Boots

I am not afraid
Of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me
That I haven't already heard

Matt and I saw U2 perform at the Rose Bowl just before Halloween, they put on an amazing show (as usual), but after 3 hours of standing waiting for them to come on, and 2 hours of dancing/hopping about while they performed, our feet (legs, backs) were complaining loudly. We staggered back to the car and made it to bed at around 2.30am Monday, vowing that the next concert we'd wear trainers, not boots (we may have been influenced by the current single being "Get On Your Boots").

I know it's trite to reference songs, but I am so impressed by the imagery in many of Bono's lyrics. I wasn't a big U2 'fan' when I was younger, they were ever-present on the radio of course, and I liked them, but I wasn't particularly into them. Matt is very much into them, and so I have heard a lot more of their work since meeting him, and now I'd definitely count myself as a fan.

I'm just trying to find
A decent melody
A song that I can sing
In my own company

I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you. Ooh.
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight
'Cause tears are going nowhere baby

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

I will not forsake
The colors that you bring
The nights you filled with fireworks
They left you with nothing
I am still enchanted
By the light you brought to me
I listen through your ears
Through your eyes I can see

You are such a fool
To worry like you do.. Oh
I know it's tough
And you can never get enough
Of what you don't really need now
My, oh my

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it
Oh love, look at you now
You've got yourself stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it
Oh lord look at you now
You've got yourself stuck in a moment
And you cant get out of it

I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm 'til you discover how deep
I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along this stony pass

It's just a moment
This time will pass

April: a SNAFU is better than a FUBAR

SNAFU: Situation Normal - All F* Up

FUBAR: F* Up Beyond Any Repair

I think my anxiety reached a head in April. I had a lingering migraine, complete with aches all over my body, for the first two weeks! I met with my stats prof, and wrote another missing section, handed the latest version over to my adviser to read on her trip to Tanzania (she is a jet-set HIV prevention doctor), evenings were spent napping and nursing the headache.

When I started to feel better I engaged in a bit of displacement activity: I unclogged the slow bathroom drains, ran de-scale stuff through the dishwasher and cleaned the oven. My gods, the oven. I did a second round of cleaner foam stuff on the the bottom the first round couldn’t get it all off.

Thesis Chair kept saying “simplify it, drop some variables, don’t try to do it all!”, and the Principal Investigator kept saying “you should include this, and this and THIS, and are you addressing this other thing?”. Then it turned out I was offtrack with my specific research question, a classic case of my committee of four, and me all thinking we know what’s going on, and are on the same page…but we weren’t. The bottom line is that the chair wants me to get a thesis together so I can defend and be done, the investigator wants it to be as close to a publishable paper as possible so that it’s more useful to her. My intention is to keep in touch with the investigator after I'm done and help her produce a paper or two out of this dataset anyway, it will be good to get my name on a paper or two from this project.

Thesis Chair was surprised I didn’t freak out, hopefully that’s a compliment. Most of what I have written is still good and useful, and the committee is going to work with me to try to get me done asap, but I will have to re-do the analysis with the new question. I met with the Principal Investigator (Dr in charge of the project at the hospital) to go over the database and consult on a better research question.

The new analysis already looks a lot better, and I'm plugging along. Analysis is the fun part actually, after some hair-tearing getting my database migrated onto the analysis computer. I actually resorted to calling Mr Riveter in to pat my shoulder and talk me through troubleshooting the data migration, I kept getting the same error message over and over and over…

The commencement ceremony is on May 21st, my parents fly in on the 20th. I can participate in the ceremony because I applied to graduate this semester, you don't have to be completely wrapped up to participate, since they have the ceremonies right at the end of term, rather than after all the results are in and processed like for my BSc.

Eeek/Wooo

Not dead, also not done yet. One page (two headings, ~300 words or so) of literature review left to go, revise the methods, meet with statistician on my committee to see if the plan I have for analysis is acceptable. Do analysis, report results...write discussion. Eeeek!

Matt is rapidly approaching the finish line, April 5th he will be done with his BS classes. Wooo!

An embarrassment of bacon riches

The Banner, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

The banner Matt picked for my surprise party two weekends ago, with the fairy lights we always have up in the archway between the living and dining areas. Matt also took this photo.

