Becky's Big Adventure

I just don't want to.

2012-02-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

I'm in quite a mood today. Somewhere between balky and stubborn. All of the tasks that I need to finish today are frustrating and nit-picky. And you know what? I just don't want to. I don't want to be at work. I don't want to stare at my code. I don't want to put another anti-reflection coating on our lenses.

This is when being a grown-up sucks, because no one cares that I don't want to. They expect me to suck it up and do it anyway.

That doesn't stop my inner child from having a serious pout, stamping her feet, and whining about it all.

Hurmph.

England, again!

2012-01-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

My craptacular Tuesday/Wednesday managed to drive out of my head the most important thing I did on Monday - book another trip to England! This time, Brad gets to go too!

We have some friends who are getting married in London in June, so we're flying out for a week to go to the wedding and see the sights. I loved England; I'm so excited to share it with Bradley.

The best part about taking a vacation is the anticipation. I'm already thinking about the things we should do while we're there. Definitely the British Museum, even though I've already been, I didn't see all of it and would love to go back. I never got to any of the fine art museums (like the Tate Modern or the National Portrait Gallery). Maybe the opera again? So many choices!

We'll be gone from June 13-20, which will be right after the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and right before the Olympics. I wish we could stay longer, but it will be right in the middle of a critical testing phase for Spider and I'm not sure that Brad can take more than a week off from Apple anyway.

I'm also happy that we'll get to see our friends get married. I love weddings. And England. And vacations.

Is today done yet?

2012-01-18T17:47:00.000-08:00

The past 24 hours have been... long. It started yesterday, when Bradley got a pretty gnarly flu bug. He spent most of yesterday sleeping and I spent most of yesterday trying to get fluids into him. (High fever, aches and pains, all the good stuff. Luckily no barfing.)

I decided to sleep on the couch in an effort to not get whatever it was he had. Not to mention that the chills/fever combination made it impossible for him to sleep without tossing and turning.

I'd been asleep for about four hours when two of my students knocked on my door, both of whom were violently ill (either from food poisoning or the flu). One of them was in rough shape, so I eventually went with her to the the urgent care facility.

While at the urgent care facility, one of the (young) nurses thought I was my student's mother. So glad to know that I look old enough to have a 19 year old child. (My sister reassures me that I look my age and that women in their early 20s tend to be a bit clueless about anyone older than, say, 25. I like this theory.)

By the time I got home, I had enough time for a catnap before work.

Work was fine, but then shortly after lunch I took a spectacular fall on the sidewalk and scraped up my hands and knees. (Word to the wise: Don't try to walk while looking at your phone.) Did I mention that I managed to do this in front of a large group of people?

So now I'm way tired, a little bruised, and so so ready for today to be over.

More of Same

2012-01-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

I'm competing for the world's most boring blogger award.

This week has been largely routine. We had a visiting grad student out from Case Western. He came to install a new waveplate on our cryostat. We got the cryostat closed up and ready for another science run earlier this week, so we should be doing science by the middle of next week.

The house is quiet. We're planning a trip to the Getty Museum in February. I adore the Getty, so I'm glad to get to share it with the students. I'd also like to get to the Norton-Simon and the LACMA before the year is out.

We saw a few movies (The Ides of March and My Week with Marilyn). We actually got to see a Q&A session with Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh after My Week with Marilyn, so that was cool. They were both quite charming in person. Brad and I liked both movies and would recommend that others go see them, too.

Brad had an interview for a full-time position at Apple. We haven't found out yet whether he got the job. We both have next Monday off, which will be the only the second time we've both had a day off on the same day since before Thanksgiving. (The other was the day of the Rose Parade.) We're thinking of driving out to say hello to the ocean.

We're going out with some friends this evening, but other than that my weekend promises to be an exciting one. I've got laundry, cleaning, and reading to do. (Yeehaw!)

It's been a week.

2012-01-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

I haven't felt well for most of this week. Not bad enough to call in sick, but I wasn't terribly excited about going to work either. It's been taking an hour or so to feel like a human again in the mornings.

It's been a nice week though. The students came trickling back in and people in my office started returning from their holidays. Most of my students are gone again this weekend for the house ski trip, so I am anticipating more peace and quiet.

2011 in Books

2011-12-30T22:46:00.000-08:00

Things I read this year. I've italicized the ones I particularly enjoyed.

1. Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay
2. Little Bee - Chris Cleave
3. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
4. The Sign of the Four - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
5. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. American Assassin - Vince Flynn
7. A Ph.D. is Not Enough - Peter J. Feibelman
8. Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl - Donald Sturrock
9. The Night Bookmobile - Audrey Niffenegger
10. No One Would Listen - Harry Markopolos
11. Kindred - Octavia Butler
12. Bitter in the Mouth - Monique Truong
13. Lillith's Brood - Octavia Butler
14. Freedom - Jonathon Franzen
15. The Help - Kathryn Stockett
16. Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other - Sherry Turkle
17. The Information: A history, a theory, a flood - James Gleick*
18. Bossypants - Tina Fey
19. Getting Things Done - David Allen
20. Body of Lies - David Ignatius
21. You Are Free - Danzy Senna
22. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
23. Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
24. Push - Sapphire
25. Bridget Jone's Diary - Helen Fielding
26. Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend - Robert James Waller
27. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age - Clay Shirky
28. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
29. The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
30. On the Decline of the Art of Lying and other essays - Mark Twain
31. Brother Odd - Dean Koontz
32. The Wilder Life - Wendy McClure
33. The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson
34. The Lucky One - Nicholas Sparks
35. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
36. Cinderella Ate My Daughter - Peggy Orenstein
37. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
38. Sideways on a Scooter - Miranda Kennedy
39. How Risky Is It, Really? - David Ropeik
40. Everyone's Pretty - Lydia Millet
41. Fundamentals of Cosmology - James Rich
42. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
43. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
44. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
45. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
46. The Prince - Nicolai Machiavelli
47. The Imperfectionists - Tom Rachman

* This was my favorite thing I read this year.

2011 in Movies

2011-12-30T22:38:00.000-08:00

All the things I watched this year. I've italicized the ones I particularly liked.

1. Blue Valentine
2. Ghost Writer
3. Taken
4. Rabbit Hole
5. The Fog
6. The Social Network
7. The Kids are All Right
8. The Grudge
9. True Grit (1969)
10. Henry Fool
11. Sherlock Holmes
12. The Help
13. The Town
14. I Am Love
15. Elizabeth
16. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
17. Animal Kingdom
18. Battle Los Angeles
19. Hanna
20. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
21. Wanderlust
22. Never Let Me Go
23. Kings of Pastry
24. Scrubs, Seasons 1-9
25. Suckerpunch
26. The Shining
27. Exit Through the Gift Shop
28. Beautiful Boy
29. Tree of Life
30. Fishtank
31. Brief Encounter
32. The American
33. Midnight in Paris
34. A Film Unfinished
35. Ballerina
36. The September Issue
37. The Lincoln Lawyer
38. Red Riding Hood
39. No Strings Attached
40. The Fighter
41. The Company Men
42. Nowhere Boy
43. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II
44. Sarah's Key
45. Three Idiots
46. In the Bedroom
47. Moneyball
48. Drive
49. Downton Abby
50. Take Shelter
51. The Princess of Montpelier
52. Melancholia
53. Oslo, August 31
54. The Artist*
55. We Need to Talk About Kevin
56. Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part I
57. Life in a Day
58. Encounters at the End of the World
59. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
60. Babies
61. Hunger
62. State of Mind
63. Shame
64. TiMER
65. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

* This was my favorite thing I saw this year.

Candidacy and Christmas

2011-12-22T10:10:00.000-08:00

Well, I passed my candidacy exam! Hoorah!

They didn't let me off easy, that's for sure. I got way more questions about inflation and our antenna design than I expected. My committee, though inquisitive, was actually very pleasant. One of my committee members even stuck around afterward to tell me that I had given a nice talk. I was actually really pleased by that.

And now it's time for Christmas! I'm still working on the Christmas spirit, but it definitely feels like a holiday on campus. There's no one here!

Since Brad had yesterday off from work, I took the day off, too. We went down to OC to hang out with his family. Unfortunately, due to snow in Denver, Brad's eldest younger sister had her flight canceled last night. So she doesn't get in until today.

And it wouldn't be Christmas unless you've spent some time in the ER/Urgent Care with a family member. (Brad's youngest younger sister sprained her knee.) Let's hope that's the last of the holiday mishaps.

We have one last minute gift, a few cards, and wrapping paper left to buy. We also haven't yet received a few of the gifts we ordered by mail, which is a little alarming since everything on campus closes at noon tomorrow. Go USPS elves!

That's about it for now. Back to work!

Not Feeling the Christmas

2011-12-12T22:46:00.001-08:00

I've been trying, but I'm just not feeling the Christmas so far this year. We've bought almost all our Christmas presents. I've been listening to Christmas music on the radio. (Side note: Around here they only play secular Christmas music, which means they play the same seven songs, over and over again. I'm dying to hear Silent Night or O Little Town of Bethlehem.) There are lights up around town. But, no.

It's not that I'm feeling particularly grinchy or anything. I'm just not feeling especially Christmas-y. It's always hard in southern California because of the palm trees and the lack of even the chance of snow. Truthfully, it's probably because I'm so focused on my candidacy exam that I haven't taken the time to sit back and let the season sink in.

Maybe when I'm done (in a week!) it will feel like Christmas.

Internets, ugh.

2011-12-09T15:34:00.001-08:00

Sometimes the internet frustrates me. This stupid quote is popping up all over the place attributed to Ernest Hemingway.

I'm pretty sure only people who have never read a book by Hemingway would think it was written or said by him.

Tripe.

Learning

2011-12-07T10:16:00.001-08:00

Lately I've been pretty consumed with learning. I'm trying to study all the topics that are relevant or even semi-relevant to my research, so that if I get asked questions during my candidacy exam, I know what the heck I'm talking about.

If you're curious about what I'm studying, here's my list of topics.

Science: Expansion of the universe, Friedmann Equation, gravitational lensing, horizon/flatness problems, how quantum fluctuations cause density fluctuations, slow-roll inflation, recombination, black body radiation, Thomson scattering, CMB anistotropy, CMB power spectra, CMB polarization, Stokes parameters, E-mode vs. B-mode generation, and reionization.

Experiment: TES bolometers, noise, foregrounds, squids/multiplexing, waveplates and crosslinking, beams, phased array antennas, simulations, and the sensitivity of various Spider parameters.

