it's warm outside, but inside, i'm cold

it is currently forty degrees in madison. madisonianites throughout the city are practically wearing shorts and t-shirts in honor of the un-seasonably warm weather. the streets are wet with melting snow and bushes and plants are peaking out from under diminishing piles of crystalized precipitation. we didn't have a thaw mid-winter last year so the snow just piled higher and higher all season until spring came. i think i like it but i'm pretty sure it will just illicit extra hard complaining during the next snow.

so outside, it's warm, but inside, my heart is frozen. in three days, flavia takes my two favorite things in the world away for a month. she might as well rip my heart out and stomp on it with spikes. blake and ziva are going to see three sets of grandparents, various aunts and uncles, and numerous cousins in two states before returning to me, a shell of a human being. they won't remember me, and they will have grown up and become completely different people, but they will return to me. excuse me, i need to blow my nose and wipe my eyes.

last night i prayed their flights out of wisconsin get cancelled. is that bad? i know it's selfish, but is it bad? i want them to see their grandparents, i would just rather their grandparents come to madison to see them. a month for goodness sake! sigh. sad face. sigh again.

ps - i didn't really pray their flights get cancelled mom. god knew i wasn't asking for real.

make your voices heard

'cause i can't. i lost my voice in one of the worst colds i've had in a long time and i sound rediculous. the best part is that the sound coming out of my throat is totally unpredictable. when i'm talking, i'm really shouting because the people i'm talking to can't hear me. the unpredictability comes in when i'll suddenly, unexpectedly have a clear sound come out and since i'm shouting, out comes a shouted clear sound. it's pretty awesome. especially when i'm on the phone with my sister in the library. oh, and i have to conduct three interviews today for a final project due today. we'll see how those go.

on a bright note, the owner of my apartment building is building me a pantry and it should be done by monday. added square footage, added storage space, me likee.

just a little rant

laughing. love it! i especially like when something tickles me enough to make me laugh out loud. you know what i don't love? 'lol'. that three-letter abbreviation for 'laughing out loud' drives me up the flippin' wall. everytime i see it, i cringe. i've actually had to cut back on my facebook time because I was getting a headache from all of the cringing. i don't know why it annoys me so much but it does; i seriously have a visceral reaction to it. there are lots of ways to let someone know they've said something you think is funny without using 'lol'. what's even more annoying is when someone writes something, and then, to make sure other people think what he/she wrote is funny, he/she adds 'lol' to their own comment. so. gross. you want people to think you're funny? be funny. you shouldn't have to tell them to 'lol'. ugh. and don't try to be funny and comment on this post by writing 'lol'. i will throw up on you or never speak to you again.

sky mall - my favorite things (one through eight)

recently, i had the pleasure of traveling from wisconsin to california and back. three flights to cali and three flights to wisconsin. some people may think this sounds painful, but it was actually really painful. totally worth it to see my family though. six flights and four layovers gave me ample opportunity to thoroughly explore, nay, experience, the skymall. that's right, the catalogue in the seatback in front of you that says, 'free copy - take it, we'll replace it!' sure, we've all glanced through it on a flight here and there, but i used three full flights to look at every item on every page. i have selected my top 34 favorite items and tonight will be listing items from the spy gadgets and anti-spy gadgets genres. my comments are in italics.

• multifunction sound-activated video camera pen: video pen is the easiest, stealthiest way to capture true events! collecting solid evidence often times requires keen discretion...

and presenting solid evidence in court requires you follow the law and get permission before recording people.

• spy ear: it's the next best thing to being a fly on the wall! the office can be a pretty hectic place these days, and it's not always easy or prudent to make every meeting…disguised as an innocuous penholder, the spyear actually holds a listening device…best of all, the spyear features a working digital face with a clock, calendar, and thermostat.

first of all how is it not prudent to make every meeting? i like that the self-proclaimed ‘best’ features are the clock, calendar, and thermostat.

• spy pen: carry an eyewitness in your pocket. click this pen and it doesn't just write words it records video…nobody needs to know that you're recording…by the way, this pen writes, too.

‘by the way, this pen writes too.’ i would hope so! otherwise, it would just be a spy.

• orbitor electronic listening device: "hear" and "see" a conversation from a football field away…this secret surveillance device is perfect for when you really need to know what's going on!

i’m not quite sure why ‘hear’ and ‘see’ have quote marks around them. i’m also not sure how ‘secret’ this surveillance device is.

• agent cam color video spy camcorder: keep your family and personal belongings safe using cutting edge spy gear. what happens while you're away? let's face it. our vision is limited to what we can see in the moment…slip into your shirt pocket, and you'll have access to a whole new world of information you didn't see before.

let’s face it, how many audiences are you trying to appeal to? families who want to protect themselves or wanna-be spies/techno geeks? and btw, a mini camera is not going to keep your family safe.

• mega-mini pro spy camera: audio-activated portable dvr camera with amazing video quality. about the size of a stick of gum, this miniature camcorder is perfect for covert operations on-the-move…every mega mini spy camera pro comes complete with the camera, the belt/pocket clip, the neck strap, the dash mount and 1 recharger…this camera can be mounted on anything such as a helmet, bike, car, jacket, and more for the ultimate in portability and on-the-go recording.

i’m pretty sure, of all of those options, the bike will be the most-used by people buying this product.