He took me to lunch on the Saturday, sushi and white wine by the San Diego Bay, and when we returned I was greeted by 15 friends with noisemakers, who had been hanging out in our flat, setting up and drinking beer for about 2 hours. Everyone was already quite merry! I got lots of hugs, a gorgeous handmade peacock pearl necklace and earrings set (made by a friend), fresh roasted coffee, a giant bag full of odd skeins of pretty yarns (each skein more than sufficient for a hat or mittens), a crochet scarf, and a pound of bacon. Which is apparently the new 30th birthday tradition in some circles of my friends.

I’ve put in my paperwork to graduate in May, but I’m behind in my thesis writing. I need to get in gear now so I don’t end up dragging this on and having to wait till after the summer to defend, and graduate a whole six months later.

My problem is I’m burned out on the grad school thing, I just want to move on already and have a steady job, I'm still struggling with the mild-moderate depression, mostly in the form of anxiety issues, and I’m in this state when I’m kind of numbing out from everything. I haven’t been to my regular dance class for 3 weeks, I’m barely knitting, and I’m burning a lot of time zoning out in front of the TV or on the web. So I get home from work or class, and flop on the couch with a cat & my laptop and/or switch on the telly. This is often accompanied by a glass of wine, or a beer, which is relaxing, but also kills my resolve to get any writing done.

By Monday I have to, no beating about the bush, no excuses, get a 10-12 page introduction written, I have 2 pages and some notes. My plan is to get a new arriving-home routine: a brisk walk around the courtyard at my building, wash my face, use the neti pot thing that protects me from stabby sinus pain, and treat it like a restart to the day. Then sit AT A TABLE and, you know, work on my thesis.

Today I was scheduled to work a half day, and I managed to get home, make lunch, and start making progress on pulling together demographics for my study population. It’s like pulling teeth to focus on this stuff, pathetic! I will call this an initial win for actually breaking my routine a little.

Tomorrow’s goals: get up with Matt in the a.m., continue with demographics tables for at least an hour before heading to my hiking date to climb Cowles Mountain with a coworker. After the hiking date do something school related, be it more tables, working on outline, or working in intro.

Nice bonnet dude, did your wife make that?

knitting 007, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

Matt has been a real gem recently. He’s usually a gem, but he’s been a extra sparkly one, here's why:

1) He’s plotting some kind of birthday get-together for me this weekend, I have no idea what, because he is doing it ALL. This is a big deal, I am the social secretary in our relationship, and have previously organized my own birthday parties (and made/bought my own cake).

2) On Monday he completely blitzed the kitchen, getting it to a point where it is now easy to keep it clean and the counters empty of dishes waiting to go in the dishwasher/be hand washed.

3) He wore the forest green tam I made him for the first time this week, after checking with me that rain wouldn’t hurt it (bless, it’s wool - it’ll just need re blocked), and apparently him showing up on a U.S. Navy base in a knitted tam has caused much confusion and double takes. His coworkers all insist it’s a beret, and had never heard of a “tam” or “tam o’shanter”. This crowd is clearly fashion challenged: the tweed golf cap he usually wears when it’s rainy weather initially got some comments along the lines of “hey, newsboy!”. This time the security guard kept giving his tam a funny look while checking his I.D. at the gate. His verdict: “those guys don’t know anything about hats!”

We decided it's probably best not to tell his coworkers that this particular style of hat is also known as a "bonnet" in Scotland.

So: plotting happy things for me while working full time and doing online university classes full time? Check. Going above and beyond the call of dishes duty? Check. Totally earning himself a wardrobe of interesting tams? Check.

Even Faeries get moles

In three weeks I turn 30, 21 days left of my 20's. I'm rather excited to be honest, I think the 30's will be good years. I also know that the only alternative to aging is not desirable at all.

I think I am most shocked to realize that 10 years ago today I was an exchange student at the University of California, San Diego. I had not yet changed apartments to get a single room, so I had not yet met a lot of the people I became good friends with in the last 12 weeks of my exchange year. Ten years ago today I was also in the final healing stages of my first tattoo: a crescent moon with roses on my left hip bone. My tattoo is almost old enough to be out of primary school! This faerie is my other tattoo, I got her/it on my lower right back in January 2001, so she's only 9.

