion.

So we headed back to the car, and she asked if we were thirsty. Stupidly we said yes, and she then brought us to this diner which made me think we were in Wyoming, given the clientele. The two of us ordered sodas, and she ordered a big-salad-a-la-Elaine-on-Seinfeld, and we sat there while she ate, trapped. We sat there and she proceeded to hate on every other neighborhood in the city (except where we were, and Riverdale, the rich white neighborhood that doesn't allow public transit anywhere near it). The worst part was that we were trapped and couldn't go anywhere, because we didn't even know where the stupid train was from the diner! The poor woman was clearly lonely (she basically said as much), but I don't think that would have been a problem if she weren't such a raving bitch.

Just a sample: When we were describing Maggie's neighborhood in Brooklyn and how it's nice because it's walking distance to tons of restaurants, it's really cute, and close to several different subways, she responded with a sneer and, "Well, that's okay, if that's what you want." That is, in fact, precisely what I want!

Needless to say I didn't even bother calling her to tell her I didn't want the apartment.

We won't be homeless

2010-07-18T09:58:00.003-04:00

After a grueling week of traveling to both western New York and New York City, we found places to move into when we leave the 'burg.

Corbett will be living in a 19th-century mansion that has been converted into apartments. The place is ridiculously gorgeous, and has a brand new kitchen. It's sort of the kind of place that I'm not sure that I belong, but alas, it's all his, and I'll get to spend plenty of time in his mansion. Luckily that took only a day in a half to find and we could head down to the city.

I was fretting my search, as I had only two appointments made to look (no one would call me back), while Corbett had somewhere on the order of 10. The first day we were there, we spent most of the day checking out the neighborhood near campus, and it felt as though the day was wasted. Our first appointment was at 3pm and thankfully the second apartment we saw I liked a bunch. It was like my old apartment in New York, but twice as big. We went to the appointment we had in the evening* just to see something else, and it was so horrible, the choice was basically made. So the next morning I got the apt I liked.

Compared to Corbett's mansion, it's a hole, but compared to apartments in NYC, it's spectacular. And, it's only a 10-minute walk to work. The neighborhood is awesome, and well, I get to live in the Bronx, which will be fun!
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* That is a story I will have to save for another date, but keep a lookout for it.

Yeah, they still want me

2010-07-10T22:37:00.002-04:00

So you may remember that just a year ago I had an interview at a small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere. The interview I had there went, I thought, very well, but alas I did not get the job. I was somewhat bitter about it for a while, and while Laurie and Rick were here, the topic of the school came up. Not thirty minutes after we were talking about the school, I received an email from them.

Apparently one of their faculty members is not returning in the fall and they offered me a visiting professor position for the upcoming year. He also said that while this was not a tenure-track position, they would have a search next year and he implied that I would have a good shot at it. Luckily I got to tell them that I had a job at a school in a real city (of course I didn't say it that way).

What a great feeling this was because of several things. First, I got to reject them this time. Secondly, it means that I wasn't imagining things last year and the interview did go really well, well enough that sixteen months after the fact, they thought of me as an excellent choice to be able to hire me on the spot.

After I told him no, I also mentioned I thought of the school because we're driving right through the tiny town next week, and he said I should stop by for lunch. Of course he was just being polite, and there is no way I would, but in the end, a very uplifting moment.

Every Little Step

2010-07-05T11:12:00.002-04:00

We watched Every Little Step last night, which is a documentary about the tryouts for the recent revival of A Chorus Line on Broadway.* It was actually very interesting, as it was essentially an entire season of a reality competition in an hour and a half (perhaps the appropriate length of time for one of those seasons), but also actually real.

What was hilarious was one of the people trying out. He was trying out for the "Mike" character, which is the guy who sings "I can do that" in the show, with regards to his sister's dance classes when we was a child. The auditioner was a certain man named Tyce Diorio, better known in some (rather small) circles as a choreographer for So You Think You Can Dance. He choreographs very good contemporary routines and exceedingly terrible Broadway routines for the show. He is also extremely irritating.

Watching him in this documentary I realized two things. First, he is an amazing dancer. Secondly, I hate him even more.

First of all, he kept acting like he was just doing this audition for himself and that he didn't care if he got it. This overly confident attitude is annoying, especially when one could easily be confident and not an ass. He has that cocky persona that tries to pretend like everything that happens to him is exactly what he wants. And it drives me nuts.

Luckily I knew he didn't get the part and when he was told he had that air of "I don't really care about this anyway." At least now I can think about his miserable failure for that show and chuckle next time I see him on SYTYCD.
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* Just take a minute for that to sink in.

Eight Years Old

2010-06-27T11:58:00.003-04:00

Today is Dante's eighth birthday. He's an old man now. Here he is around one, playful and adorable:

And now:

Still adorable, just a little grumpier.

Who wants to do real work?

2010-06-24T08:39:00.002-04:00

I've become distracted and somewhat obsessed as of late. It was something that started last fall but was in the back of my mind (and thankfully so, as I probably would not have done so well in the job search) until recently. The primary motivation of this is the iPad I just bought.

What is it? Well, I have started going through these lectures on iTunesU about how to develop apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. (This is a class that is taught very regularly at Stanford.) Right now all I want to do is go through all of the assignments and lectures and really, do nothing else.

What's nice about the class is that it is for more beginners in the way of programming, so they are super basic and I can just fly right through them. I'm getting more out of just doing the homeworks. Yes, I'm doing the homeworks. After I'm finished with this I will have developed four basic, mundane, apps, and hopefully be ready to do something on my own.

And yes, I have lost pretty much all motivation to actually work, even though I am still getting things done. The problem is that it's summer, so it's hot outside. No one is in the department, making it feel odd to work. I don't want to publish anything this summer, as it will not have my new university listed as my affiliation (and it's all about tenure now), and well, this is really a lot of fun! I'm learning a new programming language (which is extremely similar to what I already know), and I'm creating graphical interfaces which I have never done before.

I know, you're all jealous. And you should be.

I dont't care about your vespa

2010-06-17T11:43:00.002-04:00

This guy in our building just wants friends. I don't need anymore friends, but nevertheless, every time I see him, I will talk to him because contrary to popular belief, I am not an ass.

But it is always annoying when I am in a hurry, or at the very least really want to do something. This is often the case when I am walking Dante, since I walk him right before leaving the house. Today was no exception, and when I stepped out of the house, I saw him and didn't have fast enough reflexes. So I got stuck in a conversation about how he had to replace the headlight on his Vespa, how expensive it was and how it prompted him to get his motorcycle license, get a motorcycle, and take a motorcycle class at the local community college (not necessarily in that order).

Let me just say that he does read body language very well, and luckily Dante isn't as polite as I am, so he gave me an out by pulling really hard, basically saying, "Get away from this freak and bring me on my walk!"

Ten pounds

2010-06-16T09:33:00.002-04:00

I've always been a very thin person (much to many friends' dismay), and never had a reason to complain. I've been lucky enough to have a ridiculous metabolism, so I've never worried about what I eat.

Now though, for the first time since high school, I have gained weight.* This started a few months ago where I noticed randomly that I gained five pounds and just recently that has jumped to ten pounds more.

I wonder if this is the signal that I finally, after 33 years, have grown up. Maybe my ridiculous puberty-filled metabolism has finally ended, and no longer will I be dealing with all those teenage issues. Perhaps now my voice will also stop cracking.
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* Excluding the semester I spent in Rome in college, where I gained fifteen pounds.

Vacation?

2010-06-15T14:29:00.002-04:00

So I was told by a professor here about how when he accepted his position here, he went on a two-week trip to Africa during the summer before moving. He then asked if I had any such plans. His thoughts weren't along the lines of "whenever someone gets a faculty job they should vacation in Africa," so much as "this may be the last chance to be able to do such a fun vacation."

On the surface this seems ridiculous, because everyone takes vacations, right? Yes and no. Up until now, I have not really taken vacations. I have visited family of course, but every trip has a specific purpose otherwise (whether its work related or for someone's wedding). Even when we spent three weeks in Germany and Austria it was because I had a conference there, and on every train ride I actually worked.* Even when I'm with family, I check in on work every so often, to see if anything is urgently required to be dealt with.

The reason is of course that the whole point of my work is to get to a faculty position. In a sense, up until I got this offer, I was working for this one thing. Once I get into my new position, the next step will be getting tenure. And as for that, everything I do between now and September, when I'm officially there, is in a sense worthless.

So this summer is special compared to all those before and all those to come (until tenure). In a sense, nothing will really hurt my career if I do nothing for the next two months.** Thus, this professor's question makes some sense. And, truth be told, I have definitely decreased my work throughput since I got the offer.

However, travel seems so miserable, so I (we) will not be going anywhere (far) for fun this summer, except to look for apartments all over the state of New York. However, there are several things we wanted to do here in Virginia before leaving, so hopefully we'll actually get out of the house and do them.
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* Okay, this was mostly before the conference because I was frantically trying finish analysis before giving a talk that hadn't been written yet.
** Ignoring the fact that if I do absolutely nothing this will hurt me since I'll get behind and have to catch up after I have all sorts of new responsibilities starting in the fall.

iPad

2010-06-09T13:17:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I did it. I broke down and treated myself to an iPad. It arrived today and it is going to change my life. I do not think I am going to get very much done this afternoon.

And mom, stop shaking your head.

Green cities

2010-06-08T10:31:00.002-04:00

I don't often talk about the books I read on here. Primarily it's because I haven't the patience to talk about them in detail. But for this one I'll make an exception (and a link!).
Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability, by David Owen is a book about how to live in a more "sustainable" way.* It is fascinating and I urge everyone to read it, if for no other reason it makes you rethink what really is and is not environmental. A few highlights:

High-density is a key to living in an eco-friendly way, such as pretty much all European cities, or New York and San Fransisco, where there are not divided residential and business zones in the way they are in the rest of the US and Canada. Given that much of our country is designed to not walk around it, we waste just by doing our daily chores. Even yesterday, I worked at home (an environmental plus) but when I wanted to run to the bank I drove, even though I've biked it plenty of times. Today I biked into work, but it still feels odd since I have a car.

People who are hard-core about only eating food which is locally grown are misguided. The basic idea is that if something is grown fifty miles from here and not in say, New Zealand, it has to be better for the environment. This is ignoring the fact that quite likely it is more efficient to grow things in certain areas, and if one carefully takes into account all of the factors involved (for example including how much energy is used by the grower), many times locally grown food is less beneficial than more. For a simple example, a giant truck which carts thousands of strawberries from California means that per berry, the carbon footprint is lower, especially if I just drive the 0.9 miles to the grocery store to buy them. If I choose, I can drive 10 miles to a local farmer who sells strawberries, thus making a much larger dent. Of course, those latter berries are fresher and taste better, but it doesn't mean it is more environmentally friendly.

