Things are better than in my last post. At least, I'm feeling more positive, haha.

Even though I get bug eyes and noises of incredulity from every older grad student to whom I describe my course load, I think I can handle it. Yes I am going to be bugger-all busy all semester, and if by the end of it I decide it wasn't worth it, I'll cut it down next semester. But my TA class is a clone of a class I had at UofM that I practically breezed through, some of my classes have overlap, and in general this is all material that I love and am, to varying degrees, familiar with. For example, I am not worried at all about my primate social behavior class. I live and breathe the basic underlying principles of the evolutionary study of social behavior, so all I'll be doing is learning new specifics, and loving every minute of it.

And at the end of the day, I only need to maintain a B average in order to keep my fellowship. If I don't get straight A's in every class it's not going to bother me one bit.

And John is coming back to me this weekend!!!! What more could a girl ask for?

And, on a side note, I think I should be nominated Most Dorky of Everyone You Know, because one of the science forum's administrators asked me to be a moderator. A few months ago they asked people to apply to be moderators, and I never even applied because I assumed I would be much too busy to waste that kind of time on a forum. I told the admin that, and said that if he/she didn't mind a spotty appearance record, I would be happy to accept. We'll see what happens.

I am in Albuquerque. Since I flew in Sunday night, I have purchased a car, visited six possible places to live, chosen one of those places, moved in, bought a bed and a variety of other sundries, made lists of more things to buy, and generally have a full schedule for the rest of the week of things to do and people to see.

My body is still messed up from the jetlag from indonesia, and I either have a cold or the dry air and higher altitude is really slamming me hard - which it is, whether or not I have a cold, and I hope the humidifier I bought and the sleeping pills I have will help me tonight. Cuz I feel like I've been running on empty for the past three days.

And....COLLAPSE!

Did I do everything I had hoped to do this summer? No. So I won't dwell on that.

1. WORK

Is over. I organized my files to the best of anal-retentive ability, and left my mice in the hands of my coworkers.

2. INDONESIA

Was fantastic. It started out with moments of pure horror and a nearly doubled cost than previously expected, but in the end it was worth it. It's hard to be anxious when you're in paradise. Maybe I will find an excuse to go study Balinese macaques. Terima kasi, Nick and Michelle!

3. SCHOOL

I am flying out this Sunday, and there I will stay. Within the first three days I hope to both find a place to live and procure a car. Then I will begin orientations, speaking with the professor whom I will assist, and classes. The amount of things that really ought to be done before I go is rather staggering. So I will leave it at that.

I'm beginning a new stage in my life, and it roared out of the gate with a bang. As far as packing, chores, and errands go, I am not ready. But in all other ways, I am ready.

I've recently discovered Hayley Westenra. She has such a sweet, pure sounding voice. It's a true pleasure to listen to.

I also noticed, during my pre-vaccination agitation (I'm such a huge wimp when it comes to shots), that George Winston has a remarkably calming effect on me. Which doesn't surprise me, because my parents used to put me to sleep with his music when I was a baby.

I haven't updated much lately because I feel like giving a true description of my life and my thoughts right now would just take up way too much space and energy.

Why, you may ask? It is not horrifying because there is a monster wreaking havoc amongst the crowds, it is horrifying because you are made to watch and experience in intimate detail the horror and the pain experienced by the people involved. Last night John and I watched the Host. "On par with JAWS!" a quote on the case proclaims. My ass. On par with watch-family-members-die-with-horrifying-slowness. I didn't jump once, and I'm a jumpy girl when it comes to scary movies, but I did bust out sobbing. Granted, the long island didn't help, but you get my drift.

Ugh. Never again.

Watching a sparrow nervously hop towards me, then seize a cookie twice the size of its head and desperately drag it towards a safer dining location while still trying to keep on eye on me. And then watching it struggle to reach the creme filling.

Also, my favorite quote of the moment, by Konrad Lorenz in his book, On Aggression:


If it is argued that animals are not persons, I must reply by saying that personality begins where, of two individuals, each one plays in the life of the other a part that cannot easily be played by any other member of the species. In other words, personality begins where personal bonds are formed for the first time.