• mini bug detector: mini handheld device is able to detect and locate the presence of concealed wireless transmitters ("bugs") that are operating in the 50 mhz to 3 ghz range. led bar display and optional audio alarm helps locate hidden devices. with adjustable rf sensitivity level to minimize false alarms.

a, i'm pretty sure the people who buy these things are the same ones who buy the spy gadgets. and b, how many calls has the fbi gotten from people using this kind of device (and this was not the only one in the catalogue, btw) who are convinced their house is being bugged? way to feed the paranoia skymall!

the next installment of 'sky mall - my favorite things' includes items such as a kitty cat potty training set, freeze-dried sod from yankee stadium, solar-powered luggage, a holiday yeti, and much, much more!

t minus three days and counting

today is sunday and i am in my office for the second day in a row to do homework. yesterday, i put up my little two-foot christmas tree and made ornaments for it out of business cards and paper clips; caught up on facebook; and printed one journal article for school before my printer crapped out; all while listening to ella fitzgerald christmas music. today i finished printing articles (still haven't read any of them); took pictures of my little christmas tree for this post; caught up on facebook; texted with my parents; looked up a bunch of stuff on the internet (how cool is google tv gonna be?!); all while listening to harry connick jr christmas music. homework? mmmm...














yesterday i met flambliva (flavia-sam-blake-ziva) for brunch and then we walked around the westtown mall for awhile. we played in the play area with seventy-five other children until i noticed a kid coughing and motioned to flav to keep ziva away from her. flav took one look at the little girl, scooped up ziva, grabbed blake, and said, 'that little girl has pink eye, we're outta here'. between my motions and flav's announcement, we pretty much cleared out the play area. it was like a horror movie, moms grabbing their kids, running around like crazy, everyone trying to get through the 'you can't be taller than this' entry/exit way while putting on winter coats and rubbing anti-bacterial gel on every available surface.* seriously, pink eye? why would you bring your child to the mall, especially the mall play area with tons of other children, when she has a highly contagious infection? the big story here, of course, is that i was at a mall on a saturday, the day after black friday even. shows how much i love those kids; if that's where i had to go to spend time with them, so be it.

watched ocean's thirteen the other night. so funny. two of my favorite moments: george clooney says to andy garcia, 'you ready?' to which garcia replies, 'i'm always ready' as he puts his sunglasses on and walks away. clooney waits a beat and then rolls his eyes. awesome. the second moment is george clooney and brad pitt watching the operah winfrey show. i won't detail it here, you'll just have to watch it. i love when a movie or television show makes me laugh out loud.

let's see, what else is new and can help me procrastinate while i write about it...oh! i'm heading to california for the first time in fifteen months this coming thursday morning. it's only for a few days, i'll be back on monday, but i am so so excited. my mum's having surgery tomorrow so i'll be there while she's recovering. someone asked me what type of surgery she was having and i said it was something internal. really penny? i asked her this afternoon how she was feeling and she said she was stressed because she wasn't done cleaning the house so i might have to deal with dust. not exactly what i meant by 'how are you feeling' but that's my mom. fortunately for her, i like dust and am coming to see her, not make a house cleanliness inspection.

and speaking of, if i don't get enough homework done before i leave, i'll be stressed out, so here i go, doin' homework now.

*ok, ok, it was one other mom who heard flavia and my very subtle conversation but it would have been mass panic if any of the other parents had been paying attention.

thanksgiving and beyond

'hi penny, great to meet you', said my friend kristin's dad as he stuck out his hand to shake mine.
'hi...i'm penny', was my brilliant reply. awesome.

my friend kristin invited me to come celebrate thanksgiving with her family in beaver dam, a town about an hour north of madison. so this morning, i met up with her, her two sisters and a boyfriend (he only belongs to one of the sisters, they don't share), her mom, and as mentioned above, her dad. the seven of us piled into the minivan and were on the road by 10 am.

we arrived at kristin's aunt's house just before 11 which was good timing, 'cause apparently, there's this game on tv people like to watch and if you don't watch it from the minute you step in the house until the minute your wife drags you away from it to go home, something terrible happens. i'm not sure what it is since, of course, it didn't happen, but that's the conclusion i came to after five hours.

kristin has a lovely family with aunts and uncles and cousins (oh my!). one of the cousins brought his two-year-old son who is adorable. fortunately, he likes trucks and cars (pixar) so i used my experience with blake to talk to the little guy. he was super shy and didn't want to go in the room where everyone was hanging out (watching football, did i mention?), but he was talking up a storm with kristin and me in the front room. he told me all the names of his trucks and i let him pick up my ring with his little bulldozer. i may not be able to talk to adults ('hi...i'm penny') but two-year-olds still learning to pronounce basic sounds, bring it. my favorite moment was when he corrected me and told me mater is a tow truck not a tractor. my bad. ok, i also loved when he said 'ekavator' (excavator) and 'backhoe' (...backhoe).

the afternoon went on, guests left, and soon it was down to a small group of eleven with the men watching football and the women sitting around the kitchen table talking. the ladies were nice and let me share something i thought was funny from my textbook (what, you don't bring textbooks to your thanksgiving dinners?). i had to spend several minutes explaining the context before i read the sentence about how poor survey methodology could be considered a crime, and it may not sound funny now, but believe me, it's funny. survey methodology, conan o'brien, pretty much the same. do i know how to entertain a crowd, or what. (the two-year-old was gone by then, i had to talk to adults and i believe we've already covered my skill set there)

over all, it was a lovely day. i've already planned and strategized my black friday activities. can you guess where i'll be at 3 am when the sales start? that's right, in my bed, asleep, probably snoring. i pick up sam, flav, and the kiddos tomorrow night from the airport and i am so so so excited to see and hug my favorite niece and nephew! i am thankful they are coming back, i am thankful to kristin and her family for letting me be a part of their day, and i am thankful i get to sleep in tomorrow. thank you.

good idea bad idea - my weekend

can you guess which category each of these belong to? good idea or bad idea:

• cleaning out my car (finally) after moving, what, two months ago?


• costco on a saturday afternoon


• talking to my mum on the phone


• target on a sunday afternoon


• the pumpkin cupcake i got from the grocery store (hint: yummy!)