The key to trying to become more sustainable is not legislation or regulation. It's difficulty and hardship. When cost goes up (like the gas prices a couple of years ago), usage goes down. People will adapt to the situation, and really only will do things when we have to, not when we're suggested to. In that sense, we'll only see true innovation and changes when it's absolutely essential. This is something that is proven over and over again (like as soon as the gas prices fell again, drivers stopped carpooling and returned to their old driving habits).

What's interesting is that while this is a book that drives home the ecological benefits of dense urban cities (with which I wholeheartedly agree), the author does not live in Manhattan (anymore), but in a suburb in Connecticut. He ends the book justifying this, and bringing home the following point. We made this country into an inefficient sprawl, and we must deal with it now. And people in general respond to rewards and "punishments," and ultimately (I think) they react more strongly to the latter. This book overall reminds me that a) there are no quick fixes, and b) one really has to be wary about the benefits of spectacular "environmental" movements, as often they do more harm than good to the environement, even (and sometimes especially) when they are promoted by environmentalists.
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* Which is not realistic: There's really no such thing as "sustainability." Nothing we do is sustainable, as practically everything we do requires oil which is going to disappear. Everyone (myself included) usually thinks that this means that we'll have to find another source of energy and that's it. But almost everything we use is made of plastic, which comes (mostly) from oil.

"Fun" Holiday Weekend

2010-06-01T09:09:00.002-04:00

So I finally got my contract from my new soon-to-be employer. This does not bode well for red tape, I must say. I have not received my reimbursement from them either, so this means that my new university will be as bad (if not worse) as the one I am currently at. (As a side note, the place I visited a week later than the NYC school got me my reimbursement two or three weeks ago.) So far we're looking at a month and a half lag time. I imagine the bureaucracy is going to be miserable in my future.

But I received it, nonetheless. Now I have currently agreed to give a talk at this conference which is happening here on campus now (I was asked on Friday, after there were several cancelations). The problem is that I don't really have much to say, and well, I have until tomorrow at 5 to prepare something.

Here's hoping I don't look like a fool!

Creepy child, creepier mother

2010-05-27T08:32:00.002-04:00

I want to preface this story by saying: I prefer my walks with Dante in the morning to be solo walks. Okay, sure if Corbett wanted to join I'd have no problem with it, but as for others, no thank you.

There's this new kid who's moved into the building next to ours, and last weekend he came up to see Dante, and to well, be creepy. He has this air about him that I can't quite put my finger on, but it bugs me. Otherwise though, he's harmless, and he loves Dante (who doesn't?), and Dante seems to like him alright. He was out there again this morning, again with his mother sitting on the stoop in front of their building.

So he came and joined us for our walk (mind you, the way our "walk" goes here, it's more like a stroll around a grassy field that Dante has to inspect diligently, so there's not really much exercise happening). I wasn't too thrilled, but he was fine and I even got to teach him that it's wrong not to pick up after a dog (later he was singing, "Gotta pick up the dog's poo!" over and over again, and hopefully that other brat walking this tiny dog heard).

Then, as I went to the dumpster to toss it out, his mother came over to throw something away, and then made a bit of small talk (about Dante). Then she threw it out there: "You know, I hate to bother you but my phone just ran out of minutes and I have to make several calls, is there any way I could borrow yours?"

Now, for many reasons I would never let a stranger use my phone. In this case though, I wasn't about to go back inside, get it, and then wait while she made calls to how many random places? I muttered, "Ooh, I don't have mine right now," hoping that would imply that I didn't want her to use it. Then she asked about a home phone, which I don't have (but even worse, I'm not letting her into my home when I don't know her and also while Corbett was asleep in the next room!). I apologized and went along my merry way, but man. Creepy new family is gonna make me choose a new morning walk.

Just have to wait

2010-05-26T14:15:00.002-04:00

So I just talked with the departmental secretary in New York, and well, I can't tell whether or not I'm happy. The basic issue is that I have to find a place to live there, and was spoiled when I was there before (considering my previous institution, let's call it OU for Old U, there owns about four million blocks of housing that they rent to affiliates). There is apparently a housing office at my future university home ("NU"), and I was told before that they help faculty get off-site housing.

This is not exactly the truth, although it's not a lie. They have a list of landlords nearby. Now, the list at OU was not quite useful, from everything I've heard, and I have yet to receive this list from NU. (Apparently it takes longer for emails to travel on days that end in "y".) So I'm not sure if it's going to be helpful or just a big pain. It makes me not look forward to going up there to find a new home.

What makes it a little more stressful is that this is a more long term place, ideally. It of course all depends on when C can get a job in the city, because I imagine we'll get a new place then, but I will want to be a little more picky about it since I won't want to move every year for the next umpteen years.

Well, in three months all of this will be over, and I'll just have a whole new set of complaints.

Inconsequential crap

2010-05-25T14:01:00.002-04:00

I've not been in a posting mood, but I feel like I should have something to say, so here...

We're getting a new air conditioner! That's right, after dealing with it breaking constantly last summer, my bitchiness (I like to think of it as assertiveness) paid off, and within a week we'll have a brand new one. Of course, we're leaving in mid-August, but at least our last few months will be certainly pleasant!

I'm definitely not looking forward to the move. I'm looking forward to the week after the move, just because then I'll be settled. But having to find an apartment (well, two, if you consider the fact that we are both getting separate places) and scheduling everything is really starting to stress me out. And we're still months from it all happening.

I was happy with the Lost finale. Was it perfect? No. Really, the ending would have been almost that if they cut out the scene with Christian. You know what I'm talking about.* Overall, though, the problem with big hyped endings is that they never live up to it. It's never as perfect as "it could be in my mind." I'm fine with that.

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*And if you don't, too bad.

Small town

2010-05-18T08:53:00.002-04:00

I have talked about this a lot, but the 'burg here is a pretty small town. Every time we go out for Vietnamese food* we tend to run into the man (Scott) who owns the coffee shop on campus that I go to every day. We also run into him at Trader Joe's, or the Japanese restaurant we frequent.

I see cars all over town that I recognize, either because they live in my apartment complex or just because I've seen them often. It's not surprising when we run into people while shopping. We ran into Kostas and Lily months ago at the Outlets, and Andre and Erin at Blockbuster (in addition to other professors).

The other day as I was biking home from a coffee shop (not the one on campus) and heard some honking as I rode through an intersection, and there were Kostas and Lily, at the light, waving to me. This is something I will miss about this place to some extent, because I do enjoy running into people (usually). Of course, New York is very similar, as much as people don't believe it. When I lived there before, I would run into people I knew all the time on the streets. Of course, usually (but not always) it was in the neighborhood we lived in (which was also where Columbia was), so it's not surprising.

Of course, on a completely unrelated subject, right now I'm still waiting for the paperwork for my new job, because there is a ton of red tape to get through before I can have my contract to sign, so I'm antsy. It makes me want to check the mail every five minutes, as stupid as that is. Of course, it doesn't help that since we've been in the new building, the mail comes at random times during the day. Before, you knew that by lunch, the mail was always there. This is no longer the case.
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* Yes, a small town with a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant!

Poor bird

2010-05-12T09:59:00.002-04:00

Warning: If you're upset by a sad animal death story, you may not wish to read the following...

On my way to work today I saw a terrible tragedy. On Jamestown road, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a bird fly across the street as the evil SUV* behind me, and it stupidly darted back in front of the SUV, while flying downward. During this time I think it realized what a mistake it was making so it tried to fly off but not before getting whacked by the evil SUV's tire.

It was a very disturbing sight since all I really saw was the body of the bird bounce off the tire and hit the side of the road with an explosion of feathers. It was a traumatic moment, and I am generally not a huge fan of birds. Still, it kind of put a damper on my day.
---
*Evil because he kept tailgating me earlier, in addition to the fact that it's an SUV.

Look up

2010-05-10T18:08:00.002-04:00

So recall that last week I dug through my boxes in my looking for my E&M notes, so I could use them for the class I'll be teaching in the fall. (I'm not necessarily planning out the course now, but I wanted to be sure they weren't packed away when I needed to find them this summer.) I couldn't find them, and well, that meant that I'd have to dig through the (scary) closet where we have everything stored in our home office. I was going to do that yesterday, but I looked at the closet and just didn't want to deal.

Thank the gods I didn't! Today at work I leaned back in my chair to read an article, and I glanced up above the cupboards in the office* and saw a box. One I hadn't noticed before. "Oh, that's right," I thought, "that's the box I actually emptied when moving into this office." Fifteen minutes later (I'm not a quick thinker), I thought that it might be a good idea to just check that it in fact was empty.

And of course it wasn't! Found my notes, actually, all of my notes from my undergraduate (and some graduate) life. Life is good.
---
* This office used to be a biology lab, hence the cupboards.

Three days in a row

2010-05-06T10:04:00.002-04:00

That's right, for all you nay-sayers, three days, it has been! This is the third day, in a row that I have biked to work. So for everyone out there, I say, "Ha!" That's right. "Ha!"

No but seriously, I had been saying for weeks now that "tomorrow, I will definitely bike in." The trouble is that I'm an exceedingly lazy person (most people will support that claim, and I'm not denying it), and often I'm rather creative. Okay, maybe my excuses for not biking are not the most creative, but they are excuses. And I'm willing to give in to them. So the goal is to not make an excuse for tomorrow, and that would mean that four out of five days I biked to work, and next week I'll attempt to make it five out of five.

Here's hopin'.

Any little thing

2010-05-04T10:23:00.002-04:00

So of course when I got to the office this morning I felt pretty good (hell, I actually biked to work again, after weeks of saying that I would definitely bike in "tomorrow"). Then several things happened to very easily deflate my mood.

First, I couldn't find my old undergraduate notes for the class I'm teaching in the fall. They weren't at home (I thought) then I unpacked all of my office boxes (I left those packed after moving to the new building since I didn't really use that stuff all too often), and didn't find the notes. Now I will have to tear apart the apartment. Maybe I'll use this as a first pass of getting rid of things.

Then, I got a call saying that my transcripts weren't yet received by the school that I'm going to in the fall, and they can't process the contract until they get them. I ordered them last Monday, so they should have arrived. Okay, so I realized that I didn't put a street address on the transcripts when I ordered them, but honestly that shouldn't be a problem (because I put the name of the school and the ZIP+4, so it just may get delayed). I know that it's probably just a matter of the schools being too slow with everything but now I'm just in a funk.

I swear, it's any little freaking thing that just ruins my mood...

Too early for Dante

2010-05-03T10:32:00.003-04:00

So yet again, sleeping was a problem last night. I think this time it was because I slept really late yesterday morning and wasn't all that tired when I forced myself to bed. I woke up at 4:30 and kept trying to fall back to sleep. At just after 6, Corbett just got fed up and got up. I did as well, and Dante looked at us like we were fools.

So I had breakfast, made my coffee, and we chatted for quite a while. It wasn't until Corbett banged at a bug on the window that Dante came running into the living room. Even still, he wasn't ready to go out yet. I think this was the first time ever that this happened (to me, anyway) with Dante.