I'm feeling a bit like I did before my qualifying exams. (Well, minus the sense of dread that made me sick to my stomach.) When I go to sleep at night it's like there are flashcards in my head, flipping through the information so rapidly that I can neither remember it nor fall asleep.

I have to give a practice talk tomorrow (eek), so I'm going to stop gadding about on the internet and get back to work.

Epic Windstorm

2011-12-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

So, it got a little windy last night. They're called the Santa Ana winds, which is an innocuous name, given how destructive they were. I took some pictures walking to work this morning.

This one in particular makes me sad. That's a 400 year old oak tree.

It's still windy today. You can see the palms leaning in the direction the wind is blowing.

Apparently, we are the 1%

2011-12-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

Apple products almost never go on sale. It's not what Apple does. They don't do promotions or door-busters or bogo. Except on Black Friday, when they have their only sale of the year, which is a grand 10% off.

They didn't announce the sale ahead of time, so it was a mostly word-of-mouth affair. However, if you had bought a computer in the previous week, you could come in with your receipt and get the discount on Black Friday. I think that's nice; there's no requirement that a company does this.

Brad had someone come in yesterday (i.e. 5 days after Black Friday) and want the discount for a computer he bought almost two weeks previously. Not only is it a slightly ridiculous expectation, Brad couldn't have given him a discount even if he wanted to. Their computer systems aren't set up to allow the employees to do things like that.

So after he told him that, no, the company policy was to give the discount on Black Friday and only Black Friday, the man told Brad that he was just a corporate shill, "like the ones the Occupy Wall Street protesters are talking about. You are the 1%!"

Ummm, dude? Someone who's working retail probably does not have an income that would place them in the top 1% of wage-earners in the US. Also, confused and vague as their message is, I'm pretty sure the Occupy protestors are not protesting their lack of discounts.

Seriously, people.

In which I do my best Christina Hendricks impression

2011-11-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

I went to the salon yesterday and came out a redhead!

Twilight: Breaking Dawn

2011-11-27T18:49:00.000-08:00

Among the many things I did while in New Jersey this past week was go see the new Twilight movie with my sister.

It was, truly, one of the best worst movies I've seen in a while. It's so campy and silly that it's almost delicious. And it looks like the filmmakers are in on the joke. (The actor who plays Jacob is shirtless within the first 10 seconds of the movie.)

They've pulled a Harry Potter and split the final Twilight book into two parts. Unfortunately, unlike the final Harry Potter book, the source material in no way supports this decision. Since all the fangirls will go see it anyway, I suppose it's financially a good decision.

Anyway, back to the movie. It was, as my sister put it, craptacular. Or, as my favorite review put it, "Breaking Dawn is where the Twilight series goes straight-up cuckoopants." The whole series has kind of played like something Stephenie Meyer should have written down to show her therapist and the latest installment is no exception.

I'd only recommend you see a Twilight movie if you know what you're getting yourself into. You know who you are.

Thanksgiving Recap

2011-11-27T18:34:00.000-08:00

I was in New Jersey for the past week, visiting my mom and sister for Thanksgiving. It was lovely and the time went too fast.

We did a lot of catching up, plenty of playing with my nephews, and a fair amount of eating. (You really can't beat my mom's corn bread stuffing.)

I think the following two pictures capture the status of my relationships with my nephews.

The eldest took to me immediately.

The youngest wasn't so sure.

Also, here's a picture of my darling sister and I. (I feel like my face looks a bit wonky in this photo, but she looks cute, so whatever.)

My sister, determined to convert everyone she knows to ukulele players, facilitated my latest purchase (a ukulele). I've turned my fingertips red in the past two days playing with it. I hope that by Christmas I'll be good enough that she and I can play something together.

So now I'm back in California, feeling very thankful for my family and modern transportation, without which my previous week would not have been possible.

Week of Doooooooom

2011-11-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

Ok, the week of doom was actually last week. It was quite a week. I had my normal research pursuits with the added benefit of being sick Monday and Tuesday. The housing office/administration also chose last week to go crazy about certain policies here, which has the added bonus of making all my residents go crazy in response. Bah.

The good news is that now I'm less than one week away from flying to New Jersey for Thanksgiving. (Hooray!) The bad news is that my house is having their annual "Interhouse" party the night before I leave. It's a neat party - the theme this year is Alice in Wonderland. They've built their own dance floor and have walls with scenes from the movie painted on them. There will be a DJ and flashing lights and plenty of drunk kids for me to corral.

Unfortunately, the party officially lasts until 2am, which means I'll probably be up until at least 3am. My flight leaves at 8:30am the next morning, which means I'll need to be at the airport by 7am or so. So that leaves me, approximately, three whole hours in which to sleep. Hope I get a window seat!

Today my goal is to get some science done. Yay science!

The Artist: Go see it.

2011-11-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

You, yes you, need to go see The Artist when it comes out in theaters. It's wonderful. It's a (new!) black and white silent movie about the beginning of the talkies. It's an homage to Singing in the Rain (and other old films) and it's clever and funny and warm. There's dancing and drama and comedy and an adorable dog. Go see it!

Brad and I got to see it as part of the AFI Film Festival and we had such a lovely evening. It was a Gala Screening at the Chinese Theater, which was built in 1927 at the beginning of the talking movie era. By luck, we got amazing seats in the middle of the theater. The cast and crew were there. I literally ran into John Goodman. (Not joking, we were next to the concessions and I wasn't watching where I was walking. I sort of bounced off of him.) Nights like that one make me think that it's maybe not so bad to live in Los Angeles.

Melancholia: good story, bad camerawork

2011-11-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

Brad, an old friend from Georgia Tech, and I went to Melancholia last night as part of AFI Fest. It was a neat evening. We went out to dinner first and Kirsten Dunst showed up for the screening.

I feel conflicted about the movie. It has an interesting story and great acting. Kirsten Dunst plays a woman who is suffering from extreme melancholia as the end of the world nears (unbeknown by any of the characters). Charlotte Gainsbourg plays her long suffering sister, who believes the planet that's about to approach Earth and do a "fly-by" is going to hit us, despite the fact that "the scientists" claim that it will not.

It was tremendous visually, at least when the camera wasn't shaking. I don't know if they were trying for an "intimate" look or whether they just had a really bad camera operator, but the camera work literally made me nauseous. Granted, we were sitting quite close to the screen, but I had to spend much of the movie looking away from screen because I felt sick. (I had the same problem with Rachel Getting Married.)

It's hard to feel very positively about a movie you sat through trying not to be sick, but I think it was actually a great movie. I might recommend sitting the back of the theater, though.

Some Updates

2011-11-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

There's nothing much going on these days. That is, nothing big. My days are filled morning to night with tons of much more ordinary things. Since it's a Saturday and I don't feel like taxing my brain by forming complete paragraphs, this is going to be an update in bullet point form.

-My weeks are all research, all the time lately. Due to some degradation in our cryostat system, it's become a little harder to take data recently. This means that I end spending a lot of my time doing stupid maintenance stuff and not as much time doing science. It also means that I spend several evenings a week shuttling between my apartment and the lab, checking on experiments and starting new ones.

-I wish my residents would stop leaving beer out in the open so I can stop confiscating it. Now I have a lot of cheap beer in my apartment that I don't know what to do with. I would give it to my friends, but they don't drink Keystone Light. All my coworkers drink fancy beer, so they wouldn't be caught dead with it either.

-Brad is enjoying Apple and they are already giving him more responsibility on the floor. He's kickin' ass and taking names. Also, they recently changed their benefits plan so Brad becomes eligible for health benefits in January (instead of in a year from now). Hooray grown-up health insurance!

-I am participating in Nanowrimo again this month. (November is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth.) I've already fallen behind, but we'll see what pops out of my brain this year.

-Oh, I updated my blog, obviously. I was looking through old advertisements and they caught my fancy. Since I was suffering from blog boredom anyway, I decided to use the ads in my blog design. I'll post some of my favorite old advertisements later; I think you'll see why I was amused.

-I'm very excited that it's "awards season" because it means that all the good, hoity-toity movies that Brad and I love will be coming out over the next several months. We have tickets to the AFI Film Festival this week; we're seeing Melancholia, The Artist, and We Need to Talk about Kevin.

-There's other, non-hoity-toity movies I'm going to be seeing the next several months as well. Namely, the new Twilight movie (oh, yes I am) and the new Muppets movie. I love the Muppets so much. And Amy Adams. On a side note, did anyone see Glee this week where the new Irish kid sang "It's Not Easy Being Green"? I was almost in tears. (It was lucky he didn't sing "Rainbow Connection." You know I would have been in tears for that one.)

-To everyone whose birthday I missed in the past month, I apologize. I just got everything in the mail this week. I didn't forget. I even bought cards at the beginning of October for all the upcoming birthdays! The post-office kept hiding from me. It took me weeks and weeks to find it.

-In a week or two I'm going to take a break from lab work and spend time studying for candidacy. The list of topics I need to know is growing at an alarming rate (of about 5 topics per meeting with my adviser). I'm not sure there's enough room in my brain for it all. I'm going to have to forget some stuff to make space.

-And here's Pickle sitting in the bathroom trashcan. No, I don't know why.

Better Now

2011-10-06T10:33:00.001-07:00

After several full nights of sleep and some down time, I'm feeling much more human these days. We had a wonderful rainy day yesterday, too. I think it's a sign of how much southern California has warped my brain that now I love rainy days. They're so rare that they've become a fun change from normal.

There hasn't been too much new going on in my life. There was a massive glut of RA-related stuff that I needed to take care of the past few days, but other than that it's been the usual work, eat, sleep cycle.

I plan to start preparing for my candidacy soon. I'm planning to give my talk at the end of the December, just before the holidays. Assuming, of course, that my committee hangs around that long. Candidacy is a bit of a nebulous process. You give a talk based on your current research and outline the research you plan to have done before you graduate. Then the committee asks you some questions about your research (and maybe some other physics too). When that's done, you leave the room and then they decide whether or not you passed.

Preparing for it is basically going to involve reading lots and lots of papers. Then I write my talk and practice the heck out of it.

In other news, Brad had his third interview with Apple on Monday and he's supposed to hear back today about the next step. They told him during the second interview that for every position they have open, they have more than 250 qualified applicants. Geeeeeez.

Welcome to Funky Town

2011-09-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

So, this post is basically a gigantic pity party. You have been warned.

I've been in a bit of a funk for the past few days. As a result, I'm a little whiny and a lot grumpy and probably a bit snippy.