I've had a love/indifference relationship with the faerie tattoo. I had carried the pencil sketch for this design in my planner since I was 15, but not long after getting it I discovered a variety of faerie art that impressed me even more, and having it on my back meant I didn't get to admire the artist's work every day like I have with the crescent moon. There is also an unfortunate cult of Tinkerbell fans, women who enjoy the bitchy princess spoilt brat persona, and adopt Tink as their mascot. As I grew up with peter pan, the flower fairies, and mythology involving the wee folk/sidhe, my impression of the Fae is that they are forces of nature, neither kind nor cruel, a symbol of the harsh beauty of nature. Definitely not a squeaky little female sprite who stomps her feet all the time and obsesses over human boys. I've been toying with the idea of expanding her wings, darkening the green, giving her an owl or a raven as a companion, or even choosing a slightly larger design and having her covered over by an acanthus leaf or a William Morris style peacock.

Matt took a closeup photo of the ink work so that I could study it, and decide what I wanted to do, but while cropping it and brightening it up a bit on photoshop I noticed something not part of the original design. An oval mole on her right upper wing (left as we look at her). Of course it's not on her wing, it's on my back, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't there when I got inked. Especially since the outline of her wing is broken at that point.

With my history that means time for a biopsy. I only just had a screening with my dermatologist, but the tattoo does disguise the mole, and she relies heavily on me spotting any changes. I'm waiting to hear back on a biopsy she took from my leg, a tiny but very dark mole we decided to investigate, but I think I'm going to call and make another appointment to show her this offender as soon as possible. I'm sitting here wanting to tear it off myself!

Of course there is a certain amount of self blame for getting tattooed at all, though who knows if I'd have spotted a new pointy mole back there at all if I wasn't studying a photo of my own back for planning purposes. I'm really done with the constant vigilance thing, though I know I don't get to choose, I have to keep an eye out for skin changes for the rest of my life.

Besides all this, I need to submit review board approval of my thesis project, get my Master's committee officially listed (I've got them lined up, but they're not on file), and apply for graduation. Instead I'm scanning through a few years of photos to see if my lower back shows up in any of them, in case I can find an earlier comparison.

Because I can't think of anything by myself...

I filched this roundup from Shauna.

I'm sipping a craft rootbeer while Matt rubs garlic and spices on a side of beef rib and my sister chops parsnips & sweet potatoes into precise 1/2" slices (my slicing results are deemed too haphazard, I call it rustic). My Granny is upstairs listening to Christmas oldies on the radio, and my Dad is at the hospital visiting my mother as she recovers from surgery.

What? Yeah, not a normal Christmas. My Mum's appendix ruptured sometime last week (maybe Saturday), but with no warning pains, she thought she had food poisoning, and didn't start feeling pain until early Tuesday morning. By Tuesday lunchtime they decided she needed to go to hospital, we got there about 2pm, by 9.30 we were talking to her in the recovery room after an emergency appendectomy. She's recovering well, and will probably be allowed sips or water and weak broth today, and allowed to come home in 2-3 days.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Bought a block of 20 dance classes and made dancing at least once a week part or my routine. For me, having any regular exercise at least once a week be the bare minimum is a big step up from previous sporadic non-routines, and the fact it's bellydance makes me very happy - I had to overcome considerable fear of jiggling in public to attend, a good friend becoming a teacher was the final key to me signing up for classes.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next this year?
I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but I did make the goal of 2x exercise a week - specifically something that relieved stress, and using re-usable shopping bags more. As above, I managed to make 1x a week the norm, so I can keep building on that this year. I carry a shopping bag clipped to my purse now, and sometimes even remember to take extra with me for bigger hauls of shopping, next up: no buying coffee if I am without my steel coffee mug. This will probably mean I drink fewer lattes, which is also part of the reason for this goal - they're expensive!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
A new-ish friend, Judi, now she's back to work we are meeting most Sundays for a workout DVD.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, but a cousin was diagnosed with lung cancer. Cancer sucks man.

5. What countries did you visit?
Scotland & Germany.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A completed Master's degree and a full time job. An improved ability to remain in the moment. Emotional stability.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
July 2nd, left the employ of UCSD, my only professional workplace, and officially left the environment of lab work. I miss lab work, and my groovy coworkers, but not the cadaver-filled basement and performing post-mortems on rats.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Personal: bellydance!
Professional: landing my current internship & keeping good grades in my courses.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Emotional Stability.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Depression, anxiety, panic attacks...and I hurt my foot at some point.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
It's a tossup between the iPhone, and the mini. I'm such a DINKY.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Tuition, mortgage, down payment for car.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?


14. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Anything off the new U2 album, and "Stuck In A Moment", which really got to me when we saw them perform at the Rose Bowl in October.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
Both, I'm more certain of my post grad-school future, but still struggling with self image & depression & stuff.
b) thinner or fatter?
Fatter. Damn medications. But fitter. Yay bellydance.
c) richer or poorer? About the same income-wise, Matt got a raise the same time I cut my hours at work, but a bit more of it is committed now we have a car loan & student loans have grown a bit.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Taking care of myself, and focusing on my studies.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying. Skin-of-the-tooth approach to school work.

18. How will you spend Christmas?
Typing this while preparing a reduced (from feeding 27-ish to feeding 7) Christmas meal, with Mum in hospital recovering from surgery. Boo. But glad she's on the mend.

19. Did you fall in love in 2009?
With dancing in general, and with having music in my life, and with Matt. Also with this recipe.

20. What was your favorite TV program?
I finally discovered the new Dr Who. Timey Wimey.

21. What was the best book you read?
Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata.

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
The Men Who Stared At Goats

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 29, we had a beer & pudding party at our house. Selected interesting beers, bread & butter pudding, and Christmas pudding (which got set on fire twice so everyone got to see the show)

24. What kept you sane?
Matt, my friends, cats, bellydance & Effexor XR.

25. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Hmmmm. Can't think of any. Besides the inevitable Hugh Jackman & Eddie Izzard.

26. Who did you miss?
My family.

27. Who was the best new person you met?
Peggy, the statistical whiz at my new job.

20 years ago today

These images became part of history, now they're fridge magnets & postcards, not a feature of the landscape.


photo.jpg, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

I was 9 years old, my family was in Melbourne, Australia for a 3 month sabbatical, I remember my parents and 18 y.o. sister being glued to the TV, and my Dad said “Remember this, remember where you are, this is important”. Because we’d been on the other side of the world since September that year, we hadn’t heard of any of the build up, so it was a surprise. I was young, but I knew it was a really big deal that people were free to travel from the East.

Now my sister lives in Berlin Mitte, in the old East, she moved there in 1993, even then there were a lot of changes ongoing, filling in the spaces left by the demolition of the wall.

Mmm beep-beep, beep-beep YEAH!

On our way back from Los Angeles two weeks ago, Matt and I stopped by a Mini dealership to test drive their slightly larger Clubman style. We've been arguing/debating/obsessing about a choice for a new car for me, my economy sedan being over 100,000 miles and approaching the point of requiring a sizable investment to keep it going for the next 100k. Matt has the SUV he chose when leaving the Navy, and last year we upgraded his motorbike to a snazzy, powerful model. Matt loves 2-door sporty cars, I like to look at them, but prefer the usefulness of boxy hatchbacks with an actual door to the back seat. Then I found out the Clubman has an extra rear-hinged door to facilitate access to the back seat... and good fuel efficiency... high safety ratings... maintenance included with the warranty... and it's sporty... and boxy... and...

Meet Bertram.





"Bertie" for short. As in Wooster. The black & white interior made me think of spats, or Jeeves' black suit, but it's more of a Bertie.

Before the test drive I hadn't set foot in the driver's seat of a manual transmission since my last driving lesson in Edinburgh in August of 2001: chugging around the block in 1st or 2nd gear in a little diesel learner it was almost impossible to stall. I think I got to go up to third gear once. I got to drive Bertie home. 35 miles. At night. Through a construction zone. The freeways were fine, once in 5th or 6th gear it was just a question of avoiding the massive work trucks that kept trying to merge into me from alternating sides; getting to the freeway involved stalling at each traffic light and taking a few tries to get going again. I made sure I knew where the flashing emergency lights were before I trundled off the dealership lot, I even considered picking up "L" plates to warn those behind me, but I'm picking it up fast enough.

It's an adventure, we've got a radio ban until December, and I'm not commuting in it until I'm a little more practiced, I can't get the stickers to park at work until the official registration comes in the mail anyway. I haven't told my Mum, she's arriving in L.A. in a couple of weeks, so I'm just going to pick her up at the airport and watch her reaction when I put her bag in the snazzy new car.

I just wrote a blog post about my car. Yep, definitely an assimilated Californian.

Ex-Pat

I have allowed myself to be convinced that mathematical calculations exist in the singular form: "Math"

I get graded on the quality of my papers, not marked on my essay-writing.

I mail letters marked with a zipcode.

However, I still live in a flat and close my coat with a zip, not a zipper; I'd rather eat courgette than zucchini (I'd rather spell courgette too).

Brain Dump

I have been busy, and doing considerably better with depression symptoms than I was by the end of August (I got burned out & overwhelmed, went to doc, decided to go back up from half to full dose of antidepressant, found a cognitive behavioural therapist near home, started getting better).