Oh yeah...

2010-04-30T11:00:00.002-04:00

So the excitement from last week and early this week has started to wane. I came to the realization that the tenure-track position that I starts in the fall does precisely that: It starts in the fall. I have a million things that I have to do now, and have to get back to it.

One thing that I did was finally decide not to go to the Big Annual Conference in my field this year. It's in Sardinia, which made it a very tough decision, but honestly, the energy I'd have to put into planning the trip (and going to it) was just too much. The very notion of traveling right now makes me a little ill. Plus, we'll have trips over the summer to NY to find apartments for the both of us, and it's not essential that I go to this.

Something else I was thinking about was what I will do about this blog in the fall. I'm not very secretive about my identity with this, and I do think that it may have to be something that falls by the wayside as I enter the realm of Being a Responsible Professor. I know, all four of you who read this regularly will be disappointed, but there's another very important issue here. The very name of this blog is centered around where I live. Sure, I could cut out "Colonial" (it's not in the url of this site, after all), but I'm not moving to a 'burg again (unless I live in a certain neighborhood in Brooklyn which is not going to happen because well, it's too ridiculous of a commute for me to work and I don't think I could handle being around all those hipsters regularly).

These are important issues. Really, I'm working right now.

Chef's Kitchen

2010-04-29T09:54:00.003-04:00

Last night was the final birthday celebration, where I cashed in on Corbett's gift, which was dinner for two at A Chef's Kitchen. This is a place, for those unfamiliar with it, where you sit through a cooking class while they prepare and serve your dinner. The menu was:

Spaghetti Squash & Pea Shoots with Kafir Lime in a Green Onion & Ginger Broth

Asparagus, Artichoke & Chiffonade Lettuce with Lemon Dijon Vinaigrette

A Chef’s Kitchen’s Skillet Baked Corn Bread

Sauté of Wild-Caught Gulf Shrimp with Fennel, Leeks & Saffron

Roast Rack of Grass-fed New Zeal& Lamb with Sautéed Red Potatoes & Shallots and Morel Mushroom Fumé

Chocolate Mousse Napoleon with Bali Vanilla Shortbread Cookies & Dewars Butterscotch Syrup

And it was amazingly delicious and super fun! Imagine watching the Food Network but you get to eat the food (and no offense to most of the Food Network chefs, but we're talking the most delicious food ever!). That, with the glass of champagne and three glasses of wine, is something I would totally want to do again, and perhaps we will before we leave the 'burg.

No windows

2010-04-28T10:17:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this here, but the current office in which I reside (co-reside, really, with two others) has no windows. It's not a big deal (although come to think of it, it's the first I've ever had without windows), but there are times when it's a problem.

See, the latest officemate arrived just a few weeks ago. He's a great guy, very nice and often overly considerate. But see, he walks to work. It's not too far, maybe a 30-40 minute walk. But it's getting warm out. You perhaps may see where I am going with this and you are partially right.

He understands the issues with walking so far in the extremely warm weather. So he makes up for it when he gets here. Problem is, he has an aerosol (really? they still make those?) deoderant that he applies, in the office. So while I appreciate the "not wanting to smell badly" sentiment, there are issues in that it now smells like Ax body spray in here, and well, there is no window to get fresh air in. And so it lingers.

Four more months...

Empire State

2010-04-26T11:05:00.002-04:00

So it's almost fully official. I have verbally accepted a position at a university back in New York City. That's right, no matter what you may think of me and how I present myself, I am about to become an assistant professor of physics. There are many great things about this latest development in my life, and I would like to present them in bullet form:

First, Corbett will be in western New York, so we'll only be six hours apart, as opposed to the 1600 mile difference it was going to be.

I'll get to be back in New York.

I'll get to teach.

I don't have to live in Mountain Time.

I won't have to think about accepting a position that I interviewed for in Detroit.

I also learned my teaching schedule when I accepted the position. I am teaching Electricity & Magnetism (a junior-level course), which is four hours a week (Monday and Thursday afternoons), and an intro lab (two hours a week, Tuesday afternoon). So I get Wednesday and Fridays with no teaching, which is great.

The only downside is that I have to figure out where I'm going to live, and that's tricky in NYC. But whatever, it'll be worth it!

As usual

2010-04-19T13:10:00.002-04:00

So as many people know, I like to drag my birthday out for as long as possible. This year was no exception. I got to celebrate it while at the All-Hand's meeting at Brookhaven this year (whoopee), by having drinks with some friends at a bar on site.

When I returned home, I got to celebrate by opening all of my presents yesterday, and yet it still can drag on. Corbett's gift was dinner at A Chef's Kitchen, and we still have to schedule that. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and swore we'd have to do it before leaving town. So I'm psyched.

Also, no one in town was free for celebrating last night, so we did our own thing, and sometime in the future we'll get together with our friends here. Plus, one of the (too many) gifts from my folks was to get my trunk lock fixed after someone damaged it trying (and failing) to break in (this was like, two years ago, and I'm finally getting it taken care of), so I'll still be "celebrating" on Friday when I get that taken care of.

And in other news, I have one more interview, this time in Michigan, and I get to leave for that tomorrow afternoon. Yay for me.

One of the greatest days

2010-04-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

Coming up is the best day of the year. It immediately follows (and every six or seven years, it actually coincides with) what many people in this country consider the worst day of the year. I of course am talking about my birthday (usually the day after tax day). I've become more muted about it lately, partly I think because this year (like last year) I will be at Brookhaven on the spectacular day. But, that makes it no less wonderful.

I think the other reason I've become more muted is that well, this time of year is always tainted with stress, what with all of the job hunting. I do have a job for next year*, but I also have an interview for a faculty position tomorrow and Thursday. So the stress is still there. It won't leave until well, I find out yay or nay. At the very least, once this week is over, it is all out of my hands.

You know what though, it doesn't really matter. We both have jobs for next year, and so I should forget about it. Hopefully being at work today will help, and the next two days will go by pretty fast. When that interview is over, I can rest (and prepare the other talk I have to give this week, thus making a total of 3 presentations over four days, two of which are on the same day), and when I get back to the 'burg, I will get a chance to celebrate this holiest of days.
---
* And an offer for another job, although it too is temporary and as such, I'm unsure if I will take it. There are a million issues with regards to this second offer, and well, I have no energy to go into it.

Daze

2010-04-08T10:24:00.003-04:00

I've been in a daze this week. Primarily I think it is because of my superfast trip to the west coast last week, arriving just at midnight Friday night (after over an hour delay in Dallas, making my time there just over four hours), combined with my upcoming trip to New York next week. This week doesn't feel real. Also, no one is around. One of my officemates has left for good, while the other will return today or tomorrow. The two professors in the group are also out of town for the week, so it's been very quiet at work.

Several things of note. I'm getting very antsy about my interview next week. I have high hopes because the interview last week went extremely well. I get to stay near Lincoln Center, so I'll know the neighborhood fairly well, and my talk is prepared already (as I've given it several times before). The only thing to do is prepare for my lecture, which will be a class in the freshman physics class (so electricity and magnetism). I will find out today specifically what it is about (hopefully it's Faraday's Law, and the only reason I say that is because I taught that in California last week).

I also need to prepare a talk for the All-Hands' meeting, and honestly I should be working on that right now. Instead I'm doing things that really need to get done but could be put on hold for a week or two.

Now I have to put my sweatshirt on, even though I turned off the a/c in here (and it's like 90 outside)...

Sometimes it's just not cute

2010-04-06T08:48:00.002-04:00

Last night, I felt like I went to bed too early. But alas I did, and after a while I eventually dozed off (before midnight, which is this crazy new thing we're trying here). That was until 2:30, when Dante decided to go into the living room and have a barking fit. So I woke up, and could not for the life of me fall back asleep. I tossed, turned, checked my email (surprisingly no one emailed me between the hours of 11 and 3, except for American Airlines and Jo-Ann's Fabrics), and just went crazy until sometime after 4 or 4:30 when I fell asleep again.

Then the thunderstorm hit, and I woke up at 5:30 not to the storm, but come on, you all know it, to a fifty pound beagle-lab mix shaking and shivering and just being overall terrified of the thunder and lightning. And the storm lasted for a long time, and I was up for another hour or so.

So yeah, he's cute. It's sad that he's scared of storms, but when I only get half of the necessary sleep I was promised by my bedtime, it's not cute anymore.

Just because water is falling...

2010-04-05T08:08:00.002-04:00

Short letters to various people of interest:

Dear Southern Californians: When it rains for two hours in the morning, and by rain I mean a gentle spring shower, this is not equivalent to a storm that batters LA. Especially since shortly after the rain finishes, the sun comes out and by the end of the day, there's no sign of water having ever fallen.

Dear fellow flight passenger, sitting behind me: If you pull on the seat in front of you, I feel it. In fact, the seats are not all that stable, so as you rummage through the seat pocket (as apparently you have stored everything you own in there and during the entire 2.5 hour flight, you are in constant need of whatever you shoved in there), I am yanked back with a rather strong force. Please, realize this, and try to be more considerate in the future.

Dear apartment complex: We had some issues a few months ago when you tried to charge us for our washer/dryer, and luckily it was all taken care of. You told us you would let us keep it at no charge until March 31st. We have contacted you to take it out of the apartment, as we will not pay for it. If you do not, however, we will gladly keep it for the last few months we're living here, but we will not pay for it.

Thank you all for listening.

Two trips, three reasons

2010-03-29T08:31:00.002-04:00

It's pouring today, and we had thunderstorms all last night. What does this mean? For those in the know, it means I didn't sleep well last night because of a certain dog who is terrified of storms. So as you can see, it's a great start to the week.

I have several trips planned for the next few weeks. I get to go to California on Wednesday, for an interview, and I'll be there for just about a day. Nothing like flying across the country for a trip that short! I'm not 100% excited about this interview, but at the same time, I'm sort of looking forward to it.

In about two weeks, I will get to return to NY! That is something I am psyched about. I won't get to play much while there, as I have another interview up there, so the first two days of being there will be filled with that. At that interview I get to give a talk and teach a class, so there'll be a lot to prepare (luckily I have a talk all set). Immediately following that I get to go to Brookhaven for a US collaboration meeting (this is where we get to all get together and beg for computer time). I have a talk to write for that as well. Hoo-rah.

Oh, and the best part is that I get to spend another birthday at the lab. Last year I visited Brookhaven and gave a talk on my birthday. This year, well, the talk isn't on my birthday, but I'll get to spend that day there nonetheless. Score!

Humidity

2010-03-22T16:18:00.002-04:00

So the summer is not yet here, but the humidity is. This is a terrible problem here in the temporary office we have, as there is no window, and we are at the mercy of the college in terms of the air conditioner. (In other words, we can only have the air conditioning on when the campus decides it's time, and well, I would heartily agree that March is quite a bit early.)