Last week was new student orientation and this week is Rotation, so I've been meeting lots and lots of new people. That sounds like a good thing, but after 9 days of it, I'm exhausted. I must have asked people their major, hometown, and what they do for fun hundreds of times this week. Frankly, I feel a bit like this:

Plus, I'm mad at myself for not handling a situation well. I won't post details, since this is the intertubes and all, but let's just say that mistakes were made.

Other things I'd like to complain about are below:
-I've been stupidly busy and now my apartment's dirty and I don't have time to clean it.
-I haven't seen my family in ages and I can't believe I'm 25 years old and I still get homesick.
-It's still summer here. I'm sick of summer. I miss seasons.
-Pickle has figured out how to open the cabinet doors in the kitchen, which means we are going to have to install child locks to keep him from eating our bread. (Cat loves him some baked goods. Bread, bagels, hamburger buns, pastries.)
-I just got switched from being paid at the beginning of the month to being paid at the end of the month. Technically, I didn't miss a paycheck, but it sure felt like it.
-Had the world's most depressing trip to Kohl's this weekend. Nothing fit.
-Sprint hates me and won't allow me to make phone calls while indoors.
-My laptop battery is dying.

Since I'm writing this to make myself feel better, I'll try adding some good things that have been going on.
-Brad has a second interview with Apple.
-Got some cute red shoes.
-All of our family members seem to be doing well.
-My hair has been behaving itself recently.
-Our most recent cryo run went really well and it looks like we really are going to launch in 2012.
-Brad's thesis film won the student award at the Sycamore Film Festival.

Fridge Clean-Out

2011-09-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Brad and I recently went through six refrigerators in the three communal kitchens here in the house.

Oh. My. Gawd.

There were refrigerators with ants, things that were green and furry, milk that had become completely clear and then there was this:
That's right. That's four year old poultry.

Luckily, we did not actually have to clean these refrigerators. I don't know that I could have dealt with that much unidentified goo. Once they were emptied, the extremely tolerant maintenance people did the rest. God bless them.

Why poor people have "stuff"

2011-09-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

I've read a lot about poverty in America in the last month, both from the perspective of people who see it as a big deal and those who think the media reporting on the situation is overblown. There's so much you can say about poverty - how it splits along race/gender/education lines, how it is affected (or not) by welfare and charities, how the urban poor differ from the rural poor, etc.

What particularly interested me was the rhetoric surrounding what poor people own. I'm talking about statements like these:
-Did you know that xx% of poor people own a refrigerator/microwave/TV/insert consumer good here?.
-Why do I see poor kids wearing $100 sneakers? Do you know how much food that would buy?

Usually I find that these statements are being used to argue that either poor people aren't as poor as you might believe or that poor people are irresponsible with money. Now, there are lots of arguments on both sides about whether the government should be addressing poverty in a systemic way and, if so, how. But I think comments like the ones above are poorly reasoned and here's why.

Let's say a poor family does own all of the things I mentioned above: microwave, television, Xbox, $100 sneakers, and refrigerator. Let's go even further and say that they bought them all in the same year! (And who buys a refrigerator every year?) I've found prices for low-end, but new versions of all the products listed below.

Television: $300
Xbox: $300
Microwave: $100
Refrigerator: $400
Sneakers: $100
Total: $1200

$1200! That's a lot of money, right? What are poor people doing spending money like that?!

But, on the other hand, let's look at what that won't cover:
-A year of car insurance (average annual cost in 2009, $1800)
-A year of health insurance (average annual cost in 2009, $3000 for a single person)
-A year of college (on average, $2700/year for in-state students at 2 year colleges)

There are many definitions about what makes someone "poor." I'm going to say that someone who can't afford to transport themselves, see a doctor outside the emergency room, or educate themselves is poor.

Now let's push this argument slightly farther and say that we keep the refrigerator for 7 years, the microwave for 5 years and the television and Xbox for 3 years. So, amortized over these periods, this yearly frivolity looks more like this:

Television: $100
Xbox: $100
Microwave: $20
Refrigerator: $60
Sneakers: $100
Total: $380
Monthly: $32

Let's say this family makes $1,500/month ($18,000/year). Spending $32/month turns out to be 2% of their income.

So far this is just math (and assumptions). Here's what I conclude from my little exercise:
-The equivalent of $32/month is a small price to pay for cold/hot food, a source of entertainment, and some decent footwear. (I spend 2% of my income on entertainment alone.)
-Even if a person saved their $32/month, at the end of the year they wouldn't have enough money to pay for much of anything "important" like insurance or college.

And, therefore:
-Poor people can responsibly own "stuff" and still be considered poor.

What value science?

2011-09-09T01:12:00.001-07:00

Science budgets are getting cut all over the world, due to the economic crisis and the current inclination for debt reduction and austerity measures. Especially my kind of science - the kind that doesn't cure diseases or build weapons or create energy. We call it "curiosity-driven science."

As a side note, in the short term, I believe science funding does boost the economy. It keeps me (and a bunch of other folks) employed. We hire (American) machine shops and buy (American) products and fly (American) airlines in service of our project.

But, I admit that my research looks pretty useless. Who cares about some stuff that happened at the beginning of the universe? It doesn't solve any of our problems in the here and now. Still, I would argue that it's worth the taxpayer dollar. There's always something unintentionally wonderful that comes out of fundamental science research and it's hard to predict what it will be. General relativity was difficult to understand and largely irrelevant... until GPS. No one really cared about the electron... until electricity and computers became common.

It can take 50 years for this kind of research to become relevant. So cutting funding now may save money, but at the risk of shooting ourselves in our collective foot in 50 years. I would hope we aren't so short-sighted as that.

Stop Saying I Don't Pay Taxes

2011-09-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

My new pet peeve is all the TV talking heads going on about all of the dead-beat, lazy taxpayers who have "no skin the the game" because they pay little or zero in federal income taxes. You know. People like me.

I paid essentially no federal income tax last year. Want to know why? I'm supporting two adults on $30,000 on year, we qualified for the Lifetime Learning Credit, and you're allowed to deduct student loan interest from your income. Frankly, the Lifetime Learning Credit is just a "government handout" by a different name. Does taking it make me lazy? Am I "working the system?"

Moreover, even though I didn't pay federal income tax last year, I still paid taxes. I paid Medicare and payroll taxes. I paid state income taxes. I paid 9.25% sales tax (which I guarantee works out to be a higher percentage of my income than it would for someone who makes twice or three times as much as I do). I paid an absurd amount in "fees" to keep my car registered. (And fees, at least in California, are basically just taxes by another name.)

So, yeah, I don't pay much (or anything) in federal income taxes. But that's only one kind of tax, and I pay lots of other taxes. So stop saying I don't pay taxes.

More about income and taxes here: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/04/19/social-class-and-the-tax-burden/

Poor Cold Kiwi

2011-08-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

She was really cold (and annoyed) after her bath.

New Hair!

2011-08-11T01:17:00.001-07:00

Straight in this photo, but only because the hairdresser did it. I also have a feather.

Happy Birthday to Meeeee!

2011-08-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

Today I join the quarter century club and thereby earn the right to rent a car, which I guess makes me all kinds of a grown-up now. Weird.

I had a lovely little morning birthday celebration with Bradley. It's become one of my favorite traditions. ("You're awake? Time for presents!") New perfume and tickets to a Taylor Swift concert! I ran out of perfume about two months ago, so I feel particularly fragrant now. Though I mostly keep my love for country music under wraps, I'm excited to go see Taylor Swift. I think she's so spunky and fun, plus she has managed to be a successful youngish pop star without being a total train wreck.

I also had a birthday hair cut yesterday - a few little highlights and new bangs. I haven't had bangs since I was about eight years old. They're super cute, though I haven't had to style them myself yet. We'll see how I feel about them after that.

Since I had birthday cake (singing and all!) with Brad's family this weekend, I think tonight will be a low-key dinner and movie celebration.

Take THAT Quantum Mechanics

2011-07-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

I did it, I did it, I did it! I passed my quantum mechanics qualifying exam! Not even a squeaky, by the skin of my teeth pass - a solid, no questions asked pass. Hahaha! Eat it quantum mechanics!

Head Cold

2011-07-20T10:16:00.001-07:00

I've been knocked on my butt for the past few days by the head cold from Hades. I tried valiantly to go to work yesterday, but after falling asleep in my sandwich at lunch, decided to take the rest of the day off. I promptly slept for most of the rest of the day.

I think I'm over the worst of it now. I still sound a bit funny and the anti-histamines are making me crazy thirsty, but I'm functional.

My immune system works in funny ways. I always get sick right after a period of stress. I used to get sick over Christmas break every year because it was right after finals. At least it usually holds off until I'm done with whatever I'm doing.

I'm pretty sure I'll be feeling right as rain in a few days - just in time to move this weekend. (Reserved the U-Haul this morning and we haven't packed a single thing. Good thing we're only moving a mile down the road.)

Home at Last!

2011-07-17T10:59:00.001-07:00

After a massive travel day yesterday, I got into LAX around 10:30 last night. I was super ready to be home.

It was a very good trip. My only mishaps were that I lost my Tube travel card at one point and that American Airlines seems to have actually lost my luggage somewhere in the Houston airport. If those are the worst things that befall you on a 12 day international trip, I would declare success. (And I do.)

Additionally, all the photos I took are here. Have a look if you're interested!

Heeheehee

2011-07-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the hostel listening to a French guy next to me teaching his son how to swear in English.

"Moo-tha foo-kah!"

More stuff too.

2011-07-14T14:10:00.001-07:00

I've been busy. After the Tower of London, I went to see Doctor Faustus at the Globe Theater. I was actually trying to get to St. Paul's Cathedral for the Evensong service, but I missed it. I was grumpy and frustrated, so I walked across the Millenium Bridge (the Harry Potter bridge!) to seek some dinner. A bunch of people were standing in the returned tickets line at the Globe and I thought, What the heck, it just might work. A guy offered me an extra ticket for 20 pounds, and I got a great seat at the Globe! (The original price was almost twice that much.) The play was good, but it had very broad acting, which felt strange to me. It was "theater" with a capital T. I think I prefer a more naturalistic style of acting.

On Wednesday I took a bus tour that took me to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath. I have loads of pictures, but the internet here is really slow and I am tired of uploading them. So I'll just include one of me at Stonehenge. More on those later.

Today I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and to St. Paul's Evensong service. I forgot my camera battery in the charger at the hostel, so no photos. I will say that both the museum and the cathedral were amazing. More on those later, too.

A rant on tourists behaving badly:
I'm a tourist, too, but I think I know how to conduct myself in public. Honestly people, it's a cathedral, not a theater, and this is a service, not a performance. During the Evensong service, people were trying to wander around the aisles and take photos! First of all, photography is never allowed inside churches. Secondly, the priest is giving a sermon, that's rude! You don't just get up and leave in the middle of a church service because you're bored or whatever. Ack!

