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May 31, 2006
minty fresh
“I like my men with a hint of mint.”
Have I mentioned this is how I would start my autobiography of my early twenties.
I always liked my men a little minty. There was the one guy with the purple couch and white roses (tulips) scattered about his apartment. No, they were not for me. He saw them at whole foods and had to get them. We would go out dancing at clubs underground (really, underground). He cooked, and we would cuddle. He liked to talk about his feelings. He called.
The other guy also cooked, but they were his mother’s recipes. He had old records on his walls. We would talk for hours. We would go out for dessert. One summer, he got a spikey hair haircut and bleached his tip. He e-mailed me a picture. He like to gossip.
The first guy – very straight.
The second – quite gay.
Posted by christina at 4:24 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
baby, i've got to catch a plane / leave without a trace
This is seriously how I feel about my research today – that it is slowness that eventually hits as wall.
Yesterday’s comments on women with child got me thinking about working and having children. The May Oprah magazine I found on a plane has an extensive story on mothers – including working mothers. It seems that people without children (or young children) don’t understand those (especially women) with young children. People complain about mothers not working late. This was a topic conversation years a go on the group blog. A girl who works in a process control engineering position complained on the blog about her co-worker who left at “quitting time” for her kids. The grumbler, I believe, is pregnant now. I wonder how her opinion has changed or will change.
People in the story also complained about people leaving for family stuff. I believe in flextime, at least for people like me. I am goal orientation, motivated, and self-disciplined. Most people, I have found in my small experience, are not like this. In my narrow experience, there seem to be people who need a “boss” breathing down their neck, setting deadlines, and requiring them to show up for work. I’ve been irritated by these people in my life, so I can identify with those people who complain about flextimers if the flextimers don’t do their work. It is a juggling act. I do not fear that I won’t be able to handle it, but fear having to deal with those that do.
Posted by christina at 4:31 PM | Comments (1)
May 25, 2006
lock your devils up
Today I participated in our department’s senior symposium. It happens every May. Because the class before me has be SO SLOW in graduating, this year schedule had a lot of speakers from the "class" before me.
It went well. I got compliments on my talk. The main speaker was a women who has risen through Intel because she is capable and also because she moved her family every two years. Because of the past 10 years, she is now able to “park”. It seemed good for her career and her family. She was lucky she had a spouse who had a real flexible job (and could take two years from it to live in Ireland).
I could work for Intel. (One of the last graduates from our group does.) It is tempting because of the money, but it is long hours. It is moving. It is industry research in a field up again a physical wall. Though it would be interesting to try to overcome the materials challenges that face the next 20 years of logic and memory, it would be risky. Risk has never scared me before (on the long term at least). In a way, i giving up the opportunity to earn a lot of money doing a lot what i do now to fulfill my larger goal. I feel I can make a larger difference in policy than in logic chips.
We had dinner with one of my favorite and least favorite professors. My favorite brought his cute awesome wife and three month old baby. She is so cute. My least favorite is a chauvinist. He was perfectly pleasant at dinner, but man, I would not want to work for him.
They gave prizes for the day. I think this is pretty much insulting as all the talks were good and were on such varied topics, how could you judge between them?
So it goes…
Posted by christina at 7:22 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2006
little brown jug
Project Sod
I've spent a lot of this day walking between Mr. Friction tester and Mr. iBook. Lots of editing today. My wrist is tired of the mouse. It has been nice to listen to my new music. I'm happy to be done editing this book chapter. My impatience with editing does not bode well for the massive editing project called my dissertation. I can look at something 3 times and after that my brain cannot process it any more.
This weekend ben and I + ben's fam jaunted down to arkansas for some quality hot springs time. It was HOT. It was in the mid-90s. It is still quite chilly in chicago, so the change was shocking.
It was good...especially the bbq. Oh izzy, how i miss real southern bbq.