This means that I'll have to start wearing shorts in my office, even though I don't want to yet. It's warm enough outside to, but I'm not mentally prepared for this change. The irony of course is that once summer really kicks in, the buildings will be so cold that I won't want to wear shorts.

My life is so difficult.

245 steps

2010-03-17T09:12:00.003-04:00

When I walk, I tend to count. Usually this only happens when I'm on stairs, but I will often just count steps on a regular basis. This is why I know that every flight between floors here in our temporary building on campus has a different number of steps (between the basement and the third floor, there are six flights, each with a number of steps varying between 6 and 13 in a random manner, and this bugs me).

Yesterday I went to check the mail at home and learned that it is roughly 245 steps (including going down the steps in the building) from our front door to the mailboxes. This is a very important piece of information. Once I realize what it's good for I'll let you know.

For a bit

2010-03-15T08:39:00.003-04:00

Things are "back to normal" for a bit. My trip went well, and I enjoyed myself in the nation's capital (even if I never did any sightseeing). My talk went great actually, and (while I may be bragging here, that's my right on this site) I got a lot of praise.

The best though was that there was a visitor from Duke also there, and I've known her for some time (since 2004). I had a conversation with her on Thursday and then Friday (after my talk) when I saw her, she just said, "Wonderful, wonderful talk. Just wonderful." So I felt good. If only a) she were on the committee there and b) this were not a job that is almost certainly going to someone pre-chosen.

This week, though, is a normal week. I will go in, work, come home. No travel or anything "out of the ordinary." In fact, I don't even think I have to go to JLab, which is always a bonus.

Cold face

2010-03-10T13:15:00.003-05:00

I don't shave very often. Well, at least once a week I trim down to stubble, but I never shave all the way to the skin. Of course, there are some people, while fine with me never shaving to the skin, would prefer I keep it shaved to stubble every three days or so.

But as I need to look presentable today and tomorrow, I did the unthinkable and shaved for real this morning.* I always think I look funny (and always get snarky comments from people around me, and luckily Kostas is not around because he really enjoys the mockery), but the weird part is how my face feels after shaving. When I went out to bring Dante for a walk before leaving the house, it just felt cold and naked and I felt extremely vulnerable.

Luckily the hair will grow back soon.
--
* Mind you, I still have a perpetual five o'clock shadow no matter what, which is part of the reason for not bothering to shave.

A little opened up

2010-03-08T17:03:00.002-05:00

Good news for me. I had a meeting scheduled in Newport News tomorrow afternoon, and it just got moved to Thursday. This is great for several reasons. First, and foremost, it means I don't have to drive to Newport News (a chore I will be happy to do without next fall). Secondly, although it is a meeting I very much would like to attend, I now cannot because I will be out of town. Finally, something good happens!

The best part is that I already told someone else of this commitment, so the videoconference I am having before Wednesday evening won't be able to be scheduled during that time, meaning I have time available then to do whatever. Perhaps I'll even work.

It's been a while

2010-03-07T17:47:00.002-05:00

Things have been crazy the last few weeks, and a lot has happened...

Corbett's mom survived the massive quake in Chile. Of course the one day she was going to be in Santiago was the day the fifth worse earthquake in recorded history. Luckily she's on a package trip so getting out was fairly simple (although it took us 36 hours to hear from her that she was alright).

Corbett has a job offer, and that's awesome. This means we will both be gainfully employed next year, and don't have to try to get "actual jobs." The bad news is that the jobs we have are 1600 miles apart, which we were prepared for.

I have a videoconference interview this week as well as an in-person interview, and several other things that are going to make this upcoming week just too busy for my tastes. This will not stop me from watching Lost on Tuesday night, but still...

An incomplete tale from the airport

2010-02-23T12:23:00.003-05:00

I shared the hotel shuttle to the airport here in Columbus with a prospective grad student (he's currently an undergrad in Olympia, Washington). Both he and the driver were intent on having a long and detailed conversation, and well, I'm not always a fan of people. Although I know it's the polite thing to do, I really do hate meaningless small talk.* Luckily the ride was only twenty minutes, so this didn't last long.

At the airport, I got a lunch at Wendy's, which was outside security (it was either that or Starbuck's inside security), and saw this undergrad right outside the security line, with all of his luggage open and he was frantically digging through it all. Eventually, he packed it all up, talked to the guard for a few seconds, and ran back to the ticketing counters. I'm not sure what the problem was, but about ten minutes later he was back, going through, and hopefully not missing his flight. Poor kid was so terribly panicked though.
--
* Of course, that doesn't mean I'm willing to babble along endlessly about meaningless things.

Workin' for the Weekend

2010-02-20T10:45:00.002-05:00

I'm supposed to be working on my talk right now, and I don't want to. This is a healthy distraction.

Last night we went to Ichiban with Andre and Erin, then came back here for our weekly viewing of Psych. It was a lot of fun, but after they left we were up way too late, and I got up early to both call my dad and try to get something done on this talk. I have plenty of time, really, as I have all day tomorrow and much of Monday. Ideally though, it'll be mostly done by tonight.

But what I'm really looking forward to is the "Chocolate Affair" tonight. This is an annual event that I've not gone to yet, but it involves many different establishments sharing chocolate creations all for over two hours. Conveniently this is around dinner (7-9:30pm), so we're having a healthy day.

Alright, so now I'll get this talk done. For real.

It's almost official

2010-02-19T11:00:00.001-05:00

I accepted the job out west as of this morning. I think it'll be a good thing, assuming I don't get a more permanent position. In that news, I did have a phone interview on Wednesday that went fine (although it was for a really tiny school), and I have to wait another week to see if they'll invite me for an in-person interview.

Also, I just found out I have another interview, much closer to here. This is probably just a diversion though, as most likely the position I'm interviewing for is going to be given to someone who is already there. (In other words, there is a huge likelihood that this job was opened for all but really just created to give someone there a permanent position.) So I'm not counting too much on that one.

I can't believe I've accepted a job in the Mountain Time Zone. I mean, seriously.

4:59 counts

2010-02-18T16:28:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I'm finally getting my windshield replaced. The (now) 3.5 foot crack is getting a bit on my nerves, so I called yesterday about having them come to replace it. Now, they said they would be more than willing to come to my place of business, and that they'd be here between 12 and 5. You heard that right. It's now 4:30, and they're not here yet. I know I can't be upset as that was the window they gave, but really? The worst part is that if they get here at 4:59, that's completely legitimate, but then I'll be stuck here for however long it takes for them to fix the damned thing.

Sigh.

Not to be unemployed

2010-02-16T14:44:00.002-05:00

So life is a little better on the job front (not much, but a little). I received a post-doc offer last Friday from a school that is very much west of here. (Not as far as the coast, but pretty far.) It's a good thing, as it means I have a job to go to in the fall, and I don't have to look for an "actual job."

However, in the long run it would be better for my career if I could actually get a non temporary position, and that isn't yet in the cards. But for now, this is better than nothing, and well, we're at the point where we aren't looking for "good," just "not bad." This is in the latter category.

Romance

2010-02-15T14:05:00.002-05:00

So we are not very "Valentine's Day" people. In fact, the question of getting each other anything wasn't even brought up this year (this is something I realized this morning while reading a friend's blog about getting stuff for V-day). I myself am not much of a "holiday" person in general, due to my dislike of forced celebrations. I'm more of an "every day is possibly worth celebrating kind of person"*.

Nevertheless, I enjoy getting candy from my mother. Corbett and I didn't do anything in particular for a celebration, as it was like any other day. We did have a nice steak dinner and a very romantic setting. The latter was forced by a temporary power outage that had Corbett light about fifty tealights throughout the house. By the time he finished, the power came back, so we had to shut the lights off and pretend like the power was still out.

What's amazing really is how much heat fifty tealights can add to the room.

---

* One comment I should make here: My birthday is automatically exempt from this, as there is nothing forced about celebrating me. Additionally, I enjoy others' birthdays as well, and of course I love Jesus's birthday, even though I really don't care about the "Jesus" side of it.

The great W/D panic of 2010

2010-02-11T08:49:00.002-05:00

We recieved a notice from the apartment on Saturday stating that we owed something like $200 in rent, plus attorney fees and late fees. This happened before when the new resident manager (we go through these like tissues, there have been five since I've lived here) didn't realize that we had a discounted rent. So I went to discuss this with them and found out that they finally learned that we had a washer/dryer in our apartment and started billing us (without telling us) in November.

Note, to rent these things, it's $50 a month, and the W/D was in the apartment when we moved in, and we just didn't tell anyone. I told them that we talked to the previous manager and she said that it was going to be an upcoming offer to not charge for them so we should just not worry about it.* Given that they never told us we were getting charged and we signed nothing that said we would agree to pay it, I felt of course the charge was unacceptable.

But the panic set in, so two days ago we did basically every bit of laundry we had (which is no small feat, as the dryer takes an absurd amount of time drying things), in case they were to come and take it away.

Luckily, when I spoke with them yesterday, they said they would remove the charges and we can kept the W/D until after April, when we'd have to start paying for it (and come on, it is so not worth fifty bucks a month). So the panic has died down and now we can just relax.

---
* Note, part of this is true, as two months after we moved into this apartment, this special did exist.

Dear fellow 'burgers...

2010-02-10T11:45:00.002-05:00

I know living here in the 'burg, you are not used to snow. I get that. I respect that.

I understand that it takes getting used to driving in it, because as I have done it very rarely in the last 14 years, it takes me some time getting used to it again.

I realize that you may not even own an ice scraper or snow brush, in fact, I don't. Of course I am frustrated when it snows and I have to go somewhere, so I have to clean off my car with my hands and arms. It's cold, and kind of miserable.

But you know what, if you only use your windshield wipers to clear off your car, you can't see. In fact, you won't know what's behind you nor to your side, and therefore, do not swerve over into the right lane when you don't know if someone is passing you or not.

This is especially important in a city where people never use their horns. Luckily I am not so shy, and will easily lay on it to alert you to your folly.

best,
your fellow citizen.

More snow

2010-02-05T14:02:00.002-05:00

So it's snowing. We won't get the Snowpocalypse expected in DC, but yes, we're getting more snow. Luckily, the snow is not sticking, and I imagine it'll just start raining as predicted and hopefully wash all this crap away. I've had my fill.

On a lighter note, our street is open again!! I haven't seen it but this means we are no longer cut off from the 7-11 or the creepy motel that is always open but always empty. Life is good.

Mind your own...

2010-02-04T11:48:00.002-05:00

Hello stranger,

I see you think that I've parked somewhere that I shouldn't have. I apparently look like a student but have clearly parked in a Faculty/Staff spot. You obviously think that this is an affront to all the hard work you've put in becoming a Faculty/Staff yourself, and therefore think that it is your place, nay, your duty, to make sure I know what horrible crime I commited.

So you shout out (in a very confrontational, holier-than-thou way), "Do you have a Faculty/Staff sticker on your car?"

Being polite, I just answer, "Yes," when really I should have said:

"Yes, I am a faculty member* here, so mind your own damn business!"

