compositions

a new clean slate

2009-06-30T17:01:00.000-05:00

I thought this was profound and needed to write it down somewhere. This is from the spoken track "A New Clean Slate" on the "iTunes Originals - Ben Folds" album.

"...'Mess' was, this song was about just realizing you've hit the point in your life, where you definitely--it's a loss of innocence song for sure--that you've made a mess. It's like at this point, there's really--'The next person I meet', I thought when I wrote this song, 'the next person that I'm with, I can now no longer completely explain my history. I have enough baggage to where, that's not possible anymore, and they're just going to have to take it from, you know, this is a new clean slate.'"

In truth I haven't been too angsty much anymore...although I see this quote as more peaceful than angsty, and that's a big reason I like it.

I'll try writing more again soon.

random acts of serendipity

2009-06-04T19:43:00.003-05:00

Today after work, it was so nice I decided to go for a run. The last few weeks have seen me getting back into running regularly again, but the past week and a half have not been so good. But I made myself go for a run tonight and it was pretty good.

I had to go in to the office today because of some meetings, so I got a ride with the ex. (Who, for those of you that don't know, lives right nearby me.) It's always difficult to see him, even when we get along. Maybe especially when we get along.

So the run after work was good mentally, too. There is a little park with a pond and a sidewalk loop near my apartment complex. Now, this park is a special park.

This park is where the ex would go for walks in the evening and call me to chat while I was still in Vermont. He'd send me pictures of the park via cell phone and I'd set them as my background to remind myself of the happiness I'd soon be with. This park is where the ex ran into a co-worker and effervesced for near an hour on the great love he had found, a story which was recounted for me upon meeting said co-worker when I moved out here. It was nice. Everyone I met was really happy to "finally meet me".

And in this special park there is a special bench. This bench has the best view of the sunset. It has the best shade in the afternoon. It's got the best view of where the little fish like to jump in the pond, and it's offset from the path just enough so that you feel like you're in your own little world. This is where the ex would often sit while talking to me on the phone, and this is where we would often sit while walking in the park together, holding hands.

Tonight on my run, I walked a lap at the end. I stopped to pick some wildflowers from a flower bed that hadn't been tilled under yet for planting. I did this while thinking of stopping by the ex's on my way home and giving them to him as a thanks for the ride to/from work today. But I knew I couldn't do that. He doesn't deserve to see that I still care, and I don't deserve for loyalty like mine to be betrayed or rejected.

As I walked with flowers in hand, soaking in the golden evening sunlight, I tried talking sense in myself. I only had until the end of this lap, when I would be leaving the park to walk home and my bleeding heart would test my better judgement. Despite the haze of my pain, I saw the cheery bench patiently waiting ahead along my path. I then knew what I had to do.

I walked over to the bench as I had so many times before, but not to sit. I looked out over the park, took a deep breath, then worked the little hand-made bouquet of flowers into one of the open stripes in the middle of the bench. I walked away, taking one good look back at the little memorial I had left. It was pretty. It was fitting. And I then had a wisely uneventful walk home.

anatomy of a wormhole

2009-04-10T00:18:00.009-05:00

1. Was reading the latest BoingBoing goodness before going to bed, as many self-respecting somewhat-dorky-yet-still-somewhat-socialized types are wont to do.

2. Saw an ad for woot.com, some sweet sale site, and actually clicked through. (I probably click on internet ads at an average rate of one or two per week. Congrats, woot.com.)

3. Noticed the following bit of awesomeness, and surfed over to the totally rad subdomain wine.woot.com. (How's that for a little early-late nineties jargon mash-up. Totally rad subdomain.)

4. Read a decidedly 'Abbott & Costello'-esque blurb about the wine of the day, and briefly pondered buying in--at least enough to check out the shipping info. I then learned that you can't order home-delivery wine in some states:

5. Free the grapes, eh? Funny name; ok, I'm intrigued, so I clicked on over. What I found, was nothing short of awesome. (Probably helped that the funny writing on the wine page was a great opening for the hilarity that followed...)

Awesome.

And now, time for bed.

flaming hot lobsters!

2009-04-02T21:32:00.009-05:00

So evidently there's a bill in the Maine state legislature right now to legalize same-sex marriage, and to repeal the current state statute declaring that marriage is between one woman and one man. Upon learning this, I decided to check out the Editorials chatter on the Bangor Daily News website. I'm happy to say that there's definitely more support for the bill than I had feared. Maine can be one of the more conservative New England states sometimes.

As anybody might predict, people on both side of the issue have plenty to say. But what I really liked about reading those editorials was the great juxtaposition of discussion of these revolutionary civil rights issues alongside equally vehement chatterings about some lobster industry woe or another--I had no idea wtf they're talking about of course, as I hail from the "lake and mountain set" not the "trap and docks set" (as I once read it succinctly put), but I can tell that this lobster concern is at least something very important. Anyway, for the most part, I liked reading these editorials. Even the people whose views I disagreed with, even this one chick who felt it necessary to imply women's inferiority to men (whatever the fuck that was about), I was grateful that they decided to share their views. Disagreement (hopefully?) marks the beginning of social progress. So for the most part, I read most of the crazy talk with a chuckle. (Yeah, even that one subservient chick...most of the time I'll get mad about sexism--especially when it's self-enforced--but I instead just felt bad for her for some reason...)

That having been said, there is just one argument in this mess that gets me truly, emotionally angry; one statement capable of luring me down from my cool, objective perch and into the immature, name-calling fray. It's when the hyper-religious types start whining along the lines of "but the state saying that marriage between two people of the same gender is 'real marriage' would mean somebody else is forcing their views upon me!". Ok, so then what (the fuck) would you call attempting to force religious views of marriage on the state definition of marriage?! How is THAT not forcing beliefs upon unwilling others? A point that really seems to be lost on these people is that the state is not going to walk into a church and demand that a religious establishment recognize a same-sex marriage before God. So in turn, the church should not walk into a statehouse and demand that the secular establishment be stripped of the right to recognize same-sex marriage before The People.

I'm going to drop the pleasantries now and just be bare-naked honest. Despite some of them making me angry, I like reading editorials from hyper-religious types about how sinful/nonsensical/akin to bestiality same-sex marriage is. I enjoy it in the most unadulterated, smug way possible. (And I mean like, "I EAT ARUGULA AND I LIKE IT!" smug.) And instead of apologizing for that, I'm letting myself celebrate it. I've worked--and continue to work--faithfully to be a self- and well-informed person capable of tolerance. It really makes me feel good about myself, and comfortable with who I am as a person, to read these fuddy-duddies working up a lather about something that really has nothing to do with them.

You know what? I think football is dumb-ass stupid--I don't think it deserves to be called a "real sport". (And you know, I'm only half-joking here.) But instead of getting all upset about football, I just watch/play the sports I like instead. There are plenty of other sports that are already played the way I think "sports ought to be", so however the institution of football feels like playing its game is up to its members. They can even keep on calling football a "real sport", and I couldn't care less. Doesn't make my beloved basketball any less of a "real sport" in my eyes or practice, and doesn't mean anybody is going to be forcing me or anyone else to play the non-sport of football. I don't even have to call football a sport if I don't want to! (And I don't!) But it does mean I have to let other people call it a sport, at least the ones nice enough to mind their own business. I'd be pretty sad if someone told me basketball wasn't a "real sport" anymore and everybody was outlawed from playing, so I guess I wouldn't want to do that to football either.

spring cleaning

2009-03-15T15:31:00.002-05:00

Just un-facebook-friended the other half of the most significant relationship in my life to date.

Kind of sad. Kind of necessary. Hurts but was the healthy choice.

In other news...all rejections from grad schools so far, save for the two applied math programs, still waiting to hear from those two. Things are not exactly looking up for me right now. Granted, the rejections were from physics programs, whereas I realize (but only realized halfway through the apps process...) that I'm a better fit for an applied math program...but who knows if such optimism is founded. Maybe I just suck.