I'll say this for American tourists - we may be fatter than all the Europeans and have an unhealthy attachment to fanny packs, but we know how to sit down and shut up in church. I resisted the urge to shush the Germans sitting behind me, but only because I figured they wouldn't listen to me anyway.

Also, someone in my hostel took two bites of an apple and then threw the rest of it into the toilet, thus clogging it. Ummm, the toilet is not where trash goes? And why were you eating in the bathroom anyway? Ew.

I really like England and would totally come back, but I am officially over being away from my husband, my cats, and my bed. I'm also a little museum-ed out - my brain and feet are both sore. I think I'll poke around the shopping areas tomorrow and figure out how to get to the airport on Saturday (when about half of the Tube lines go down for repair, including the one to Heathrow).

Tower of London

2011-07-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

Tuesday afternoon, after the British Library, I made my way to the Tower of London, which is actually a complex of 20 towers and walls.

I took an entertaining tour by a thickly-accented Beefeater (Yeoman Warder - no one really knows why they're called Beefeaters). Turns out all the Beefeaters are retired members of the British military. They all live at the Tower of London, too.

My first stop, in honor of Jenn, was to the site of the old scaffolding where they used to do executions. There's a little memorial there now, but this is the exact spot where Anne Boleyn lost her head. (Two more wives of Henry VIII also died here.)

There's 20 towers at the Tower of London, and the following photo was taken either in the Bloody Tower or the Salt Tower. I can't remember. Anyway, it's basically old-school graffiti. Prisoners used to carve things into the walls.

There are large ravens at the Tower of London. There's a legend that if they ever desert the tower, the "kingdom will fail." Being a superstitious people, there's a Ravenmaster who takes care of eight resident ravens to make sure there are always ravens at the tower.

I went to the Waterloo Barracks to see the crown jewels. Very sparkly and large. Some of the largest diamonds in the world are set into the crowns and scepters. Have to say, though, the crowns are actually quite ugly. They're filled with millions of dollars worth of jewels of all varieties, but they have no sense of proportion or design. They look as though the jewels were stuck on at random.

There are also good views of the Tower Bridge, which we Americans know as London Bridge (is falling down, falling down).

The complex of buildings was started with the White Tower by William the Conqueror in 1078. I went inside the White Tower for an exhibit about the royal armory. I saw the armor of a bunch of kings, but more importantly...
That's right. That's a 1000 year old toilet.

The British Library

2011-07-14T13:11:00.001-07:00

I thought the British Library was going to be a building like the British Museum or the Natural History Museum (i.e. old and gorgeous).

Nope. Turns out it's really ugly.

There's some neat stuff in there - like a huge stamp collection and this old printing press.

But all the good stuff was in an exhibit called Treasures of the British Library and there was no photography allowed. I saw some mind-blowing stuff though.
- One of Jane Austen's original notebooks with the beginning of one of her novels written in it
- Jane Austen's writing desk
- Virginia Woolf's handwritten first draft of Mrs. Dalloway
- Musical scores written by Mozart, Beethoven, Ravel, et al.
- The original score for "The Wedding March" by Mendelssohn, which was written for a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
- Beethoven's personal tuning fork
- One of Charles Darwin's diaries
- Scraps of papers from the Beatles archive with bits and pieces of lyrics written all over them
- A Gutenberg Bible
- Two of the four original copies of the Magna Carta

And it just kept going! There was history everywhere I turned.

I also checked out a science-fiction exhibit they had running, which was fun. I've added a bunch of the titles to my reading list. You know, for all the spare time I'm going to have when I get back. (Ha!)

Cendrillon at the Royal Opera

2011-07-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

I went to my first opera ever on Monday evening. I chose Cendrillon (Cinderella) because I figured that I would at least know the story, even if I couldn't understand the lyrics. It was in French, but they projected the subtitles above the stage, so it turned out not to be a problem.

I was a little early so that I could pick up my ticket from the box office, so I waited in the bar/restaurant in the opera house. It's a lovely building - very light and spacious.

Here's the view from my seat. It was a cheap seat, so it was it the highest part of the theater and I had no armrests. My ticket actually said, "This seat is not recommended for persons who suffer from vertigo." Great view of the stage, though. Worth every pound I spent on it.

I met a really nice girl from India who was in London for summer research in electrical engineering. We hung out during the intermission and I got her to take a picture for me. Yay opera!

This is from a random Google images search for the opera. This is Lucette (Cinderella) going to the ball.
So, how was the opera?

Incredible.

I don't like listening to opera, but seeing it in person was an entirely different experience. It was charming and funny and beautiful. The wicked step-mother and step-sisters were hilarious. The costuming and sets were whimsical. It was a slight variation on the traditional tale, and there were some truly heartbreaking moments when Lucette believes her prince doesn't love her anymore. At the end, the somewhat mischievous fairy godmother starts directing the orchestra. It was so perfect.

I surprised myself with how much I liked it. My only complaint was that they cast a woman for Prince Charming. It was hard to tell her voice from Cinderella's during the duets. The actress for Prince Charming also did that awkward "I'm a woman pretending I'm a man" stance in which her knees were bent and bowlegged like she was John Wayne. No man actually stands like that. (Well, I guess John Wayne did, but that's not the point.)

The opera is Los Angeles is crazy expensive, but I enjoyed myself so much that I'm tempted to give it another try.

Famous Stuff in London

2011-07-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning, I went on a walking tour of London led by a very funny Irish guy named James. We saw all the famous stuff in about two and a half hours. Here were some of my favorites.

The Wellington Arch, built to commemorate British victories in the Napoleonic Wars. The statue on the top is supposed to be the Angel of Peace descending on the Horses of War. I don't know about all that, but it's very big and quite pretty.

Big Ben! We got a lesson from our guide that the phrase Big Ben actually refers to the bell, not the clock. The building is St. Stephen's clock tower.

Me in front of Westminster Abby, which was swamped with people that day. I'm planning to go back tomorrow for the Evensong service.

St. James Palace - the other royal residence in London. The royal family apparently doesn't like it much. It's certainly not as glamorous as Buckingham Palace. Our guide said that Princess Diana lived here after she divorced Prince Charles. The guards out front may have funny hats, but the guns are all business. They have wicked looking knife things on the end of them as well.

The Houses of Parliament. They're gorgeous. Our guide told us a super gruesome story about the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament in 1604. Well, the plot didn't actually work, but Guy Fawkes had a horrific death nonetheless. I won't give the details, but if you're interested Google "traitor's death." Yuck.

I sort of saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, but it had massive crowds, so I didn't have much of a view.

It was a free tour through Sandeman's, which I highly recommend. I tipped the guide five pounds because he was so good. Super entertaining and informative!

The British Museum

2011-07-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

The exterior of the British Museum is very imposing and official looking, but it's the interior that's really worthy of a photo. The roof of the great hall of the British Museum is amazing.

See?

My Favorite British Museum Exhibit

2011-07-11T08:52:00.001-07:00

The gallery of clocks and watches was SO MUCH COOLER than it sounds. I've got tons of pictures, but I'll try to limit this to just my favorites. There was also a whole case of beautiful pocketwatches from the past 400 years, but they didn't photograph well.

This is a masterpiece clock from 1620. It showed the time, day of the week, saints' and feast days, when eclipses were most likely to occur, and the length of the day and night throughout the year. Oh my god - can you imagine mechanically encoding all that information? It's a technical marvel, as well as being beautifully crafted.

This is a miniature clock from around 1600. It shows the time and strikes the hours. It is a miniaturized version of a full-size clock rather than having been manufactured like a pocket watch.

This was my absolute favorite thing in the whole museum. It's a rolling ball clock from 1820. It tells time by how long it takes a ball to roll from one end to the other. The rolling ball takes 30 seconds to traverse the course. At each end, a mechanism tips the table the other way so the ball rolls back. I'll put a video up later - so cool.

British Museum - China and Southeast Asia

2011-07-11T08:17:00.001-07:00

Here are some things I liked from the China and South Asia exhibits.

The text accompanying this sculpture says that it would have been used as a focus for meditation, focusing the qualities represented by the goddess Tara - mercy and compassion. It would have been placed in a temple next to her male companion, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshevara. (Bodhisattva's are beings who have reached Enlightenment but turned back from it, out of compassion so that they can help mankind escape from the cycle of death, rebirth and suffering. It was made on Sri Lanka.
It struck me that the mixing of sensuality and religion is a exceedingly foreign idea for those of us from the Judeo-Christian tradition. It seems almost uniquely southeast Asian to me.

This picture does not do this Chinese vase justice. It was hundreds of years old and the colors were vivid. It was made with a technique called cloisonne, where you solder metal strips into place to form the design and then fill the gaps with a glass paste that turns bright colors when fired in a kiln. Pretty amazing.

Now that's a knife! It's a war knife from Southwest India and is normally carried on the back in a special sling. Fierce looking, no?

And here is my reflection. Being on vacation by yourself makes taking photos harder!

British Museum - Mostly Egypt

2011-07-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

I went to the British Museum all day yesterday. It was absolutely stunning. There was so much to see and think about. When I left at the end of the day I felt slightly lightheaded from everything I had seen.

I started with the Egypt exhibit - the most famous of all British Museum exhibits due to their vast collection of mummies. Here I am with the famous Egyptian cat statue.

I was fascinated by these statues of the goddess Sakhmet. According to the text next to the statue, the goddess Sakhmet was a leonine goddess who was regarded as the bringer of destruction to enemies of the sun-god Re. There are nearly 600 statues of her, as she was a favorite of the king Amenophis III.

I don't love mummies and sarcophagi and all that, but they were also neat. There was a fascinating/horrifying "natural" mummy on display. It was basically a man who had been left in the sand 5000 years ago and was naturally mummified by the heat and sand. Unlike artificial mummies, there were no shrouds or wrappings - it was very evident that you were looking at a dead man. It was really interesting, but I didn't feel comfortable taking a picture. It felt disrespectful somehow. (I know that's probably weird; he's been dead for thousands of years, but he just felt so human to me.)

I didn't spend much time in the Greek/Roman sections of the museum. I had seen similar artwork and artifacts elsewhere. I did really like this statue of Venus/Aphrodite though. There's an immediacy to it that I find appealing. Like I, the viewer, have just stumbled upon her bathing and she's covering herself from my eyes.