In the end, what does it get you? If you're right and I was not allowed to park there, just enjoy the fact that I will get a ticket (that's what I would do), and if you're worried that I wouldn't, call the parking office. They would be glad to give me a ticket. Oh wait, I was legally parked.

In any case, just mind your own business, and stop pretending like you're more important than you are.

---
* Sure, I'm just a post-doc, but that's part of the faculty, and it says as much on my ID card, so it's true enough. Really I would have only said this to be bitchy, which I should be more often, as it is so cathartic.

Main points

2010-02-03T11:34:00.002-05:00

Bullet points for the day:

We got rain last night. Not much, just enough to get rid of some snow and make the rest more slippery. It's fun!

The crack in my windshield expanded. What was once "fixed" to remain at one inch is now well over a foot. Since this "repair" was covered by my insurance, I basically don't get the discount afforded me due to the "lifetime guarantee" that the crack would never expand. The expansion was fun though, we can watch it happen in real time.

I wish one officemate would not face me since his desk was set up to face a different direction. I don't like the idea that he is constantly staring at me. Okay, he's not staring at me but whenever I look at my second monitor he looks up at me. I don't like the constant feeling of surveillance.

Kindness

2010-02-01T08:53:00.002-05:00

We got just over 8 inches of snow here, which for these parts is a veritable blizzard. It's pretty awesome, since it's the largest snow we've gotten since I moved here. Of course, I used to despise snow, growing up in Maine, but I've gotten past that. Primarily because it's not inevitable and well, it is pretty. Usually here it lasts a couple of days, but it'll last more than that this time. And it's a pain.

But this was interesting. A downstairs neighbor we have dubbed "drunk fireman,"* shoveled the walk outside our building. Of course he has just as much interest in getting out as we do, but that was very nice of him (of course, it's still slippery and covered with ice, but whatever, it's better than it could have been). He is a nice guy even though we have reason to believe he just spent the last two weeks in jail for beating up his girlfriend.**

Also, while we did clean off my car Saturday night to go to dinner (to the only open restaurant in the 'burg), it snowed a bit more that night, and there was quite a bit of drift, so my car had a new coat of snow. Sunday, another downstairs neighbor after clearing off his car cleared that off of my car! This is especially nice because we've flooded his apartment probably four times.***

--
* I don't think you need me to explain why.

** That's Corbett's theory, and we really have no "proof" it is true except for a bunch of circumstantial evidence.

*** Not really our fault though, and I will stand by that argument until the day I die. Or move out of here.

Part one: Age

2010-01-29T08:59:00.002-05:00

So I haven't written about the current job search because, well, I've gotten a very defeated feeling about the whole thing. I've applied for post-doc positions, as this is my third (and thus final) year here, and I have applied for faculty positions. For the latter, well, there's still a lot of time. But for the former, there's a problem.

Probably 90% of the post-doc positions I have applied for I could not get. The reason for this is my age. Not the number of years I've been alive, but the number of years since I got my PhD. Many institutions (as well as the official rule of the Dept. of Energy, where much of the funding comes from for us) have a policy against hiring someone who is more than five years out of getting his/her PhD. This of course immediately rules me out. As for the other 10%, well, that's just a crap shoot (and hoping that many people take the jobs I can't get to leave these open).

Honestly, the worst part is my interest in teaching. Obviously I want a faculty position due to its (more) permanent nature, but I also just want to teach. So getting a post-doc position is basically in case I don't get a faculty job (which is rather likely), but I would immediately pull out of it if I did. Basically, I'm frustrated because I have always taken getting post-doc offers for granted (my first time around I got three offers, plus two potential offers, and the second time around I got one potential offer and two offers, so I've always been able to choose).

So that's frustration number one right now.

Alarms no more

2010-01-28T09:03:00.002-05:00

So apparently I don't need an alarm anymore to wake up. Usually, my alarm is set to 7:40, I snooze four times (something Corbett just loves*), and get out of bed at 8:20 to start the day. This is what occurred on Monday, but since then things have gotten all messed up.

Tuesday the volume was off (not sure why), and I woke up at 8:20 realizing this. Both yesterday and today apparently I shut off the alarm without snoozing it when it first went off and proceeded to sleep until 8:20. I guess my internal clock is finally set. Only took nearly 33 years.

I've been not all interested in posting as of late, primarily because of not-so-positive things really. One of these days, perhaps even later today depending on how I feel, I may go into all the detail, but I'm just not in the mood this early in the morning.**

---
* Except in all honesty, he usually doesn't hear it anymore.

** It's nothing major, mostly just work-related mumbo jumbo, so really, it's nothing like personal or family health problems or anything...

Need to work on the algorithm here

2010-01-21T16:43:00.003-05:00

I just went to the 'burg's library website and searched for the title "Anything Goes." It did not find this title, but then asked if I meant "Nothing Gobs."

Interested, I had to click on it to search, and sadly it came up with no results. Now, I'm all for these "did you mean" corrections (so long as they don't, as Google often does, automatically search for the "correction"), but if you are going to suggest it, should it not have a result?

How dare she?

2010-01-20T10:23:00.003-05:00

I came into my office this morning all ready to start the day. I get my laptop out, open it and let it connect to the internet (very slowly, mind you, as apparently even the web is sluggish today). I connect my external drive and pull out my lunch. I take from my backpack my bottle of seltzer and put it on my desk, when I notice something missing.

My cup.

I have two items from which I drink. First there's my coffee mug, which I generally use for, well, coffee. Then there's my plastic cup that I obtained two years ago on a drive to New York, when I stopped at a gas station in Delaware for a refreshment and gas. Since it was a fairly sturdy cup I kept it.

Apparently, the cleaning woman decided that it needed to get tossed. Note, it was not dirty (meaning I have only ever drank water from it), and was not on the floor.

I know she was "just doing her job," but as far as I'm concerned, unless it is rotting food, then anything on my desk is not tossable. I mean, I have plenty of things that could be perceived of as garbage (mostly a lot of paper piled up).

Not a happy way for me to start the day...

It takes years to development this lack of caring

2010-01-18T10:13:00.003-05:00

So Dante somehow injured himself yesterday, sometime around noon. All we know is that he couldn't put weight on his front right leg, and was limping. My initial response was mild concern, while Corbett was more worried. I did my fully professional examination of his leg, and saw no cuts, swelling, or other sign of injury. He didn't seem to get hurt if I squeezed it and as far as I can tell it wasn't broken.

So I brushed it off, saying he'd be fine in a few minutes. Well, it lasted much longer than that, so much that when I brought him out four hours later, I had to carry him down the stairs. (And up them.) Corbett was very worried, and I was growing concern until later when midnight came around and he happily limped down the stairs to go out.

This morning he was still limping a little, but he could jump with no problem and was (sort of) bounding about outside. He'll be fine, thankfully, but it's amazing how little I really was worried. I felt terrible because he was clearly in some pain and unhappy, and wanted me to do something, which I couldn't.

If this had happened in the first couple of months when I got him, the story would have been very different. Now, after nearly eight years, I think I need to see a lot of blood to start to really worry.

I guess that's good?

Still a child, part 2

2010-01-15T10:10:00.002-05:00

It's still in my head, the idea of not being fully grown up. Today there were two things that prompted these thoughts:

1) First of all, I have a zit. That's right. I was promised by my parents over fifteen years ago that this was something that would go away once I got older. Well, it hasn't. Okay, fine, I'm not breaking out like a freshman in high school*, but seriously, now. And yes, they don't come very often, but I am past this.

2) Secondly, I still have this urge to run places. Remember being a kid, and never being able to get somewhere fast enough? I wanted to run down the stairs to my car today, and upon arriving on campus, I wanted to run all the way to my office. Walking is just so slow and well, boring. Just wait, sometime in the future, I will be "that professor."

You just wait.

---
* And yes, I do wash my face daily.

Still a child

2010-01-12T09:47:00.003-05:00

I don't think I've ever grown up, fully, and it's sometimes an issue, as I am at that age where, well, many people have (often multiple) kids. That having been said, I do not like the idea of changing, so I will remain immature.

For example, yesterday I went to lunch with people I don't know very well. We split up into two cars, me driving one of them. When we got to the restaurant, one of my passengers said to me, "If we beat them I'll give you creds, as they should have beaten us." This was referring to the fact that they were parked much closer to the building we were in previously, while I was parked rather far.

It is very high schoolish of me to care about this, as generally this means I'm just a reckless driver (no argument there), but it does sadly give me pleasure.

Childish? Yes? Do I really care?

Not really.

Don't rain on my parade

2010-01-08T11:11:00.002-05:00

Every Christmas I drive to Georgia, something bad happens to my car. I don't think someone is trying to tell me something, but let's go with the various times I've gone.

Dec 2007 (two events):
1) Oil leak while at my parents' house
2) Lug nut flies at my car while on I-85 driving home, leaving a perfectly circular hole in my
front bumper.

Dec 2008:
Flat tire while driving home, requiring the purchase of two new front tires.

Dec 2009:
While driving home, a rock hits the windshield, leaving a small crack just three
inches from the crack that I was able to get just a few months ago.

I have gone there one time in the summer, and nothing happened, but the average is 1 event per trip (4 events, 4 trips), and well, I'm worried about what may happen the next time to the poor car.

Bane

2010-01-06T14:50:00.003-05:00

According to the 'burg's website (which is nicely updated and very informative, I must say), our street is supposed to be repaired by the end of this month. I haven't posted about this, even though I feel I should have, but not too long ago, they started work on our street, right next to the apartment complex. This made for some minor inconvenience of having someone direct traffic on the at-the-time-one-lane road. As far as we could tell, all that was happening was that they were digging a rather large hole next to the road. Also, FYI, the road basically is bounded by ravines on either side.

Then came the infamous "November Nor'easter," which dropped 6-10 inches of rain on the area, eroding the nice new hole they dug, and collapsing the road. Thus, they had to shut it down completely, and block our access to that escape route, which is the best way to get basically anywhere but the grocery store here. So now it looks like this:

It has looked like this for a month now, and I feel as though it's going to be several months before it's finished, and I also have this fear that the road itself will completely collapse, and they'll just give up. Maybe that's not the right attitude, but alas...

New digs

2010-01-05T08:54:00.002-05:00

So the move to the new building is almost complete. The only thing I need now is a key to my office (talk about great planning: "We'll move you all over the holidays, but since the campus is closed, no one will be around to give you a key."), and working phones. Andre has a key to the office that he swiped from someone, so we've had access this last week, given us a chance to set things up.

The phone issue is hilarious. Both of our numbers are accessibe through the same jack, but we can't make outgoing calls on either of them, and when it rings when someone calls, we can pick up the receiver, but the phone keeps ringing. So who knows if IT will be out to fix this today or not, but it's rather irritating.