The only thing that gets me up in the morning these days is that I have set a personal deadline of June 1 for me moving out of this stupid town I currently live in. Seeing as how I still have two schools left to hear from, I don't know where that will be to yet, but I am confident it will be somewhere better than this. Also, the not-knowing the details has not stopped me from already looking into summer sublets in the two prospective towns. Got a bunch of craig's list bookmarks, send out some emails, have already gotten some responses. Either town I'd be happy to live in for the summer if I don't get into either school; I would be living somewhere where I can find my happy while sorting out what the next phase of my life is going to be.

78 days. That's all I have left in this town. Better get moving.

the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny

2009-03-08T23:04:00.003-05:00

To the dear, few readers of my little blog:

Sorry I've not been much for writing lately. The waiting to hear back from grad schools on my applications is really taking an emotional and mental toll on me. Don't worry, I'm not a total mess or anything...I'm just very spacey and drawn inward. So the free time which I spend on the internet has lately been spent perusing a message board forum for people in the exact same situation as me.

This evening, this video was shared with me, and I in turn wanted to share it with all of you. If you are in need of a good laugh, like I have been, then do give this a watch. Laughs guaranteed.

the good life

2009-03-02T13:54:00.003-06:00

If you have spent much time with me at all, you've surely heard at one point, "I'll know I've made it in life when I have a place to live with a piano in it."

That having been said, I really enjoyed this article from today's nytimes.com. But perhaps what struck me most was the final paragraph:

"But he is not a butler," she said. "He is a guest." She explained that having houseguests was a way of life that Americans don't always understand. "I grew up in a situation where you would never ask guests when they would be leaving," she said. "In Poland we have an old saying, 'Guest at home, God at home.' "

One of the things I really miss about the northeast is the innate sense of community its people have. (And actually, I even missed it a little in Vermont...for all of its self-declared progressiveness, its hospitality facet of community-mindedness is a shade weaker than Maine's.) In the midwest, there is practically no "innate sense of community" whatsoever. Still, it sounds like Poland has us northeastern-ers even further beat still, in terms of community-sensitivity, and it sounds rather pleasant.

(Side note: I always wondered how Erdos could've actually lived just hopping from friend's house to friend's house...but I guess now I have my answer...)

i want my free time back...so that i can prepare for giving it all up again to more fun things

2009-03-01T22:06:00.004-06:00

Spent a lot of the weekend doing work for work. Sigh.

So, instead of working until ungodly hours trying to fix problems created by other people on the project (I haven't even had time to fix MY OWN bugs lately!), I am drawing a line in the sand, and going to bed early for some reading.

Recently picked a book back up that I had started last summer: "Chaos" by James Gleick. It's a fun read, but just reminding me of the fact that I still haven't heard back from any grad schools yet and am obviously starting to freak out a little bit about it.

Universe-- you are on notice. If I don't get an acceptance letter this week (even if only one of those infamous NYU "oh you're accepted but we can't fund you" bullshit acceptances), bad things will happen. I may just need to stomp on a bug or something, to feel like I'm getting back at you, but you know what they say about a lady scorned...

Just saying. Don't fuck with me, universe.

soul (sole?) education

2009-02-26T21:06:00.004-06:00

Got back into running today. Was a pretty pansy run, but one has to start somewhere. A very cheerful FedEx lady delivered my running shoes this morning, and I decided it would be a travesty if I didn't take them for an inaugural run today.

Excuse overcome today: "it's too late in the day". Sure, it was 6pm and more or less dark outside, but half of the park near my apartment is lit--so instead of loops around the pond, I just ran "c"s. Plus, the weather was remarkably summer-like, with a breeze and everything...this is such a strange land.

Anyway, now, I'm going to try and get something done for work before I go to bed. sigh.

ode to a pair of running shoes

2009-02-21T17:39:00.004-06:00

I used to have an awesome pair of running shoes when living in Burlington. Awesome does not even begin to do justice...I mean, these were the sort of magical running shoes that could inspire epic poetry and paeans of timeless caliber. (My knees have never been so happy in a pair of shoes--ever.) I ran these shoes until they wore out, and then they eventually died a fantastic mud puddle death. (I mean, why not go for a mud puddle run when your shoes are done for anyway? Might as well go out in a blaze of fun.)

Well I set myself to the semi-indulgent task of buying a new pair of running shoes this afternoon. I did some searching online...wanted to see what there might be out there by this same company that made my once-upon-a-time dream shoes. Turns out--they still have some of the same model of shoe, and they're trying to get rid of them, as they're now discontinuing the line!!

Guess who's getting a sweet new pair of these puppies delivered to her doorstep this week...

maybe tuesday will be my good news day

2009-02-20T17:02:00.007-06:00

So. A few thousand fellow dorks and I across this country (and, the world) are currently sitting on the edges of our seats, repeatedly refreshing our email inboxes. It's decision time.

The Grad Cafe has a database of user-submitted decision stats. You can sort the data by program, school, date, etc. It shows what decision a person received, and how they received it (email, postal, phone), as well as whether they're American or from abroad. There is a place to write comments, too, so you can say something like, "accepted but w/o funding". (No funding is basically a rejection...and, as it turns out, NYU mathematics is notorious for doing this...and yes, I applied there, well before I found out about this site. Damn it.)

The other cool thing is that you can look at the years previous (they've had this database up for three or four "seasons" now), and see when the schools you've applied to usually start sending out their decisions. For UMCP, the school I think I have the best shot at, it looks like they usually send out their first round offers any day now. So, this will be a weekend of anticipation for me, I imagine.

Anyway, usually these boards are alternately filled with woeful rejection and joyful victory. But sometimes you get people with their heads up their own asses writing plain stupid stuff. But also sometimes, they get put in their place.

In other news, it looks like Cornell sent out their decisions today; as they pretty much dominated the math board today. Not a whole lot of activity yet from any of the schools I applied to; a couple early Columbia (physics) and NYU (math) admits. (Although as I mentioned earlier, NYU doesn't really offer funding for many people other than their first picks, so they may be a moot point for me by now...who knows.) I just need one "yes" and I'm good to go...

banks gone wild

2009-02-19T21:12:00.008-06:00

This is a surprisingly clear (and hilarious) explanation of the financial crisis, in so far as it was caused by bad mortgages. I really liked the explanation of "leverage":

"i'll pay you back tomorrow"
"ok"

(you'll see what I mean)

I think with the economy imploding as it is and all...we'd all do well to improve our understanding of the financial system a bit. I took an intro to macroeconomics course my senior year in college, and then really wished I had done it sooner, so I could've spent more time in some intermediate courses. (I think every college student should be required to take a macroecon course, and possibly a microecon course as well...and yes, this is in addition to my infamous "every college student should have to take two semesters of calculus" rant.) So, in that spirit, I am bookmarking this blog on my list of daily-ish reads.

Anyhow, without further ado...

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

As you can see, I'm not much for my own thoughts this past week or so...instead just posting various internet clippings. I've got a lot of projects going on right now, but things will be calming down soon enough. Until then, I hope you are enjoying my little findings from the interwebs...

update (9:52 pm): just found out this video was picked up by BoingBoing as well...see, told you it was cool.

low-tech hackery

2009-02-18T22:53:00.003-06:00

I think my favorite part is the one about using your head as an antenna:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/personaltech/19basics.html

e-time capsule

2009-02-17T02:55:00.005-06:00

There are only two relationships in my life so far that I've haven't deleted all the "love emails" from. And before the year is out, that might be truncated down to one.

I was digging around the depths of my UVM email inbox tonight, looking for a class-related email from fall 07. In the process, I stumbled upon one of the aforementioned emails...and sort of stared it down for a minute, while it dared me to read it.

So I opened it. (I can be a bit of a masochist sometimes.) Turns out, it contained exactly the words I needed to hear right now. Besides reminding me I'm lovable, besides reminding me to take care of myself, it told me this:

Keep your chin up sweety. Everything's gonna work out. I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed when you got a lot of stuff going on. It happens to me on a regular basis. But things always end up working out in the end.

When I finally perform the electronic exorcism of this relationship past, this email will definitely be spared.

