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.