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!

winter lesson #258

windshield washer fluid freezes.

it turns out there are two kinds of windshield washer fluid: the kind that freezes and the kind that doesn't. the former kind is usually put into vehicles driven in places that do not experience severe winter weather like, say, southern california. the latter kind is sold and used in vehicles driven in places like, oh, i don't know, wisconsin. being the responsible person that i am, i had taken my car in for a full inspection, oil change, tire rotation, new wiper blades, mani-pedi, fluid top-off, the works. in southern california. so i learned winter lesson #258 after my washer fluid reservoir was full of frozen washer fluid, one big hunk-a-hunk-a-chunk-a ice.

i also learned that if you leave your car in the airport parking lot for a week, the window-roll-down mechanisms freeze and you have to open your door to pay the attendant (lesson #259). winter is awesome.

let the recovery begin

written yesterday (sunday), posted today: sitting at the airport; waiting for my flight back to milwaukee. my flight is scheduled to depart at 4:28 but as i checked my bag the midwest lady told me the plane wouldn't arrive until 4:30. i told her i shouldn't have to pay the baggage fee since i was being inconvenienced by a late departure but she didn't buy it.

i'm taking advantage of the my wait to begin the recovery process (and drink a delicious, over-priced pumpkin spice latte). i can't even imagine how i would feel right now if i didn't like my family. but i do (like 'em). they're funny and intelligent and talented. my emotional exhaustion is primarily a reflection of my inability to maintain a high level of pleasant, social contact for days on end. very little alone time, constant noise and interaction, crisis resolution, sleep deprivation (playing beatles rock band with my cousins until all hours of the night was a necessary activity), and being confronted with the reality of mortality as i saw the grandparents who raised me, now in their eighties, dealing with all of those things that come with old age. in five days i went through almost an entire bottle of midol, purely for its excessive-emotion-reduction capabilities.

yesterday, grandma and i, and then later, my cousins, cousins' wives, cousins' kids, and i went to the marion mall to check out the day-after-christmas sales. being as fond of shopping as i am, my willingness to go with grandma is a testament to my love for her; my eagerness to go the second time is a testament to my love of books and the going-out-of-business sale at waldenbooks. my suitcase ended up at 49.5 pounds after i shifted two of the i-won't-say-how-many books to my carry-on (one suitcase is $20, one suitcase over 50 lbs is $75!).

last night a fuse blew on one side of the house and one of my cousins and i spent an hour looking at three different fuse boxes to try to locate the culprit (with a flash light, in the freezing cold, in our pajammers). i finally ended up reading out types of and amp levels of every antiquated fuse the house possesses over the phone to my uncle who was shopping with my aunt and another cousin in columbus. how they found replacement fuses in the middle of the night is beyond me (they had to go to three stores i found out today). so the power's back on in that side of the house and now my uncle has to return the space heater that contributed to the power outage in the first place. it was a little like christmas at the oswalds.

this morning we all went to church and then the house of hunan for chinese food. the fortune in my cookie told me to remember the date three months from today because something important would happen. so in case i forget, would someone please mark 27 march in his/her calendar? thanks. my aunt and uncle drove me and one of my cousins to the columbus airport after lunch and here i sit. surrounded by people and blissfully alone.

christmas with the family

oh, the cacophany of noise. ten adults, a four-year old, a two-year old, a toddler, an infant, two dogs, and a partridge in a pear tree. and did i mention my aunt has a collection of easily accessible singing stuffed animals? the four-year old thinks these are immensely entertaining and likes to push the 'push here' buttons on as many as possible at the same time. i think it's equally entertaining to hide as many as possible at the same time.

we started the morning with stockings and then had a lovely breakfast. knowing how well i do with large numbers of people and small children for extended periods of time, i took midol as a pre-emptive strike against grumpiness. worked like a charm and, although no one took me up on my offer, it might have been a good idea for more than just myself. won't mention any names or particular incidents in the kitchen...

