Descending (A Ramble) or: US/UK Alliance V. C.H.U.D.

Note: I don't pretend to be any kind of real movie critic, or even to plan out my blog entries in a logical, well-ordered fashion, so this will probably have spoilers of some kind or another.

I took some time out of my busy and also ouchy baby-growing schedule to go to a very early matinee (10:55) of The Descent yesterday. I have a friend who is my scary-movie buddy. Other than us, there were two people in the entire theater. We both brought fleece blankets despite the stifling heat (outside at least), in order to have something to pull over our eyes. However, both our male partners pooped out of going at the last minute, as we kind of expected. They're just not as into horror movies as we are.

I actually want to go see this one again (or rent it). I generally prefer low-gore, high-suspense movies, so I guess that'd be psychological thrillers. This one was a lot more gory than either of us anticipated, but it was okay. It didn't rely on the gore to be the main scary part. I could look away during most of the flesh-gnawing scenes. There were plenty of scary and startling bits that didn't rely on the gross-out. And I had to use some deep breathing to overcome the claustrophobia. I would probably never go caving to begin with, but now I definitely won't. (Maybe that first chamber, with the sunlight and the water pouring in, but that's it!)

I didn't realize (the trailers don't make it very apparent) that most of the actors are Britishy*. The producers probably thought U.S. audiences would hear those accents and immediately pigeonhole it as another of those brainy yet dry type of mysteries that we see on PBS. (Personally I like those, but PBS isn't exactly a giant money-maker, you know?)

Therefore, the tragically-flawed character is naturally the American, who embodies the stereotypical tragic flaws of the US national character in the eyes of the rest of the world: highly skilled but show-offy, arrogant, impulsive, careless, selfish, rash, makes important decisions without consulting the others whom they affect, and so forth. So that was an interesting bit to mull over. (And a change from the way in which Hollywood flicks always, always cast the villain as the character with an English accent.)

(Did I mention I'm forever trying to find some excuse to get my husband to wear a redcoat uniform?)

Anyway, it really is scary immediately, even before the CHUDs come out. So, if you like being scared, then see it. But look away during the parts where the foley artists have to crush eggshells in Jell-O.



*Also, I haven't seen Dog Soldiers nor do I know anything about Neil Marshall, things which would likely have given me a clue in this department.

*OK, a couple of the cavers are Scandinavian, too. I guess that would make it more along the lines of "NATO V. CHUD".

Proggin' Along

I realized today that I may have fewer of these surveys left to finish scoring than I thought; perhaps 35 or so instead of 85, which is a couple days work instead of another week. If the people who are helping me are able to get the ones they took done and not die from it, that is.

I did that "out of sight out of mind thing" when counting them, that is to say, I haven't been accounting for the ones they took when I've counted them daily. So...we'll see how it goes. There are still things I have to go back and re-do or re-check even when they're done, which may take another day, but still. There may be a light.

I was originally hoping to have this portion of my work done at the beginning of June, so I could spend June/July/August writing and editing the results. As well as working on my applications for internship, preparing for the baby's exit in a number of aspects, and so forth.

The principle of cognitive dissonance states that the harder you work for something (or the more you invest your time, money or emotions in it) the more you value it, regardless of all other factors, even if it's something inherently worthless*. Given that, I will likely believe that my study is the best research ever done by anyone, anywhere.

So anyway, back to it, I guess.


Note to self: must squeeze in a shower today! Before husband returns home, too.

*This principle also explains why the heck so many of us stay in crappy relationships and keep throwing good years after bad, by the way.

Ecureuils

ecureuils
Originally uploaded by silnes60.

Good grief, these are cute babies (and mother).

I wonder if our squirrel mummy will bring her babies around. I think her nest is a little too far.

Mmmm...French ice cream...

Bizarre ice cream flavours
Originally uploaded by GlamourGeek.

I'll have a scoop each of vervaine and rosemary, please.

No, wait--make that bergamot and tomato.

No--

In Case You Were Considering It

Another reason not to go base jumping. You don't have to read Norwegian to understand the picture.


PS: Don't worry; he was saved after three hours by a climbing team.

Now It's Gone Interspecies

How far will this headbutting trend extend? (Not that you can call two instances a "trend," but I will anyway.)

Personally, I'd like to see it in rock climbing, figure skating, and ski-shooting.

Unofficially...

(This test was way too easy to jimmy.)

You May Be a Bit Schizotypal...

A bit odd and socially isolated.You couldn't care less of what others think.And some of your beliefs are a little weird.Like that time you thought you were Jesus.