• starting my homework at 3:00 on sunday afternoon


• stocking up on toiletries for the next six months


• watching the movie 'jonah hex'

post #100

i'm celebrating my 100th post by posting more evidence that i'm a geek.

i've been working on this survey at work for over a year; development, distribution, collection, analysis, phase 2 distribution, etc. got an e-mail today from a coalition in barron county (and no, i don't know where that is except that it's in wisconsin) that the survey was the LEAD STORY on the ten o'clock news last night. i watched the clip on-line and it was very cool! they showed the survey on camera, interviewed a community member about taking the survey, posted the survey on the station's website, and talked about how the community is focusing on reducing underage drinking. so, so cool!!

two-faced

i send e-mails every day. the other day, i thought about the e-mails that i send and the different facets of my life that they represent. my work e-mails reflect a confident, competent professional, a problem-solver, a solution-creator, a knowledgeable, intelligent person who knows what she's doing. my school e-mails, on the other hand, reflect all of the insecurities and stupidity within me. seriously. 'how do i do this?' 'i don't know how to do this.' 'please advise me on where i should go from here.' 'what does this mean? i don't understand this.' every school e-mail includes one of these phrases and at least one other way of expressing my inadequacies. someone has said that the purpose of graduate school is to make you feel perpetually stupid. consider its purpose fulfilled.

in other news, i'm at my sister's house playing peek-a-boo with ziva while five boys under the age of 8 run around upstairs and it sounds as if they are about to come crashing through the ceiling.

i have a lot of blogging stored up, it's been so long since i've posted. this week, i saw several things that made me laugh: a boy wearing a t-shirt that said his feet hurt (in big letters). and underneath, in smaller letters, it said, 'from kicking so much a**.' i also saw a girl carrying a duffle bag that said 'love pink' on it. the duffle bag was not pink. i saw other stuff but now i can't remember so you'll just have to trust me.

the badgers won last night (football). apparently, this is a big deal, so, yay. [crash from upstairs] fall is beautiful right now. cool weather, leaves blowing everywhere. huge piles of leaves on everyone's front lawns. i guess the city comes by and sucks up the piles of leaves but while they're sitting there, waiting for pick up, they are so tempting! i can't imagine someone not wanting to jump on top. i bet even the city workers would rather jump on top than suck them up.

the mayhem upstairs has spread to downstairs so i'm going to go (escape, leave, vacate). until we meet again...

non-organic un-fair trade

i'm sorry, non-organic, un-fair trade coffee just tastes better.

there are more, but these are the worst

can't say this has been a great week. dog ran away, car ran out of gas on the freeway, and then i tried to ride a bike after twenty years of not doing so (see pictures for results of that brilliant idea). i'm hoping this next week is better.

houdini hayden

so i had a bunch of funny things to blog about but they were overshadowed by the events of this evening. really, i've been recording funny things into my digital recorder so i wouldn't forget them but i'm dogsitting and i came over this evening after class, let the dogs out to do their business, and by 'business,' i don't mean a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods or services, or both, to consumers, and approximately three minutes later, opened the door to let them back in. in came in tyson, good boy. and hayden? nowhere to be seen. to make a long story short, mainly because i'm tired, and it's just too emotionally draining to re-live the walking, calling, driving, crying, and talking to neighbors, the little stinker knows how to escape from the front yard, did so, and ran around the neighborhood until a very nice neighbor saw him and took him inside where her very nice daughter gave him a peanut butter doggie treat. i was in the driving-crying-on the phone with my sister-phase of the search and rescue process when the very nice neighbor saw me and asked if i was looking for a little yorkie.

so now i'm back and can begin working on homework (after i check facebook and finish this blog post, duh). hayden is on my grumpy face list but he's trying hard to win me back. he'll succeed in about two minutes, but grrrr, all i could think about was him getting hit by a car and it was getting dark and i couldn't find him and it was all horrible. he is only conducting business in the back yard from now on.

robots in disguise

optimus prime and poptimus prime.
optimus prime and his autobots fight the evil forces of the decepticons while poptimus prime simply scares them away with his psychotic glare and threat of suffocation.
whatever works.

fall 2010 classes

sociology 362: statistics for sociologists iii. a class all about regression; linear, logistic, simple, multiple. lots of work and three stupid days a week. seriously, the associate dean of the department teaches the class, he couldn't have made the lab on one of the discussion days? ugh.

sociology 752: measurement and questionnaires for survey research. a fantastic class that will also be a lot of work but i'm very excited about. the instructor is the director of the uw survey center, very intelligent, and super organized.

pop health 803: monitoring population health. i'm also excited about this class which deals with public health surveillance systems.

french 1: conversational french. bonjour! i'm learning french so i can get a job with an international organization. it's practical and fun!

despite liking three of my four classes, i hate my schedule. stupid soc 362 is three afternoons a week, french is tuesday evenings until 7:30, survey research begins the next morning at 8:00 with the monitoring pop health class ending at 6:10 on the same day (wednesdays are going to be the longest days ever). in addition, i still have my 50% assistantship which means i have to fit 20 hours of work into each week. that wouldn't be a problem except that i work off campus and i could, potentially, spend all of my non-class time doing homework.

this weekend was my first with homework and i was a terrible student. i read about a 16th of what i needed to and didn't write anything. gotta work on that.

today i have class from 3:30 to 5:25. which class, you might wonder? stupid soc 362. but then i'm picking up a costco pizza and heading over to hang out with flav and the kids so the evening won't be totally ruined.

i'd just like to point out that i don't actually dislike the regression class. i dislike that it's three days a week and that there are six exams. none of my other classes have exams. but regression? six!! the other classes meet one day a week. but regression? three!! stupid soc 362.

year two

classes start today. i prepared by forgetting that classes started today and then remembering and then realizing i had lost the envelope with this year's parking pass in it. i finally found the envelope as well as my student id which i had forgotten i would need. i'm also borrowing a pen from work because, well, i forgot to throw one in my bag.

i'm taking four classes this semester: survey methodology, monitoring population health, regression, and french. i can't really say i'm excited about classes although i did choose three of the four that i'm taking. just feeling a little dis-enchanted with school given my failure with the qualifying exam. maybe i'll be more excited once classes get going.

and so begins year two.

