brain overload

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ten. days.

me and miley

a few weeks ago, as a friend and i were studying for finals in the library on campus, i described for her my most recent epiphany. as i've struggled through my first two semesters at uw, i kept thinking, if i can just get through this first year, i'll be able to take the qualifying exam. when i pass the quals, i can become a disertator. i already know what my research will be and, although it's not what i would really like to study, it'll get me out of here quickly. if all goes according to my schedule, i'll defend three semesters after that. after i finally have this degree, i can go back overseas, hopefully with an organization like the world health organization or unicef or the state department. ah, then i'll be back in the 'real' world.

everything was about my 'next' adventure, after i get those three coveted letters after my name. the epiphany came when i realized that everything i'm doing right now is a means to an end. multiple ends, granted, but ends, none the less. i've been so focused on the ends, i haven't been enjoying the means. i need to remember that right now is my 'right now' adventure. and yes, there will be 'next' adventures, and by no means am i saying one should not have goals and direction, but this, today, studying for exams (remember, this was during finals), going to class, not being able to pay bills, this is my current adventure. i don't want to be in india or zambia or anywhere else in a few years and only remember madison for it's cold winters. i want to remember my time in madison as a great adventure that i took on my way to the next.

my friend looked at me and said, 'you just captured a miley cyrus song perfectly.' to which i responded, 'curly-haired study-buddy say what?'* so many questions immediately came to mind. why would my friend, a fellow phd student, smart, sophisticated, not 14 years old, know a hannah montana song? it is not a hannah montana song, she said, it's miley cyrus. nope, not better. she felt it was important that i hear this song so, as all good grad students do, she googled the song on her laptop, i plugged in my headphones, and this is what i heard:

the struggles i'm facing
the chances i'm taking
sometimes might knock me down
but no, i'm not breaking

i may not know it
but these are the moments that
i'm gonna remember most, yeah
just gotta keep going

there's always gonna be another mountain
i'm always gonna wanna make it move
always gonna be an uphill battle
sometimes i'm gonna have to lose

ain't about how fast i get there
ain't about what's waiting on the other side
it's the climb

the fact that i liked the song was made only marginally better by the knowledge that hannah, i mean, miley, didn't actually write it. the music video was ridiculous - what business does a fourteen-year-old girl have thrashing about in the rain, trying to look all sexy - oh wait, that rant is for another post. everytime she sang, 'it's the climb' she would thrust her hand into the air as if reaching for something. my friend and i decided that would be my recentering gesture; anytime i feel myself focusing on the end and not appreciating the means, i'm to simply thrust my hand into the air and remember, it's the climb!

*lame attempt at hannah montana humor

the market of farmers'

it's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring in madison. no cats or dogs in sight so that's something.* i'm at my office on a sunday afternoon, 'studying,' listening to pandora radio on-line, and catching up on facebook. i need to get something out of my car but, well, it's raining. and yes, i will melt. and i'm wearing flip flops (i'm from california, it's june, duh).

qualifying exams are in thirty days and i'm pretty much a big bundle of stress. i took a break from studying yesterday and went to the farmers' market with flav, sam, and the kids. here are some of my most favorite things about the market: being with the kids, spicy cheesy bread, being near the beautiful capital building, people watching, and the music (i've got some great pictures of a blues band trio called boo bradley). here are some of my least favorite things about the market: the crowds of people that move around the square like herded cattle - oh, and yesterday, there actually was cattle there. four cows. blake petted one. continuing: that's pretty much it, the large numbers of people. i'm very happy for the madisonian farming economy, but we all know how thrilled (and not at all panic-stricken) i get when surrounded by lots and lots and lots of people. it's a good thing the spicy cheesy bread is so, so yummy.

*i've been told not everyone gets my subtle references, so for those who are confused, i am referring here to the nonsensical colloquialism, 'it's raining cats and dogs'.