(It has been a rough past week. I needed to be reminded that I always land on my feet. And it doesn't hurt to read it written with such warmth.)

ah, the refreshing awkwardness of laundry day

2009-02-12T13:19:00.008-06:00

You know in college when a buddy would show up to class in a really nice pair of dress pants or something, and you'd ask, "hey, what's the occasion?" And your buddy would reply: "oh, no occasion--laundry day."

Yeah, so today I'm wearing my skinny jeans to work. The jeans I wear when going out to a bar, or even if I just feel like feeling cute on the weekend when I go to the grocery store. But today I'm wearing them to a place where I usually try to dress on the androgynous side. I had two pairs of jeans in the dryer that I was waiting for this morning, but they didn't dry in time...and I wasn't about to wear dress pants, so...the skinnies it was.

<seque style = "questionable">
But if Sens. Collins and Snowe can get it done at work while wearing skirts, I can certainly make it in a similarly male-dominated workplace in skinny jeans.
</segue>

Ok, so I have one more news story to share (that refers to Mainers as "pragmatic and independent people")...but I promise I'll stop gloating after this last link on how awesome Maine's senators are:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/us/politics/11cong.html

"respectable" media fucking up their numbers as usual

2009-02-11T15:45:00.004-06:00

There's plenty to laugh about in this article on CNN.com, but the ending is what really gets me:

Nationally, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Monday showed a slight majority of Americans, 54 percent, favored the stimulus bill while 45 percent were opposed. However, only 32 percent of Republicans said they favored the bill.

I think what they should've pointed out is that only 3 out of the 200+ Republicans in Congress had the grit to vote for the stimulus package (and to work hard to negotiate a bill they felt was worthy of a vote)...despite the fact that a whopping 32 percent of Republicans out and about in America support the bill.

Less than 1.5% of Republicans in Congress << 32% of Republicans in the general American public.

Can you say partisan politics? (And oblivious journalism?)

hero-worship

2009-02-10T20:48:00.004-06:00

What can I say? This lady is my hero.

And maybe the role model the little girl mentioned in two posts previous needs.

(I will partially justify said hero-worship by stating that: anytime you can say everybody where you're from has bought lumber from your senator's siblings at their hardware store, it definitely humanizes said senator. I mean, I would be a huge fan no matter where in Maine she was from, but the fact that she is actually from true "northern Maine" is just all the more awesome. I would probably freak out in full Obama-tron-like undiginified-ery if she were to run for president someday. She's too cool for president, so she won't, but I'm just saying. I'd be completely intolerable. =) )

hooray for political moderate-cy

2009-02-09T17:42:00.002-06:00

The state motto isn't "Dirigo" for nothing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/washington/10stimulus-web.html

somebody get this girl a role model

2009-02-08T16:38:00.005-06:00

The final passage of this article from the NY Times is quite possibly the most depressing thing I've read so far this year:

And when a little girl at the charter school visited by the Obamas announced that she dreamed of becoming first lady, Mrs. Obama flashed her self-deprecating wit. “It doesn’t pay much,” she advised.

I could add my own thoughts here...but I think I will just let the quote speak for itself. If you don't understand why this is depressing, then you are not very in-tune to the ongoing oppression of ladies in our society, and I am just not prepared today to waste my energy trying to enlighten others through writing.

I guess my only question is, Ms. Obama being the bad-ass career woman that she is, why didn't she suggest to the little girl that someday she could have her choice of first lady or president, instead of cracking a joke?

Oh, wait. Right. I forgot about those 2008 primaries already.

those fuckers messed up my cookies!

2009-02-07T21:55:00.004-06:00

http://www.kashipeanutbutterrecall.com/

And here I thought I was immune to the recall. I didn't think Kashi (a food brand which I admittedly, borderline, hero-worship) would buy ingredients from such an idiot company:

Federal health officials have begun a criminal investigation into the actions of the Peanut Corporation of America, which they said knowingly sold contaminated peanut butter and peanut products to major food makers.

Knowingly?! Those bastards deserve jail, and a full psychological workup. What strand of wonky produces people that will sell products even after they know they've tested positive for potentially fatal bacteria?

I'm now wondering if my recent case of food poisoning was actually due to those damn cookies, and not the tuna from a restaurant as I had originally suspected...

Either way, it will be a while before my FAVORITE cookies are back on the shelves. Which means I will probably just take to baking my own in their likeness, and won't bother buying them again once they are back on the shelves. Epic fail on this one, Kashi. (But I will still religiously buy your "U" cereal...and would still buy your seven-grain nuggets if I could find them out here...)

oatmeal from concentrate

2009-02-06T20:35:00.006-06:00

Did you ever realize that it's possible to turn granola back into warm, comforting oatmeal simply by drowning it in hot water? Well, now you do. (And now you are probably wondering, like I did, "why didn't I think of that before?")

So, at work, I eat oatmeal in my aluminum (I think, or rather, some alloy thereof...) travel coffee mug. (Indeed, I am known by some as the crazy girl that eats oatmeal from her travel mug. One of the people recently pulled to our project from elsewhere said, upon being introduced to me, "oh, I know her, she'd come downstairs to clean the oatmeal from her coffee mug, because the soap brush was missing from the kitchen on her floor." Great.)

Anyhow, I was cleaning my travel mug out this morning, by filling it up with (really) hot water from the coffee machine. Immediately after it was full, I began using my spoon to scrape along the top of the cup. But as I was scraping, the pitch of the scratching kept increasing, for several seconds, up to a certain point. Now, my only guess is that this was caused by the metal heating up in response to the arrival of the hot water.

So I then wondered: why does heating metal make it give off a higher-pitched sound when scratched?

I do not have an explanation yet. (I'm sure I probably should...but ah well.) Attempts at such explanation are more than welcome.

And now for a moment of zen:

"sun in the sky, you know how i feel
breeze driftin by, you know how i feel
and i'm feeling good
...
dragonfly out in the sun, you know what i mean, don't ya know
butterflies all having fun, you know what i mean
sleep in peace once day is done, that's what i mean
and this old world is a new world
and a bold world
for me"

--"Feeling Good", as performed by Nina Simone

ah, efficiency

2009-02-02T12:40:00.005-06:00

Today I received an email with the subject line: "Lunch at 1? (eom)", and an empty message body. I thought, wtf is eom? I almost wrote the sender back asking that question, but I decided to see if Google could hide my ignorance instead. And indeed, it was able to find an answer; see the explanation here.

Good thing I didn't write back to ask. =) However, I did respond with an "eom" of my own (someone else had written in the meantime, saying they brought their lunch but would hang out with the group anyway):

Re: "Lunch at 1? (eom)"...I brought my lunch today, too --k (eom)

I feel so trendy.

yankee republicans

2009-01-29T20:43:00.006-06:00

Today, Pres. Obama signed a "fair pay" act into law, the first bill-signing of his presidency. There were mostly some high-up Democrats present, a nice old lady from Alabama, and the two female senators from Maine. (Yes, they're both Republicans. No no, not that kind of Republican, they're Yankee Republicans. Don't worry about it.)

The ceremony, and a reception afterward in the State Dining Room of the White House, had a celebratory feel. The East Room was packed with advocates for civil rights and workers rights; the legislators, who included House and Senate leaders and two moderate Republicans — Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — shook Mr. Obama’s hand effusively (some, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, received presidential pecks on the cheek) as he took the stage.

The whole "presidential pecks on the cheek" language bullshit pretty much deflated the whole gender-equality tone for me--but I'm still totally psyched to see my ever-beloved senators getting such big air-time. Snowe's been around for a while, but Collins is still somewhat new (in senator years, anyway), only having been there a couple terms -ish.

Ok...after several minutes of google searching, then giving up and remembering I had read this great line about Snowe from slate.com...I found the article I was looking for. (I just gave google all sorts of hilarious search data, from "olympia snowe puppies roses" to "mainers send olympia snowe babies"...) Here is an excerpt from an article written in advance of the 2004 presidential election, entitled "Maine: The state that could go for Kerry and Bush." (For those of you unaware, this is a reference to the weird way Maine doles out electoral college votes. Nebraska does it, too.)