gift opening started in somewhat-organized rounds but quickly descended into madness and mayhem as my uncle decided things were taking too long and we should all open at the same time. two cousins playing santa, two cousins' wives trying to keep up with two small children each, four small children who didn't want to be kept up with, two dogs with new plush squirrels to chew on, one sick cousin, two great grandparents, two grandparents, and myself. it was awesome.

the kids were (and are) adorable; super excited about their new toys, more excited about each other's toys. three different sizes of batteries had to be found to begin playing - after scissors, twist ties, and teeth finally got the objects out of the packages. hours later, they're back to playing with the toys grandma and grandpa (my aunt and uncle) keep at their house and that belonged to their parents (my cousins) when they were kids.

we had a big, formal, yummy lunch of paella (rice, shrimp, chicken, olives, beans, clams, other stuff) and three kinds of pie for dessert: crapple (cranberry-apple), pecan, and mincemeat (surprisingly popular around here). i think there's some leftover pecan - sounds like dinner to me!

biostatistics

ode to flavia

she has two children I love to adore,
i'm hoping she'll have at least two more,
ziva is precious and smiley and warm,
blake is rambunctious and like a storm

blake's saying new words, he's a little man,
'daddy home' he says about her husband sam,
she likes volleyball and pizza from costco,
she doesn't like cold, 'specially the snow

she texts me pictures of the cute kids,
and recycles everything, even lids,
she makes me food and brings it to my house,
watches ncis and sneezes like a mouse

i'm glad she's nearby with sam, ziva, and blake,
one night she even made me a steak,
that's true, it's not just a rhyming line,
you should be so luck to have a sister like mine

the ox and lamb kept time

par-rum-bum-bum-bum

someone's making money off of this. genius.

this week in review

let's see...

• tuesday i was riding a bus that almost got into a collision. we had to pull over, disembark and get on the next bus that came by.
  


• tuesday night madison experienced the worst blizzard since, like, 1885. 17+ inches of snow. i was snowed in my apartment until wednesday night around 8:30 when a plow finally came by and cleared the area in front of my garage.
  


• wednesday was my first ever snow day. no work, no school. everything in madison shut down. the university even cancelled classes which hasn't happened in, someone said, 30 years. i think it was a degree that day. i stayed inside.
  


• thursday the roads were horrible because of the storm, traffic was unbelievable, i missed the bus and had to drive to school. on the way, i slid on some ice and ran into a parked car, shattering its bumper. barely a scratch on my car and no injuries. i'm convinced the cold contributed to the utter decimation of the bumper because i barely bumped it.
  


• friday i was terrified to drive anywhere but i did. i went with a couple of friends to see the movie invictus. it was pretty good but morgan freeman's accent was embarrassing. and someone did not do their research on south african culture because people were giving and receiving with one hand all over the place. seriously? a matt damon-morgan freeman budget movie couldn't afford a couple of researchers?
  


• saturday had lunch with flav and the kids. blake said my name!!! he's saying all kinds of things now, the best of which is my name. he hasn't put aunt and penny together but he says penny pretty clearly. he's a genius.
  


• this weekend i'm working on two papers, a biostatistics assignment (the last of the semester, woo-hoo! except the final), and a take-home final for another course. all of that is due this week and my biostatistics final is due the 22nd, thus concluding my first semester.

so overall, it was a pretty eventful week. will be glad when this coming week is over and even more glad when i submit my biostats exam. and now, back to homework.

my first real snow

flurries, my you-know-what. we got a real snow! here is a pic of my car's first real snow (this was pretty early, there was a lot more snow in the morning). the scary part was driving in my first real snow. i did fine until i pulled onto my little street where not too many cars had driven and the snow was a bit icy. i missed my driveway when my tires didn't turn but it all turned out ok. it's s'posed to snow pretty much all week but we'll see.

two more weeks of my first semester! aaahhh!!!

it's snowing!

it's snowing today! my first snow! i'm told these are 'snow flurries' and not real snow but as i see it, perfect little snow flakes are falling from the sky, thus it is snowing. they landed on my car as i drove, on my lapel as i walked, and on the windows of the library as i studied before class. snow!

