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!