ten moving lessons

1. packing tape does not a good meal make. use one of those rolly things with the jagged metal teeth instead of your own.
2. make sure you've had a tetnus shot in the past ten years. dropping a rusty screwdriver on your toe does not feel good. or perhaps the lesson was to wear shoes while being handy.
3. counter-top wine racks do not fit nicely in to any box unless it's the only thing you put in there, in which case, you might as well not.
4. eggs and diet coke also do not a good meal make. there are other ways to use up/get rid of what's in the fridge.
5. charles barklay is a terrible snl host. ok, not a moving lesson, but true, none-the-less and i just finished watching it so the horror is still fresh.
6. commenting on your also-moving-in-neighbors' eeyore doll is only a good idea if those new neighbors are three-year-old girls. in the case of two strapping young lads, keep your mouth shut.
7. moving two miles is, in some ways, worse than moving two-thousand miles. profusely and repeatedly thank the people helping you make six trips, back and forth, especially if moving in and/or out of a multi-level building. and if they have a truck.
8. moving boxes of 'miscellaneous paper' is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
9. lots of not heavy stuff gets not not heavy when put in a box together.
10. look both ways before crossing the street.

silence of the goats

the men who stare at goats, a must-see movie. funny, cynical, outrageous, and unbelievably, true. i can't even tell you the plot, you'll just have to watch it and fall in love with it like i did. george clooney, jeff bridges, ewan mcgregor, and kevin spacey, so awesome.

road paint

as soon as the first thaw happened, sometime in march (?), the road construction crews came out en masse in madison. roads all over town were torn up, blocked, re-routed, orange-cone covered, drilled, dug. lane closures have ensured that traffic all summer has been nice and congested. as we head in to fall, many of the roads have been re-tarred and opened for business. for the last couple of weeks, many of the roads i take to work and campus have been re-opened, but not yet re-painted. no lines means, to most people, one large lane - very luxurious (seinfeld, anyone?). there are people, however, who are confident they know where the lines would be if they were there and make their own lanes. it's great because not having lines doesn't create enough chaos, we need those falsely confident people on the road too. oh, and have i mentioned the millions of bicyclists in madison? no lines, interpreted by a bicyclist, means the entire road is a bike lane (i'd like to take a moment to disabuse any reading bicyclist of this idea).

this week is paint-the-finished-roads week in madison; instead of orange cones, there are construction workers in the middle of the road. i've been told the workers are worth more points than the orange cones if you hit one. gone are my luxury lanes, back to being told in which ten feet of road i'm allowed to drive. it's kind of a relief and kind of a disappointment, all at the same time. there are still a couple of months left of road construction so the fun isn't over yet, but with the first frost, the construction ends, leaving us with nicely re-paved and re-painted roads to be covered by snow, ice, and slush. gotta love driving in madison!

baltimore - episode two

i am the future of prevention. that's what the head lady of the federal government organization said this morning as she opened the general session of the conference. she didn't say those exact words, but that was her message. i felt very important.

this afternoon, a guy i recognized from the conference walked into the women's restroom. fortunately, i was the only one who saw him and i pretended i didn't. haven't seen him since.

the elevators here at the hotel have a security mechanism that forces you to enter your room key card into a slot before it will allow you to stop on your floor. i'm pretty sure this security measure is to prevent hooligans from accessing guests rooms or kids from running around all wild and crazy-like. last night i wanted to visit a co-worker whose room is on the floor below mine. as the elevator would not cooperate, i had to think outside of the vertical transport box. the stairs! now, you might think that the secluded, windowless, concrete stairwell might be a better place for a security system than a glass elevator where occupants are visible to everyone in the lobby and on the mezzanine, but nope, nada, zip. hooligans, this way if you please.

my co-worker and i went to a lovely restaurant for dinner in downtown baltimore. it's a good thing we make each other laugh because the service was lousy and the food was bland. but the restaurant did provide a complementary shuttle to and from the hotel so we didn't have to walk in the hot, sticky, don't-want-to-touch-yourself, sweat-with-no-exertion, evening weather. speaking of...

it's 6:15 pm and 90 degrees outside. according to the weather channel, it's 90 degrees but 'feels like' 103. how does that work? what kind of guage is used to determine what it 'feels like'? is there a formula involved? if it's a 'feeling', how can there be a standardized objective measurement instrument involved? do they send several people outside, ask them what the temperature 'feels like', and then average their responses? that's neither standardized nor objective. i'm not sure about this touchy-feely weather business, i believe further exploration is required.

i had dinner tonight with the same co-worker as last night. i've made her facebook status two days in a row. i'm pretty sure that makes us besties. move over miley.

baltimore - episode one

i'm being sent to baltimore, maryland by my funder/employer as the evaluator and representative of the south dakota grant-equivalent of what i work on for wisconsin. got that? in real life, i evaluate a federally-funded grant for wisconsin. for the conference, i'm representing the south dakota evaluator on the same grant (minus a few thousand details that are even more boring than this introduction). all that being said, these are the adventures of my trip to baltimore.

first flight, 7am, haven't had a full cup of coffee yet: sat in the wrong seat; apparently, 22e looks very similar to 22a that early and caffeine-deprived in the morning. then, as the plane was taking off, i was looking out the window, watching the flappy things on the wing and i thought, i could die in a fiery plane crash. and then i thought, why does it have to be fiery? it could be just a plain ol' plane crash. or some other kind of plane incident. an explosion perhaps? but then we were back to the fiery. maybe a hit and run? but when would i be walking along a tarmac? i guess i wouldn't have to be the hit-tee, i could be in the plane that does the hit-ting, but then, how would i die in that scenario? i guess, maybe, if we hit something really big and solid. but that would just result in a crash, probably fiery, and the plane wouldn't really be able to 'run' away from it. the plane could lose power mid-air and free fall to the ground...ending in a fiery crash. the plane could lose power mid-air and fall in to a body of water, the impact killing everyone on board. but then, why would our seats serve as flotation devices if that scenario were likely? that just doesn't make sense. the flight attendants could be serving beverages and teeny-tiny bags of peanuts and i could choke on a peanut and suffocate. but i'm cpr-certified, i know how to save myself.