I also saw some friezes and status that had been stolen/recovered/preserved from the Parthenon in Greece. There's a bit of controversy about whether the British Museum is truly the rightful owner. I'm agnostic on the issue.

Regent's Park

2011-07-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

We all made it to London yesterday. I had expected to stay in Cambridge an extra day, but in general everyone in the group wanted to head down to London. Since driving with the group was going to be easier than trying to catch a train from Cambridge, I decided to go along.

We all met up at a pub, then went to Regent's Park yesterday afternoon. There are other large parks in London and I don't know how they compare, but Regent's Park seemed large and green and family friendly.

I mean, look at this adorable statue of a little girl and her dog.

There were lots of people flying kites, too.

We walked to the top of Primrose Hill, which had surprisingly good views of London, given that it's not a terribly large hill.
Hooray scientists on top of a hill!

Scientists in Pubs

2011-07-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

We went to a bunch of pubs, which was very fun and Cambridge-y. Pubs are neat at first - they feel very cozy and British. Then you go to a few and realize that they all serve the same five dishes. (Fish and chips, beef and ale pie, roast chicken, chicken tikka, and beef with Yorkshire pudding.) Once you've had all five, you're pretty much done with pubs. I mean, except for the beer, which isn't really my thing.

Anyway, here we all are, at a pub called The Anchor.

We're off to London tomorrow - so goodbye Cambridge! If you're interested, the rest of the photos I took are here.

Kinderegg

2011-07-08T16:49:00.000-07:00

One of the post-docs from Princeton (who, as it turns out, grew up about two blocks away from me) introduced me to a British sweet known as a Kinderegg. It's a chocolate egg that has a little toy on the inside. It's not associated with Easter, as I had assumed, though they do taste like bad Easter bunny chocolate. They cost about 60 pence apiece.

Here I am, enjoying my first Kinderegg.

My friend, though, is crazy about Kindereggs. She bought one for everyone in the group. These are all the toys we got. I personally have the blue parrot on a skateboard.

Cambridge is Pretty

2011-07-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

The town of Cambridge really only exists for the purpose of Cambridge University, which has 31 constituent, independent colleges. The system is both old and confusing. But what I really can't get over is the feeling that Cambridge is some sort of Disneyland. Except that everything here is actually old, instead of fake old. It's mind-blowing. I walk up to building expecting some form of Styrofoam and speckled paint, but no, it's 800 year old stone. Amazing.

Anyway, the town is just beautiful, albeit slightly overrun by college students.

This is one of the colleges in Cambridge.

Here's the front of King's College.

A neat gate with a lens in Clare College

A perfectly Dickensian street near Trinity college.

Me, on a bridge over the river Cam.

I could go on and on about the scientists that researched in Cambridge over the past several centuries. (Newton, Darwin, Watson and Crick, you know, minor players.) Still, I wondered at times whether all the traditions associated with the Cambridge colleges could be stifling rather than enriching. Wouldn't be a bad place for a post-doc, at any rate.

British Warnings

2011-07-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen a more perfectly British warning in your entire life?

Fish and Chips

2011-07-06T10:04:00.001-07:00

Last night we went to a pub with the folks from the University of Toronto. It was called, no joke, The Baron of Beef. God I love English names. Anyway, I did not have any beef. I had the fish and chips (with mushy peas).

Turns out, mushy peas are literally mashed peas. There must have been some extra seasoning thrown in because they did not have much pea flavor. Vinegar maybe? The fish was very good - crisp on the outside, flaky on the inside - and very large. I felt like I'd eaten a brick after dinner. I think I'll go a little easier on my stomach tonight.

The Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge

2011-07-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

Traveling to England isn't all fun and games. I actually have to do work for the first few days I'm here. Luckily for me, the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge is a gorgeous new building on the outskirts of Cambridge.

Well, it's prettier on the inside than on the outside. Sort of looks like a middle school from here.

It has an old observatory in the backyard.

Adorable little daisies in the grass.

And gorgeous English ash ceilings.

Sometimes it's good to be a physicist.

The Cambridge Belfry

2011-07-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

We're staying at a lovely hotel called the Cambridge Belfry. It's not actually in Cambridge though; it's in Cambourne. For some reason, it was impossible to get a room in Cambridge proper this week. Anyway, the Cambridge Belfry is very pretty and we are enjoying our stay.

The rooms are nice and the bathroom are excellent. Free wifi too!

There were gloriously fuzzy bumblebees in the flowers outside the entrance. The flowers smelled wonderful, so I understand the appeal.

Hi from Cambridge

2011-07-05T08:55:00.001-07:00

We made it! My body clock is feeling a little confused, but we're here and in our hotel in Cambridge.

The flight was pretty good - first five hours were quite turbulent, last five much smoother. I got about three hours of sleep. It's a good thing it's almost dinner time here already. I'm ready to go to bed.

The drive to Cambridge was very nice. It's very green and lush here. In fact, I'd say Old England looks a lot like... New England. Hmmm. We passed some houses and cottages that were so English it almost hurt. I'm sure this is a very American reaction, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm living in a movie.

The hotel is very nice - pictures coming later. I had major duh moment that I'm going to chalk up to being tired and hungry. So you know how American hotels usually coordinate the room number with the floor number? Rooms 200-299 are usually on the second floor, rooms 300-399 are on the third. Well, my room number started with a two, so I went to the second floor, where I was very confused to see all the room numbers starting with a three. Back to the ground floor - all the room numbers start with a one. Then I realized that there's a first floor located between the ground floor and the second floor. Sure enough, twos everywhere.

So I've found my room and had a shower. I'm starving and sleepy, so I hope there is a movement from the other members of the group to go eat and have fizzy, caffeinated beverages soon.

Goin' to England, brb.

2011-07-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

I'm going to England on Independence Day. Oh the delicious irony.

I'm pretty much packed, though I'm still wondering if I've forgotten something and whether the clothes I've brought will be appropriate for an English summer. The London forecast calls for temperatures that resemble an LA winter. I hope it's a good approximation.

I checked in last night and printed my boarding pass, though I was confused by the British Airways website. It asked me how many bags I wanted to check and gave me the following options:
a) Not sure.
b) 0 bags
c) More than one bag.

Ummm, where's the option for checking just one bag? So I picked "Not sure" and I'll figured I'll just go to the counter when we get to the airport.

I'm feeling a little anxious about the flight. Traveling in an aluminum tube over the Atlantic Ocean seems like a crazy thing to do. I'm a physicist, I know how airplanes stay up, but still.

Anyhow, I love you all very much and my next post will probably be from England!

Taking the Cure in Desert Hot Springs

2011-07-03T11:01:00.001-07:00

Brad and I bought a discount resort stay from Living Social a few months ago, intending to use it as an anniversary trip. Unfortunately, the resort was already booked through June by the time we called, so we ended up taking a fourth of July weekend trip instead. The resort is nice, though in an odd area of town. The pools and jacuzzis (even the ones in the room) are all filled with natural spring water, which we are also encouraged to drink. (Well, not the water in the pools, but mineral water comes out of all the taps.)

Visiting a resort whose primary attraction is hot mineral water makes a lot more sense in May, when the average temperature is something like 80 degrees. Hot mineral water is much less appealing when the outside air temperature is approaching an oven setting.

On the drive out, we stopped at Hadley's Fruit Orchards, which is famous for its date shake. We had one and it was, indeed, very good.

We also went to Joshua Tree to take a look at the stars. It was DARK - which made for some very good star viewing. We bought an app on Bradley's iPhone to help us identify stars and constellations. It was a qualified success. We managed to find a few constellations and stars, but we couldn't figure out where the planets were. (Ok, taking pictures of stars is hard.)

We're on our way back to Pasadena today, as I have to get ready to go to England. I'm leaving tomorrow and I feel a bit unprepared. Eeek!

It's Like They're Reading My Mind

2011-06-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

Becoming RAs

2011-06-29T19:15:00.001-07:00

It's pretty much official - Brad and I are going to be RAs for Page House! The job technically starts July 1st, but we'll move the week after I get back from England. Everything has worked out really well. They're going to make an exception to the "no animals" clause for us. (We wouldn't have taken the position if they didn't; we like the cats too much.)

The apartment they have for us happens to be unfurnished (most of them aren't), which is good because we like our furniture better than the institutional Caltech housing furniture. And we just bought a big, comfy bed that I was SO not going to put in storage.

The students we interviewed with at the house were very nice and friendly, so I am feeling optimistic about this. I've got some fun ideas for things to do with the residents - mostly movie nights and trips to museums and things like that. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Not Too Bad

2011-06-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

All in all, my exam went pretty well today. Of the six questions asked, I feel like I got close to full points on three of them, about half the points on two questions, with only one train wreck of a problem. It won't be a high score, but I think it will be enough to pass.

So I'm massively relieved and totally drained. Every time I take one of these exams, I come home and sleep for five hours.

Tomorrow is going to be weird - no studying, plus catching up on the life I put on hold for a month to study for this thing. I've got work and a vacation and a trip to England coming up. Ready... go!

The Year of Quantum

2011-06-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me today that I first took my quantum qualifying exam almost exactly a year ago. (I took it for the first time July 1, 2010.) That means I've studied for this exam three times in a one year period, which adds up to a little over three months of studying quantum mechanics this year. This, of course, doesn't even include the year of quantum mechanics I took at Georgia Tech and the year of quantum mechanics I took at Caltech.

All of this means two things.

1) I am enormously tired of studying for this exam. I'm sick of it hanging over my head. I don't want to think about it anymore.

2) I have learned so much quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics in the past year. I don't know if it's enough to pass the exam I'm taking in three days, but in comparison to what I knew when I started graduate school? Wow, there is no comparison. And I guess that's really the point of all this.

Let Me Help You With That

2011-06-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, thank you Pickle. So helpful.

Stressing Out

2011-06-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

My exam is in one week and I'm a total stress monkey. To be honest, I have a very bad feeling about the whole thing. I'm studying and doing problems, but I'm still struggling with the material and I don't feel ready.

The anxiety is starting to make my body wig out, too. I've been having some wicked stress dreams. There are the usual ones about desperately needing to find the value of x or psi, but last night I had one where there was a bat living inside my abdomen. (It explained both the constant lump in my stomach and the "butterflies" feeling, depending on whether the bat was awake or sleeping.)

In other news, they've re-opened the search for RAs at Caltech, so Brad and I might end up becoming RAs after all. You know, assuming they don't kick me out after I fail my exam.

Going to England!

2011-06-11T13:09:00.001-07:00

Some exciting news this week - I've booked a trip to England for the 12 days in July! My research group is having a collaboration meeting in Cambridge, so I'm going out for that and then staying an extra week to have some touristy fun.