... But in Maine, entrenched Republicans and die-hard Democrats are outnumbered by independents, who make up 39 percent of the state's voters. And when that many votes are in play for each election, things get notably weird.

Maine, for example, has had independent governors for 12 of the past 30 years. H. Ross Perot had his best showings in Maine: In 1992, he won 30 percent of the vote, taking second place and beating hometown honey George H.W. Bush; in 1996, he won 14 percent. In 2000, Nader won 6 percent of the vote. (More on that later.) The 2nd congressional seat is currently held by a pro-life Democrat, but it was held by a pro-choice Republican as recently as 1994. And Maine is devoted to its senior senator, the moderate Republican Olympia Snowe. Every single person I spoke to in Maine was a fan—I wouldn't be surprised if they regularly send her roses and kittens and first-born children. "She really represents Maine," I heard, from Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. Maine voters like Snowe's moderate politics—she's your typical Yankee Republican (one of the last of the breed), fiscally conservative and socially liberal—and they also admire her willingness, on occasion, to tell Republican leaders to shove it. "Olympia," they say, "doesn't just vote the party line."

...

The rest of the article is just plain gold writing. Definitely worth a read if you are ever trying to understand Maine--our people or our culture in general. (They even talk about the "Two Maines"...ooh, scandalous.)

the new ladies who lunch

2009-01-28T14:14:00.005-06:00

An article from the NYT, about the girlfriends/wives/mistresses of well-to-do Wall Street dudes, who are now feeling the crunch of our economic meltdown.

I got a little angry over this part:

Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Au contraire, girlfriend, that's exactly what you signed up for. Or did you miss the part about 'for better or for worse, in sickness and in health'?

Much like the "unexamined life is not worth living", I think the unexamined reasons for marriage result in a marriage not worth much at all. (Well, unless the only dimension of "worth" you concern yourself with is financial...)

clearly canadian

2009-01-27T21:08:00.002-06:00

There is something deeply annealing about true winter weather--and having been raised on it year-after-year for a total sum that can be described in decades. And not just personally annealing. It forms inter-personal bonds, which in turn beget communities, the dynamics of which beget this nebulous thing we call sometimes call culture and sometimes call society. (Those unafraid of being labeled "new age" often dare to call it the collective consciousness.) And all of this is then turned around again into stamping the individual with a unique blend of self-identity (that as we all know, is not exactly entirely self-formed).

This is not a strand of humanity that can be learned after the fact, or through stories or any sort of second-hand interaction. This is a you've-either-got-it-or-you-don't type thing.

"so, screw california"

2009-01-23T20:14:00.004-06:00

(uh oh...this new pandora thing makes my music references really easy to figure out sometimes...)

One theme I have increasingly become aware of as I have grown is that much of what we encounter on a day-to-day basis is "human-made". Rules, laws, mores--all constructed by us humans. (Realizing this as a kid could have been a ready salve for many an angst, but alas...)

When I first moved to Burlington, I wrote several songs. Full-fledged songs with words and chords and everything, that I still often sing in the shower or on walks, etc. (Someday I will make myself brandish them at an open-mic night somewhere...) One of them was about softly shaking my head on behalf of people that think they can run away towards some external idea and it would suddenly make everything internal better. My first chorus throws a jab at people romanticizing California. This evening I discovered someone else has put the same thing in a song, too. (...hence this blog post title...not my words, but this other song's...)

So, having poked plenty of scorn at other people clinging to social or personal constructs, it's only prudent to turn that same scorn on myself from time to time. This round is about relationships. Why do I think I want one? Do I really? And if so, and if I am fortunate to find one...who's to say it will last. These are questions which I once thought I had answers to...and now...I don't know. And what's more, I don't know if I ever will have the answers.

I want something to believe in. (Something personally constructed.) I need something to believe in. Can I give that to myself?...I don't know. I'm not sure what it would even be, this thing to believe in. This is an interesting bit of philosophy that I'm sure entire books have been written about over the past several hundred years. But maybe everybody just has to figure it out for themself.

I'm just gonna do what I gotta do (as John Legend--stealing Aretha's chords--would say...) Maybe constructs are just made to be broken, and you can only ever count on yourself.

"This next song, I don't know if you've heard it. It's a song about cheating. But it's a nice, sexy song about cheating. It kinda makes you wanna cheat. It's called, 'She Don't Have to Know'..." --John Legend at the end of a live track

(And despite myself and everything I stand for...I really like that goddamn song...)

no really, he's that awesome

2009-01-22T23:55:00.008-06:00

(...more serious writing about "monastic aspirations" continues to be postponed, likely until the weekend, when this crazy week is behind me.)

Now is just a quick bit of wit, from two Maine natives expressing shameless admiration for one of our favorite sons:

And now...
"Goodnight, you princes of Maine, kings of New England."

two songs you MUST listen to

2009-01-18T22:56:00.002-06:00

Spending Sunday late-night figuring out what music and Mathematica have in common. (Well, I already know what they have in common, but I need to figure out an articulate way to put it...) A perfect soundscape for such an endeavor, I figured, was the algorithmically-generated playlists of Pandora. I've been a huge fan of this site for a while now...but just tonight I created a new station based on the artist Rogue Wave. This may now be my favorite station in my account there...even better than some of the ones I've spent months tweaking to my every musical whim! I don't want to jinx anything, but I've been listening to this station for well over an hour or so now, and I haven't needed to hit the "next" button once...

Anyway, I came across two songs everyone must absolutely check out (and probably in this order):

"Elevator Love Letter" by Stars
"In The Morning" by The Coral

And might I suggest as a low tempo palette-cleanser:

"Crush the Camera" by Rogue Wave

You're welcome. ...back to work.

(so much for work... 11:27 pm update: just figured out how to put a classy sidebar on my blog listing my most recent Pandora song bookmarks. Oh, technology.)

monastic aspirations, pt. 1

2009-01-18T10:36:00.003-06:00

For someone who is not remotely religious, and, has somewhat fallen off the spiritual wagon in the past year or so (for reasons of not having had anyone to talk Eastern philosophy with in a long time, not bothering to re-read favorite texts from said philosophy, and increasingly taking on more of a cold, mathematical view of the universe) I find I am oddly enough continuing to develop "monastic aspirations".

Someday I would really love to go vegan. I realize, however, that such an attempt would probably be doomed to failure because:

1. I can't eat soy, and not a lot of commercial foods aimed at vegans use sources of protein other than that. I would probably spend a lot of time in the kitchen as a mad scientist, trying to extract protein from other plant sources. (Actually, this doesn't sound so bad.) I've heard you can do it with wheat gluten.

...and then more earthly whining...

2. I like seafood.
3. I love yogurt (both for taste and protein) and cheese.

I can however, continue to iterate my diet towards a more vegan-esque makeup. The current thing I am working on jettisoning is milk. I don't really need milk. I use it in cereal and baking. These uses can withstand alternative substances. I've already written about how the rice milk from Full Circle pretty much sucks, and today I've got some more positive news. I finally found the little repository of alternative dairy-like beverages at Schnuck's yesterday. And was totally stoked to find they had almond milk. (They also had a few brands of soy and rice milk--even Rice Dream brand, which is, as far as rice milk goes, pretty good--but I am giving up on those two for obvious reasons.) They had one brand of almond milk, so I got a quart each of the two versions: original and vanilla. I have already gone all the way through the vanilla one. This stuff is good. Evidently they make oat milk, too. I am so trying it (even if I must trek to Urbana or even buy it online...)

I have more to write, specifically regarding grad school and love, but these will have to be writings for other times. I've got a lot to do today and should get to working on all of it...

"there's something wrong with being copied in a memo, in the form of a big ugly demo..."

2009-01-16T21:48:00.001-06:00

So I'm spending Friday night in. This is perfectly ok because, one, I could have gone out dancing with friends tonight but pansy-ed out (because I'm tired and broke) and two, because I've got stuff going on both Saturday and Sunday nights. (Actually, when I put it that way...I should probably be being productive tonight...hm, nah...) So instead I will recount a tale of my Saturday previous.