World's Largest Brat Fest

it's real, i've been there. a four-day festival, celebrating bratwursts, attended by hundreds of people, right here in madison, wisconsin. and it really is the world's largest brat fest; last year, the people from the guiness book of world records came out and declared it so. i'm not sure how much competition there was, but regardless, it has been declared.

a brat is basically a large sausage and they put it on a bun. one of the sponsors of the event was the mustard museum so there were six or seven different types of mustard other than plain yellow. honey mustard, chipotle mustard, garlic horseradish mustard.....some other kinds of mustard. yummy. the event stayed pretty true to it's homage to brats, the only thing to eat other than brats were hot dogs or 'double johnnys' - two brats on a kaiser roll. there was also ice cream, funnel cakes, soda (pepsi, shudder, but i came prepared, i brought a diet coke), and beer, but nothing of sustenance. three stages, two for bands, one for local dance studios to perform. there were also brat fest t-shirts. but even if i wore printed t-shirts, the color choices were yellow, orange, and florescent green. seriously?

the cele'brat'ion started in 1983. here are some fun facts i read on the history page of the fest of brat's website (and yes, i know, i'm probably 1 of 1 people who read that page):

total brats sold since 1983: 2,634,255
total $$ raised since 1983: $855,723 (they donate procedes to local charities)

current world record stats:

lbs of brats consumed in 4 days: 208,752

lbs of brats consumed: 41,550 lbs

brats consumed, laid end-to-end: 19.77 miles

brats consumed per minute: 94.03

hot dogs consumed: 22,160

veggie brats consumed: 10,176

20 oz. sodas consumed: 53,568

onions consumed: 1,640 lbs (would be more if my mom attended this event)

mustard consumed: 176 gallons

ketchup consumed: 300 gallons

sweet relish consumed: 172 gallons

sauerkraut consumed: 3,978 lbs

will i go again? probably. i had fun and i have a new appreciation for the brat. i mean, it does have an entire fest dedicated solely to it. i was also impressed with the organization of the event. i only got overwhelmed in the condiment tent and that was just for a minute. brats, good.

there is a season...

turn, turn, turn.

winter, check. spring, check. summer, fall, check, check. yup, that's all of 'em. learned them when i was a youngin. four seasons. there's even a hotel chain named after them. i moved to wisconsin, and all of sudden, people are talking about 'tornado season'. the hotel's not called 'five seasons' people.

in southern california, we have the 'santa ana's', winds that blow lots of miles per hour (couldn't find the actual number - i thought the google knew everything?), stir things up, and help spread fires. we don't call it a 'season', however. 'the santa ana wind season' - that's just silly.

but we're not in southern california anymore toto, i'm in wisconsin where they create new seasons that have nothing to do with the solstice or equinox phenomenon. safety tips for surviving a tornado include: lay under a matress, get away from windows (duh), and if you have a mobile home, get out! brings up fond memories of earthquake drills in elementary school - we'd all huddle under our desks, had to bring a packet of food to class at the beginning of each school year just in case 'the big one' occurred while we were at school. can you imagine being the teacher stuck in a classroom with 30 nine-year-olds after a devastating earthquake who all brought disgusting canned food like vienna sausages. no thank you. i'd probably start teaching the kids about new seasons, like 'earthquake season'.

and so, i say to those of you who are trying to add seasons to our well-established four, please stop, you're confusing the children. and the emigrants from los angeles.

just say...it depends on the drug

see what i did there with the title? instead of 'just say no', a phrase we are all familiar with, i replaced 'no' with 'it depends on the drug'. i also thought of titling this one, 'what's in a drug?', a play on 'what's in a name', but - oh, you saw? well, here's my current rant:

there's this poster in a cubicle at work that i have to pass on my way to my cubicle and i've trained my eyes to look anywhere but at this this poster. every once in while, however, i accidentally catch a glimpse of this poster, and its message, ugh, makes me cringe. and want to rip it off the wall. 'a drug-free world. we can do it' - that's the message on the poster. my question is: do we want to do it?

this is not a drug-war rant, i promise. but i do want to meet the creator of this poster and say, really poster-man? really? do you know what a drug is?