I leave July 4th (nonstop flight from LAX to Heathrow, which is good, but 10 hours long) and get back July 16th. I'm having fun planning all the things I want to see and do while I'm there.

I'm planning to make London my "home base" after the conference and do day trips from there. Here's some of the stuff on my list so far:

Cambridge (where the meeting is being held):
Work...
Cambridge University
Cambridge cathedral

London:
Big Ben/Parliament?
Tower of London
Trafalgar Square
Buckingham Palace/Changing of the Guard
Globe Theater
Student tickets to the Royal Opera (if possible)
British Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum (recommended to me by a friend)

Salisbury (day trip):
Salisbury cathedral
Stonehenge

Dover (day trip):
Castle
Cliffs
Hiking

I'm not renting a car or anything (drive on the left hand side of the road? No thank you!), so I'll be taking lots of trains. I've got a whole book from the library dedicated to the British rail system. Plus two other travel books - a student's guide (hooray cheap accommodations) and a traditional Fodor's Guide to England.

I'm considering this trip to be the light at the end of my studying tunnel!

On Migraine Medications

2011-06-08T22:01:00.000-07:00

I've had migraine headaches on and off for a lot of years. My first one, which I very clearly remember, happened when I was 15. Since I didn't have another one for several years, I wrote it off as an anomaly.

From the ages of 18 or 19 until recently, I had one every few months. Not pleasant, but certainly infrequent enough to be tolerable. Last summer, though, they started becoming more and more frequent, until I was having two or three a week. I finally decided to give up on the Excedrin and go see a doctor for something more serious.

My neurologist put me on Inderal, a medication intended primarily for high blood pressure but which has the secondary effect of preventing migraines. I went from having 10 migraines a month to two, and then a few months later to zero. Ahhhh.

I had been migraine free for almost six months, so about two weeks ago my neurologist suggested I go off the Inderal. Migraines tend to come in cycles - you'll have a period when you get them all the time, and then months or years where you'll have none at all. Since it seemed that my irritated nerves had been sufficiently calm for six months, we hoped that they would stay calm without medication.

Perhaps I should have been wiser and suggested we try this experiment after my exam rather than before. I was okay for about a week, but then they came back. With a vengeance. The past four days of my life have been a painful, throbbing blur. I admitted defeat and went back to my neurologist today. He wasn't so happy to see me. Not like that, he's a very pleasant man - just not happy that my migraines had returned so fiercely. (He's actually a pediatrics neurologist; I'm probably his oldest patient. His offices are decked out with cartoon characters and picture books.)

So now I am on a heroic dose of steroids to get things under control in the short-term, back on the Inderal for the long-term, and I have a brilliant little tablet called Maxalt. You take it when you feel a migraine brewing. I tried it today and within two hours I was feeling so much better.

I feel a bit like a walking pharmaceutical (as my stepmother would say, I am definitely NOT "all-natural"), but that is infinitely preferable to my previous state. Granted, I'm now so behind on my studying for my qualifying exam that I had a good weep this morning, but that's another story. (Physics can be a rather teary subject for me.)

Not only that, I have to give major kudos to Caltech for supplying their graduate students with a Cadillac of a health care plan. I've seen my neurologist no fewer than six times in the past year and paid a grand total of 30 bucks. My medication costs $6 a month. Lunch costs more than that. I can't think of a better use for six dollars.

So hoorah for modern medicine and fancy health insurance!

Umm, that's a sheep.

2011-06-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

While driving to the movies last week, Brad and I were following a car with what looked like a dog in the backseat.

Nope.

Sheep. (Click for bigger picture.)

Why? I have no idea.

Bodily Frustration

2011-05-25T09:36:00.001-07:00

I had a check-up last week and my nurse practitioner gave me the following results.
1. I have a fairly severe vitamin D deficiency. (Not a surprise, I shun sunlight like a mole.)
2. I have high cholesterol. (Kind of a surprise. I knew I was overweight and out of shape, but I never expected my cholesterol to be that high.)

The solutions? Take a Vitamin D supplement. (Easy.) Change your diet and lose weight. (Less easy.)

Changing the diet isn't that bad. No red meat, significantly less cheese/full-fat dairy, fewer pre-packaged foods. None of these are things I was particularly attached to anyway. (Well, except ice-cream.)

But losing weight? Apparently I had forgotten (if I ever knew) how close to impossible losing weight is.

It's not like I didn't know I needed to lose weight. I'm not blind; I have a scale. I've gained about five pounds a year every year since I turned 20. Et voila! I'm 20 pounds overweight.

So for the past week I've been eating really well (I thought) and walking or going to the gym in the evenings. Stepped on the scale this morning, expecting to see some sort of decrease.

Ha.

"Hahahahahahaha," says my scale. Yeah. I gained two pounds. (@#$%!)

What. Gives.

I guess more drastic measures are in order. I loathe counting calories, but maybe that's the next step.

Losing weight really is about shorting your body of nutrients so it decides to use up some of what you have stored instead. Maybe there's no way to do that without feeling like I want to gnaw my own arm off all the time.

Sorry to go on about this, I'm a little frustrated this morning.

Stupid scale.

The Vacation That Wasn't

2011-05-05T17:12:00.001-07:00

Brad and I bought LivingSocial Escapes vacation, thinking that it would be nice to go on a trip for our anniversary. (LivingSocial is a website that sends you a coupon everyday for some local business or service.) It was for two nights at nearby Desert Hot Springs (near Palm Springs). So, within driving distance and promising lots of relaxing soaks in hot mineral water. Sounds about right for an anniversary trip!

However, we have learned a vital lesson about buying discount vacations. Lots of people buy them. Those same people will then want to take a vacation on the exact same nights you do. By the time we called, every weekend through June was booked.

So instead of taking a relaxing anniversary trip, we're taking a relaxing fourth of July trip. It will still be nice, since I will have taken my qualifying exam two days before we leave (and so will definitely want a vacation). Still, I'm a little bummed that the anniversary plans fell through.

List o' Links

2011-05-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

Things I've Found Interesting Lately:

The Future of PhDs: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/phdfuture/index.html
Finances and Marriage : http://www.slate.com/id/2281613/
Review of a book I'd like to read, "The Wilder Life": http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/04/17/wilder_life
Trailer for the final Harry Potter movie: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi137338137/
Tornado videos from the recent storms: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/video-of-the-tornado-in-alabama/?scp=1&sq=tornado%20video&st=cse#

Why I Never Return Your Call

2011-04-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

As most you know (since my readership consists of my parents, siblings, and three close friends), I am exceedingly bad about answering my phone and returning phone calls. Some of this, I admit, is my own carelessness. I often forget to charge the darn thing or to turn on the ringer back on after meetings.

However, I would like to plead that some of this is out of my control. My apartment complex is a black hole of Sprint coverage. My sister confirmed this when she visited in January. We have identical models of phones and hers didn't work in the apartment either. Out of curiosity, I finally visited the web pages of the major carriers to see what they thought the coverage was like around here.

So I submit the following, for your viewing pleasure.

Verizon's coverage:

ATT's coverage:

Aaaaaand, Sprint's coverage:

Notice the GIANT HOLE in coverage where my apartment lies? In fact, it's pretty patchy all around Pasadena. However, if I moved three blocks west, I think all my cellphone woes would be solved. Too bad three blocks west corresponds to a gas station and a Trader Joe's.

The Most Nostalgic Smell in the World

2011-04-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

We had a gorgeous, perfect weekend. The air was mild and the skies were sunny. I decided to take a walk on Saturday afternoon. There are some big, lovely houses in the neighborhood south of us. The sidewalks are wide and the roads are quiet. I was meandering down the block when something so wonderful hit my nose that I had to stop, close my eyes, and smell for a few minutes.

I was stopped in front of a pretty house, with a freshly planted bed of impatiens, newly mowed grass, and a sprinkler wetting the lawn and sidewalks with every pass. That particular combination of wet pavement, fresh dirt, and grass clippings smelled like playing in the sprinkler. It smelled like stomping in puddles after a summer thunderstorm. It smelled like planting flowers with Mom. It smelled like taking walks with Dad and Laurel after dinner. It smelled like home.

I am not exaggerating when I say that it nearly brought tears to my eyes. I think my heart broke a little when I opened my eyes and remembered that I am, in fact, a 24 year old woman with a marriage, a career, pets, debts, and other responsibilities. These things are good, too. Some of them are wonderful. But they're complicated and hard and adult. For just a moment, I regretted ever growing up. (Not that there are any alternatives.)

I wish there were a word that described feeling simultaneously old and young. My life certainly looks awfully grown up, but I still feel like I'm about 16 years old. I think that's the big secret that they never tell you about adulthood. No matter how old you get, you never really feel as old as your age.

Dave Ramsey at the Right Time

2011-04-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

Brad and I recently completed the Financial Peace University classes taught by Dave Ramsey. My dad got us the materials and membership for Christmas, saying "Your income could easily double or triple in the next few years and I want to you to have a plan." (Little did he know how prescient that was, but more on that later.)

The Dave Ramsey plan focuses on getting (and staying) out of debt, building savings, and learning to invest. I liked about 90% of what he had to say. The early classes focus on getting out of debt, with a focus on consumer debt like credit cards and car loans. Although we are deeply indebted because of our student loans, we don't have any consumer debt. Still, we have mostly given up using our credit card. Dave Ramsey recommends using the envelope/cash only system for most purchases and this was hugely beneficial for us. We stopped blowing our monthly budget.

The class also changed the way we think about things like car loans and mortgages. I suspect that, as a result of this class, we will never take out a car loan or finance anything except a house. We're also feeling much more ambitious about getting the student loans paid off as soon as possible.

Which brings me to some really really good news! Last week, Brad was offered a full time job as a director for a small entertainment company! (And it will, in fact, more than double our income!) The company doesn't make feature films, which is what he eventually wants to do, but he will be directing commercials and some instructional/informational videos for them. They've said they'll give him a lot of freedom and creative control, so I think this job is a good stepping stone to where he wants to go. I'm so proud of him; getting this job was a study in persistence and determination. He's been pursuing this opportunity since the beginning of the year!

In true Dave Ramsey form, we're not planning on changing much about the way we live. We hope to apply most of his income to the student loans. We could get them paid off in as little as three years with some discipline and good luck. That will be financial peace, indeed.

Brad's Premiere

2011-04-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

The premiere for On the Outside was this past weekend. Finally! Woohoo!

It was very well attended; the first screening was standing room only. They had good food and a bartender, a photographer, and even a mini red carpet. After chatting and standing about in my heels for five hours, I was ready to hibernate for a week, but it was a really fun time.

