Circumstances demand that I cannibalize an email to Argotnaut for a scrap of content:

I'm in the midst of the harrowing process of Internship
Clearinghouse. It's where all the leftover applicants who didn't
get an internship placement grovel via email to all the sites
that didn't get a match. I have been camped out at the visibly
smoky Internet cafe for 12 hours now, waiting with email fax and
phone at the ready, and I'll be back tomorrow morning.

Only one person from my program got matched. Nobody wants
students from a non-accredited site, but APA won't accredit us
until we have students in all levels of the program, including
internship.

I have applied to everything that isn't military or prison. Even
one in British Columbia. Even working with kids! In New Orleans!
For peanuts! (Almost literally.) I
am feeling kind of pessimistic, but maybe that's just the
aftermath of sending out 30 or so applications in 12 hours.

The site stats say there were 669 unmatched applicants, and 309
unmatched positions. So I guess all I can do now is wait. Bleh!

...The Florida conference was good, my presentation went extremely well, and I was accepted into the sisterhood of the crone or something. Tampa was rainy and temperate: in other words, perfect. Also took many pictures. Wanted to update about it, but Clearinghouse has taken over my life for a few days. Now I've been here for so long that it's time to go home and go to bed so I can come back here in the morning. Gah.

Heading off to Florida this weekend for a conference where I'll present my research on Gender Role Traits and Nutrition. This time, I get to use some data/results that I wasn't "allowed" to include in my thesis, so there will be more to present. Also, unlike the APA convention, I will be presenting a paper, not a poster.

Meanwhile, I have a ton of stuff to do but have been having trouble with spinning my wheels and overthinking things. There is a great speaker tonight at the Union (Tim Wise), but I may have to stay home and work on my diss revisions. I don't know; we'll see.

Now that my workload is merely busy and not inhuman, I paradoxically feel less compulsion to post. I guess I use it as an escape--a way to vent--and I just don't have much to vent about right now. (Similar to how so many of us wrote horrible poetry as teenagers, when we had all that angst to expel.)

Every few years I have a fit of looking for people I used to know. For example: people I knew while living in Norway. Since the advent of the "internets", it has become almost unfairly easy. The part that is unsettling for me is that the women have become harder and harder to find. A boy I sat next to in second grade? Easy. A woman I worked with ten years ago? Invisible.

That's one of those problems with the whole marriage and name-change thing, is that it makes women disappear. It may be bad for the present, but it's much worse the longer it goes, especially when we start getting into historic contexts. I have photos of women who are my ancestors, but I only know them as "Mrs. So-and-So". It makes it look as though my ancestry is composed of "men (and their wives)", thus chopping off half the roots of my family tree. It doesn't seem very fair.

I've already changed my own last name once in adulthood (not marriage but a different long story), and I decided to include the last names of both my parents, in a kind of Spanish fashion, I suppose (although I know of no Spanish heritage in my ancestry...at least in my male ancestors!) The Icelandic naming system seems quite useful, too, although it might only work in a tiny population on a remote island. Like...Iceland.

As always, following someone else's blog links leads to delicious time-wasting entertainment. I couldn't resist trying out the British Name Generator.

My very British name is Elizabeth Chamberlain.
Take The Very British Name Generator today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

(What happens if you put in a name that's already flamingly British?!)

Besides the squirrel-feeding trip, the weekend included one breakfast of Heinz beans and toast (prepared by Chef Limey, imported beans bought specially by me at the British imports section of Meijer), another breakfast delivered by a local Mexican restaurant (though I went traditional American and got pancakes and eggs), an afternoon at the Ugly Mug internet cafe, intermittent viewing of Jeeves and Wooster*, some moderate Meatball viewing (" 'Super ... bowl?' Wot's one of those?") with some colleagues of mine who were luckily more interested in chatting and drinking than in the game, and once or twice waking up before sunrise without the alarm (now that's an accomplishment!).

On the technological front, I figured out how to get those passport photos taken at home to print out razor-sharp, and I also spent some time finally burning a couple CDs and using my dorky (but fun!) little Afterburner CD-labeler. (While fuming at Amazon for posting "lables" on their listings for certain CD label packages.)