We did some touristy stuff - the botanical garden, the bath houses, the clinton library, all of which were quite interesting in their own way. The gardens reminded me of summer camp, which i miss. My section of arkansas is covered with beautiful trees, hills, and lakes. The bath house was restored from the hey day of bath houses were people flocked to Hot Springs to cure their ills in the thermal waters. My favorite sign captioned a room as the place where people received mercury rubs for syphilis. If syphilis didn't make you crazy, the mercury poisoning would. The Clinton Library is in Little Rock, where we flew in and out. It was beautiful and informative. The question we all had as we looked at all these achievements by the clinton administration, what exactly are they going to put in the G.W. Bush Library?
Posted by christina at 5:31 PM | Comments (1)
May 17, 2006
hurry up sky
I have ben motivationally challenged lately. I believe it is partly because I haven’t been sleeping well. Partly my machines are getting on my nerves. Partly because I’m stressed. I’ve back to the “thank izzy that I’m getting out of research” square.
I added a counter to the side of the blog. I like to watch the number decrease. In theory, it should motivate me. The number is quite large now, so it is hard to be motivated.
Ben and I seriously talking about a dog. It is more a timing issue now – I want to make sure we are in town constantly through the training period. Therefore this might be after our trip to Lake Geneva in October. I have a hard time being patient on days in which I see a puppy (this morning I saw a lab puppy) or a boston terrier (Saturday, ben and I saw one when we were out at dinner).
Patience. I have need for this trait in spades as I just hold my breathe and wait out this presidential administration. In a vacuum of leadership, isn’t a leader suppose to appear? McCain is catering to the religious right (speck at Jerry Farwell’s U). Where are our democratic leaders? The American public is finally opening their eyes to the Bush train wreck (low low low poll numbers). I worry that the republicans will remain in power on the god-appointed-me/anti-gays/anti-marriage platform.
Worrying makes patience hard.
I feel so powerless.
I know that I am marching down a career line, which will enable me to make a change…make a difference…in science, in policy, in life.
When I feel like I am helping maybe patience won’t be so hard.
Posted by christina at 4:07 PM | Comments (1)
May 15, 2006
monkeys at the zoo
In the llama pen there was a peacock. All of the llama were quite intrigued by the peacock, especially the adolescant one.
The adolesant peacok tried to either play with or attack the peacock, causing it to spread it’s feathers.
The peacock then strutted around much to the delight of us humans.
Posted by christina at 3:42 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2006
i breathe in on the tic / and out on the tock
i feel a lot younger than the things that define me (engaged, 4th year Ph.D. student, engaged, etc). When i think of people who fall into these descriptions, i think people older than me.
sigh.
Posted by christina at 5:26 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2006
waiting for my real life to begin
This return from west coast time has been harder than I remember. I’m not sure why I am crazy amounts of tired each morning. I’ve been going to bed on the early side. The sun had been shining for the majority of the week. I’ve been looking forward in to going to work as I have the lab to myself. I have a final defense date complete with a reserved conference room. I have a plan for my thesis and a good chunk written. I have the cutest cat and roommate.
I have matching bruises on both of my knees as I keep hitting them on the middle bar of the elliptical. I’m trying to get my heart rate to match my running level. This goal requires the use of high levels, which make me work and result in my knees bumping into the middle bar. Of course, one would think I would learn, but both elliptical mornings consisted of a good knee bump. It wasn’t until my stretching today that I noticed the beautiful bruising.
My labmates are gone to a conference, so the lab is so quiet. It is a different kind of quiet then when they just don’t come to work, which is a quiet of expectation that they might be in at some point. This quiet is true quiet. I’ve taken the opportunity to do some more lab cleaning and parts of it look so good. If only the rest matched…
I finally scheduled all my committee members for my defense date. Due to the long time away of my outside committee member, I am defending the Friday before the Monday I start U of C. I am happy to have it done before I start, for a while there it was looking like I was going to have to do it after I started. People look at me like I am crazy as that time period 3 huge things are happening with in, oh, 3 weeks, but I’m not worried. My thesis will be done by the beginning of September. The defense is not that stressful. I know my stuff already. It is engrained, and so can answer questions. The other night I dreamed I was done. It felt unreal in the dream, as it will feel in real life.