I get excited about little things. I'm not sure if this is inherently who I am, or someone I became at some time in my life for purposes of coping with said life, but I do know by this point it is essential to my being. There is this bar in town that has all sort of goodies in the ladies' room, including body lotion, spray-on deodorant, hair spray, peppermints, and (free) tampons. Now let me tell you--when you have dry skin, as I do, you very much appreciate when a business is intelligent enough to put lotion in the bathroom. Washing hands and then not putting lotion on in the winter is rather uncomfortable. =( So suffice it to say, this place already had my allegiance. Well, I was prevented from being a hermit last Saturday by a couple of work buddies who were going to this place for dinner and drinks (including the dude responsible for the introvert/extrovert quote in a previous post). I hadn't been to this place in a while, and was happily surprised by the newest addition to the restroom luxuries:

Washcloths to dry one's hands with! How awesome is that?! There was a little sign on the paper towel dispenser saying something like "restroom amenities provided by staff. soiled cloth hand towels in hamper, paper towels in trash". Drying one's hands with cloth is a lot less rough on dry skin than paper towels, so this is just a dream come true for me. Plus, my little inner hippie is very impressed that they are also cutting down on their paper waste.

Besides the washcloths, the rest of the evening was very lovely, also. It's nice to begin to feel less and less like a hermit. My work buddies were glad that I seem to have finally come out of a months-long funk and am being sociable again. A lot of people have had a lot of really nice things to say about me in the past week. I don't really know why all this positivity is converging on me all of a sudden, but it sure is well-timed, I'd say. There were also a couple not-so-nice things said about me this week (evidently I'm an even worse judge of character than I realized, or more accurately, I'm even better at deliberately ignoring my character judging abilities than I realized...), but the balance of it all is still positive enough to prevent me from getting down. Even though I'm somewhat in a holding pattern this first part of the year while I wait to see where the second half will take me, I'm quickly discovering there is still enough friendship in this foreign land to keep me from crashing into the Hudson.

out of context

2009-01-15T20:56:00.007-06:00

You know, with a different picture, this ad could take on a whole other meaning. (But that program probably wouldn't be suitable for PBS. Unless it was sufficiently "artistic".)

In other news, yesterday's brooding has been downgraded to something that could probably be taken care of by one of those really small Ben & Jerry's cups. However, upon realizing (while chatting yesterday eve with my recently-turned-health-nut little bro, who was--despite said health-nut-ness--eating a pint of oatmeal cookie B&J's) that I hadn't eaten any of their ice cream in oh...well, at least since I left Vermont, I've decided it's time to fix that. Tomorrow, at lunch. And I'm probably going to go for the pint, but it's also probably going to be the low-fat, fro-yo Half-Baked.

And if you don't know what the following is all about, then you should probably go look it up... (oh, Google...is there anything you can't make interesting?)

"when sad," she said, "i do what i do best. i take to the keys."

2009-01-14T20:06:00.002-06:00

Endings she could handle, misunderstandings...she could not. But it was out of her hands now, and what would be, would be.

This one would have to be settled the old-fashioned way, she feared...with some Ben & Jerry's and a fresh haircut.

word

2009-01-10T17:55:00.004-06:00

Ok, it's official. I miss Burlington. =(

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27752501/

(The downtown co-op they mention is where I used to work! woot!)

"he's just not that into you"

2009-01-10T14:40:00.004-06:00

Points if you can name the source of that quote.

So, I have had my mind changed this morning. I am aware of the fact that I am a very stubborn person (but I would maintain, not-arrogantly, that this is just because I frequently have already thought well through whatever is being talked about...this is more of an affliction than something to be proud of), however, I also know that my mind is definitely changeable when someone makes a particularly good and articulate point. And I know that this is all a very genuine construct in my brain due to the rather marked feelings of happy and relief that arise when someone else makes a good point to change my mind. Sort of like that person is taking over the wheel for a moment in my continual quest to map and understand the world, and giving me a moment to rest.

This is a particularly good and articulate point about why being single is great. Hope you have some time to read, as it's seven freaking pages long. Actually, it's not just one point, but an article stuffed full of great points. Definitely worth a read. (Well, if you're single at least...)

With that little trinket of good thought having been delivered, I am now setting myself to the task of finishing my last grad school application. Adventure cannot wait around for accompanying gentlemen.

way to normal

2009-01-09T20:12:00.006-06:00

"'Are you an introvert or an extrovert?' ... Fucking shit."
--lunch buddy on Thursday, describing himself emailing with potential lady friends

(DISCLAMIER: I fucking love Ben Folds. If you know me at all, you already are aware of this.)

How self-neglectful have I been, to have gone 3 months without checking out Ben Folds's latest album? Anyway, suffice it to say I am finally checking it out, and he's making me believe life is really all that worth living again, like usual. (At least if one owns a piano or has access to one in the woods...I am working on saving for one, for whatever space I will inhabit beginning next fall...) In conclusion: Ben Folds + Regina Spektor + piano = true love. And I'm not even a huge Regina Spektor fan.

This week for me was denser than the irrationals in the reals. (My little math joke. hah.) Work was crazy, but the great news there is that I am moving to a much sweeter desk as of Monday; I carted all my stuff to my new location at the end of the day today. As for my personal life (yes, I'm really beginning to have one of those again!), after tomorrow I will be done done done with working on my grad school applications. And then I will begin having a fun, restful existence again. I'm rather looking forward to it...after all, that is one of the perks of being a working stiff as opposed to a student--the relaxation factor.

I'm not sure if it's just heightened sensitivity due to the fact I am not in a relationship right now (albeit freshly at peace with the end of the last one), but it seems like the whole world is getting engaged or at least just plain in a relationship. Strangely enough, I didn't seem to notice this when I was still acutely in broken-heart pain, so I guess I'm doubtful of the single syndrome cause. I guess all the marriage proposals can at least be blamed on the holidays, perhaps.

Viewed from one angle, being single is rather freeing. And such freedom is even, might I say, really romantic in a way. Viewed from another, I still find myself longing for a relationship of some sort. Something easy and comfy...affectionate yet not too serious. At least not (serious) yet. Someday maybe. Damn you, contradictory emotions; always sneaking up and getting the best of me. The next place I live needs to be busy enough for me to not notice such things. At least if, no one notices me (or, deliberately chooses to un-notice me).

Well, I am getting my hair chopped off tomorrow. Needs to happen...it's getting too long. I've always wanted to grow it out really long, as I'm sure it would look super bad-ass with it being so curly, but every time it so much as gets down to my shoulders, it starts pissing me off and I itch to cut it. I'm bringing pictures of Carrie's hair from SATC season five and will say, "make my hair do something like this, please." We'll see how that turns out.

"So, I'll say something I should've said long ago,
You don't know me at all."
-- from the man who wields thirteenth chords like they was triads

CELEBRATE YOUR VEGETABLES!

2009-01-06T19:29:00.007-06:00

Today at the office there was a rather heated debate on the social email list about vegetarianism. I kind of felt like throwing my computer across the room by the end of it. The meat-eaters side of the aisle didn't seem to get that vegetables are tasty, and were completely incredulous that veggie-broth based soup could be any good. They also made such silly claims as that eating meat is "natural". (I worked in a deli for almost a year. That shit is rarely natural, yo. So, I hope this person was limiting their comment to fresh steaks sliced right off the animal.) All this started by someone asking if anyone was interesting in doing a vegetarian soup swap at work a couple Mondays from now. One lady said she wasn't going to bother doing it, and would participate another time when chicken broth was allowed. What kind of wonky sense does that make?! Really...you aren't willing to try vegetarian soups made by the exact people that know how to use their veggies? My response was, "where's your sense of adventure?" and "don't think of vegetarian food as missing meat, but more as a proper celebration of vegetables." This shift of food-world-view focus seems to be something meat-eaters have an incredibly difficult time comprehending.

And now, for a turn on the topic.