I tried to get TheLimey to post this in his blog, but since it's already two days later I've grown impatient and will post it myself. I agreed to take the Geek Test, which is (fittingly) in Excel spreadsheet format. Apparently it's from a friend of his back home who is about to marry someone who is a huge geek and scored an extraordinary, unheard-of 65% on this test! So, anyway. I took it and achieved a 75%. I guess TheLimey now has something to either brag about or cry into his beer over.

We found ourselves arguing over whether it was valid to check "yes" to a question about having attempted to build a robot, since we have not yet actually opened the box with the robot in it. Finally we decided that in the interests of absolute scientific accuracy, we can't take that point until we open the box and begin the actual building. (I think we should probably be gifted/penalized with more points, simply for worrying about whether or not that counted!)

I will let TheLimey tell you his own score. Let's just say I was surprised--not about either score particularly, but about our scores relative to one another.



*Punctuated amusingly by Someone's alternating great booming laughter and interjections of "Idiot!"

Look at this! I forgot about this blogshares ... game ... thing. At least I hope it's a game, and people aren't imagining that my site is actually worth $7,262.11.

This is nice to know in the same way that it's nice to know how much your body is potentially worth in component form.

Placed my ranked list of internship sites into the mouth of the Great Internship Ranking Program today. I hope it spits out the Ohio site, since Erie PA is not only depressing, but twice as far away. The Great Spittage begins on February 25th, when we discover whether or not we were matched to a site. Then, inexplicably, it waits until the 27th to tell us what site that might be.

Of course that weekend is the same weekend I will be in Florida at the Uppity Women Psychologists' annual conference presenting a paper on my research.

I don't feel too worried about the internship matching thing--not because I don't care about the outcome, which will determine a lot of my plans for quite a while--but because it's completely out of my hands at this point. I did the years of work, I underwent the application process, I did my best at the interviews, and now I'm done with my part. (Unless I don't get matched, but then there's nothing more to do until next autumn.)

Went on campus yesterday to get TheLimey's new passport photos (though we may simply redo them at my place, since my camera and printer have been producing such great images).

The weather was very strange and beautiful--just at freezing, and foggy, which produced ice crystal formations over all the trees (see below).

Of course I always have peanuts in my purse, so I dragged him over to the quad where he discovered the joy of hand-feeding squirrels.

First tentative squirrel approach:

I somehow "forgot" to mention to him that rather than holding peanuts out on the palm of one's hand, as for a horse, one must stick the peanut out between finger and thumb. Squirrels have terrible vision, and if your fingers smell like peanuts, they will think the first thing they encounter sticking out is the peanut. This led to a minor nibble. However, TheLimey was very brave and persevered in the feeding attempts.

He may have been paying the squirrels back for the nibble with this bit of squirrel teasing.

(Whereas I will actively go out of my way in order to get the peanuts to the squirrels:)



A serious and scientific examination of the curious crystals:




(Answer: it's H2O!!)

I still wish I could find that --what was it, the excuse generator? The version sung by a robot: "Jean, this is Craig Michaels*..." sung to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance.

Sometimes it gets stuck in my head for no reason at all.

(Wasn't that speech [speeach] program from some previous computer incarnation of yours, Argot? I think it was five years ago.)



*Craig Michaels always reminded me of a former coworker known (to me) as Wretched. I cAn rEaD knows who I mean.

For the linguistically inclined: 'Strine younger than thought.

Even in the '80s Aussies were still saying "be-ah" (and saying it a lot, if I remember correctly. Which I do.)

Funny; just this morning I was thinking that Aussie/Kiwi and even South African accents and cultural referents seem a lot more Englishy than American ones do, and wondering when the various sociolinguistic splits occurred.

Also I recently remembered a Norwegian friend's years-ago conjecture that the notorious American "arrr" (r) came from Irish immigrants, after we watched some movie with Irish people in it. Made sense to me at the time, though I don't know much linguistic history. (Linguistory?)

I bought 2 small packets of little mushy fruit gel things (candy, really, but supposedly with vitamin C) from the clinic snack shelf, and then put them on the kitchenette table while I made some (eww) ramen. Didn't remember them until one of the 1st-years came into the computer lab smelling of fake-fruit, as she was eating them!!

It's my own fault, because people sometimes leave things like batches of brownies for everyone on that table. But I can't help being annoyed, since that was an individually packed item that is for sale in our cabinet, rather than a big basket of homemade muffins or whatever. Darnit!

Trying to spend less time online, as I think it is depressing me simply through online inertia.