biostatistics

i have a love-hate relationship with biostatistics. mostly i hate it. just spent forty-five minutes on one question for the current assignment. let me clarify: part a of one question. my instructor likes to divide the questions into parts and sub-parts so although it may look relatively harmless and straight-forward, it's actually a seven-page answer to 'one' question. hate. biostatistics.

so that you don't think i'm always complaining, i would like to point to the love part of my relationship with biostatistics. i love it when i'm done with an assignment or class is over. and i'm truly fascinated with the biostatistical basis of my field. i just don't like having to actually do the calculations. statistical analysis software? love it! give it to me! let me play with data all day long. hand calculations of confidence intervals using the chi-square distribution with a paired two-sample experiment? well, you can just take that and - calculate it yourself.

fun with carbon monoxide

so last night, rally and i enjoyed a lovely fire in our wood-burning fireplace. it was warm and pretty and i turned all the lights off and watched a movie while rally sat in front of the fire and watched the flames dance. a little after ten, the fire was out, i closed the floo, and started picking things up around the apartment. about twenty minutes later, the alarm upstairs started beeping and a voice declared, warning: carbon monoxide detected. rally and i raced up the stairs, found a step ladder, and tried to quiet the alarm by pushing the 'hush' button, which made the fire alarm go off and the voice to yell, at the top of its mechanical voice, 'warning: fire', siren, siren, siren, 'warning: fire'. and not quietly, i might add. did i mention this is one of those new-fangled tamper-proof alarms? so i'm standing on the step ladder, jabbing at the 'hush/fire alarm' button and trying to open the linen closet to pull a fan off the top shelf. i get the fan, plug it in, get back on the step ladder, and hold the fan above my head to blow the odorless, poisonous carbon monoxide gas away from the alarm. i know i need to open windows and re-open the floo, but every time i move, the stupid alarm goes off again. after a few minutes, i put down the fan, race to one room, open the window, race to the other room, open the window, jump back on the ladder to set off the fire alarm again, hold the fan up for a few more minutes, set the fan down, race downstairs to open the floo and open another window (because 30-degree air coming in from two windows isn't enough), race back upstairs, jump back on the ladder, and proceed to set the fire alarm off again in my attempt to shut off the carbon monoxide alarm. i'm. not. kidding. although i did ask the alarm at one point, out loud, 'are you kidding me?' so let's go back to this tamper-proof bunch of boloney. just because there's no battery to remove does not mean it's tamper-proof. all you have to do is wrench the stupid thing off the ceiling and untwist the cap things holding all the wires together.

you think it's over don't you.

i finally get the alarm to shut the hello-dolly up, my arms are about to fall off from holding the stupid fan above my head, my legs are about to give out from standing on a step ladder and running all over the house, i'm fuh-reezing because all of my windows are open and it's eleven o-clock at night and any minute now i'm expecting my doorbell to be rung by a neighbor or the fire department - oh! i forgot to mention that in the midst of the chaos, i was trying to look up the fire department's non-911 phone number in a totally useless phonebook (while standing on the ladder and holding the fan). never found it, btw. and no one rang the bell. i did a self assessment for carbon monoxide poisoning but i wasn't nauseous or sluggish (although the adrenaline could have counter-acted that) so i felt it was safe to close the downstairs windows and call it a night. i decided to risk leaving the floo open; whatever crawled in, crawled in, that's rally's department. apparently, i've never raised (or lowered) the blinds in my living room because i spent the about fifteen minutes trying to get the stupid things down. up, down, up, down, up, up, dow-nope, up. i was pretty sure i was going to rip them off the wall and have to hang up a classy sheet or piece of foil to cover the window, but i finally got them down and added them to my list of things to talk to the property manager about.

around midnight i got into bed, second-floor windows still open, electric blanket on. i woke up successfully this morning so i'm going to assume the carbon monoxide dissipated to the alarm's satisfaction.

looking forward to the fire tonight.