So this week at work I'm responsible for training a new hire on our project. Turns out, his girlfriend recently quit being a vegetarian. I said, really?, why so? (This conversation occurred yesterday, well before today's veggie vs. meat office smack-down.) He said it was for health reasons, that she was getting sick rather frequently and didn't have enough energy. I said that one thing I'm determined to get better at as we start this new year is my nutrition. I don't get enough protein or iron (and I can really tell the lucky times that I do), and I need to start taking a multi-vitamin, which I have recently started doing. But I want to better educate myself about the various available plant proteins (other than my arch-nemesis, the evil soybean) and do a better job of getting a full spectrum of amino acids, as well as other nutrients, too. (Iron and B vitamins top the list.) So I sat down this eve with the intention of doing some online research. I was day-dreaming of one day having a huge kitchen filled with not just cookbooks, but also science-y nutrition books detailing the pros and cons of various foods and nutrients. (Dork-ery in the kitchen...what revelry that would be!)

I hopped on Google and was met with this. The quizzical stuff in the picture needs no intro.

There definitely not 5 times as many vegans as vegetarians. What this says to me, is two things:

1. Being a vegan is far more nutritionally tricky than being a vegetarian.

2. Vegetarians as a whole don't really take their nutrition very seriously, or as seriously as they should.

Is being a vegetarian a wise decision? I'd say a passionate "yes". But we'd do better to be wiser in it's practice.

(And it's also a damn tasty decision, too, just in case you were wondering.)

holla

2009-01-06T12:54:00.002-06:00

All I have to say is, "duh":

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123119236117055127.html

What I find really interesting is the fact that "Mathematician" gets #1, while "Physicist" gets #13...maybe I'd rather end up in a math department after all...

on being the only female in a room full of males, pt. 2

2009-01-04T23:36:00.001-06:00

I'm coming up for a quick breath of air while working on my next-to-last grad school application, and decided to write for a spell. (After all, I did say I'd have more to say on the previous post later...) Honestly this whole application process is a little overwhelming for me. Required financial and time investments aside, the part that is particularly unsettling is the gravity of it. I am basically saying to schools, "please let me come work for your Nobel laureate professors and with your super-fast computers...let me come study at your institution and then attempt to begin making my own mark on the field." I didn't really apply to any safety schools; not because I'm cocky, more because there just aren't really "safety schools" for theoretical physics. (I tried to find some that are doing research in what I'm interested in, I really did.) So my apps are a mix of reaches and middle-of-the-road picks. This has the resultant effect of making me fear I'm acting too big for my britches.

Recently, a new conversation partner has highlighted exactly the complex I seem to have with not feeling like I deserve anything, or put another way, with being afraid to ask the universe for things. Now, this is interesting since I've written in detail on this topic before, in my old, now-long-neglected other blog. (I plan on moving some old entries to this blog and just deleting the old one when I can find the time...) Basically, my point in that writing was that asking for things is a sign of respect towards one's self. People don't bother to give mathematics an honest try in school because "that's stuff for smart people, not me." I never thought I'd learn to use chopsticks, because that was something cosmopolitan/worldly people did, not some kid from the sticks like me. (I'm happy to report I was very wrong about the chopsticks.)

I recently read a quote somewhere that said something to the effect of, "treat people as they have the potential to be, not who they are." I think that's probably a pretty applicable statement for one's treatment towards one's self, as well. Whether or not he had ever heard of this quote, my math advisor at UVM was definitely living it. When he told me I should first try submitting the paper that came out of my independent study to Physical Review, I thought he was crazy. (The way I explain it to those unfamiliar with it is that Phys. Rev. is like the Yankees of physics journals.) "My paper's got a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted there," I thought. Evidently this paper was one tough snowball. See, that's the thing. I sprung for something (admittedly, after significant external encouragement) that I didn't think I or my work would be considered good enough for. And look what happened. So I guess, regarding the applications, I just decided to take a deep breath and go for it. I think I would have regretted doing it any differently.

As for the electronic smack-down the other day...I don't have much more specifically to say about it (but I do feel like this post was an exploration of somethings very similar). My mind brooded over it for the afternoon and then let it go, after remembering what may be my absolute favorite Eleanor Roosevelt quote (and she's got a lot of good ones!) In fact, I think this quote is rather applicable to the rest of my here-written concerns as well...

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

on being the only female in a room full of males, pt. 1

2009-01-02T11:32:00.004-06:00

...and the only bachelor's degree in a room full of phds.

In a nutshell: it sucks. Anything you say is often screwed right out of the gate, at least for some pairs of ears. Luckily there is usually a good helping of enlightened pairs of ears as well, so sometimes a very decent idea presented by someone in my position can take off in a group discussion, by way of the help of said quasi-enlightened beings.

But when you are duking it out on a group-wide visible email thread with one such not-enlightened pair of ears (eyes?), you end up feeling pretty alone and self-esteem-bruised. At least until, some voices of reason write you personally and laud your grit.

Grumble. Time to go for a walk for lunch soon, I do declare.

More later.

mmm...treats from the deep!

2008-12-30T18:52:00.006-06:00

Here's a snippet of an article from Stop Smiling:

Sunday, December 09, 2007

BUILDING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING:
ISAAC BROCK OF MODEST MOUSE
(EXCERPT)

The complete Stop Smiling Interview with Isaac Brock, which was conducted throughout summer 2007 in Chicago and at Brock’s home in Portland, appears as one of three cover stories in the second annual 20 Interviews issue. (For more on this issue, click here). An excerpt of the conversation follows below

Interview by JC Gabel

Stop Smiling: You grew up in Issaquah, just outside Seattle. You moved around quite a bit, and then settled in Portland, but at one point you were living in a logging town in central Oregon.

Isaac Brock: Once I got into Portland I had no idea what the fuck I was doing in that logging town, except for drinking and getting fat. I didn't go back, I just moved out. It seemed to me at the time that if I wanted to get things done — I was too easily distracted — and I was in the middle of nowhere, so I’d have nothing but time to focus and work on stuff. But because I was isolated, I drank out of boredom and I got less done. I didn’t ever actually intend on moving to Portland. It wasn’t a thought I had. It just kind of happened and here I am. Occasionally, people ask me to talk about the music scene here, like, “Why do you think people move here?” — that whole thing. There’s a lot of rock and rollers who live here, but I have no idea. I don’t hang out. I stay at home most of the time.

SS: Can you see yourself living anywhere else permanently — other than the Pacific Northwest?

IB: I have a hard time imagining that — maybe the Northeast, around Maine. It’s beautiful. It’s cold enough to not make me paranoid about the world ending, and it’s near seafood — treats from the deep.

(read the rest of the article at the link at the top...)

why don't you just put up the damn parking lot already

2008-12-26T11:20:00.002-06:00

I forget the movie, but whatever it is, Edward Norton's character has a line where he complains that he hates pecan pie because everybody makes it too @%^$#@& sweet. This is how I feel about these cereal bars I bought the last time I was at the grocery store. Well, ok, let's just put it all out there--this is how I feel about lots of foods; too sweet.

But these cereal bars have me particularly grumpy because they tricked me! Schnuck's (think the midwest equivalent of Hannaford's) has this "Full Circle" brand they carry. It's more or less their mass-produced hippie food brand. (It's the only kind of rice milk I've been able to find at that store yet, and it pretty much sucks. When you're a (even just quasi-) vegetarian, you can tell when you're eating something that was made by meat-eaters for non-meat-eaters. Rice milk is not easy to make well, and this stuff tasted like they didn't really try all that hard. But I digress...) Now, don't get me wrong...I am all for mass-food producers hopping on the hippie bandwagon. I myself am not a super-rabid supporter of organic foods (and got myself into plenty of shit in Vermont for my lukewarm support of organics...), although I do really like the effect that movement is having on the food industry at large.