Ingrid wants to know what's going on, and because I love her, I will post.

1. Went to Michigan for Jon's graduation and to see some family before I go to New Mexico. The graduation ceremony was horrendously long and boring, with some particularly awful speeches (wherein the principal related commencement ceremonies to funerals, and since you should keep it short at a wake he'll keep it short, and then he proceeded to not keep it short and spent the rest of his speech talking about kindergarten). When you got the names of 500 students to read out loud, it takes a while. Also, my mom has been remodeling the house and it looks pretty good.

2. Speaking of New Mexico, there is a new development in the saga. John will probably never move to Albuquerque permanently. He's moving into a leadership and potentially management position, and to move away entirely would not be good for his career. It makes sense. It did kind of seem too good to be true when we though he could move out there with me. But, there is a very good side to this, which is that he can do a half-time deal; that is, spend half his time in DC, and half his time in Albuquerque (going back and forth every 2 or 3 weeks). And, he could start that right away. It did require me to start a whole new housing search since I now need a place with two rooms so John (and I) can use one as an office - if he's going to be working from home out there, he most certainly doesn't want to be cooped up in one bedroom the whole time. But, I've already got a line on quite a few places - and from the looks of things, I may not have to pay more than I was going to pay for a single room. Even less, in some cases. I still can't believe how cheap things are out there. Anyhow, now I've got to start looking at cars too, to figure out what I want to drive when I get down there, especially since John's car will stay in DC permanently.

3. We booked our tickets for Indonesia the other day, as indicated by my previous post. It ain't cheap. But, we were able to finagle a much lower price than we originally thought we'd have to pay by being a little sneaky. Once I get over the sticker-shock, I'm going to really look forward to the trip. It will be a lot of fun. And we won't do a big trip like that again for quite some time probably, so it's worth it, in my opinion. Oh shoot, that reminds me I need to fill out visa forms for Indonesia. And probably get another armload of shots at the health office downstairs. POOP. I hate that part. >_<

4. Work is - well, work. But I'm getting awfully, awfully tired of killing mice. There are two sitting on my desk right now, awaiting their fate. I can't WAIT for that part to be over. Other than that, the boss is keepin me busy, getting what she can out of me before I leave.

In general, I have a lot of stuff to think about and get stressed out/anxious about, and time is passing way faster than I would like. And though I'm doing my best to be calm and stay out of the anxious mindset, every now and then I just get this awful, overwhelmed feeling. The sooner I can stop that the better, because I imagine my life isn't going to go in the direction of simplicity from here on out.

There have been few things that I ever really contemplated buying that are well and truly beyond what I can afford. One of those things is first class tickets to Indonesia and back. Holy. Schiesse.

Lots of things have been going on but I've just felt constantly too wiped out/anxious/busy to post about them.

@_@

It's 3:30 am and I should have gone to bed a long time ago!!!

*cries*

My two favorite episodes of "foreigner having trouble with american common language" at work are as follows:

1. An indian vegetarian guy at work who has some paranoia issues with milk, while describing some of the (perceived?) negative ways in which milk is processed, said: "...and they add things to it, and it makes it kinky." After making an ineffectual attempt to hide my laughter, I felt it my duty to let him know that, while his usage of the word was technically correct, most americans only use that term in a sexual sense. I let the younger indian grad student who is a little more hip explain exactly what kinky in a sexual sense means. With examples. It was almost as frightening as it was amusing.

2. That same grad student (remember, I said a little more hip, not completely hip) asked at lunch today, "So - what's a sugar daddy?" After a complete lack of an attempt to hide my laughter, I and the only other american at the table explained it to him, which then led the conversation to sugar mommas, gigolos, cougars, and milfs. And the taiwanese girls didn't know what a milf was and we then had to explain it them. Probably not the best discussion to have had in the cafeteria of a children's hospital. :p



Yesterday was John's and my fourth anniversary (all together now: awwwwww), and instead of splurging on one really expensive dinner like we did last year, we had two and a half reasonably priced meals: one korean lunch, one indian dinner, and a basket-load of pastry varieties from a korean bakery for us to sample when we got home. It was delicious.