I have a reoccurring dream about my car being covered in water because of some mistake of mine. I drive it the wrong way and end up in a river.
As I’ve been working on my thesis, it is amazing how much I have already written. A lot of the background and some results come from my qualifier (research proposal). I’ve written 2 published papers, on review paper (for a class), and a book chapter. From these sources, I’ve put together almost 33% of my thesis. I found a thesis from a former student that is really helped me with how to organize things and what to include, which has been very very helpful.
Izzy has lost a couple pounds, enabling her to reach her back claws. She loves to chew on them, but has bad balance. She tumbles over a lot and make me laugh so hard. She also is so cute when she laying on her bed in the bedroom as I work out.
Ben’s school kids are putting on a play tonight, and I forgot the camera. He is “helping”. It makes me “laugh”.
Posted by christina at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
May 6, 2006
swingin' from the trees
Posted by christina at 6:07 PM | Comments (0)
May 3, 2006
in the jungle / the mighty jungle
OH MY GOODNESS
THE SAN DEIGO ZOO IS AWESOME
I play hooky (somewhat guiltily) today from the conference. There wasn't anything i really wanted to see at the conference today, so I spent from 9:45 am to 4 pm at the zoo. It is safe to saw that I saw everything there was to see. There is little wonder why that zoo is world famous. I saw so many monkeys playing. I saw hippos fighting, peacocks playing with the lamas, lots of different kinds of pigs, bears, tigers, birds, fish, lizards, snakes, wolves, pandas, goats, and sheep just to name a few. I took a million pictures of the animals and the plants, so once i get back to the camera cord you'll be amazing.
after my 5.5 mile run and all day after than on my feet, i am happy to be back to my room, sitting in my room.
ah.
Posted by christina at 7:20 PM | Comments (1)
May 2, 2006
you say /you want
Conferences are always interesting. Since I am “getting out of the business”, it is hard to stay motiviated to go to talks. I usually go to talks the whole time as you never know when something is going to help you. At the last conference, I stumbled upon a key piece of information on my project. In the past at this conference, I found it easy to fill my conference time. All the talks were are about coatings. I like coatings. This one, it seems, has less of things that are interesting, or I am more impaitent. I doubt it is that there are less interesting things. I bet that I am more tunnel visoned then before. Unless it can directly help me with my current work, I would rather be working on my thesis. I enjoy the talks by people that I “know”. I enjoy the roses. I enjoy learning. Sitting through talks all day is lessening my apprehension about returning to class in the fall.
My room is quite nice, and the location is better than ever. I have a balcony; it is very nice to sit out there and talk to ben. Going away always reminds me of lots of things I take for granted; it especially reminds us how much of a relationship is just existing together. It is hard to exist together on the phone; the battery starts to burn your hands after awhile and the time change calls you to different tasks.
I ran a lot this morning, surprisening myself because it involved hills.
Nervous energy, I was glad to expend. I present this afternoon. I’ve never presented this work at a conference. With my other project, it was second nature to present it, I had presented it so many times. When you present the progress of the same project, you know that questions to expect. I am not sure what questions to expect.
Posted by christina at 1:43 PM | Comments (0)
May 1, 2006
an apple a day
oh my izzy, do i love love love love love love love the apple store with its free wireless. stupid hotel charges you for wireless. though, beautiful hotel, next to a beautiful mall, with beautiful apple store, with beautiful wireless. i just love the feel of apple stores. on this random monday at lunch, i would venture to say that this is the busiest store in the mall. lots of people are here for ipod service. I'm perched in the watching area (for a class, the man beside me just asked) with my white ibook on my lap. feeling oh so legit.
the morning fog burned off this morning to beautiful sunny skies.
i wonder what class i am waiting for?
Posted by christina at 2:36 PM | Comments (0)