The Odyssey

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:48:30 GMT

I still exist... sort of.

Productive/Unproductive

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:30:32 GMT

In the past 24 hours, I have made a blown glass vase, replaced the bearing cartridges in my bike, learned to play arpeggiated fifth harmony on the harp, and taught undergraduates how to read phylogenetic trees. After all that, I failed to add soap to my laundry.

Pool People

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:47:03 GMT

To the girl with the cleavage tattoo:
That tattoo may (although I sincerely doubt it) made your cleavage look awesome in your senior prom dress, or whatever evening wear you usually wear. But the rest of the time, especially in the swimming pool, it makes you look pretty tacky.

To the couple in the next lane:
Couples shouldn't try to teach each other skills. I have been down that road, and it never ends well. College girl, you are a beautiful and talented swimmer. If you really love him, you'll buy him swim lessons rather than trying to teach him. Then you can spend your time together actually enjoying each other, rather than fighting about whether or not he's breathing at the right time.

To the extremely pregnant lady in the bikini:
You look (and smell) like a dirty Eugene hippie. You probably believe in water birth. You look ready to pop. Please do not do it during my morning lap swim.

To the extremely muscular man with the fake tan:
You do not belong in my lane. I am swimming in the lane marked "Fast". You are not a fast swimmer and I don't want to share my lane with you. You may, on occasion, use your superior muscle mass to pass me while I'm using the kick board. But you have no endurance, you cannot complete a flip turn, and you're pushing yourself through the water with brute force rather than swimming. You are splashing excessively and annoying me. Yes, I am a girl, and yes, I have noticed you have a problem with this. Please put your dick back into your speedo and move to a different lane.

To my swim cap:
Please stop sliding off of my head. Backstroke is my best stroke and your constant defection from your job is seriously throwing off my groove. I will replace you if needed.

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:18:11 GMT

When I rise out of my bed and take in the first air of the day at my door, I can smell the sea. And when I smell the sea, I also see it, in my eyes, and in the eyes of my mind. When I feel the waves lift my boat, I feel in my bones the pulse of the tide and I know that my heart and soul shall not be at peace with each other until I am once again afloat like a prayer on the swell of the waves.

-Frank Delaney, Ireland

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:56:29 GMT

When I'm happy, I never write in my journal because I'm too busy being happy. When I'm annoyed, or angry, or stressed, I often find time to write. I'm not actually always annoyed, I just think I write most in my journal when I'm annoyed.
But for the past couple of months, I've just been sad. And I'm spending all of my energy pretending to everyone that I'm not actually sad. The good part of that is that my life has pretty much carried on as normal, and my relationship with my boyfriend is fine, and I'm becoming great friends with my new roommates, and my students last quarter and this quarter think I'm great, and I went to holiday parties, and I'm a "visiting member" of the Eugene roller derby league this quarter, I'm giving an invited talk to the honors college this quarter, I'm on the Graduate School Advisory Board...

etc.

After all of that social time (which isn't actually that many hours of any week) I'm just so tired from not being sad in front of everyone. No wonder depressed people are so depressing; it takes so much energy to be anything else. I haven't gotten anything done for my thesis in god knows how long. My thesis makes me sad. Tegula are now Chlorostoma and that makes me sad. The news makes me sad. The economy makes me sad. The environment makes me sad. I've even started letting the dog sleep on the bed because I can't stand the sad face she makes at me if I don't let her. My boyfriend doesn't want to cat sit for Aeneas anymore because he cries all the time when I'm not there, and that kind of makes me sad too.

I would really like to spend all of my time sleeping. When I can't be sleeping, I want to be doing something that isn't going to make me sad. I can't think of what that is right now, but I sure would like to do it.

I don't think I'm actually depressed, since I seem pretty much normal to everybody else, and I think if I was really depressed, I wouldn't actually be able to hide it.

So... I don't know. Which is pretty much what I say these days.

Maybe I'll be posting more soon, something of a grander nature.

Again...

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:18:03 GMT

...I dreamt of a child.