There's no avoiding it now - the planning must begin. Finding a place to live, finding a car to buy, buying plane tickets, organizing schedules, packing, and probably spending every last drop of money I have in my savings account by the time it's all through. And at the end of it I'll be across the country, thousands of miles away from John and all the people closest to me.

*breath, breath, breath...*

This is my share of my mother's anxious neuroticism. And at the moment, I am not enjoying it. =\

Here's the deal: Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring, in high definition. At a semi-outdoor theater at the Wolf Trap park in Virginia. With a live orchestra and choir playing the music. The US premier of such a showing of the film. Sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it?

In fact, it sounded so awesome that John shelled out the $55 a ticket for two good seats. Except it ended up being over 60 bucks per ticket because Ticket Master hit him with over 15 bucks in fees and service charges for buying the tickets online.

And the good seats, it turned out, were of that high school auditorium plastic quality, each plastered with a fair dose of bird shit that, despite the fact that the seating area was kept strictly empty until half an hour before the show thus providing plenty of time for even last minute clean up on plastic chairs that should be easy to clean, was still there in all its disgusting glory when it was time to sit down.

As people living in the environ of the east coast will know, the weather of late has been chilly and rainy, and especially chilly in the evenings. So there we were in our hard plastic seats open to the wind, when John, willing to brave the horrendous prices at the concession stands, went to procure warm food and beverages for us. He thereupon discovered that neither food NOR beverages besides water were allowed in the seating area. The seating area that consisted of concrete floors and hard plastic seats.

Just to be sure I got up and asked one of the many ushers (who were all VOLUNTEERS) about the no beverage rule, especially as it pertained to the forbidding of nice, hot coffee, and she confirmed that only water was allowed. "You could heat it up, and have some warm water to help keep you warm," she suggested. I "laughed" in a way to show exactly how not fucking funny at all that statement was. I walked away before I started swearing at her, because I REALLY wanted to say, "Oh. So you leave the bird shit all over the fucking seats but you're worried about us spilling coffee on those hard plastic pieces of crap. Yea. Right."

Ultimately, we left at intermission. The evening got colder and colder, and even though John shelled out yet more money to buy a ridiculously over-priced fleece blanket, and managed to smuggle a coffee down to our seats (which he spilled on himself in the process of transporting it under his jacket, and which we drank furtively under the cover of our blanket), the cold combined with the uncomfortable seats and the inability to partake in warm foodstuffs made us decide it was time to go home. Besides, it was hard to appreciate the live music. The musicians played into microphones and the sound was then blasted out through giant speakers, such that it didn't feel much different from listening to a recording.

To top it all off, when we got home, we found out that our xbox is fried. The video chip is busted and when you turn it on it just flickers in these awful neon colors. It was so wacky that for a minute, we were afraid it broke the bulb on our projector because it suddenly went dark. And those bulbs cost several hundred dollars to replace. Fortunately, after a reboot the projector still worked, it just probably got confused and overloaded by the messed up signals the xbox was sending it.

And, John said he doesn't want to get another one until the fall, when the new version comes out. You know what that means? That means for the forseeable future, Ingrid and I will not be able to play Rock Band or Guitar Hero together again. Ingo and Inga are dead! T_T

Today was Research Poster Day at work. And my poster won an honorable mention! And since there was only one winner and one honorable mention per category, I basically won second place. Awesome!








The mouse in that picture was very popular. I figured her picture would be nice to balance out the dead skinned mice pictured in the poster. Yes, that's what I said. I skinned four mice from the base of their tail all the way to their nose. And it was not pleasant.

And now, to distract you from what I just said, a close up!




#713 says thanks for looking!

Sound like the title of a horror movie? No, it's just the way I would describe the "World" section of DC's little daily paper, the Express. There was not a single article on that page today that did not describe people dying.

The "In Brief" articles:

Khartoum, Sudan - Government: More than 200 Killed in Rebel Assault

Beirut, Lebanon - Saudi Arabia Warns Iran About Lebanon, Hezbollah - "Lebanese solemnly buried more of their dead..."