The building itself is pretty gloomy. Not that the other was all that great, I mean, they are renovating it after all, but that was a form of dismal I had become accustomed to over the last two-and-a-half years. It's worse there now, as I went to the old building and it looked like a wasteland. Desolate, and with not everything taken out (some of the furniture in my old office I didn't keep), it looks like the place was evacuated in a panic. Like our own little end-of-the-world movie.

But it's a new year. I have things to worry about now, that I didn't have before, and I have plenty of other things on my mind, which is sure to take over my life any second now. But first, my coffee.

13 hours before 2010

2009-12-31T09:18:00.002-05:00

Ah, the holidays are almost over. I have to say I'm rather excited about that, because although I love seeing family (both the week in LA and the week in GA was great, we basically saw everyone and luckily it didn't involve a lot of travel condensed into a single trip), it is always nice to get things back to "normal."

The sad thing is that we have a temporary building that we are now occupying on campus, and so I get to share an office with my fellow post-doc. The sharing part I don't mind (although I did get quite used to having my own office), but the office itself is pretty dismal. Of course, I wasn't residing in the most spectacular digs before, because it is, after all, a physics department, but there was a coziness that existed in the old place.

The most disconcerting part really is that after I get back from a vacation, I return to a different workplace, had to unpack everything there, it's as if everything is different. Plus, of course, due to the holidays and severe lack of planning on the administration, we don't have working phones, I don't yet have a key, and we also don't have access to the building with keys (and the swipe cards don't really work either). Plus, parking is going to be a bitch.

On a lighter side, I finished my new hat, which I'll have to show a picture of soon. I started this while still in Georgia (my sister was very much creeped out by me, my mom, and C all knitting on the couch together), and finished it last night while watching a bad 1930's movie. Good times.

Epileptic dog

2009-12-16T09:18:00.002-05:00

You know, I have never said that Dante was the most well-trained dog. He is very smart (usually), and often well behaved. Sure he used to go after food like he was a starving child, dig through garbage at my folks' house (my trash has always been under the sink, so he's never dug through our garbage), and when I first got him, would tear up any book, shoe, or CD case he could. But most of that was puppy stuff. When it came to begging, I would have none of it, and he is generally on good behavior when I eat.

Just about two years after he entered my life, I met Corbett. Corbett has been a bit less of a disciplinarian than I have, and for the most part that is fine. You can see it in the way Dante treats him, going up to Corbett and looking adorable, knowing full well that he just needs patience and quite likely Corbett will give in. At dinnertime, Dante stares at Corbett, again with that same patience.

But we hit a new low last night. I do believe in the last five years, Corbett has succeeded in untraining this dog. Dante was to get a treat, so Corbett broke up Pupperoni into several pieces (as giving multiple treats is more fun than giving one), and Dante went completely apeshit. Corbett sat on a chair and Dante began flailing his front paws around (the excitement making him not realize if he should "give five" or "give a high five," and as no command was given, he just did both, over and over, simultaneously. What resulted was what appeared to be either a dog having multiple seizures, or a completely untrained psychotic canine that was so excited he might pee himself.

He's over seven-years-old, and it's like Benjamin Button, he's moving backwards while we all are going forward. In a few years perhaps he'll start teething.

A lot to think about

2009-12-14T13:42:00.002-05:00

I've been sort of in a daze for the last few weeks. A lot of it has to do with the standard stuff. Winter is here, meaning holidays and a lot of travel, and having a lot of work travel right before holiday travel is always mind numbing. But this year there is more in the air.

For one, we are moving out of the physics building into a temporary building, so packing up my office by next week is needed. (They are moving us between Christmas and New Year's, but I will be out of town by Tuesday of next week.) There are a lot of details to manage, and my office is a mess. (My preferred organizational style, much to Corbett's chagrin, is to just pile things on my desk as I use them, so packing means a lot of digging.)

What adds to that, and really is the bulk of it, is the realization that I am leaving this town. In a year from today I will be somewhere else. I don't know where that somewhere else is, but I know it's not here. It's funny because things have popped up in conversations with friends (such as Sonya saying, "Well, next year we can...oh, wait, you won't be here."), and every day passes with another thought crossing my mind about this.

What is most dizzying about this though is that I don't know where I'll be. Applications have been sent out, and nothing is known yet. In January if I am lucky I will get a couple of requests for interviews, and then I'll be able to play the "oh, maybe it'll be there" game. (I don't even want to get into the issues of the two-body problem, that just makes it all worse.)

Ultimately it is again making me numb to everything around, and well, distant. Hopefully the feeling will go away, and definitely a ten-hour drive to Georgia will help with that. I'll at least have something else to think about. I'm sure it will only get worse after the new year.

Disturbing dream

2009-12-08T09:27:00.002-05:00

Last night I had a very odd dream. Actually, I believe it occurred during my "I should be getting up but instead of hitting 'snooze' I turned off the alarm phase," when my strangest (or rather, most memorable) dreams occur.

I was at the grocery store on Thanksgiving here, waiting for a cake that I had ordered. I waited for two hours and after yelling at the woman who was spending more time talking to her friends than on the cakes, I left to come back for it later.* As I was coming into the apartment (no longer on the top floor), the drunk fireman who lives in my building started spitting, and hit me in the head. Now, in real life he does live here and is constantly drinking (luckily, he's a York county fireman, so he wouldn't be coming to our place were there a fire), but he lives one floor below us, not above, as he did here. As he laughed I got extremely angry, and C and I were just getting all riled up.

So we called the police, who happened to be the same two officers we ran into at Blockbuster** and they decided to hang out with us for the holiday, since they had nowhere to go.

The rest is sort of a blur, but I do remember whatever happened, they spent the night (in a separate room you gutter-minded folks, and anyway one of the cops was female, so, ew***). My next memory was of looking at the clock thinking, "Oh crap!"

---
* Apparently, I'm a grouch even in my dreams.

** This only occurred in the dream, we've only run into Andre and Erin at Blockbuster in real life.

*** I mean this in no offense to my female friends.

Positivity

2009-12-04T10:43:00.002-05:00

So yesterday we finished decorating for Christmas. Of course, we will be in Georgia for the actual holiday, but this is the first Christmas we've actually lived together (I know, ridiculous, but it's hard to cohabitate when you live in different states), so we have a tree (fake, courtesy of a former WM prof), ornaments (many from my family from the last dozen or so Christmases, and glass balls from the same aforementioned prof), stockings for the three of us, and lights for the apartment. We still have to put tinsel on the tree (yes, I still like tinsel, even though it's old fashioned and kind of tacky, it's pretty), and wrap lights around the balcony to show our neighbors how festive we really are.

The best part, I will say, about the shopping we did for this was watching C play with the little toy Jack-in-the-boxes. If you ever get a chance to see this...

Marriage rant

2009-12-02T17:41:00.003-05:00

If you haven't already heard, the state senate of New York voted against gay marriage today. I didn't write about this sort of thing much after the Maine debacle, but given the extra joyous hypocrisy of New York (by which I mean they will recognize a gay marriage if it's been performed in another state, just won't allow it there), I feel like I have to just vent some.

I don't have much to say, really. I do, however, have an ever-growing hatred of the people who run this country, as well as many of the inhabitants. I shouldn't hate, I know, however it is more and more difficult to live day by day without these feelings growing. When I hear people say that they "love gay people, but just don't think they should get married," I feel the hatred in their voice (and don't try to tell me it isn't hatred; it is hatred pure and simple).

I think it is sickening that people are easily allowed to oppress others in the name of "God." I think it is disheartening that I am not fully considered a part of C's family (nor he a part of mine) because we are not legally married. It doesn't matter what people say, it matters to everyone in this country whether or not someone is your husband or your boyfriend. It is absurd that I could go marry some random woman that I just met, legally and with all of God's blessing, and the entire world would look at us and say, look at that happy couple. Oh sure, our families would take issue with it at first, but the very notion of being married would force them to overlook it and get used to it, and eventually (given that she wasn't a total psycho), they would grow to love the union.

The only thing that is making me not move out of this country right now is my spite. My spite is keeping me here, so that when gay marriage is fully legalized and all of you fuckers have to accept it, I can sit here and laugh myself to sleep thinking about how you are praying for our souls.

A tribute

2009-12-01T15:25:00.002-05:00

I should work right now, but I feel like writing a tribute. A tribute to something that has been in my life for so long, it deserves nothing less than this. And that is my gray hoodie.

I have had this hoodie since high school, and it's been so long that I can't even recall when I first obtained it. However, it has been with me, through high school, through college (especially during the semester in Rome, where I wore it far more often than I ever washed it and it never let me down), through graduate school, and beyond.

It has been with me in Maine, Texas, Rome, St. Louis, New York, and now the 'burg. I am almost 33 years old and yet I still wear it to work (that's right, I wear hoodies to work--Thank you, Academia). It is absolutely the most comfortable thing I own, and during the summer I yearn for the days where the temperature will drop and I can again put it on. There is a small bleach stain on the front pocket, but do I care? Hell no. It's my hoodie.

Here's to you, the one thing throughout the last two decades of my life that has really been there for me, and here's to at least another two decades together.

Better late than never?

2009-11-29T17:18:00.002-05:00

Funniest e-mail I've received in a while. For those that don't remember, I interviewed for this job in October of 2008 (do the math). I think I figured this out already...

Dear Dr. A,

I would like to inform you that the search committee for the W1 position on computational physics has finished its work. Although you were placed on the short list the faculty decided to offer the position to another candidate first who accepted.

I would like to thank you for your interest once more. Your personal qualifications were regarded highly by our committee and we wish you all the best for your future search. A formal letter about our decision will reach you soon.

Best regards,

Prof. in Bonn

Return from the west

2009-11-29T10:46:00.003-05:00

So it's been a busy couple of weeks. Mostly because of this last week out in LA. We spent just about a week out there, and it was a lot of fun. It was also exhausting, as we saw Corbett's niece and nephew all but the first day there, and at 6 and 8, they are rather energetic. We spent the better half of the week playing the new Super Mario Bros on the Wii, where you can have four players on screen at the same time (which, more often than not, really leads to chaos more than successful completion of a level).

The highlight was the spreading of illness. Dylan, the nephew, got sick and subsequently gave it to Ally (the neice), and to all of us. So we arrived home Friday night (to a very excited Dante who was dropped off at home for us by a wonderful Sonya), passed out and basically laid around all day yesterday. Corbett had a fever of 102, and while I didn't, I wasn't (and still am not) feeling the greatest. Sadly, we had to miss out on a potluck dinner last night at Kostas's house because of it, and hopefully I'll be feeling better by tomorrow.

Put away the bitterness

2009-11-19T09:20:00.002-05:00

I think I come across as too angry at times (re: last post), and sometimes it's with reason (re: last post), but other times I think I let it out when well, I should just relax and let it go. So it's gone (for now), and I am happy to say that I finished my latest project last night, almost. I have been working on this fantastic scarf for a few weeks, and I just finished it. I have to weave all of the ends (there are a lot, I have to say), and I'll do that tonight. I'm just happy because it's probably the coolest thing I've knitted (okay fine, I haven't knit very much)...