I hate stats today

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:41:24 GMT

I spend all yesterday and today up to my ears in statistics. Now I'm staring at a long series of P values for all kinds of dependent and independent parameters, and there seems to be no pattern to it. For instance, there's a significant difference between populations in the north and south when I look only at exposed populations, but none of the egg densities come out significantly different.

Obviously, all of the statistical significance in the world won't help me if I don't know what it means.

I just want enough results to send off my stupid abstract to WSN by tomorrow...

September Books

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:20:19 GMT

Fiction
Tin Princess; Phillip Pullman
The Opal Deception; Eoin Colfer [Audiobook]
Bridge to Terabithia; Katherine Paterson [Audiobook]
Blight Way; Patrick McManus [Audiobook]
Alentejo Blue; Monica Ali [Audiobook]
Carnivorous Carnival; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
The Snake, The Crocodile, and the Dog; Elizabeth Peters [Audiobook]
Slaughterhouse-Five; Kurt Vonnegut [Audiobook]
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove; Christopher Moore
Lost in a Good Book; Jasper Fforde [Audiobook]
Scarecrow and His Servant; Phillip Pullman [Audiobook]
Anne's House of Dreams; L.M. Montgomery
Talk Talk; T.C. Boyle [Audiobook]
101 Dalmatians; Dodie Smith [Audiobook]
The Slippery Slope; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
Dead Until Dark; Charlaine Harris [Audiobook]
Anne of Ingleside; L.M. Montgomery
The Lost Colony; Eoin Colfer [Audiobook]
The Great Fire; Shirley Hazzard [Audiobook]
Well of Lost Plots; Jasper Fforde [Audiobook]
As I Lay Dying; William Faulkner [Audiobook]

Non-Fiction
The Downhill Lie; Carl Hiassen
I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers; Tim Madigan [Audiobook]
Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash; Charles R. Morris
The Empress of Victoria; Godfrey Holloway
Texas Childhood; Evelyn Miller Crowell
Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease: Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince [Audiobook]
Conservatives Without Conscience; John W. Dean [Audiobook]
How to Pick a Peach: The Search For Flavor From Farm to Table; Russ Parsons
Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails With America's Hoboes; Ted Conover

Buried in Statistics

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:11:57 GMT

After 2 years in the same house (the longest I've lived any place in 10 years) I'm going to be moving again in December. I'm not sure to where, or if I'll find a place before Christmas vacation or after, and how I'm going to find a place for 10 weeks that will allow the dog.
Winter quarter sucks.
I've already started to obsessively ditch my stuff. I've already gotten rid of 2.5 boxes of stuff, which is really only a small dent in the amount of crap I've got.
Some things are pretty hard to decide on. I've got a couple pieces of glass that I've blown, a plate and a couple of bowls. They're not really of the quality of stuff that I've given away as gifts, but they're nice enough so I don't want to just throw them out. These are the kinds of problems I let bother me when I can't think about statistics, or my data, or my upcoming committee meeting, or how I'm never going to graduate, much less get a job.

My most recent pet peeve: A fundamental assumption of performing an ANCOVA to compare regression lines it that the slopes are equal (statistically insignificant differences between them). However, every statistics program I know of just tests the differences in regression coefficient without testing the slopes. Not only that, they don't even have the option to test equality of slopes. So how many people less fastidious than I am have run ANCOVA's when they should have run a different test? Not that I haven't accidentally misused statistics, I'm sure, but that kind of pisses me off.

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:05:05 GMT

It's not that I hate my country, but it is just a little ironic that my birthday is Patriot Day.