we started our descent into detroit as i came to the conclusion that if i am going to die in a plane-related incident, it's just going to have to be a fiery crash.

american goat society

so, so many things to write about but this had to be written about immediately. just did a google search for a company called 'ags' that sells marketing data and it's all rather boring, but one of the top hits on the google results was 'american goat society'. man i love america.

day two post-exam

well, the exam is over for now. results come in august. whichever section(s) i did not pass, i will have to take again next july. if i don't pass then, i'm out of the program. i can't really write about how i felt the exam went (other than that it was extremely painful) because we just don't know how the committee will score the exams. it's a pass-fail sitch. night before last, i had terrible anxiety dreams - why wasn't i studying? what should i be studying? what section of the exam was in the morning? - last night wasn't as bad. yesterday (day 1) i went to a few yard sales, found blake a tent shaped like a bob-the-builder bulldozer. then met sam, flav and the kids at chuck e cheese. afterward, we went to tcby where little ziva tripped on the tile, and hit her face. there was blood everywhere. coming out of her teeny tiny right nostril, out of her mouth, there were tears, blake was trying to make everything better by wiggling his fingers in her face, sam was holding her, flav was trying to wash the blood off, everytime she stepped away, i stepped in. it was a mess. today, we tried to go to the farmers market downtown but there was an art thing so we went to a much smaller farmers market - one with no cheesy bread! we met up later for lunch. so much time with the fam, i love it! so much time not studying, i love it! ziva's chipmunking now, she stores food in her mouth, won't swallow it. it's great because when you finally show her something she wants, she gives up what she's been storing. into your hand. man i love being an aunt. it's a good thing she's so darn cute.

can and parents coming to visit, work, and summer school. that's the rest of my summer. now that the exam's over, i might go see a movie. i'll definitely read a non-school book. how exciting!

interview with the big cheese (chuck e)

me: thank you for the interview sir, it's quite an honor
mr. cheese: my pleasure, my pleasure
me: so mr. cheese-
mr. cheese: please, call me chuck
me: ok chuck, thanks. so the rumor is that kids can really be, you know, kids when they're at your place
chuck: it's true; i remember when the first store opened, back in-
me: that's great chuck. from childhood, i remember your place as kind of dark, there were these big scary puppets with blinking eyes that sang every once in a while, you got tickets from playing video games and ski-ball, and there were cheap plastic prizes you could exchange those tickets for. how is it possible that a place like that has survived for over thirty years?
chuck: well, first there's our quality frozen over-priced pizza, made from the finest ingredients, as you can see from this animated poster, featuring myself. we also now give little cups to the kiddos so they can hold their tokens in them, much like adults carry around in vegas. we've opened the place up a bit by having windows installed and the puppets are still here, see? right over there? but now you can see their whole bodies so they're not quite as scary. they still move when they're not singing and their eyes stare at you incessantly, but we've had very positive responses. finally, we have a salad bar for the adults and all games are now only one token.
me: i know my niece and nephew sure love this place. we came here just yesterday and they had a blast. the frozen pizza, plastic prizes, and wierd puppets clearly appeal to them.
chuck: just wait until they get older, they'll have fond memories of my stores, just like you.
me: hmmm, yeah. ok, well, thanks again for your time, i know you're a very busy mouse.
chuck: my pleasure, my pleasure. come back anytime, and be sure to bring your niece and nephew!

t-minus thirteen hours

tomorrow's the first day of my qualifying exam
been studying for months so there's no need to cram
three sections, two days, and serious implications
lots of stress, lots of coffee, and a lack of vacations

i know lots of stuff about techniques of regression
preventing all bias has become an obsession
methods for study design and analyses
my brain is at risk of knowledge paralyses!

if y is my score, beta one is my slope,
x one is me, x two is hope
looking forward to this exam being over and done
so 'normal' can return and i can have some fun! (and start my research)

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

sick poetry

sick and at home and laying down in my bed
there's pain in my chest and pain in my head
i'm cold and i'm hot, these symptoms in tandem
i hate this attack on my weak immune system

my left nostril drips while the right stays plugged up
i sneeze, my eyes tear, and if that's not enough
i've become a mouth breather so my tongue is all dry
and now the left's plugged and the drips on the right

went to work for an hour, didn't go to school
but i've got friends, so no worries, it's cool
thanks to netflix, i've watched 10 law and orders
detectives, you're being called to the judge's quarters

no time to be sick, i have too much to do
family's coming, homework, not scheduled this flu
no orange juice, no soup, no meds, no clean spoons
guess i'll just have to get well soon

spring break

so, so close. two and a half days. i mean, i have to work next week, but no classes. i almost get teary just thinking about it. ok, and i'll have homework to work on, but no classes. sigh.

everyone here at school is so ready for break and it shows. we come to class, walking slowly, only going into the classroom at the last minute. we're tired and grumpy and indifferent. had a mid-term exam on monday and the post-mortem discussions were decidedly lackluster. oh spring break, how we long for thee!

mom, dad, and sister arrive from so cal on saturday. haven't seen them since july. they say they're looking forward to seeing me, but come on, the only two grandchildren in the family live in middleton, you really think they're coming to see me? can't say i blame them, my favorite nephew and niece are the cutest children ever. hah! they thought they were so clever, waiting until the snow melted to visit; they don't know about the bicyclists.

winter showers bring spring cyclists

almost as bad as driving around snow is my newest challenge: driving around bicyclists. as the snow melts, hundreds of thousands of bicyclists emerge in madison, pedaling their way to and fro, enjoying the sunshine after the long winter months.* many are commuters, cycling to work and/or school, and were i to wear a hat, it would be off to their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. others are serious bikers, wearing special biking clothes, helmets, shoes. a friend of mine here owns five bikes. seriously, who needs five bikes? but, you see, they're all different kinds of bikes. utility, racing, mountain, and variations therein. madisonians do not fool around when it comes to cycling. [to give my friend her props, she did have a tramatic bus ride last week - she got hit on by a toothless man and a blind woman sat on her lap. i'd ride a bike too if the bus was my alternative transportation.]