So today should be a good day.

Calm down...

2009-11-16T09:02:00.003-05:00

I've been angry for some time now, and it most recently flared after the Prop 1 fiasco in Maine a few weeks back. I should include myself in the blame of course, because I could have done something, anything to help, but I did not. That does not diffuse the anger, just makes it worse. I have not posted about it because whenever it is mentioned, or I think about it, I have to stop everything I'm doing for five minutes and fume. It's not a productive use of time.

I was raised Catholic, and up until I went to college, I really believed in the faith. In college is where I started really understanding what I truly believed and what I made myself believe, and since then I have not referred to myself as being a Christian. Do I believe in God? I don't know. I think it is just as arrogant of us to say for sure there isn't a God as it is to say there is.

When the Catholic church invited disillusioned Anglicans/Episcopalians over to Catholicism if they were angry about allowing female and openly gay priests and bishops, I felt sick. I guess it is often true that the strongest unifying force is often hatred.

Then I wake up this morning and read this on Sarahlynn's blog. I do not want to diminish the first point on abortion she makes, because that is absurd. But the second article she quotes discusses how the Catholic Diocese of DC will cut off services to the homeless in DC if gay marriage is allowed in the capital.

I know that all Catholics and all Christians are not this evil, but in two cases lately now, we have the head of the church actively discriminating and hating others, which is completely against the core values the faith supposedly has. I used to think of myself as being disillusioned with the faith, and more and more I am disgusted with it.

I think I might vomit if I say any more right now.

Drying off

2009-11-13T09:12:00.002-05:00

So the rain has almost stopped. It's drizzling, so it's not exactly a bright and sunny day, but it's infinitely better than the last two days. While we're far enough inland to be safe from the flooding that has happened all over the area, it was kind of miserable. What is hilarious is that everything even in the 'burg was delayed for opening for two hours (schools, and the like), so I wonder, do I go in at noon?

Oh, and just by the way. If you can only think of posting "TGIF" (or even worse, not capitalizing it: "tgif"), or "Yay! The weekend's here!" or something like that, you don't have something worthwhile to post as a status update.

The only thing worse are those people who get "a case of the Mondays"* or give a play by play of their morning:

"Ugh, need my coffee."

"Coffee's brewing."

"Have my coffee, am human again!"

Really, I just cannot handle this. If you are going to post updates regularly, great (more for me to read than work), but be original. It's not hard. Plenty of people do it...

---
* Truth be told, they are usually the same people.

On the edge...

2009-11-12T11:46:00.003-05:00

So the joke's on me: I thought there'd be no more travelling for a while...but nope, we're going to LA next week! This is the beginning of the rest of our lives: Alternating Christmas and Thanksgiving in Georgia and LA, so this year it's T-day in LA and Christmas in the Peach State. The bad part is that our flight leaves Richmond at 6am to go to New York, then from there we have a direct flight to LA. You heard that, right? 6am. Sigh.

And my uncle's wife is god damned moron. No wait, she's an insensitive bitch. Sorry about being so hateful but listen to this. My grandfather (mother's father) went to the hospital yesterday and my mother found out about it because her brother's wife posted it on her Facebook Wall. This is worse than when my father's niece left an answering machine message 12 years ago when his mother passed away. What the hell is wrong with these people?

This combined with applying for jobs, Corbett heading out of town (got up at 4am to bring him to the very same airport we're flying out of next week), and torrential endless rain (started Tuesday night and hasn't stopped yet, and probably won't until tomorrow afternoon) has put me on edge. I feel as though I'm going to snap at any moment and I've got to figure out some programming now.

Son of a bitch.

No more traveling...for now

2009-11-09T10:23:00.003-05:00

Can you tell I'm back in my office? Of course! I'm not working even though I should be. What have I done this morning thus far? Well, I've finished another set of applications, and I have a few more to get through (this is just yet another horrible experience). I've worried about how little I am able to get done, and how I think my recent trip really wasn't a good idea. I mean, really, did I need another talk to be put on my CV? Not really. Did I need to waste two full days of travel for a two-day workshop? No. Did I need to see (well, not see, since I had no free time) Vancouver? No. Did I need the airline miles? Well, sort of.

But no more, for a while anyway. I know at least for a month I am most likely not traveling at all, so I'm psyched. Corbett leaves me for a few days at the end of the week, but this time I'll get to stay home, so I can relax while he deals with the terror of travel. And that's right, a whole weekend where I can do whatever I want!

Yeah, that probably means I'll lie on the couch watching all of the TV Corbett hates to watch :)

And back home

2009-11-07T10:25:00.002-05:00

So I've got over an hour in the Vancouver airport before I head out. This will be a long day of traveling, as I get to fly to Seattle, then Dallas, then Richmond. The only benefit of this journey is that I was able to get an upgrade to first class on the last flight, from DFW to Richmond. Sometimes always flying on the same airline has benefits (even if I really can't stand American at times).

My (short) trip to Vancouver was uneventful. I arrived, and the workshop lasted for two days with eight talks (one of which was mine). It was low key and relaxed, but still was somewhat exhausting. My talk went just fine, but I was very much out of place in the midst of the other talks. In the end I won't complain, but it was a little odd. I think everyone else realized it too, but whatever.

It's always odd going to Canada. I like it, but it's not like going to any other country, because in so many ways it's exactly like the US. All of the (non-political) differences are so minor but noticeable. It feels like a dream, or like an alternate version of the US. I only wish I had a little more time to see the city. This is my second time in Vancouver, and I still haven't made it downtown.

One thing that I realized before coming here is that I have to get more visa pages for my passport! I never even thought I would have to, but I only have like 1 full page left, and four more years before it expires. I'm kind of excited about this, just because it seems like I've won some sort of prize.

Yeah, simple pleasures for simple minds.

9:36

2009-11-03T09:57:00.003-05:00

This last week has been a lot of fun. After returning from Korea, I had a few days of trying to get a lot of work done, before Maggie came to visit. She arrived by train (she's not a fan of flying and this worked out for the best for us, as the train station is literally five minutes from our house while the airports are not...this is relevant for later in the story), and we had a bunch of fun. We did some touristy things, a stroll through the colonial 'burg, the Wmbg Winery (not as bad as one may think, unless that person only buys the Wmbg Wines from Kmart which cost five bucks...their $10 wines are actually tasty), and...oh wait, that's about it.

The bulk of the visit was made up of us teaching Maggie how to knit (she's a natural!), and hanging out knitting (either at home or at Aroma's, a local cafe). It was a lot of fun because it didn't involve a lot of running around. On Halloween we watched a Swedish vampire movie, handed out candy to the four kids that came to the door, and carved pumpkins while enjoying cocktail time. A ton of fun. Now, though, I have to prepare for a talk I've not started which I'm giving Thursday (and leaving for tomorrow morning).

One last thing, though. Her train this morning, she said, was to leave at 10:30am. Perfect! We'll get up, I'll get ready for work, drop her off, vote, and head in to the office. I wake Maggie up at 9am, as she asked (I was already ready, so that I could get a few things done this morning), and around quarter after, right when Corbett was getting up, I hear, "Oh wait! I think the train leaves at Nine thirty!"

So much running around was done to get her ready to leave, and thankfully we made it with five minutes to spare. And I just got into work a tad earlier. All the better to get things done, I guess.

AFN

2009-10-21T21:38:00.002-04:00

I decided to turn on the TV in my room last night, and found AFN. All of you non-military brats may not know that this is the Armed Forces Network, and when I lived in Germany, this was the only English station that existed (as a sidenote, now here there is also BBC and CNN), and more specifically the only station to get American shows. So I watched it for a while. I forgot how much it sucked to be forced to watch whatever they had on (and last night it was the Jay Leno Show and then the Tonight Show, at 9pm and 10pm, and seriously, I am not a fan of late-night talk shows, they just are not funny).

But what really made me laugh were the commericals. There are no commercials for products, they are merely commericals on how to make your life better while you are stationed here in Korea. The sad thing is that it is so low budget, it is like watching television in the 70's. Well, for me, it just reminded me of the 80's, and I remember seeing commercials on how to drive on the German roads (the main issue was the fact that when the light is still red but about to turn green, the yellow light turns on while the light is still read, implying that soon it'll be green and you must prepare to go...Americans really had to be taught this, as if they couldn't figure it out from driving around for a bit).

Fresh air

2009-10-20T21:20:00.003-04:00

I was listening to Fresh Air on my iPod on my way into the dept today, and realized something. What is it about NPR that makes not just the hosts but the guests speak in that soft, put-you-to-sleep voice? Jason Segal was on, and he was talking in such a soothing voice I almost nodded off while walking up the endless hill on my way in, thereby falling into the street and being hit by a Hyundai model city bus. What a way to go that would be...

1 down...

2009-10-19T04:03:00.002-04:00

I just finished the first of the five lectures today. It went very well, with minimal interruption, even though it was insisted that I only do one hour today because I am supposedly "very tired" from my trip. I'm not tired. I would like to make sure that there is not a repeat of last year, where on Friday we had a five-hour lecture (with a quick break for dinner) to make sure we covered everything. But that's not as big a deal.

Up at 4am

2009-10-18T17:54:00.003-04:00

I just got into Seoul last night, making it to my hotel by 8pm or so. The travel time was around 26 hours if you include getting to the airport in Richmond and getting to my hotel last night, so it was exhausting. Nevermind the fact that I lost a day, leaving Virginia at 7am Saturday and all of a sudden it's Sunday night.

But I stayed up for a couple of hours, and went to sleep at 10, hoping that I could sleep a ton until my alarm went off at 8. No such luck. I was awake at 4. I read for a while before finally giving up and just getting up. I seem to recall this happening last year as well, so I'll just get used to it. I know I'll be fine for my lecture today since it is (most likely) in the morning, and I'll definitely make it through the day.

The cab ride from the airport though is what I want to discuss. I felt like I was in a video game. The driver had a GPS in the car, so it was graphically displaying where we were. It also measured (or displayed after getting it from the car) the speed we were traveling. This is all well and good, but it kept making blinging noises, and at one point, I saw we were accelerating. Once the car hit 100 km/h, the GPS went crazy and I felt like we just got a bonus and have moved up a level. It was rather distracting and the entire hour-long ride, I was fixated on it.

Incidentally I am not sure why the driver had the GPS. He didn't use it to find the hotel, he had a crumpled piece of paper that had directions on it. At least I assume that was the case because a) the GPS never indicated where he was supposed to go and b) every ten minutes he'd turn on the inside light and look at this piece of paper.

Two more hours until breakfast.

Close call

2009-10-12T10:16:00.002-04:00

As I was driving in this morning, a student nearly hit my car. The whole thing happened really fast, and yet in slow motion. It was both terrifying and yet not at all, considering the speeds involved were around 10 mph. I was pulling into campus, on a one-way road with angled parking and she started backing out. And she kept backing out, as I went by and by the time I noticed that she was even coming out, I couldn't stop or she would have hit me. So I laid on my horn and the gas. Given my little Hyundai, the gas did little more than add a couple of miles per hour, but it was enough. That combined with her finally noticing and braking (with rather slow reflexes I might add) was sufficient to prevent the accident.