Several of our old Georgia Tech friends who are now in the LA area came out. That was really special, though it was so strange to see them again. We're having dinner on Thursday with my old college roommate. It's good to reconnect.

The only snafu, as far as I could tell, was that the projectionist missed the reel change and there was some brief goofiness of sound and picture. Then again, I probably only noticed because I've seen the movie a hundred times.

You can see photos at http://castingimagesonline.com/. Click on Events, then On the Outside Premiere. There are some good photos of Brad on the second and third pages.

The premiere marks the end of an era for us. AFI is officially over. Off to the real world... yikes!

Kiwi's Favorite Human

2011-03-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Most Expensive Thing We Own

2011-03-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

We finally got it a few weeks ago!

Today We Did Everything

2011-03-06T18:39:00.000-08:00

We had a nice weekend. Yesterday we didn't even get out of our PJs. We slept in, read books, and watched movies all day. (We watched Animal Kingdom last night. I found it frustrating. Wouldn't recommend it.)

Today, however, we did all of our errands: recycling, going to Target, returning my powder for the correct one at Macy's, getting printer ink at Office Depot, picking up my books on hold at the library, rescuing my blue bicycle from the bike rack at my office, and trying out a new restaurant. (The last was not so much an errand, but it did happen on our day about town.)

Now, I'm tired. Back to reading and watching movies.

Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl

2011-03-05T19:55:00.000-08:00

I just finished the 600 page authorized biography of Roald Dahl. Whew.

I don't generally read biographies, as I usually find them deadly dull, but I'm glad I read this one. Roald Dahl's books were among my favorites as a kid, and I still treasure the memories I have of my sister reading Matilda to me at bedtime. (I loved Matilda.)

Dahl's books broke a lot of the conventions of children's literature. They were slightly twisted, the adults were usually the enemy, and they generally avoided any sort of traditional moralizing. Kids loved them - librarians less so. Although Dahl is most famous for his children's books, he actually wrote several volumes of short stories for adults, most of which I have read, all of which are macabre and very funny.

Reading about Dahl and his life confirmed most of the suspicions I had about him from reading his books. Much of his own story (until now) was myth, either actively or accidentally perpetrated by himself. He was a very contradictory man, generous and kind, but also volatile, with a famously bad temper. While he always considered himself a man of the English countryside, he was fascinated by wealth and power. People tended to either love or hate him. Also, he didn't start writing children's stories until he was in his 60s.

The book, by Donald Sturrock, is thoroughly researched. It's well-written, though perhaps the tiniest bit dry. The unfortunate fact of biographies is that lives don't have narratives, and it's hard to invent one without it seeming forced or gimmicky. Roald Dahl had an eventful life, which keeps the book moving along.

If you'll excuse me, I have to track down Matilda and The BFG. It's time I read them again.

The Oscars

2011-02-28T20:35:00.001-08:00

Brad and I hosted an Oscars party yesterday for some friends. It was fun - plenty of food and arguing.

Frankly, I thought the Oscars were kind of lame this year. I really didn't care for the James Franco/Anne Hathaway duo, though I thought some of their prepared bits were cute. (The opening sequence and the "Little Ball of Light" song, in particular.) The random "classic movies" segments were confusing, too.

I did win our Oscars pool, however, with 17 correct answers. (Two of which, for the short films, were just lucky guesses.)

Did anyone else notice that the dresses were seriously sparkly this year? They all looked like they weighed 50 pounds! (Or, as my friend so eloquently put it, "What's up with all the shiny sh%$ on the dresses?") Still, I wouldn't say no if someone offered to let me wear one for an evening.

That's about all we've been up to lately, other than working and school.

Hello Buddy!

2011-02-23T12:48:00.001-08:00

This isn't my new Buddy, but this is what it looks like! Brad and I found one on Craigslist over the weekend and snapped it up. They're really hard to find used. Alas, we had to drive to the southernmost part of Orange County to pick it up, so we spent a lot of time in the car, but she's all mine now!

We took it directly to a scooter shop in North Hollywood to be serviced, so I don't have any pictures yet. I'll be able to pick it up Saturday. Unfortunately, my appointment at the DMV isn't until next Thursday, so I'm not legally able to drive it yet. Nor is it legally allowed on the streets because I haven't registered it yet.

Still, I'm T minus one week from scootering around Pasadena!

Scooter Shopping!

2011-02-19T17:46:00.001-08:00

Well, Brad and I have had a very busy day of scooter shopping. I've been saving up for over a year now and I'm able to afford the lower end of what I want, so I figured that it's time to start looking.

One of the hardest parts, actually, has been getting all the cash I saved into a more manageable form. I've been saving the money we get from recycling as well as the money I receive for participating in fMRI studies for the economics department at Caltech. I also picked up a half-TA position this quarter. All of the cash was saved in a jar on my desk, but I figured that people probably wouldn't want me to pay with a wad of tens, fives, and ones. Turns out it's pretty hard to deposit cash when you only bank online. We had to get a money order in order to get the cash into a bank account and boy was the post office office employee confused.

I'm almost certainly getting a used scooter, but there are a few things I know I want. The first is a recognizeable brand. There are plenty of obscure Chinese made scooters available for $600, but no one will service them, they break easily, and it's very hard to find parts. So I'm going to stick with something like Yahama, Genuine, or Honda. I also want curvy, retro styling. Lastly, I can't afford a Vespa.

So, that pretty much narrows it down to the Yamaha Vino, the Genuine Motor Company Buddy, and the Honda Metropolitan. We visited two Craigslist Vinos today and went to a fabulous scooter dealership called Noho Scooters. It was raining today, so business was pretty slow and the guy at Noho Scooters had plenty of time to chat and give us lots of advice. He recommended the Vino or the Buddy, but thought that the Metropolitans don't have enough power to make them roadworthy. (They top out around 40 mph.) The Vino is much easier to find used, but it has the disadvantage of not being able to add extra storage compartments to the back or handlebars. The Buddy is great, but they're more than I can afford new and they don't come up very often on Craigslist.

Incidentally, the dealership had two used Vinos that had been recently serviced and were comparable to or less than the Craigslist prices - so I'd probably do that rather than buy from a private party. That way I know I'm getting something mechanically sound. We're going to look at a used Buddy tomorrow, but we don't know if it's 50cc or 125cc. I'd rather have the 125cc (though neither are legally allowed on the freeway, which is JUST fine with me).

If I can't find what I want used, I may just wait and save up more money until I can afford something new. Anyway, it's been fun and exciting to actually go and ride some scooters!

Stupid Busy

2011-02-08T22:00:00.001-08:00

I was going to make an effort to post more often, but I've just been stupid busy lately. I've got plenty of research on my plate, an actual for-grades class (Physics of Interstellar Medium), a shop class that takes a few hours a day, a Dave Ramsey class once a week, a full two-day motorcycle class this weekend, the GSC retreat last weekend, etc.

So, yeah, I basically get up and go from about 9am until about 9pm, at which point I don't want to anything except take a shower and go to bed.

Here's a quick recap of life the past few weeks:

GSC retreat: I spent 12 hours in a car for, essentially, a one day retreat. We drove up to Mammoth on Friday evening (6 hours), spent all day in a hotel room on Saturday, and drove back on Sunday morning. It wasn't even that useful of a retreat. There were better uses for my weekend.

Motorcycle class: I'm taking a two-day motorcycle skills class this weekend. No, I'm not getting a motorcycle, but I am getting a motorcycle license. You need one to drive any class of scooter in California. And since I've been saving up for my scooter for over a year now, I figure I should be able to test drive a few!

Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University: We're on the fifth week and learning good stuff. Today was all about debt collectors and their tactics. Not so much applicable to us, but interesting anyway. We've definitely benefitted from a more detailed budgeting approach and we like many of his ideas about debt and credit.

Shop class: I'm learning how to drill, mill, tap, lathe, grind, buff, deburr, measure, you name it. A very nice man is patiently teaching me how to use all the machines in the physics machine shop. It's been fun and interesting, though it's kind of eating my day. It's about three hours, three times a week. Today I completely messed up the part I was making, so I'll have to redo it tomorrow, thus extending the class by another three hours. Blarg.

Phone program: I got a raise (to $20/hour!), so I've been trying to go in a few hours a week, just to pad our checking account a little bit.

Ummm, I think that's about it. Last week Brad had an interview with a media company that's working for the Boy Scouts. They tend to drop off the face of the planet for a week or two at a time, so we haven't heard back yet. We think it went well though.

Ok, g'night all.

Movies Seen in 2010

2011-02-05T12:15:00.001-08:00

1. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

2. Donnie Brasco

3. Star Trek: The Original Series (Season 3)

4. Nine

5. A Serious Man

6. The Hurt Locker

7. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

8. Live and Let Die

9. Mansfield Park

10. Once

11. Seven Samurai

12. The Hours

13. Post-Grad

14. Star Trek: Wrath of Khan

15. Moon

16. La Vie en Rose

17. Bridget Jones’ Diary

18. The Godfather (repeat)

19. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

20. Lost in Translation

21. The Negotiator

22. Run Lola Run

23. In Bruges

24. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

25. La Strada

26. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

27. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

28. Funny Girl

29. Up in the Air

30. The Reader

31. Alice in Wonderland

32. The Golden Compass

33. The Outsiders

34. Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country

35. House of Sand and Fog

36. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

37. Winter's Bone

38. Twilight: Eclipse

39. The Insider

40. Vertigo

41. Tropic Thunder

42. Toy Story 3

43. The Runaways

44. High School Musical

45. High School Musical 2

46. High School Musical 3

47. Dan in Real Life

48. Inception

49. Valentine's Day

50. Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

51. A Single Man

52. No Impact Man

53. Capote

54. Salt

55. Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion

56. Dark Floors

57. The Time Traveler's Wife

58. Step Up 2: Taking it to the Streets

59. Planet Earth series

60. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

61. Disturbia

62. 2012

63. Fried Green Tomatos

64. Steel Magnolias

65. The Young Victoria

66. Three Colors: Red

67. This Movie is Not Yet Rated

68. Eat, Pray, Love

69. Enter the Void

70. Hancock

71. A Simple Plan

72. Manhattan

73. The Secret of Kells

74. Harold and Maude

75. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I

76. Over Her Dead Body

77. The Uninvited

78. National Geographic: Aryan Brotherhood

79. National Geographic: Inside the US Secret Service

80. National Geographic: Inside Special Forces

81. Black Swan

82. The Red Shoes

83. True Grit (2010)

84. The Tourist

Books of 2010

2011-02-05T11:52:00.000-08:00

It took me a while to get around to this, but here's my recap of the books I read in 2010.