madison is a pretty friendly bike town. there are bike lanes on most major streets and most bicyclists are defensive drivers, but omg, there are just so many of them! to your right while you're driving, crossing the street while you're waiting to turn left, waiting at a stoplight next to you. and what happens when the bike lane ends? all of a sudden, you're sharing the road with them, you can't get too close to the car on your left, you don't want to hit the biker on your right, you find yourself gripping the steering wheel at 10 and 2 with white knuckles and a tension headache. the worst is when there's a right turn lane, a bike lane to its left, you're in the driving lane to the left of the bike lane, and you need to get into that right turn lane. you have to cross over the bike lane. i think i check my mirrors and over my shoulder, like forty-five times before i cross over.

oh! and you should see the looks the bicyclists give you! behind their special bicyclist sunglasses are eyes full of judgement. 'why don't you ride a bike?' they ask. 'why are you driving a car, polluting our environment, not being healthy and exercising like me?' my eyes send messages right back. 'why don't you move to madison from los angeles where no one rides their bikes or takes the bus because the roads aren't pedestrian friendly and the bus system stinks? how do you have enough time to ride a bike or take the bus which takes three to four times longer than driving your own car? oh, not in a phd program and studying sixteen hours a day? excuse me while i cross over your bike lane.'

so, yet another challenge, albeit one i can definitely handle. although, come to think about it, when i was learning to drive around snow, i did hit a car...bicyclists beware.

*these numbers have not been verified

winter's legacy

it's not yet spring, but the snow has mostly melted, leaving in it's wake mushy brown sod. like a receding hairline, the white blanket of frozen matter slowly changed from a solid to a liquid state, revealing, inch by inch, lawns, parks, those strips of land between the sidewalk and the street, landscaping long forgotten.

but there's snow that doesn't melt. heat doesn't melt it. rain doesn't melt it. sodium chloride doesn't melt it. black snow. snow that sits in piles along the streets and in parking lots. snow that has become so mixed with exhaust fumes and other pollutants, it is no longer recognizable as the pretty white snow it once was. what will it take to make this snow go away? how long will it take? and where will it go?

(picture courtesy of google images)

oh wisconsin, what have you gotten yourself into

well, it's official: i'm official. officially a wisconsinite. i finally made it to the dmv today, while it was open and with all of the necessary documents. i'll get my new wisconsin driver's license by mail in 7-10 days. in the meantime, i have a 'driver's receipt' to carry around. it's pretty not awesome and i was very sad to relinquish my california driver's license. as far as the title for my car, because i didn't bring in my current title, and apparently, there's some law that you can only have one title per car at any given time, i got to pay for a wisconsin title but i didn't actually receive a wisconsin title. i didn't even get a 'title receipt'! the very nice woman behind the counter did say, however, that if i bring in my california title and pay the dmv another $5, they'll give me the wisconsin title. finally, wisconsin license plates. these, i actually walked out of the dmv with. haven't put them on my car yet (what! i just got home, like 10 minutes ago!) but i have them. can't complain about the wait at the dmv, it really wasn't bad. i will however complain about the $177.50 that the three transactions cost. ridiculous.

so there it is, i'm a wisconsin resident with wisconsin license plates, a wisconsin title (theoretically) and a wisconsin driver's license, i mean, receipt. i've even made it through most of my first wisconsin winter (i think 40 degrees sounds heavenly warm). the only thing left is to develop a love for beer, brats (bratwursts), and cheese curds.

i might have to be ok with living on the fringe of wisconsin society.

smell my breath

dentists, dental hygenists, dentist office secretaries who wear scrubs, my friend kristin. for years i've been hearing about the wonderful blessings that will be bestowed upon one's teeth if only one will use an electric toothbrush. sonicare, oral-b, doesn't matter. the key is the vibrating brush that properly hits all the surfaces of your teeth for a full two minutes.

so, you guessed it, this weekend i got my very own electric toothbrush. this morning, i used it for the first time. i put toothpaste on the brush, turned it on, and proceeded to fling toothpaste all over the bathroom. my second attempt involved putting the toothpaste on the vibrating brush really, really close to my open mouth. tonight i'll try turning on the brush after i put the brush in my mouth (thanks, kristin - genius!).

so to get everything brushed proportionally and for a full two minutes, you're supposed to brush outer upper for 30 seconds, inner upper for 30 seconds, outer lower for 30 seconds, and inner lower for 27 seconds. just kidding! 30 seconds. there's supposed to be a 'beep' (onomatopoeia!) to notify you of the 30-second mark. apparently, i missed all of the beeps because the toothbrush shut off and i was still on the upper outers - they got a really good cleaning. i thought it seemed like a really long 30 seconds, but who am i to question an electric toothbrush?

so, who knew? there's a learning curve for electric-toothbrush use. despite my inability to master my new toothbrush right out of the box, my teeth felt really clean so i couldn't have screwed up too badly. is it wrong to feel so victorious?

e-aggressive

now, no one get your undies in a bunch, but i registered on (which is not the same as becoming a member of) e-harmony. the only reason i did it was because i got a hundred points on mypoints. to register, you fill out this un-buh-lievably long profile form. you think you're done when you click 'finish', but it turns out you're only 37% done. you have to be a member to do the other sixty-three percent. no thanks, didn't want to do it anyway, just wanted my hundred points. my answer to, 3 things you can't live without: giraffes, snowplows, cheese. in hindsight, the snowplows is true.

this was three days ago. i've been sent thirty-eight matches (apparently, i'm very matchable), each in a separate e-mail. in addition, e-harmony has sent me over a dozen photo 'nudges', become-a-member reminders, and welcome messages. i have a blackberry. please. stop. sending. me. e-mails.