Of course, if only she had hit me, I could have gotten the passenger door fixed, which would get rid of the unsightly scratch that has been on there since the day after I got the damn car two years ago, when some douche in NYC damaged it while parked on the street. I shouldn't have accelerated...

Scarf

2009-10-06T10:21:00.001-04:00

Corbett kind of wants to knit this:

I think it looks like something is trying to eat this poor woman.

We must all be up!

2009-10-05T09:47:00.002-04:00

I'm sure I've mentioned this to plenty of people before, but I just have to go into it again. Dante has this strong desire in the morning for all of us to be awake. Generally I get up to my alarm (after three, four, or five hits of the snooze button), to which Dante responds with much joy and excitement. ("We get to go out! We get to go out! I really have to pee!")

When we return from our walk, I give him his breakfast and he sometimes will eat it right away, sometimes not. Many times he goes back to the bedroom and looks at Corbett, and wonders why he's not getting up. He'll often get up on the bed and forcefully (read: with his tongue) get Corbett awake. This is generally when the nuzzling occurs, if it's going to.

The best is when he gets as excited as he did this morning. I was in the office, and saw Dante bolt out of the bedroom and spin around, wagging his tail very exuberantly. After a couple of seconds he ran to the kitchen, again spun around, still wagging his tail. Corbett was getting up. Finally he ran into the kitchen supposedly to eat, since he sometimes will not eat until we're all up. But this morning was special.

See, there are times when Corbett likes to get Dante to eat by either hand-feeding him, or more recently, by throwing Dante's food, one morsel at a time, into the living room. This gets Dante worked up and he runs to grab every piece. This morning, Dante clearly wanted to play this game because he'd run into the kitchen, then dart out and look at Corbett. The look said, "C'mon, we have to play the food game this morning." Corbett of course obliged, and it was adorable, as always. I wish I had pictures.

Fame!

2009-09-28T11:34:00.002-04:00

Corbett's mother was visiting last week, so much of the time was spent touring around the area. She had been here before, and had seen most of the colonial 'burg itself, so we had to figure out what to do this time. Since her flight arrived late Tuesday night and at a different airport due to a missed connection, she had no luggage, so the first stop was at WalMart (sadly I had to go into this place for the first time in years, but alas, nothing else was open at this hour...I will be happy to say that I did not purchase anything). Wednesday was low key; I worked and they shopped in case her luggage didn't make it (which it did).

The touristy things we did though were Jamestown and Yorktown, which I find entertaining, so I was happy to do those again (and it's free for us residents). Other than that it was mostly relaxed visiting time. We rented Tropic Thunder (first half of the movie: awesome, second half of the movie, it got really horrible), and watched several movies we own (Connie and Carla, Wall-E), and went to see Fame! at the theater on Saturday (it was good, but not spectacular).

So for the most part the visit was relaxing, even if sleep was lost for much of it. She left yesterday very early in the morning, and I slept in. The whole day was one of decompressing, which always must happen when a visitor leaves, as you well know.

Heart Attack

2009-09-21T10:15:00.002-04:00

What better way to start off a Monday morning than to give your sister a heart attack? There is none.

I've been collecting CDs of French lessons for my sister, and will burn them to a CD to send to her, and I would like to put them on a DVD so I had to make sure her computer had a DVD drive. Email is sometimes too slow for my tastes, and so I planned to call her yesterday (and well, it'd been a while since I talked to her). Things got in the way of that though, so I did not call her. Instead I called her at work this morning. Apparently, when you never call someone at her work and are a family member, I think there's a panic that sets it, and for the first few "How are you?"s, she had that sound in her voice of "What the hell is wrong?!?"

Now I get to continue with my day.

Dog bed

2009-09-17T12:04:00.002-04:00

Hopefully tonight or tomorrow I will finish my dog bed for Dante. I have tried to describe it to several people to no avail, and so it just has to be finished before I can show everyone what it'll look like. I may have to do some modifications to the pattern, as I'm not sure the bottom of it will be cushy enough for my baby, but that'll be determined after finishing tonight's work. If Dante likes it as is, I will do no more for him. If he seems to not like it, I'll do the modification.

Then back to my socks!

Psych

2009-09-16T10:25:00.002-04:00

Corbett has often mentioned that I tend to like stupid, gimmicky detective shows. I don't mean Law & Order (I actually actively dislike that show, much to my parents' chagrin), or "real" detective shows. I mean more along the lines of quirky comedies, such as Psych (or the recently cancelled Pushing Daisies), where there's a murder and then wackiness ensues while trying to solve it. In the case of Psych, the main character pretends to have psychic ability and works for the Santa Barbara police department, helping them solve murders (in a very Scooby Doo-like manner). The show is ridiculous and absurd, and I am completely in love with it.

But, I am not alone (of course I'm not, it's in the third season), as Andre and Erin also enjoy this show. They were over a few weeks ago on a Friday night and so we all watched the new episode together. Now, Corbett will watch it and laugh at some parts, but really he'd just as soon not watch it. It was great having two people actively enjoying the show with me, so they came over last night to watch the most recent episode. Corbett now really doesn't mind watching anything since he can knit while doing so, and I just loved having two other people there to laugh when I laughed, and to get giddy when I got giddy.

In other exciting news: Corbett finished his first afghan, and it looks awesome! Too bad it's not cold yet, or it could be used. Right now it just makes a perfect complement to the futon in the office.

Good weekend, good food

2009-09-07T13:14:00.003-04:00

We had two great new restaurant experiences. Corbett accidentally stumbled upon another German restaurant down in Newport News, called "Deutsche Ecke." So we tried it the other night, and it was delicious! Far superior to Das Wald Cafe, also in NN, and much closer than Eckhardt's, which is like an hour away. The place was empty though, and so we must go as often as possible to make sure they stick around :)

Then last night, we went with Andre and Erin to the new Vietnamese restaurant in the 'burg here. It's called Saigon Pearl and just opened last night. Also, delicious! The other Vietnamese restaurant here is disgusting, so this is a new favorite place to go.

The rest of the weekend has been sucked up with knitting (lots of knitting), bad movies (such as Step Up 2: The Streets), and miniature golf (at Pirate's Cove...that was our date night, since it was just the two of us having dinner and then playing golf). Now it's a rainy Labor Day, and we must go shopping.

People should mind their own business

2009-09-03T14:19:00.002-04:00

Several times a week, I feel as though I have an interaction with someone I do not know that makes me think, "Mind your own business." Usually I do not say this, and I come up with other great comebacks after the fact. Sometimes these people butt in out of (what they think is) kindness, and other times it's just because they can't stay out of other peoples' lives.

Case 1: Yesterday I was biking home and stopped off at the library. I had a DVD to return, so I leaned my bike up against an outside wall so I could run in, drop it off, and head out. No need to lock it up. As I was walking away, a lady said to me, "Are you just dropping something off or are you staying a while?" I think she was implying, "It's not safe to just leave your bike there unattended, you naive little man." I wanted to just say, "Mind your own business," but I mumbled something about how I wouldn't leave it unlocked for more than a second and moved on. But seriously, if I wanted to just leave my bike there for four hours, it would be my fault if it were stolen. Why does she have anything to do with it?

Case 2: (This didn't happen to me, but still angers me.) Last week Corbett was walking Dante outside and Dante was doing his business on a tree. A grumpy old man yelled at him, saying that it was unsanitary that Dante was peeing on a tree. I don't recall Corbett's reaction, but um, how is anything outside sanitary? It's outside! I would also liked to have said, "You're lucky we pick up after him when he poops, unlike most everyone else here, so shut the hell up!" I wouldn't have, but it would have felt good.

These are just a couple of examples. I would come up with more, but I really should work. And I'm sure I am going to.

Don't stop believin'

2009-08-31T10:01:00.002-04:00

There is a lot on my mind today, and of course none of it is very exciting.

First, we went for a 25-mile bike ride yesterday. It wasn't straight through, however. We biked (the long way, adding five miles) to Chris and Sonya's house and chilled there for a few hours. Cashews, pudding, and egg salad sandwiches were eaten, and much fun was had. The ride home started out tough because of the long break taken.

It's raining today and I have a doctor's appointment today (recall), so I drove into campus. And yes, the students are back, and I remember the most important rule here: Never drive to campus at ten-to-the-hour. All the students are leaving classes and rushing to their next ones. I have to remember this to force me to bike in more often. Ugh.

I am a fan of the new show Glee, which is re-airing its pilot on Wednesday, and begins the "real first episode" next week. It is about a high school glee club, so there is much singing and the humor of the show is very reminiscent of Arrested Development, so it's kind of my perfect show. In it, they have covered Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'", and it's pretty awesome. I only bring this up because I was just listening to their version on my iPod, and I did so by going through my songs alphabetically, and I realized something: There are a hell of a lot of songs with "Don't" as the first word. I have around fifty in my collection alone. Not very interesting, but come on, it's Monday morning. That's the best you'll get.

Watch out

2009-08-27T15:21:00.002-04:00

Debugging code is always fun. Well, by "fun," I mean "not fun." As anyone who does this regularly knows, writing a new code or editting old code can very rarely work perfectly on the first try. Usually though, there are millions of little bugs here and there that just make it a big pain.

So I try to avoid writing code if I can help it. Being in a highly numerical field, this is a challenge, but I've gotten pretty good at avoiding many things in my life. Right now though, the code I'm working on is rather frustrating, especially because I have no real clue what I'm doing. Additionally, I'm not sure how useful it will be, and so I could just be wasting my time.

Why do I talk about this? Well, I just spent the last half hour trying to find why my code was failing. Turns out that when I wrote some new code to replace the old, I did not erase the old. But since I wasn't paying any attention, the code failed over and over again while I kept trying to pinpoint the error. Now it runs but still doesn't work.

Can you tell it's not the most productive day?

Not a rant

2009-08-25T09:59:00.002-04:00

I was writing a long rant about dog haters but I shortened it. Suffice to say, if you are one of those people who hate dogs or are afraid of them, then do us dog owners a favor. We will be corteous and not send our dogs to attack you if, when you are sitting on the steps in front of the entrance to my building wasting your life away, please get off your ass so I can get through with my dog instead of getting angry that my dog is getting near you. Just so you know, we cannot tunnel through you, and if you are blocking the door, then the dog is going to get near you.

See, a short rant.

Knit-ernet

2009-08-24T00:44:00.003-04:00

The only thing worse than becoming obsessed with knitting is the existence of the internet. I have, however, discovered many exciting things and now have at least five projects lined up for the near future.

Hopefully the scarf I'm working on now will be done soon, although I will have to start limiting myself. We have sometimes forgotten that it's time to eat, and although we usually eat late, dinnertime has recently become closer to ten than ever before.