1. Into the Wild - John Krakauer
2. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
3. Pursuit of Honor - Vince Flynn
4. Star Trek Memories - William Shatner and Chris Kreski
5. Super Freakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
6. Take the Cannoli - Sarah Vowell
7. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - James Tiptree Jr.
8. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
9. The Invisible Man - H. G. Welles
10. Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
11. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
12. The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
13. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
14. The 10 Year Nap - Meg Wolitzer
15. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
16. Introduction to Cosmology - Barbara Ryden
17. Lady Chatterley's Lover - D. H. Lawrence
18. Academeology - Female Science Professor
19. Ask a Mexican - Gustavo Arellano
20. Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger
21. Mass Effect: Ascension - Drew Karpyshyn
22. The Lost City of Z - David Grann
23. Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
24. South: The Endurance Expedition - Ernest Shackleton
25. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
26. The Beautiful and the Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald
27. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains - Nicholas Carr
28. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
29. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything - Christopher Hitchens
30. Haunt Me Still - Jennifer Lee Carrell
31. Don't Eat This Book - Morgan Spurlock
32. Bee Season - Myla Goldberg
33. Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood
34. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart - Lydia Millet
35. The Company - Robert Littell

When at Night I Go To Sleep

2011-01-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

It's an oddly personal thing to ask, but what do you think about before you go to sleep at night? I'm not talking about the random thoughts and images that go through your head when you're getting sleepy. What do you purposefully think about to help yourself sleep?

I never thought much about it until a friend of mine told me that he thinks about the Enterprise to help himself sleep. Yes, that Enterprise, from Star Trek. My first thought was that this is a delightfully nerdy thing to think about, but I realize that I think about things that are no less random (though perhaps still illuminating).

When I was very small I thought about horses. I would think about all the different breeds and colors and names. In high school and college I thought about being trapped on a desert island, where there were no exams or papers or projects to work on. (Clearly my academic stress was top of mind then.) Now, no joke, I think about flowers. I consider shapes and colors and scents. Sometimes I think about gardens or bouquets. I like to consider subjects with many variations because it's familiar, but different every time.

It occurs to me that this might be strange. Maybe most people just try to leave their mind blank or think about what they have to do tomorrow. Most of my thoughts are dictated by the demands of the day - work, classes, finances, food. So one of the reasons I like going to bed is that I get to think about whatever I want.

What do you think about when you can think about whatever you want?

Marie Claire Wants You to Diet Dangerously

2011-01-26T15:19:00.000-08:00

Brad and I get free magazine subscriptions by redeeming Coke Rewards points. We've been getting Wired and Entertainment Weekly for a while and we just signed up for Marie Claire. (I said, "Oh can I get a girly magazine? I never read those anymore.")

I had forgotten that there's a reason I don't read girly magazines anymore. They're stupid. Look at the cover of this month's Marie Claire. (This was the first issue I received.)

On the left hand side is the pull quote "The New Dangerous Diet That Really Works." Hmmm, Marie Claire, what are you saying? Not that this diet is dangerous and I should stay away from it. No, it's dangerous and it really works.

I read the article. It's a two page spread, 5/6 of which is taken up by a woman recounting how she lost 25 pounds by injecting herself with hCG - a hormone produced by pregnant women which is not approved by the FDA for weight loss. According to the author, she lost her post-pregnancy belly, fit into jeans she hadn't been in for years, even the whites of her eyes got whiter. It's a miracle!

Except that while you're on the hCG diet, you only eat 500 calories a day. And studies show that there's no difference between taking hCG and a placebo for weight loss and that the effectiveness of the diet comes from calorie restriction. Plus, hCG can cause all sorts of unrelated and unpleasant side effects. But believe them, dear reader, hCG is a diet "that really works." I'm sure I would lose 25 pounds if I only ate 500 calories a day, too.

Marie Claire does explain some of this in a thin sidebar next to the article, but only after you've spent two pages reading the virtues of the hCG diet.

It's nonsense. Not only that, it's dangerous nonsense and I can't believe magazines are peddling crap like this. Why are they encouraging women to jeopardize their health for a goal as inane as being thin?

I don't think I'll cancel my subscription because I'm not paying for it, but I certainly won't renew. Next time I'll just get Popular Mechanics.

Thoughts on Student Loans

2011-01-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

We are currently in the process of consolidating all the various student loans from Georgia Tech and AFI. I knew about what the number was going to be, but it was still a shock to see it all in one lump total listed beneath the phrase "you owe."

We almost kept it under six figures. Final total is $106,000. Sadly, that's pretty low when compared to other AFI graduates who also had to finance it themselves (as opposed to those whose parents/trust funds paid). Many of them have totals like $160,000 or $170,000. We didn't borrow for living expenses, only for tuition, which is probably the difference.

Something I've found interesting is how other people with student loans are dealing with it. They're mostly not. They're shocked by how much the payments are, they don't know their options for paying it off, and they don't really know how much they've borrowed.

The other thing I've noticed is that people, when they find out we have student loans, often say something to the effect of "You can't get rid of those, even if you declare bankruptcy. They keep coming after you."

My reaction is always, "I wasn't planning on 'getting rid of them.' I was planning on paying them off." We took out this debt knowing about how much the total amount would be, about what the payments would be when they came, and how we could meet the payment every month. This, to me, seems like the responsible way to incur debt (leaving aside the issue of whether it is responsible to incur debt in the first place).

Apparently responsible borrowing is somewhat rare. I was surprised to see that people can and do borrow large sums of money willy nilly. I'm sure Dave Ramsey would have a lot to say about this, but I'll leave that topic for another post.

I fretted a lot about taking out the loans in the first place, but now that they are coming due, I'm find that the anticipation of the event is much worse than the event itself. Certainly we're going to have a few more years of "grad school poor" than I'd really like, but we won't eat Ramen all the time either.

Lord of the Rings and the Woo Guy

2011-01-23T15:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Brad and I went to a triple feature of all three Lord of the Rings films at the Egyptian Theater. It's been 10 years since they first came out, which was the reason for the event. Of course, it takes about 12 hours to watch all three movies, so we spent all day at the theater.

It was a fun event... except that it was mostly attended by serious fanboys and fangirls. And they cheered for everything. They cheered when each character first appeared on the screen (including villains). They cheered at every major plot point. They cheered for Peter Jackson's cameos. They cheered for the spider. They clapped for every damn thing throughout the movies.

And I sat next to a "woo" guy. Every single time something happened, he let out this earsplitting "woo!" to celebrate. It was such an piercing sound - almost perfectly a single tone with no harmonics or overtones.

I debated with myself the whole time about whether I l;'was just being a major league grump or whether all these people needed to shut up and watch the movie. My problem was that all the cheering kept reminding me that I was, in fact, watching a movie in a movie theater. The point of movie theaters is that they're dark and quiet and distraction free - so you forget you're watching a movie. Maybe I'm just crotchety.

We didn't have to pay to attend the event and I love the Lord of the Rings movies. So it was still a good day.

Echo Mountain

2011-01-17T20:47:00.000-08:00

Brad's sister stayed with us this weekend. While she was here we decided to hike to the top of Echo Mountain. There used to be a hotel (the Echo Mountain House) at the top of the mountain and you could get there by rail. Now, no dice. It's a climb to the top, but well worth the views and a look at the ruins. I put the photos on Flickr, if anyone cares to have a look.

Things I'm Loving Today

2011-01-12T18:24:00.000-08:00

-Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups: Someone brought these to a meeting today. I have never actually smoked crack, but I imagine that it might be something like eating these.

-The weather: After two solid weeks of rain, the sun is out and the highs are in the mid-70s. It's glorious. Maybe Southern California isn't so bad after all.

-Our new bed: We bought a new mattress with our Christmas money this year. It's so fluffy! It's causing a lot of impromptu sleeping.

-Inderal: It's the drug I'm taking for migraines and it's amazing. I haven't had a migraine in almost two months. I had an appointment with my neurologist today and he was pleased with my progress.

Fun Stuff Lately

2011-01-11T14:20:00.000-08:00

I feel like the holidays really only ended yesterday for me. Since we got back from Christmas, my sister came out to visit for a few days and we drove out to Palm Desert to visit my dad and stepmother. Now I'm finally back to "real" life. (Note, adorable pictures of my sister's visit available on her blog.)

While in Palm Desert, we visited the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, the "World's Largest Rotating Tramcar." It's essentially a giant gondola that sweeps you 6,000 feet up the side of a mountain. It's not for the faint of heart. It moves quickly and it's steep. It was a beautiful view. You could see the vegetation change as a function of elevation. The striations in the rock made even sheer cliffs look like works of art.

The top of the tramway is Mt. San Jacinto state park, which has trails and campsites galore, for those people brave enough to leave the visitor's building. (It was cold and snowy up there.) I'm not much of a winter camper, but I can see how it would be lovely and cool during the summer.

We also went to a large street fair and had a delicious dinner while in Palm Desert. (Thanks parents!)

But now we are back. Classes started last week and Brad has a potential job opportunity that we are anxiously awaiting. Real life, indeed.

Rose Parade

2011-01-02T21:32:00.001-08:00

All of us at the Rose Parade, plus my two favorite floats.

Holiday Recap

2011-01-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

I realize it's been ages since I posted. Let me explain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up.

We visited Dad and Laurel for a long weekend in mid-December, thanks to a last minute airfare deal. We had an early Christmas and I got to go to the Christmas dinner at church. Not only that, but it was cold and snowy, which is way fun when you're only there for a few days.

Then we decided to squeeze in one last run before the holidays, so I worked for seven straight days before I left for my holiday break.

We went to Mom and Greg's for the week of Christmas, which was peaceful and wonderful. I got lots of Mom time as well as more cookies than I should ever eat in a week. We also saw two movies and went to the dog park to watch Bear frolic. And we hit the after Christmas sales like it was our job.

Got home in time to celebrate the New Year with Brad's family. They came up to Pasadena to camp out at our place the night before the Rose Parade. Brad's dad had grandstand tickets, so we got to see the parade in relative comfort.

Although start class again tomorrow, my sister is in town for a few days later this week, so it feels like the holidays aren't really over yet. I'm really really looking forward to her visit. We haven't had much sister time in the past few years, due to the fact that we live 3000 miles apart.

Every Christmas I'm astounded by the generosity of my family and this year was no different. They are generous with their time and money, but most importantly they are generous in spirit. I don't think I can express how much I value their kindness and love and patience and goodness.