New job - not so new any more - I am settling into a routine, and working on two projects. I am trying to establish myself as generally useful, and specifically the resident neuroscience person, since everyone there is more experienced in epidemiology than I, my angle is being "Brain Girl". I have (mostly) been having fun branching out into a more professional work wardrobe, the discovery of getting dress trousers a size big, then getting the waist taken in has provided me with a few pairs of pinstripe wide legged pants that make me feel like Katharine Hepburn when I wear them. Or her more buxom cousin at any rate. I'm still working on wearing "grownup" shoes. I'd rather wear smarter clothes and stick with clunkier comfortable shoes than go the route favoured by my female coworkers of more casual dags dressed up with heels. Can't run from zombies in heels.

University is chugging along, I am having a hard time finding the time/brain space to put significant hours in on my thesis. I don't know how I did 9+ units and full time work when I started this program, but that head of steam has decidedly run out! My main focus in counseling (besides taking adequate care of myself) is time management, since most of my stress comes from the balancing act.

Time to go, dinner is served!

Thus Spoke Marble

Marble has been very talkative lately, rushing about meowping in her squeaky little voice, she never manages a full "meow" so it pretty much sounds like she's running up and down saying "eek! eek! EEEEK!". Perhaps she's channeling Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit.

Marble smudge face

Marble smudge face, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

As an indoor cat, Marble does not get many opportunities to get her snow-white self all mucky. However, she is a hard working, innovative kitty, and often manages to smudge her nose by pressing it against the dusty window screens while bird watching. This morning she has impressive amounts of grime on her nose, which made me wonder if she'd been trying to head-butt her way out through the screens.

Turns out the culprit is Matt's dusty sandals from a walk we took yesterday. She's been running over to them and snuzzling the mucky things frantically all morning.

It was a great long weekend, culminating in getting our feet good and dusty. Saturday morning I briefly Skyped with my sister in Berlin, & the APs in Edinburgh. On-screen time being used to play show-and-tell with everyone's new eyeglasses, Eve held her laptop out the window so Matt could see the Berlin TV Tower live, and three cats in three countries got waved at their respective owner's webcams. Then Matt and I retreated to a friends house on the hill overlooking our neighborhood, where we lounged by the pool and watched people make beer while catching up with my friends from the lab. I took my swift and wound a couple of balls of yarn while chatting, then bravely bared my bathing suit and spent some time in the pool.

On Sunday we ran errands, did laundry, watched movies and hung out on the patio once the sun dipped behind the hills.

Monday, Labor Day, I woke up with a hangover (did I mention we had gin on the patio?), so I retreated to bed for a bit. Around noon we headed up to the mountains for a picnic lunch and to lounge under pine trees listening to the breeze. We took a walk to a spot claiming to be a small lake, it was really a damp patch of ground, but there were five cows munching away on the water plants, and we sat watching the pastoral scene for a while before continuing around the loop back to the car. We also saw a gorgeous blue jay, and heard a few woodpeckers thunk-thunk-thunking. Both of us had beige feet by the end, the classic "dust tan" effect of walking in the fine dry dust of Southern California. We had planned a pasta dinner when we got home, but discovered we were missing the necessary fixings, so we ended up at BJ's for dinner (fish and chips!), and then back home for pineapple upside down cake for dessert.

Marble evidently appreciates the dusty shoes resulting from this adventure, but I think I'll take them outside for a good shake so I can have my clean white kitty back.

To the Mountains!

Predicted to go over 100F in El Cajon this weekend, so we are high tailing it to a campsite near Julian, where hopefully it will stay under the three digit temps. Either way it'll be pretty forest camping, a much needed recharge before the semester starts on Wednesday. That two week break went fast.

Can't talk, deadline will eat me.

Last session of class is tomorrow, revised drafts of Intro, Literature Review, and Methods chapters are due, along with a brief presentation on my project. Then I will be done. For two weeks. Then Fall semester begins.

I'm definitely having trouble concentrating, I'm feeling somewhat burned out, and seriously considering dropping my "extra" class next term. I've gone through the whole program planning my schedule on " I can take it!" principles, and I think it is time to give myself some slack. If taking a challenging work-heavy statistics class, working 20 hours in a my new field, and FINISHING MY THESIS can be considered slack that is. Now that I put it that way it definitely makes sense to skip the additional statistics class. Both the classes I'm signed up for have a reputation for being coursework intensive, and I have learned that can mean "twice as much homework as you'd expect from a three unit class".