What Personality Disorder Are You?

Speaking of Margaritas

Wasted away in Margaritaville
Originally uploaded by Terry_Lea.

...and speaking of squirrel pictures...

This lady's photoshops always crack me up.

Sort of Back

[Finally, Blogger is accepting photo uploads again!]

Our internet was out this whole past week, except for a few times during which it came on for, say, five or ten minutes. I have also been transportationless during this time as my car's in the car hospital having its transmission fixed or, more likely, replaced. Therefore I've got a lot of official catching up to do, though I'd sit around and blog given my druthers.

The other problem I've had is that my sacroiliac (where hips connect to spine) has a nice little trick it occasionally pulls, in which it goes out of joint and gets inflamed, making it impossible to sit or stand without a lot of pain that actually goes down to my knees. Sitting a lot (as in school work) tends to make this happen.

Also, pregnancy makes it worse. The additional several pounds of weight on my front (considering leverage) puts 50-70 pounds of strain on my lower back area, according to various uncredited sources. On top of that, my body is preparing for the birth by producing relaxin, which (logically enough) relaxes one's ligaments so the hip bones can open up enough to extrude someone's head. (Particularly that same sacroiliac area.)

What this means is that I can't sit anywhere for long. Sitting in the car is agonizing, and being at dinner at a nice restaurant this weekend was very difficult. Naturally, sitting to do my work is especially bad. I have had to arrange the sofa cushions to support me in a downward-facing position with my arms hanging over the end of the couch to do my dissertation work. While this hurts my neck and cuts off circulation in my arms, it's still better than sitting on my behind!

I do have a chiropractor, but she'd have to come to my house every day to keep this in line. And when I went to a standard physician for it, they gave me an anti-inflammatory and basically said to quit sitting for a while. This is going to be extremely hard advice to follow while I'm trying to finish my diss data! (Hence the new couch position working arrangement.)

Meanwhile, just writing this has meant sitting too long, so... so long for now.

Makin' Hay While the Sun Shines

I have heard that the third trimester sometimes brings a burst of energy for "nesting" purposes. I think that's what I experienced today. And since I had a prenatal appointment in the middle of the day, I planned to not get much done as far as coding my surveys, so I actually did some other things. As it turns out, a lot of other things.

I weeded the garden plot (in the morning before it got up to 97 degrees, that is) and was pleased to discover some little budding tomah-toes, a tiny sweet pepper, as well as jalapeño blossoms (and later, one little hidden green jalapeño!)

Then, as the culmination of a few days' worth of virtually re-arranging the bedroom (via that old $5 design application) to accommodate some baby furniture, I felt compelled to actually do the rearranging in real life. So compelled, in fact, that I couldn't do anything else until I had completed this.

Thanks to some furniture sliders more or less like these ones, it was actually possible for a 7-months pregnant person to move the giant behemoth of a bed that TheLimey has had since he moved into this place. (Which reminds me on a complete tangent, a bed larger than a twin was one of the signs that I was looking for in a man, as it indicates that he has outgrown the "guy" or "bloke" stage. A man with a small bed is generally not ready for a commitment. Just FYI.)

Aside from some general straightening and organizing, the other big thing I did was this: I called one of my credit card companies and negotiated vastly better terms.

This is an account that bore a usurious interest rate (23.99%) and also had an annual fee of $59. Now, I am one of those people who have a hard time asking for anything from anyone, and I also really dislike being on the phone, especially for business. (it's one of those tasks I'll procrastinate forever.) However, we are now on a budget and saving hard for next year when I'll be on internship and we'll have a baby, so getting a random $59 fee in the post for really no reason at all was a thorn in my poor husband's side. I guess my guilt trumps my phone-anxiety, so I called them up.

It went just as it was supposed to, according to financial advice columns. The first representative told me she couldn't do anything, the next one told me he could do only a small portion of what I wanted, and the third person offered me great rates (1.99% initially and then 11.99%) and best of all, the thing I wanted most: no annual fee. It pretty much went exactly as you'd read in any financial-advice column or magazine.