today i fought back. i went to their website and made my profile inactive. i have to give them credit though, they really try to hook people up. relentlessly.

google scholar (tm)

a while back, my very intelligent and wildly intelligent cousin eric (sorry ladies, he's married) e-mailed me to say that he had discovered my level of fame reaches well beyond blogging as he had been searching for dissertations on proquest (a scholarly search engine) and had come across my master's thesis, which, technically, is published, making me, technically, a published author. last week, as a friend and i were working on our quantitative methods homework (and having a blast, by the way), i remembered this e-mail, and, as we were looking for something to do other than our homework, we booted up google scholar and searched for "penny black diffusion of innovation theory". the first result, my thesis. and you can purchase your very own copy! only 37USD for a .pdf, or 75USD for a hard copy. if you're really interested in reading it, i'll loan you my copy; it'll put you right to sleep.

oh, awkward moments

so i'm working at my desk, minding my own business this afternoon, when a voice begins to penetrate my concentration. it's a loud voice, irritated, argumentative, coming from the lobby of my building. now that i can hear the voice, it's the only thing i can hear, the only thing i can focus on. it goes on and on and on and on. finally, i can't stand it any longer. i get up and close the door between my program's offices and the lobby. i have to leave the door partially propped open however, because it locks from the other side and people need to be able to enter our offices. i see the man sitting in the lobby, talking on his cell phone. it's been at least ten minutes and he hasn't stopped talking. loudly.

ah, sweet bliss. the sounds of the loud, agitated man are muted and i can concentrate on work again. after awhile, i notice the voice has completely stopped, there is silence in the lobby. i get up, glance through the glass door i had closed, and see the previously occupied chair empty. triumphantly, i knock on a co-worker's door. "someone was not using his inside voice out there!" i say to my co-worker, whose office shares a wall with the lobby. we chat about the loud man and his inconsideration and such for a minute before i go back to work.

a few minutes later i need to use the restroom. i open the door, this time propping it fully open and as i rise to a standing position from setting the doorstop, i see the cell phone talker sitting in the chair in front of me. he's looking at me and i know he heard every word i said to my co-worker. i smile politely, walk across the thousand-mile lobby, use the restroom, and walk back across the endless stretch of tile, all the while knowing he's there, watching me, planning his next cell phone conversation, his next volume level, his next audience, all in retribution.

odds and ends

today i had the pleasure of attending an irb training with my supervisor who slept through the entire thing. whenever you do research, you have to submit your proposal to an 'irb' - something review board - which allegedly are in place to protect human subjects (participants in your research). the truth is, these irb's serve to protect the university from liability issues but they don't say that. the timing of this training was a little late as 1) i have already completed the on-line, much more comprehensive, irb training; and 2) i submitted an irb application 2 weeks ago. but, as a lowly grad student/project assistant, i had to attend per my supervisor - who, did i mention, slept throughout the training??

ziva's crawling and oh man, is she cute. of course, she won't crawl on command so if you put her down, wanting her to perform, she looks up at you as if you've betrayed her and tears fill her big blue eyes causing your heart to break and your arms to reach down and pick her up again. she may never learn to walk.

it was 0 degrees when i woke up this morning and 5 degrees when i got to work. and no, i don't get tired of reporting the weather to you all.

i'm starting a new study group. i sent out the invitation to everyone in my classes and got a pretty enthusiastic response. i had to find a meeting room large enough for us and we start meeting next monday. we'll see how it goes.

my laptop has a virus even though i have anti-virus software. i need to take it to the computer doctor on campus and see if he can do anything. i know antibiotics won't work because it's not bacterial but maybe they'll have something to knock it out.

someone stole my coffee mug at work.

and so, my friends, now you know why i haven't been posting a lot lately. while i've been crazy busy, nothing very exciting has been happening. school is intense and all-consuming and when i'm not at school, i'm working and when i'm not working or at school, i want to sleep. it's not yet 8:30 pm and all i can think about is crawling into bed and closing my eyes. of course, then i'll lie there for two hours thinking of everything i need to be doing (like bringing in the trash can from the street that i've left out there for 2 days, shoot!). so it's homework for a few hours before i get to fall into that beautiful bed upstairs. i'll leave the trash can for tomorrow.

joke of the week

tourists visiting a natural history museum were marveling at the dinosaur bones on display. one of them asked the guard, "can you tell me how old the dinosaur bones are?" the guard replied, "they are 65 million and eight years old." "that's an awfully exact number," said the tourist. "how do you know their age so precisely?" the guard answered, "well, the dinosaur bones were sixty five million years old when i started working here, and that was eight years ago." - contributed by my quantitative methods professor (suspender-wearer at right) in an attempt to illustrate the relative meaninglessness of too many digits after the decimal. he is a funny guy.

winter lesson #173

you can't leave soda in your car here.

compassionate friends here responded by saying, "well you know you can't put soda in the freezer, right?" yeeeees, but i don't think of my car as a fuh-reezer, thank you very much. a motor vehicle that gets me from point a to point b, yes. a food-storage appliance intended to reduce the reproduction rate of bacteria, no.

that said, let this be a lesson to us all.

the parking gods are smiling

first of all, it was negative 2 degrees when i got to work this morning. it's eleven o'clock am now and the temperature has risen 8 degrees. that's right, it's 6 whole fahrenheit degrees. now onto my good news.

just got an e-mail from transportation services - i'm up for a parking permit for next school year!!!!!!!! happy days are here again! no more riding the bus! no more illegal parking! no more parking tickets!

i accepted the offer, paid for it (well, i will, as i pay off the credit card debt i'm accruing), and all i have to do now is pick it up. can't use it until september, but yay! i have a parking permit!

btw, the high today is 15. i don't think it'll get anywhere near there. it's 6.