personally, i think they should put prozac in the water supply. anti-depressants are god's gift to us all. as well as aspirin, penicillin, and, of course, caffeine. oh caffeine, you deserve an ode, you do not deserve to be threatened with extinction by a well-meaning but monumentally stupid campaign.

and so i'll close this post with one final thought: just say...it depends on the drug. (see what i did there? bringing it around, full circle - oh, you saw.)

celebrate, celebrate, dance to the gray-ades

finals are over, i passed my classes (barely), and now the real fun begins. quals are in forty-nine days and counting. i've coordinated a biostat tutor (my genius friend justin) and organized my materials (a fantastic procastination technique), now i just have to dig in. i've been preparing all semester, but now it's crunch time.

two days of exams. three subjects: epidemiology, biostatistics, and health services research. level of importance to continuing in the phd program: critical.

my last final was last thursday. i didn't study at all for four whole days; i can feel my brain atrophy-ing already. i need a theme song to get me pumped up. all i can think of is the rocky song where he's getting ready for the big fight, his cute little old man trainer keeps appearing to him, he's running up stairs and doing his victory dance at the top. let me know if you have any other theme-song suggestions.

regardless of the song, there will be a victory dance on 8 july around five pm, followed by mental exhaustion and shutdown. bring it.

boxed hair color

i'm confused about celebrities that endorse boxed hair color. i feel fairly confident that celebrities do not use boxed hair color. i've used boxed hair color; it involves going to stores like target or wal-mart or cvs, picking out a color, and spending seven to eight dollars. and then the fun really begins. plastic gloves, smelly gels or pastes, and a plastic hair cap. if you're highlighting, there's a second plastic cap and a hair pick. you get to wear an old towel around your shoulders so as not to stain your shirt and you have to wait a certain length of time to let the color set before you wash it out. the point is, there's real work involved. and the result is not always pretty. i can name at least three people who have ended up with a green tint due to some interaction between the dye chemicals and the hair - and no, green was not the intended outcome. i'm not suggesting that celebrities are not just like us, that they don't shop at target and wal-mart and cvs, or that they don't perform their own beauty maintenance. i am, however, suggesting that when it comes to hair color, celebrities are more likely to go to a hair-care professional than to rely on their own skills and a boxed tincture. could it be that they are not endorsing the products because they use them, but for the money they receive in return? hmmm...

so, the plan tonight was to do homework but i'm staying at my sister's to take care of the dogs and they (the gibsons, not the dogs) have cable so i've sort of been watching tv instead of doing homework. hence the diatribe on hair color commercials.

bookface

jim halpert: yes, i am the popular social networking site known as bookface.

so, i'm not sure if you've heard of this phenomenon sweeping the nation, but it's called facebook. oh, you have heard of it? you have your own page? you check the site every couple of hours to see what witty new comments one of your friends might have made? to add expositions of your own? do you think about it when you're away from a computer? longing to log in and check what's going on? to see who has newly befriended who or to note who else is logged on for an 'instant chat'. oh sure, you act nonchalant while you're away from the site, but inside, you're counting the minutes until you can get back there. sometimes, you don't even realize you've logged on until you're there, halfway through the last fifteen minute's banter. you think you can stop anytime, but you can't. and the truth is, you don't want to.

i'm not judging, i'm one of you! just tonight, i was struck again by the pull of this website. in between vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms, cooking dinner (ok, reheating leftovers) and reading for school, i kept coming back to my laptop and hitting f5 to refresh the screen and see if there was any new news.

i didn't used to be this way. up until a couple of months ago, i logged on to facebook about once every three months. but then i started making friends here in madison and i started getting 'friend requests'. i logged on and accepted the requests. for those of you who don't know (which is probably none of you), this is how the whole networking thing works: when joe becomes friends with jane, his page notifies the world that 'joe is now friends with jane'. all of joe's current friends see this new friendship and those who know jane and are not current facebook friends with jane send jane friend requests. this chain of event continues until jane has six thousand friends, making jane feel very popular. jane, i mean, i added four new friends, just today.