So, I like that mass-producers are seeing that they must produce healthy/all-natural options if they want to stay competitive. However, the success of such ventures seems to vary widely by instance. Quaker Oatmeal has this tasty multi-grain, low-sugar oatmeal they've begun carrying...and it's way good. (And they don't cram it full of Splenda to make up for the lack of sugar...they just really understand that there are people out there who don't feel like eating a bunch of really sweet stuff.) Smucker's makes an all-natural peanut butter that is sort of ok...I've had better, but I'd still buy it over our usual American excuses for peanut butter any day. (My personal fav has for years been Maranatha; smooth or crunchy. That stuff is food for the gods.) Anyway, I pegged this Full Circle as a hippie lip-service brand the second I saw it...but decided to give it a go anyway. I really like having cereal or granola type bars around the apartment...good for breakfast on the run, good for snacking. They make some decently priced cereal bars, so after my usual scan of the ingredients list, decided to give them a spin.

Well let me tell you. Do not get these puppies. Too much sugar. You can make something as organic-y or natural as you want, but when you drown it in sugar, you've totally missed the point. Looks like I should have checked out this site first. (I think a B+ is far too generous considering the sugar offense.) I think reading the sugar content will need to go on my usual food product check-over list...right up with there with soy, preservatives, and partially/fully hydrogentated stuff. Damn you and your sneaky ways, Full Circle. I think I need to go shopping in the hippie land of Urbana more often...I've recently been told legends of oat milk being sold over there...

best. alarm. ever.

2008-12-24T15:30:00.005-06:00

I am so getting myself this. No question about it...I've been waiting for this alarm clock all my life. (It's like the real-world equivalent of Google's now infamous mail goggles..."are you sure you want to turn your alarm off? let's make sure you're lucid enough to properly answer that question by posing you with a small puzzle...")

This way beats just putting the alarm clock on the other side of the room. I could strew these three pieces in various other rooms for that matter--all different. Maybe even hide one in a cereal box to remind me to eat breakfast.

Just trying to find the proper Google blog link for that previous paragraph has drawn me off into all sorts of other wonderfully rabbit-hole deep thoughts. One in particular struck a chord with a thought that has been gracing my mind repeatedly a bit lately; that of mastering an art form.

I've been daydreaming a lot lately about when I used to play piano seriously. I have this confused winter coat, that although remarkably lovely, cannot decide if it's blue or purple. (I think I probably bought this coat for that very reason. And it's effing warm, too.) The other day I realized it is very nearly the exact same color of the cover as a piano solo copy of "Rhapsody in Blue" I used to have in high school. The link's picture doesn't entirely do it justice, but you get the general idea. If one could ever truly be in love with a few bound pieces of paper (well, not few, the damn thing was almost 30 pages and I'd only ever perform about 12 or so of them...), then I was with this. Not only was the music it contained gorgeous and worthy of devotion, but the ambiguous shade of blue chosen for the cover was almost a challenge: "go ahead, try to label me or conquer me or stick me in a box; and when you fall short--as you most certainly will--you will understand my true beauty."

There are various phases I came to be familiar with when seriously practicing a difficult piece on a long-term time frame. (Phases that I have come to recognize in all sorts of other areas of life...but those are other ramblings for other days...) First, you pick a piece that you absolutely love. If you work on anything long enough, you're going to get sick and tired of it for certain, and you might as well postpone that event as long as possible. The first phase is rather rewarding...there's a bigger return for your time investment as you go from just very slowly being able to work your way through a few pages, then eventually the whole piece, to finally being good enough at it to recognize some semblance of a continuous melody or various voices.

Next, you begin to hit a plateau. Progress slows. You come to know the piece better and have a better idea of it as a whole. It becomes a familiar commute, complete with easy stretches, and bumpy difficult parts that force you to slow down. You begin to curse these bumpy difficult parts from denying you the satisfaction of doing justice to a piece of art you are emotionally invested in. Have you ever had a dream where you were trying to yell, but no sound came out of your mouth? That's what this feels like.

Next comes the intense part. You are dead-set on smoothing over the bumpy patches; there is fire in your veins from the frustration of not being able to freely express yourself through your craft. You play the piece through and make note of all the places that need work. And you set to work on them one by one. You will play the same eight measures over and over again for two hours if that's what it takes. And often, that's exactly what it takes.

Eventually, you reach the point where you can begin slowly stitching the piece back together from all of the microscopic bits you had focused on. The smoothness of some transitions may have temporarily been forgotten as you lost the artistic forest for the technical trees, and must be relearned. But the task of a full play-through is now getting easier and more fluent each time you sit down. You see a light at the end of the tunnel. And if you've gotten to the end of that tunnel before, you know you're bound for something amazing.

And then it happens. You're just sitting, playing the piece through one day, and perhaps in the middle of a passage that you have a particular liking for. And you lose yourself in the sound for a minute. You've just played it a little differently. You weren't paying attention to the notes or the staff or your deliberately mapped-out fingering; you were speaking. (That's the best I can explain it, and if you've never actually experienced this, then any explanation is doomed to fail anyhow.) The instrument and the writing became auxiliary vehicles for your expression for an ecstatic, fleeting moment. Eventually these beautiful moments start to bleed their way across your entire playing of the piece. And when you get to the point where you can play the entire thing on autopilot, leaving your waking mind to fully express itself in the artistry of your playing, that my friends, is the most wonderful manifestation of freedom I have ever felt.

So I've found this similar journey in lots of other places as well...learning a (spoken) language, learning a computer language, playing a sport, cooking, ...I could go on. Granted, I don't think I've ever mastered anything else quite to the level of where my piano skills once were, but I imagine if I were to have, the end result would feel quite similar. I do hope, one day, to master some sliver of mathematics/science to (at least, if not more than) this extent. And the reason I even got into this stuff in the first place was for the gleeful freedom of expression and further exploration allowed by the advancement of such theoretical technologies.

I think the true metric of an advanced society is the extent to which it uses its hard-earned intellectual advances for purely leisurely enjoyment.

no-turkey day

2008-11-25T11:32:00.004-06:00

Everybody needs to see this...it's hilarious in its extremity, but sort of sad in its proximity to the truth at the time time.

Happy Thanksgiving, America. =(

...make sure you play til the vegetarian bonus round!

sampling error

2008-11-16T17:09:00.009-06:00

So I took the physics GRE the weekend before last. It went better than last year, but that's all I'm going to say for fear of jinxing myself. And so now begins the several weeks-long wait for my score.

But I had come across a physics student message board back when I was trying to find good studying resources, and was curious to see if there was any chatter about how people found the Nov. 8 physics GRE. Well, chatter there was. The board went in chronological order, so the first posts I read were all from just a few hours after people had taken the exam. The first one even went something like, "Nov. 8, 2008 was an easy test!"

F@#k!

As I continued to read down the first several posts, I began to fear I was really screwed. All these kids talking about having answered 80, 90 questions on the test. (For the uninitiated, the test is 170 minutes / 100 questions = 1.7 minutes per question. Not, a lot, of time.) But when I got about halfway down the first page of posts, someone said "hey, seeing a lot of indian names here, what do you think about these scores...", asking about his chances applying as an international student (presumably, to the States). I started looking back at the user names...there were a lot of Indian names, and furthermore, their post times showed that they had taken the test hours ahead of 9 am my time.

So I kept reading. Eventually the westerners chimed in. They didn't find it as easy; maybe answering 50, 60 questions. I answered 61, only guessing on 2 or 3. Maybe I played it a little too safe; if I had spent a little more time guessing and a little less time being absolutely sure of an answer, I might've been able to get up to 70 answered. But who knows if that would have helped any. (right answer = 1 pt, no answer = 0 pt, wrong answer = -1/4 pt to counteract random guessing.) At the end of the day, all I care about is beating out the other Americans...we know we're powerless to even approach the astronomical scores of the Asians.

(Sorry if that sounds awful red team vs. blue team of me...but why is being up in arms about dependence on foreign oil so en vogue, but our dependence on foreign intellectual capital is not? That's probably another rant for another day...)

And the other thing is, even after reading about the potentially more moderate scores, there still probably is a serious sampling error inherent in my taking this board to be a representative sample of all the scores from the Nov. 8 test. Of course it's going to be the students most interested in their scores, the more motivated ones, and likely the ones that did better on the test, that are going to post to this board.