Bogota, Columbia - Colombia Extradites to U.S. 14 Paramilitary Warlords - "The extradited include Salvatore Mancuso and most other leaders of Colombia's illegal right-wing militias - figures blamed for some of modern Colombia's worst atrocities."

The main articles:

Chinese Quake Toll Soars - More than 12000 dead as rescue workers search for survivors

Iraqi Pact Has Little Effect - Clashes kill 11 people in Sadr City despite new cease-fire deal

Bomb Blasts Kill 60 People in India - Militants suspected in 7 explosions in popular tourist areas.

Aid Piles Up in Myanmar - Police bar foreign relief workers from reaching some cyclone survivors - "U.N. officials warned that the threat was growing for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger ... 33% of those killed by the cyclone were children, according to U.N. estimates."


I don't think I can present a much better case for why I so greatly dislike trying to keep up with world events.

I've always gotten compliments on my writing, and I've always enjoyed writing. And yet, during the past several years, I've often felt seriously lacking in those qualities that make Great writers, or Great writers to be. I think my friend Eileen is a Great writer to be. And I say Great with a capital G, by which I mean a writer whose work will be of lasting quality, and who will be remembered as having made an admirable contribution to the world of literature. And I don't consider just your average lit class authors to be Great authors - people like Tolkein and Orson Scott Card are up there too, as far as I'm concerned. Great writers' work has implications and suggestion that go beyond the story they're telling, whether or not those implications were necessarily intended, or if any reader can derive such deeper meaning/feeling in the work for themselves.

I think Great writers write for their readers. And I realized, that I don't really write for my readers. I write for myself. All the story ideas that have most excited me, the story elements that have really got my imagination going and my heart stirring have been, in a word, pretty self indulgent. I think this self indulgence is best exemplified by the types of movies I like the most - action and sci fi movies where kick-ass heroes rattle heads, take names, and if I'm lucky, blow shit up. I can't tell you how many times I literally squealed with delight when I saw Iron Man last week. Granted I can appreciate a well done story, but I especially appreciate kick-ass comfortably embedded in a reasonably well done story. But mostly because it makes the kick-ass that much more enjoyable.

Now, in light of my previous entry where I said I now realize that I'm capable of learning pretty much anything I want, so long as I'm committed enough to put in the time and effort - I think if I was that committed to becoming a Great writer, I could be. But as writing is not the focus of my life, I doubt I will ever have that commitment. And without that commitment, the excitement of self-indulgent kick-ass will probably be the only driver that has any serious hope of drawing me back to writing. Thus, I don't think I will ever be a Great writer. But hey, we don't all have to be Great writers, and clearly many people are not unlike me in enjoying their fair dose of kick ass, or movies like Iron Man wouldn't be made and be making as much money as they do. I think I've always had the perfectionist expectation that any serious writing I do should be aspiring towards Great writer quality, and maybe that doesn't have to be the case.

Owww. My hands and arms hurt from playing Guitar Hero. Hoooooooly crap.

I was able to pass through 7 sets on hard, but the 8th one has proved to be my downfall. I just can't beat those songs. I think part of it, though, is how fucking stiff my fingers are at this point. They simply can't move fast enough to keep up with the song, haha. AND, though John says it must be something I'm doing that makes me think this, I'm CONVINCED that the blue button on our guitar is stiff and doesn't press down as easy as the others. I'm working with a handicap, here!

Yes, there are real life things going on. I've started looking for a room to rent for the fall in Albuquerque, I've (mostly) registered for my classes, I'm going back to Michigan in June for my little brother's graduation (assuming he graduates, a future which is facing some serious jeopardy), and I'm seriously losing my motivation at work. I guess part of it is that I now know that I'm leaving. And, I have a lot of mouse dissections ahead of me, and I have to be honest, I'm really getting tired of all this mouse carnage. I really am. Just this last Friday I had to kill and dissect two of my favorite mice. They didn't even have names, I've just had them a long time and have always liked them. And I had to gas 'em and chop 'em up. Sigh.