heteroskedasticity

it's a real word and it's my favorite. i read it in a journal article a couple of years ago, immediately wrote in on a little yellow post-it note, and stuck it on my desk so i could look at it whenever i wanted to. yes, i had to research what it meant, and no, i have not been able to use it in a conversation yet, but - and here's where it gets exciting - since i've been back in school, i've had two, count 'em, two! professors use the word. and since the semester has only begun, one has to assume i will be hearing, using, and correcting for heteroskedasticity on a regular basis. doesn't it just give you tingles?!

spring semester 2010

i have three classes this semester: quantitative methods, epidemiologic methods, and health services research. these classes are supposed to prepare us for the qualifying exam this july that phd students must pass before we can move on in our academic careers. so not only do we get the stress from the difficulty of the classes themselves, we get the compounded stress of preparing for a test that determines the course of our lives for the next few years. fortunately, it's only the first week of classes, and the oppressive weight of mental and emotional tension has not yet set in. i still possess the capacity to find humor in things, so while this lasts, let's review:

professor 1: a small man with a columbian accent so thick, it takes all of my accent-sorting listening power to stay focused. it's hard not to get mentally stuck on words like 'kuh-myoo-luh-tiv' (emphasis on the 'myoo'), roll it around, play with it, stretch it out. you just have to think, he means 'cumulative' and keep following the lecture, otherwise you'll miss half of what he's saying - because half of what he's saying are mispronunciations like 'in-stant-tin-ay-ose' (emphasis on the 'stant') (instantaneous); 'pope-oo-lation' and 'huh-sard' (emphasis on the 'sard') (hazard).

professor 2: first day of class wore boots over his gray trousers, held up with suspenders, a blue shirt, and a pea-green plaid, tweed sports coat. oh, and glasses. nice enough guy, reads from his notes. no accent but uses words like 'multivariable regression analysis' so i'll probably have as much trouble understanding him as i do professor 1.

professor 3: will farrell-look-a-like (see 10nov2009 blog entry). i only pictured him as a giant elf once during the two-and-a-half hour lecture; i consider that a success. this class only meets once a week, which is nice, but it's two-and-a-half hours long, in a small, overcrowded classroom, so a bit painful.

so the first week is done (sort of. tomorrow, i have a full-day seminar on sas, statistical analysis software) and the semester has officially started. the anxiety really only goes up from here.

this week in review

ok, so it's really a review of last week.

monday - went to the eye doctor for a routine eye exam, ended up in emergency retinal surgery. turns out i had detached retinas. left the doctor's office that day with the right eye fixed and the anticipation of another surgery to fix the left eye.

tuesday - got to recount my story for everyone in the office and received lots of empathy.

wednesday - met with my new therapist. i think she's the reason i haven't posted a new post in a couple of weeks. my blog has been my personal therapy (remember, most of what i write, i don't post), and now that i'm meeting with her, i haven't felt the need to write as much. i've also been on school break so there hasn't been as much to write about. also went to the dmv to try to get my wisconsin driver's license, title, and plates but i didn't have my passport or birth certificate so i took the forms i needed and vowed to return.

thursday - went in for the second eye surgery i had been dreading for three days. it was painful but since i knew what to expect this time, i employed mental imagery (i kept picturing george clooney) and it helped up until the very end when i couldn't ignore the pain. i didn't make my afternoon dentist appointment but i'm not blind so i figure it balances. i went home after the surgery, took a nap, grabbed my passport and got to the dmv at 4:05. the dmv closes at 4:00 on thursdays. i shook my fist at the locked doors and drove away with my california driver's license, california title, and california plates.

friday - drove to rockford, illinois to pick up flav and the kids. it's the tiniest airport i've ever seen and it has free parking. short-term, long-term, it's free. it's also an hour and a half away. on the way back we ate at a place called 'beef-a-roo'. not kidding. it's like a mix of arby's and a regular burger joint. despite the name, it was actually pretty good.

next week, classes begin. dun, dun, dun (you know, menacing, descending, song-like tones)

the search for church

i have been very productive during my school break so far: i made appointments with doctors within my new insurance plan, i changed my car insurance, i packed up my christmas decorations, and i made a long list of things that still need to get done. things like finding a church in madison; a church with good, solid teaching, not too big, not too small, not too short, not too tall - oh wait, wrong list, and available service opportunities.

there is certaintly not a lack of churches in madison. i like being an informed consumer so before i started the exhausting process of 'church shopping', i thought i'd do some research to narrow down the field of possible candidates. you might think this means looking up the distance from my house, service times, congregation size, etc. and perhaps i'll get to that at some point. but first, when a church proclaims to be 'reformed' or 'four-square' or even, 'non-denominational', i want to understand what that means. what do they believe, what do they teach? it's been a long time since i could rattle off the five points of calvinism, the arguments from lutheranism, and how arminianism felt about it all. i don't fall neatly into any of those schools of thought, but i want to know where a church stands. free will vs. predestination? limited vs. universal atonement? uncertainty vs. certainty of perseverance?

my grandpa told me that as long as the church is bible-based and preaches against sin and nancy pelosi, he would approve. with these standards in mind, first, a theological quest to understand the doctrine; second, service times. this should be easy.

banana cream pie blizzard flavored lip balm anyone?

'tis the season for giving. and, as a result, i cannot be the only one who received gifts that made me say, huh? (with love and appreciation, of course) and, for the record, the doggy socks, pictured right, are not 'huh?' gifts, they're adorable and i took the picture right before i put them on.

i had the honor of being visited not once, but twice, by santa; i must have been a very good girl this year. gum, post-it notes, pens, etc. and, oddly enough, each time, santa left me a food or beverage-flavored lip balm in my stocking. the first, a dairy queen banana cream pie blizzard flavored lip balm (not kidding), the second, a wild cherry pepsi flavored lip balm. they're both still in original packaging if anyone has a 'huh?' gift worth trading.

please feel free to submit your candidates for most random gifts via comments.
happy new year!