Then I started thinking, it's kind of like this in relationships, too. My last relationship, I fell in love with a guy that I only interacted with (in person, I mean...we talked incessantly on the phone, ichat, etc) on his vacations from work. He'd visit me, or we'd meet in the middle; one time I flew out to his place for Thanksgiving, but even then he had some time off from work. (Well, the notion of him ever truly being on vacation from work borders on the laughable, but that isn't really essential to my point here...) My point is that we only interacted in person when he was not (wholly) consumed with his work life.

The flip side of all this, and what really stings, is that his decision to love me was not prone to such sampling error. When he would visit me in Burlington, I'd still be in classes and doing homework. Even when we weren't in Vermont, I was still often studying for a test or working on a paper. He saw me in my usual day-to-day mode, and saw a place for himself in that life. Which there was. Then I move out here to some strange land, only to discover that there is not really a place in his life for anyone right now. And historically, my bullshit detector (my character judgment function, what have you) has been remarkably accurate. But this one caught me unawares. In his defense, his self-delusion ran so deep, I think, that even he wasn't aware of it until too late.

And so I will comfort myself with this cold analysis of where I went wrong in trusting someone that did not deserve my trust.

Sorry for the broken-heart drivel, but I simply cannot let this be me:

My normal approach HAS to be useful here! It's all I've got!

little things

2008-11-16T15:57:00.004-06:00

I just found the coolest new functionality in Firefox 3.

Did you know that if you have a bazillion tabs open in the same window (as I am wont to do), you can scroll through them using your mouse scroll button?! Just mouse over the row of tabs, and scroll off into the sunset.

This is almost as cool as the time I accidentally discovered you can preview documents in Leopard by highlighting them and hitting the space bar. It was like cave man discovering fire, "whoa! what just happened? what is this?!"

i feel like my secret heart has lost all it's stuffing

2008-11-05T18:11:00.002-06:00

I'm (hopefully) taking the physics GRE on Saturday, so that this is me for not too much longer:

you do realize it is your own failed policies that created the problem in the first place...right?

2008-10-30T15:24:00.005-05:00

Every time someone has the audacity, no, animal-level ignorance, to mention "September 11th" and something about national security in the same sentence, it makes me think of this quote from Edward Norton's character in the movie 25th Hour:

"Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on!"

That is what I feel like saying to anyone still blabbering on about Sept. 11 like it made the world suddenly so much less secure-- "move the fuck on!" Everybody on this (sort of still) green earth needs a copy of "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. If there is one thing you read this winter, make it that book. I think if our society took mathematics more seriously, we'd be a much different country, in a good way. But that's another ramble for another day I guess...

one of these is not like the other...

2008-10-24T14:56:00.003-05:00

Sometimes when I really try to understand racial tensions in this country, and I mean really understand, like on a micro level, I try to imagine how must feel to be the only black person in a room full of white people. Probably somewhat intimidating, probably somewhat jarring. Luckily I do not have to try too hard to understand this feeling--I've gotten pretty used to it myself.

Right now I am the only lady in a lecture room full of a couple dozen people. Really, gals? Am I the only one who finds conservation laws of nonlinear PDEs to be interesting?!

Oh yey! Another lady came in late! Talk is starting...got to go...

my kind of comic...

2008-10-21T13:32:00.003-05:00

...is one that requires footnotes.

samantha and the ring

2008-10-20T22:20:00.002-05:00

In "Sex and the City", the movie, there is a small storyline regarding Samantha and a diamond-encrusted ring being sold at auction. She decides to compete in the bidding for the ring, saying, "I work hard, I deserve this." To the external viewer, such a purchase may seem superficial or frivolous. But to Samantha, buying herself that ring was a symbol of her independence, earned by her hard work at her job. She does not need a man to buy her things, she is a completely self-sufficient unit.

I have just bought myself the world's most beautiful coat. (And as opposed to Samantha's ring, it set me back less than $300.) And to me, this is more than just a proper investment in light of the impending cold weather; this is a symbol of my independence. I did not have to rely on my folks for money, like when I was in college; I splurged my very own hard-earned money on a new winter coat. October just so happens to be a three-paycheck month, so I am left with a little more extra money than usually budgeted for--so I went for it and bought the coat of my dreams.

I wonder if the intoxicating allure of buying myself lovely things completely from my own finances will prevent me from going to grad school. (If you want to see the coat, follow this link. The coat is shown in "Look 4".) On the other hand, maybe this year in a 'real' job will make me all-the-happier about going to grad school, if it results in some savings of my own allowing me to live less poor-student-y later...

a "cuil" new search engine

2008-07-28T10:40:00.005-05:00

Evidently a few ex-Googlers launched a new, competing search engine this morning called "Cuil", pronounced "cool". They claim a web page index that they estimate at three times the size of Google's. Needless to say, I was curious. I went to www.cuil.com to have a look. Frankly, I was disappointed to the point of complete skepticism after two inputs.

To arrive at Cuil in the first place, I Googled it. (Thankfully, the universe did not implode due to my pathologically recursive search engine use.) The first hit for "cuil" was the new search engine site. Google also helpfully brought up a couple news stories for my perusal, about the launch of the new site. Basically, Google brought me exactly what I was looking for. So when I arrived at Cuil, and was faced with a blank text box and no ideas on what to search for, I tried searching Cuil for itself. Only thing is, I didn't get any hits remotely related to the search engine...instead I got a bunch of travel website hits. Evidently Cuil is a location in Scotland or somewhere around there. Sure the site layout at Cuil is, well, cool--it's listed in sort of magazine/newspaper column fashion as opposed to one straight list down the page--but the content was pretty useless to me.

For my next input--I was pretty excited about this one--I tried searching for myself, wondering if my rank on the list of Cuil hits would be better or worse than my place on Google. Only thing is...my input came back with NO hits!! Really, three times the web page index of Google, and they didn't pull a single page for me or any of my many google rivals? This is when I cried "foul!" and decided I'd better get back to coding, as my program just finished reloading...

UPDATE: I checked the site again later in the day, and many inputs that were not working in the morning were then returning hits. Seems like maybe they had some kinks in the morning they had to work out.

"no really, i think i might pull through this!"

2008-07-22T11:36:00.003-05:00

Externally, this has been a bad week so far. There is roofing going on, on top of my apartment building. Luckily I am not on the top floor, but it's still loud enough. It was scheduled to be finished last Friday, but the roofers were still out there this morning when I left for work. They were also out there on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I did not sleep in this weekend. Nevertheless, I tried to be grateful for what is probably a nice, new roof. Not that I will ever see it, but I can imagine nice things about the roof in my head.

Also this weekend, my garbage disposal backed up all over the kitchen. I had so far put a small amount of soggy cereal, and later some blueberries, down the disposal. I think the backup was due to the numbskull previous tenant--what appear to be garlic peels were included in the backup water. I tried drain-o-ing the clog last night, but the first 1/2 of the bottle didn't seem to do the trick. So I poured the rest in, and it's still sitting the pipes today--I'll probably flush it out when I go home for lunch.

Yesterday when I went home for the evening...I pulled back the curtains that cover the glass doors out to my small balcony, only to see that it was covered in old roof shingles! A loud string of expletives followed, as well as a hasty voicemail to my landlord detailing the mess. So much for trying to be grateful.

And at work today, somebody, somewhere on the project, did something that indirectly broke a ton of stuff which I am directly responsible for. And when I say broke, I mean smashed into subatomic particles. =( So this means that I will be getting yelled at if I don't figure out what happened, very, very soon.

But internally, this has been an ok week so far. For some reason, I am still holding it together and feeling ok. But I did need to whine a little first. =)

new blog

2008-07-19T21:17:00.001-05:00

To the lady in possession of northerncomposure.blogspot.com: I covet your subdomain. I thought I had stumbled upon the most brilliant and personably applicable play-on-words out there--only to find someone else had already thought of it! To be fair, she is more northerly than I (she's actually in Alaska), and is evidently a mother, so likely has me beat in the composure department as well. I had hoped there was another ready pun out there--and spent a long time with a crossword puzzle-solver on the web, before realizing the futility of my rhyme search and settling on the less obvious, but perhaps more applicable, "northern composer". And thus was born a blog.