I also recently finished reading the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and that combined with recent conversations I've had with John and Craig, his boss's boss, have changed how I view the functioning of the human brain, as well as my basic understanding of learning. I originally was going to write a huge long entry about it but I thought better of it.

I think, up til now, I haven't been giving my brain enough credit. With enough determination for continually repeated effort, it's surprising how much your brain can process, and how it can sink into your subconscious, to your benefit. Just taking the whole guitar hero thing as an example, the more often I do it, and the more different and difficult songs that I play, the more the patterns and the mechanisms sink in, to the point where sometimes, when I'm surprised by a suddenly difficult passage, and I feel like I'm just frantically flailing my fingers - somehow, I manage to still hit most of the notes. I've had a few experiences similar to this previously in my life, only now I realize what is actually going on and the fact that I can apply this method to just about anything I want to accomplish. It's not necessarily the quickest or most efficient method, but it's pretty reliable. And that's an interesting new point of view, to really truly know that I can learn whatever I want to learn with enough time and commitment. I used to think that if I had a lot of trouble doing something, that maybe there was some trick to learning it that I just couldn't figure out, or maybe I just didn't have it in me. So I've always been something of an easy quitter, and I think this new point of view might change some of that.

Damn. I tried to avoid making a super huge long post but I still ended up with a super long post. There's something I need to apply myself to - concision. Yoinks.

I just had a pretty cool dream. I dreamt that on this remote island, far away from any other land, a giant pyramid-type structure had been discovered. John, Ingrid, my little brother, and I were the head researchers chosen to investigate the structure. It was very ornate and seemed to have statuettes and carvings and symbols from a great variety of human cultures. The island was very stony and I remember Ingrid once clambering down into a crevice between boulders at the base of the pyramid, where we noticed that the pyramid seemed to extend an unknown distance into the ground. Also on sent to the island where some military types and in fact a whole village's worth of people to support the research effort. I remember we were amused by the military guys because they were kind of meat heads.

Then one day an old woman, dirty and bedraggled and thin, appeared at the door to our research building, and I knew that she wasn't one of the people that had been sent here for the investigation, and I wondered where in the world she had come from since there was no land for miles and miles. She seemed to be very confused and distracted and impossible to understand like some very old people are, and I tried asking her gently where she was from and how she got here. I managed to pull out of her that she lived on a houseboat. But then she said she was hungry so I invited her in to eat some candies I had on the table.

And then my alarm went off!

Been doin' that a lot lately. I came down with one hell of a cold on Wednesday morning, but fortunately, the worst of it was over by the time Thursday morning rolled around. I'm still sniffly and a little light headed, but it is Friday after all - I can take one day of easy work.

So I think I've decided what classes I'm taking in the fall. Human Paleoarcheology, Primate Social Behavior, Primate Evolution, and Behavioral Endocrinology Lab. (YAY! So excited.) The UNM course listings aren't as user friendly as UofM's are, so I'm a little fuzzy on whether or not most of these classes do actually solely consist of one 2.5 -3 hour session a week, or if additional sections will launched at me as soon as I actually register. Cuz at this rate, on most days classes won't start until 1 for me, and on Tuesdays I'll be free. And this is four classes. I'm kind of suspicious. I thought grad school was supposed to be hard. Maybe I'll just get assloads of homework?

Now I have to work on finding a one-semester room mate situation, start looking at used cars to buy down there, and procure a parking pass. It all sounds so deceptively simple.

Current Addictions: Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Even now my fingers itch to play...I can see the scrolling circles when I close my eyes...thank goodness it's Friday and I can stay up late playing! Muahaha!

Ho-lee smokes, it's been a while.

( The Conclusion of the Grad School Saga: Episode 2 )

( Three Blind Mice and Their Odyssey of Freedom - And the Fate of Their Less Fortunate Compatriots )

( Reading Like the Man Whose Old Job Was Given To Mr. Power Point )

Phew! I think that's all I can do for now. That was more exhausting than I thought it would be, haha. Hopefully I'll have the strength for more later!