August Books

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:00:47 GMT

Non-Fiction
Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing; Lee Server
Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity; Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King [Audiobook]
The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family; Martha Raddatz [Audiobook]
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation; Lynne Truss
Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World; Margaret MacMillan [Audiobook]
Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement; John Brockman (ed)
Death By Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries; Neil de Grasse Tyson [Audiobook]
Don't Know Much About Mythology; Kenneth C. Davis [Audiobook]
The Places In Between; Rory Stewart [Audiobook]

Fiction
Call of the Wild; Jack London [Audiobook]
Because of Winn-Dixie; Kate DiCamillo [Audiobook]
Anne of Windy Poplars; L.M. Montgomery
The Last Hero; Terry Pratchett
Mrs. Dalloway; Virginia Woolf [Audiobook]
The Fountainhead; Ayn Rand [Audiobook]
The Last Camel Died at Noon; Elizabeth Peters [Audiobook]
Abide With Me; Elizabeth Strout
The Keep; Jennifer Egan [Audiobook]
100 Cupboards; N.D. Wilson [Audiobook]
The Hostile Hospital; lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
The Eyre Affair; Jasper Fforde [Audiobook]
The Blind Assassin; Margaret Atwood [Audiobook]
The Fourth Bear; Jasper Fforde [Audiobook]
This Body The Earth; Paul Green

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:39:46 GMT

I'm all for women in government, and I dig the sexy librarian look, but anybody who picks names like that for their children deserves to be shot.

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:37:20 GMT

In terms of my running, Hood to Coast was a disaster. But I did it! And my team was certifiably awesome. It was a good time, much fun had by all. Except the dog, who wasn't allowed to come along on any of the running or the after party. Poor pup.

In other news, I have gotten the worst, most time-intensive (twice as much time as anyone else) TA position two semesters in a row. I'm a little peeved about that. If I have to TA Invert Zoo again in the spring, I am going to throw an unholy fit. This fall I'll be TA'ing Marine Molecular Biology, with the intent that I might learn a few techniques that will help me out in the winter quarter, when I start my genetics work. Too bad MMB doesn't actually involve any genetics.

More fun times were had camping in northern California with J, on a mad snail collecting trip/whirlwind tour of the coast, Coos Bay to Fort Bragg. I love the Lost Coast area most of all. I find myself continually blown away by how beautiful it is there, and I convince myself that's where I want to live. Then I get home and realize that I already live in one of the most beautiful places in the world- in fact, it's much like the Lost Coast, only with internet. So...

... speaking of staying put in beautiful Coos County, I'm thinking about applying for a grant to fund me for a postdoc that would keep me here at OIMB. I'm not sure I want to stay in Coos Bay, but the work would be great and perhaps give me the chance to get a step up that I'm not going to get from my completed thesis. I still have to talk to my committee, as it is probably a bit premature for me to be thinking about postdocs. But if you're going to write your own postdoc grant, it's a long process and I don't want to be up shit creek when I finish. Our program has a bit of a history of pumping out graduate students a bit unprepared, like the babies of a teenage welfare crack whore. I'd prefer to not get stuck in that trap if I can avoid it.

Off to bed with me. Tomorrow is a big day of statistics, meetings, and image analysis and I'd hate to miss it.

July Books

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:46:49 GMT

Non-Fiction
Prairie Keepers: Secrets of the Grasslands; Marcy Houle
The Old Way: A Story of the First People; Elizabeth Marshall Thomas [Audiobook]
Infidel: Ayaan Hirsi Ali [Audiobook]
A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash; Sylvia Nassar [Audiobook]
Grace, Eventually: Thoughts on Faith; Anne Lamott [Audiobook]
The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery; D.T. Max [Audiobook]
The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda; Paul David Wellstone
On Liberty; John Stuart Mill [Audiobook]
Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present ; Michael B. Oren [Audiobook]

Fiction
The Shadow in the North; Phillip Pullman [Audiobook]
The Futurist; James P. Othmer [Audiobook]
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident; Eoin Colfer [Audiobook]
The Mummy Case; Elizabeth Peters [Audiobook]
Boomsday; Christopher Buckley [Audiobook]
The Miserable Mill; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
The Emperor's Children; Claire Messud [Audiobook]
War of the Worlds; H.G. Wells [Audiobook]
Lion in the Valley; Elizabeth Peters [Audiobook]
The Last Continent; Terry Pratchett
The Tiger in the Well; Phillip Pullman [Audiobook]
The Austere Academy; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
The Ersatz Elevator; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
A Fine Balance; Rohinton Minstry [Audiobook]
The Red Tent; Anita Diamant [Audiobook]
Deeds of the Disturber; Elizabeth Peters [Audiobook]
The People's Act of Love; James Meek
The Big Over-Easy: A Nursery Crime; Jasper Fforde [Audiobook]
The Eternity Code; Eoin Colfer [Audiobook]
The Vile Village; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]

Why is it that...