Enough procrastination. Back to my second draft.

Sunset July 25th

Sunset July 25th, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

Snapped on the way home from a lovely day in Julian. We met up with friends from the lab at Orfila Winery, where S & J have a membership. Before they rolled up I discovered a bead shop where the owner hand selects every single piece (and she has great taste) and I picked out some copper pieces to turn into earrings while a brother-sister pair of golden retrievers flaked out on the floor to escape the heat. They were so relaxed that when their human papa came in all that moved was their tails, wagging in unison.

What do you mean I can't eat this? It SMELLS like food!

photo 4.jpg, originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

I had a bit of fun with the camera on my iPhone yesterday, being able to snap a photo and email it right to Flickr is such a handy feature. The camera is surprisingly good, especially in low light. Now I'll probably keep my Ravelry projects more regularly photographed, since it's so much less of a fag to *snap, send* than *snap, find cable, connect to server, save photo, upload*.

Of course, after a couple of shots of lonely skeins on the block by the window, I recruited Tali to make the photos more interesting. He was surprisingly well behaved, no chewing on the sheepy goodness or trying to run off with a ball of mohair. In this photo he had just nuzzled the lampshade at me. Sometimes the cats must find us as quirky as we find them. What's more odd, me photographing coloured string, or Tali carrying around the occasional dirty sock?

The summer is zooming along. I've registered for my lone remaining class, the rest will be research and field work credits. I've produced a (very) rough draft of the lit review, and am currently avoiding work on a draft of the introduction, due tomorrow evening. I've been going to belly dance at least once a week since I got back from Scotland, and I'm really enjoying it, I can feel how much work for my legs and core it is, and it's liberating to be learning a dance form designed for my body shape. Though the best thing with belly dance is EVERY shape looks good doing it, but having extra jiggle makes it much easier to get a good Turkish Shimmy going. I had planned to just take it over the summer, but I want to carry on once term starts again, and add a weekend yoga class at the gym. We've already paid for the membership, and the dancing makes my hamstrings and lower back veryveryvery tight.

NYARGH

This all stems from flash drives being forbidden on Military computers, and Epi-Info being unavailable for Mac.

I have been plagued with silly technology-related inconveniences, and at the end of the weekend have achieved very little.

When my Mac Operating System Disk shows up right after I spend $69 on a replacement, that will be the crowning moment of this whole experience.

On the upside, we have upgraded our dining set to one that fits the space better, and has a built in wine cabinet under the table. Then the furniture delivery people got our number wrong.

Nyargh indeed.

Sometime in June

I am back from my trip. This time last week I was in a jet-lagged haze, falling asleep in the car while Matt fetched Persian food. I landed at about 10.30pm Saturday, so with taxi-ing, finding my bags, and Matt realizing I was flying Delta, not United (so he was at the wrong terminal), it was Midnight before we were home. I should note that Matt's trip to the wrong terminal did not cause delay, my bags were at the bottom of the heap this time, I got the second one and looked up to see him walking towards me.

Now, a week later, I have not quite finished unpacking, but I have started the class that will walk me through the first stages of writing my thesis, spent an hour drilling with zils (finger cymbols) in Bonnie's ATS Belly Dance class, begun an internship at Navy Health Research Center (met lots of people, spent a whole day doing online safety training), and... Given notice at the lab at UCSD.

The last was in the plans only since the week before I went on holiday. Once I lined up the internship and had found they were happy to take me for the summer, but would be even happier to take me full time in the summer and continuing part time after classes restarted it was sort of a no-brainer. I have been concerned that my job prospects after graduation might suffer from only having the required 180 hours of field work, when many fellow MPH students are currently working in public health. I will miss the lab, the group I've been working with is a nice lot, smart and competent, and we have a lot of fun. I hope that I won't be losing touch, I feel like I'm going to be leaving with a bunch of good friends.

Approaching halfway (update from the academic front)

Exam on Wednesday went well (I think), HIV presentation is mostly written, complete with accompanying blog, poster... and a team mate is going to get pens made (the project is an HIV prevention strategy targeting drug users in Thailand). Have barely looked at stats final, but after Wednesday's two presentations I will be done done done with two of my four classes for this semester. Then I've got a week and a half to do the statistics and study for the methods exams on the 18th.

THEN, we get to go to War at Potrero. An event involving camping out with friends, wearing garb of any period from 8th c. to 16th c. and lots of beer.