and so the madness continues. with an increase in friends comes an increase in notifications - every time one of your friends updates his/her page, comments on your 'wall', is looking for a farm animal, becomes friends with someone new, sends you a message, gets tagged in a photo, etc., you receive a notification (case in point: i just found out my sister is attending a lia sophia jewelry party). if you have a blackberry like me, or some other type of smartphone, your phone doesn't stop vibrating or ding-donging (onomatopoeia!) all day. as an added bonus, facebook allows you to poke people whenever you want. really! i've never done it, but there it is, a 'poke' button. 'poke kristin', 'poke john', 'poke rachel'. poke poke poke. am i the only one who thinks that's weird?

in case any of this sounds negative, i think facebook is great. it's a quick and easy way to stay in touch with everyone you know and have ever known and everyone they have ever known and, let's not forget, there's always the option to poke one another.

pretty little stick bush

it's a beautiful day in madison. i had the pleasure of enjoying it as i walked the fifteen feet from my car to the door of my office building. spring has definitely arrived. there's this stick bush outside my garage door (at home, not work) that i haven't been able to figure out the value of until this morning. every day for months, i would look at this brown bush of sticks in the morning when i left my house and in the evening when i returned and wonder, why does the property management keep this? the only thing i could figure was that the ground this bare and stick-ly bush sticks up from is covered in rocks, so it must not require much maintenance. and then this morning, as i pulled out of my garage, i glanced over at the stick bush and to my surprise, it was covered with pretty green leaves. so now i have a pretty little stick bush outside my garage. this season thing, i kindof like it.

logistic regression for dummies

yesterday on my way home from meeting with justin, my bff and e and e and e (and biostatistics genius hero), i stopped by borders to see if they had a 'logistic regression for dummies' book. the very tattooed, very hot guy at customer service said, logistic regression, that would be math, right? i responded with, that would be math from he**. he said they don't have a math from he** section at borders. turns out, there is no logistic regression for dummies book. the hot guy said if i was doing logistic regression, i probably wasn't a dummy. oh, go on. no, really, go on.

the picture is of me and my one-dollar garden gnome, purchased from target this morning. i received a gift card to target as a present to commemorate the day of my birth and i found myself buying all practical, necessary items so the mini garden gnome was my just-for-fun purchase. see? i'm a wild and crazy gal. i don't even have a garden.

rick, rick, rick, rick

e-mail received last evening from my quantitative methods professor regarding our current homework assignment [my comments are in brackets]:

"1. Problem 1 Part d) asks about estimating an odds ratio in the presence of an interaction. This is quite similar to problems discussed with respect to ordinary least squares (except we exponentiate the effect after we calculate it). However, Part e) asks for a confidence interval. For that we need the variance of the estimated effect (estimated log odds ratio). This is a weighted sum of coefficients. The following formula (contained in the book, but not so conveniently accessible) is useful for the variance of a weighted sum of correlated random variables. Call the random variables "B1" and "B2". The weights are real numbers denoted a1 and a2. Then:

Var(a1B1 + a2B2) = Var(B1)*(a1**2) + Var(B2)*(a2**2) + a1*a2*2*Cov(B1, B2)

The variances are listed on the diagonal of the estimated variance covariance matrix given on p. 683; the off-diagonal elements are the covariances. []

2. Problem 3 Part a) asks about conditional vs. unconditional logistic regression. Conditional logistic regression is usually applied to paired or matched data (matching is a generalization of pairing). These data are not paired; however, conditional logistic regression can also be used to give more precise results when the sample size is small. I think that the authors are aiming at this second use here. [clearly]

3. Although Problem 3 Parts f) and g) ask you to calculate something similar to what you did in Problem 1 Part d), you aren't given the covariance matrix. Please skip these two parts of Problem 3. [while seemingly generous on his part, i'd like to point out that problem 3 has parts a through m!!]