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:09:28 GMT

I never feel as lonely as I do at a party?

Makes work look surprisingly good

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:40:09 GMT

I pulled a muscle in my neck, which has more or less kept me immobilized in bed for the bulk of today. I am very bored. I think I've probably burned fewer calories today than most any other day in the past several years (unless being in pain burns calories, but I don't think so). Rarely have I spent so many consecutive hours in bed.
Even reading was a bit of a stretch, since the pain is all the way into my shoulders and holding up the book turned out to be painful. I realized that listening to audiobooks while doing nothing else (driving, working, walking the dog, etc) is insanely dull and I can't do it. It's only been in the past few hours I've been able to sit at the computer for more than a minute or two.
I hope I'm all healed by tomorrow, or I am going to go crazy.
Apparently I'm not someone who is very self-reflective and I have a severe aversion to being left alone with my own thoughts.
And how the hell am I going to get to sleep tonight after spending all day in bed?????

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:15:47 GMT

I'm not sure if it's rewarding or depressing to drive 4 hours (round trip) to my field site, complete my field work, grab a quick breakfast at the local coffee shop, and when I stop by my house for clean clothes before heading into the lab, my roommates aren't even awake yet.

And now I have to finish reading one of Paul Dayton's monstrous monographs, a paper I've been about halfway through for about 2 weeks. Despite all of the hero worship he gets from (soon to be former) student(s) at OIMB and many other people in the field, I just don't see what all the hype is about and I find much of his work to be terminally boring.
And there's that part about him being a total dick to my labmates and I during his last visit, and much as I try to not associate personalities and science, that doesn't predispose me to like his work much.

I am so tired and seem to be perpetually running on empty.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:13:56 GMT

And another note about the new roommate: before she moved in, she asked if it would be okay if she brought her boyfriend down with her for a couple of days, to help her move in. I said, obviously, no big deal, since my boyfriend and the third roommate's boyfriend are long-distance as well and generally stay a few days at a time.
To date, her boyfriend has been living with us for two weeks. I have probably exchanged ten words with him this entire time, since he hides in her room when she's away. He seems like a nice enough person, but two petty things are really annoying me about him.
1) He plays too rough with my dog. Selkie is an overly energetic dog and doesn't know when to quit, but last week when he was wrestling with her she was limping for days afterwards. I certainly don't mean to imply that he's intentionally hurting my dog (if that were the case, obviously he would have been kicked out of the house immediately), just that he doesn't understand her limits.
2) He seems to be incapable of reading the instructions for the recycling. They're pretty standard- no lids, no plastic tubs, no envelopes with plastic windows, etc. But every few days I'm having to sort through all the recycling to pick out stuff he's thrown in.

I know that these things are not, even when taken together, a big deal. But paired with the fact that she's got what I find to be disgusting fridge habits and pet crickets (loud enough to hear downstairs, but not in my room, thank goodness)- and did I mention she failed my class?- and me being at the end of my rope, I'm finding it hard not to say anything.

Okay, I'm done. Now I'm really going to bed.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:54:57 GMT

I swear, as soon as I get my life a little bit more together, I'll make a more interesting post.

In other news, my newest roommate (an undergraduate who failed my class and my labmate's class last quarter: awkward!) is cooking something with a ton of garlic at ten at night. Because my room is upstairs, my room is inundated with the smell. It's a bit overwhelming.

Anyway, I have to get up at 5 AM and 2AM the next two mornings, respectively, so I'm heading to bed.

April, May, June Books- Field Season means lots of Audiobooks

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:52:05 GMT

Non-Fiction
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy; Barbara Ehrenreich [Audiobook]
Uncommon Carriers; John McPhee [Audiobook]
The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter; Peter Singer and Jim Mason
Chew on This: Everything you Don't Want to Know About Food; Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson
Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History; John Patrick Diggins [Audiobook]
Einstein: His Life and Universe; Walter Isaacson [Audiobook]
The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?; Leslie Bennetts [Audiobook]
The Kabal Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil; Deborah Rodriguez [Audiobook]
What Paul Meant; Garry Wills [Audiobook]
Red Tails in Love: A Wildlife Drama in Central Park; Marie Winn
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly; Anthony Bourdain

Fiction
Nobody's Angel; Thomas McGuane
Anne of Avonlea; L.M. Montgomery [Audiobook]
Native Son; Richard A. Wright [Audiobook]
You Suck; Christopher Moore [Audiobook]
Ulysses; James Joyce [Audiobook]
Eric; Terry Pratchett [Audiobook]
We Need to Talk About Kevin; Lionel Shriver [Audiobook]
Against the Day; Thomas Pynchon [Audiobook]
Ruby in the Smoke; Phillip Pullman [Audiobook]
Ragtime; E.L. Doctorow
Charlotte's Web; E.B. White [Audiobook]
The Bad Beginning; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
The Foreign Correspondent; Alan Furst [Audiobook]
Lost and Found; Carolyn Parkhurst [Audiobook]
In the Country of Men; Hisham Matar [Audiobook]
The Dragon Prince; Melanie Rawn
Three to Get Deadly; Janet Evanovitch [Audiobook]
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; Amos Tutuola
The Reptile Room; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
Artemis Fowl; Eoin Colfer [Audiobook]
One Good Turn; Kate Atkinson [Audiobook]
Frankenstein; Mary W. Shelly [Audiobook]
Winnie the Pooh; A.A. Milne [Audiobook]
Anne of the Island; L.M. Montgomery [Audiobook]
House at Pooh Corner; A.A. Milne [Audiobook]
The Guy Not Taken: Stories; Jennifer Weiner [Audiobook]
Interesting Times; Terry Pratchett [Audiobook]
The Awakening; Kate Chopin [Audiobook]
Curse of the Pharaohs; Elizabeth Peters [Audiobook]
Ethan Frome; Edith Wharton [Audiobook]
Four to Score; Janet Evanovitch [Audiobook]
The Wide Windown; Lemony Snicket [Audiobook]
Love to Water My Soul; Jane Kirkpatrick
Virgin Suicides; Jeffery Eugenides [Audiobook]
Lolita; Vladimir Nabakov [Audiobook]
Palm-Wine Drinkard; Amos Tutuola

Mon, 12 May 2008 05:05:29 GMT

I'm going to the Bahamas!
I'll try to update from the ship, especially after my deep sea dive, but I guess our Internet is sporadic so we'll see what I can do.

Hurrah!

Today's lesson learned

Sat, 10 May 2008 16:22:03 GMT

Never let a cranky roommate cut your hair.

March Books

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:56:26 GMT

Non-Fiction
Dry; Augusten Burroughs [Audiobook]
Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know- And Doesn't; Stephen Prothero [Audiobook]
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable; Nassim Nicholas "I'm so much better than everyone else" Taleb [Audiobook]
The Glass Castle; Jeannette Walls [Audiobook]
Uppity Women of Medieval Times; Vicki Leon
Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, And the Legacy of Vietnam; Tom Bissell [Audiobook]

Fiction
Heyday; Kurt Andersen [Audiobook]
The Light Fantastic; Terry Pratchett
Yiddish Policeman's Union; Michael Chabon [Audiobook]
Sorcery; Terry Pratchett [Audiobook]
On Chesil Beach; Ian McEwan [Audiobook]
A Sweetness to the Soul; Jane Kirkpatrick
Finn; Jon Clinch [Audiobook]

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:28:04 GMT

Turns out the dog doesn't have ennui, she was just tired.

What a week

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:45:54 GMT

Sprained my knee, lost my cellphone, I am going to the Bahamas, and I officially registered my roller derby name. Also, my dog has developed ennui.