Rick Chappell"

and now i hope you realize why i'm a wee bit worried about the qualifying exam.

scent memory

many, many moons ago - like, maybe, 324, 325 - i had a strawberry shortcake doll. i didn't have her friends, blueberry muffin and lemon meringue, but i knew girls who did. strawberry shortcake's big draw was that she was supposed to smell like strawberries. and she did, sort of. overly sweet, plastic-y strawberries - more plastic than strawberry. i remember her shoes came off and her stockings were green and white striped all the way to her toes. her hat did not come off and i suspect that was the source of her parfum de plastique (and strawberries). i hadn't thought about my doll in a long, long time until i walked into the ladies' room at work a while ago and the memory-inducing scent of plastic strawberries assailed me. i don't know the source, don't want to know the source, but i instantly recalled my little strawberry shortcake doll. then i came back to my desk, did some research on the link between scents and memories, found a picture of ss, and wrote this nonconsequential post. anything to avoid homework!

jose, can you see?

yesterday i went to the opthamologist for my three-month follow up exam. both retinas are still attached, i'm happy to report. some of you may be amused to hear that the doctor caught me using her magnifying glass to examine a scratch on my hand, but this was definitely not the most entertaining part of my visit.

as per normal modus operandi, i was first called in by a nurse/assistant who asked me a bunch of questions; took my blood pressure; tried to engage me in a friendly chat; dropped liquid into my eyes, which proceeded to run down the back of my throat, so gross; and finally, took me back to the waiting room to let the dilation drops work their magic before the doctor saw me. if you've ever had your eyes dilated, you'll know that your vision gets blurry and you can't read anything, which is a bit of a bummer because i really wanted to read cataracts weekly and aarp the magazine. oh, didn't i mention? i was the only one under the age of sixty in the waiting room. i may not have been able to read but i could still see the lumps of carbon mass sitting about, many with eye patches. so not fair, by the way. i didn't get an eye patch after my surgeries. fortunately, the television mounted in the corner of the waiting room was blasting (loudly, i suppose, for the hearing-impaired elderly demographic) the view so i had the pleasure of listening to four women banter - and oh, how i wish i could describe it as intelligent or witty - for a good thirty-five painful minutes until i was called in to see the doctor. i had one blessed moment of comical relief when a commercial came on playing the isley's brothers' song, who's that lady? and a guy sitting a few seats away from me, maybe mid-forties, started mouthing the words - who's that lady? sexy lady! and kindof moving around like he was dancing - all while pretending to read his magazine. fortunately, i, too, was pretending to read a magazine even though my eyes were too dilated to see the words, so i was able to cover my face so he wouldn't see me laughing at him. if you guessed that he was wearing a gold chain necklace, you would be right.

i go back in six months. after that, i'll only have to see my regular eye doctor, no more opthamologist. i'm gonna miss that waiting room. old people greeting each other by name; men slumped over, sleeping in their chairs until their wives elbow them awake. 'honey, it's your turn!' 'what?' 'they called your name, wake up!!'; complaints about the free coffee running out. sigh.

who's that lady? sexy lady!

hello again

every good blog writer knows that she must post something fairly frequently in order not to lose readers' interest. when i was reminded today by a reader that i had not posted in almost two weeks, i was faced with a dilemma. do i write something simply for the sake of posting and risk disappointing readers with something banal and forced? or do i wait until i have something good to write about and risk disappointing (all three) readers by making them wait even longer? so i wracked my brain for something to write about, a funny anecdote, a witty joke, a clever way to tell an otherwise boring story. i ended up with a weather report (it snowed last night) and an update on the courses i've selected for summer and fall. needless to say, i care too much about all of you to post that so it's been deleted. there was something funny about a re-cap but since i was writing about it for the first time, it was really a cap, but the context is too long to explain, so you'll just have to trust me that it was funny, you would have laughed.

obviously i decided to write something just for the sake of writing something. school's back in session, the semester's winding down, and there are 89 days left before the first day of the qualifying exam. i'm on day three of a tension headache and i suspect, by the end of 8 july, i'll be on day ninety-four. "one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. this coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, i found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year." - albert einstein