Rep #1: Good morning, how are you today? [pleasantries exchanged]
Me: I would like to see about getting the annual fee on my card waived, as I have several others with much better terms and interest rates and can afford to prune a few of them out.
Rep #1: Please hold while I review your account [files nails for 90 seconds]. I'm sorry, there are currently no offers like that for your account. Those are the terms you signed up for.
Me: (pleasantly) I would still like to see about getting the annual fee waived. Is there someone else I could speak with?
Rep #1: Let me transfer you laterally to someone I will pretend is my supervisor. [transfers]

Rep #2 in distant country: Good morning, how are you today? [pleasantries exchanged]
Me: I would like to see about getting the annual fee on my card waived, as I have several others with much better terms and interest rates and can afford to prune a few of them out.
Rep #2: Please hold while I review your account [refills teacup, adds milk]. There is an offer available for your account: we can reduce your interest rate.
Me: That would be great, but I'm still most interested in getting the annual fee waived.
Rep #2: I'm sorry, there are currently no offers like that for your account. Those are the terms you signed up for.
Me: That is true, but terms often change over the lifetime of an account. Is there someone else I could speak with?
Rep #2: Let me transfer you laterally to someone I will pretend is my supervisor. [transfers]

Rep #3 in US South: Good morning, how are you today? [pleasantries exchanged]
Me: I would like to see about getting the annual fee on my card waived, as I have several others with much better terms and interest rates and can afford to prune a few of them out.
Rep #3: Please hold while I review your account [takes brief nap]. There is an offer available for your account: we can give you an introductory rate of 1.99% for three months that will change to 11.99%, and there would be no annual fee.
Me: That sounds perfect. Thank you.
Rep #3: You should receive your paperwork in the mail in 7-10 business days.

After that success, I was bursting with pride for hours.



I will leave you with my escape plan should things get any worse, politically speaking.

Our Kid?

OurKid_sml
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

I'm really curious to see who's in there after all this time.

Will s/he look like the fotomorph we did last year? (I think I may have blogged this before but it's worth a revisit under the circumstances.)

And what is going on with those EARS?!

Headbutt Heard 'Round the World

I guess this was inevitable.

I hope more are to come, à la the Star Wars Kid videos.


Update:
PS re comments: I think "Tron Javolta" has to be the greatest online name ever.

What I'm Missing

Since I moved away from Ypsi: all the events in the park at the end of the block, including this one.



Although this particular sign is from last year.

I bet they reused it for this year, too.


I wouldn't have minded strolling down to see the Orphan Car Show, which I always got to see before the paying attendees during my morning jog.

However, as fun as it was last year, this year the Beer Festival would likely be unbearable for me: unable to drink the beer, pregnant, sweltering outside in August, among a huge crowd of drunks. Greeaat!

Independence (or, "Ah, We Didn't Want This Stupid Country Anyway")

(That, of course, is a direct quote from my husband.)

This photo is basically how we spent the 4th.

We went to the state park that's near our place--the one where we had our wedding reception, in fact--and stayed the entire day. This was because I wanted to see the fireworks.

I've been trying--and failing--to "go see the fireworks" (at one location or another) since I started grad school.

Since the fireworks display at this park is always incredibly crowded to the tune of blocking up the highways for miles and hours, we thought it would be best to go early in the day and just stake out a homestead.
Even arriving at 9:30 am, it was already full of early picnic setter-uppers. Nevertheless, we found a nice spot under the trees and hauled out the things we had packed the night before.

We congratulated ourselves all day long at having chosen the site that was the nearest to the park general exit, since simply leaving the park after the fireworks often takes hours.

All we did all day was to lie around and read and nap, interspersed with such activities as strolling down to the beach for a little swim, cooking things over the little gas grill, buying an ice cream, and so forth. (It turns out that grilling corn on the cob is actually easier than boiling it, as well as tasting better.)

Probably the most fun part was making breakfast on the grill. Even the water for tea, which TheLimey was pleasantly surprised to discover boils quite well on the grill, just as I had predicted.

We also watched people vainly circle the lot all day looking for parking spots. Or even wander about the site looking for a picnic table. Ha! Good luck.

When evening fell, we packed our things into the car and walked down to the lakeside for the fireworks. TheLimey made the predictable jokes about how, having conquered one individual, he had done his bit in reclaiming the U.S. After the fireworks were over, we read in the car for a little while until the parking lot had cleared out a bit. And that was it--getting out and going home was relatively painless, for the 4th.

The only thing we forgot was to set up the VCR to record the Germay v. Italy game, which was said to be a great one as they go. But we all know how that turned out by now anyway.

In the Spirit of Things

I'm sure this episode has lately come back to haunt others as well as me:

=============================
A man in a cowboy hat barbeques a soccer ball and thrusts it, skewered and flaming, at the camera, screaming, "Open wide for some soccer!" As the commercial continues, high-action footage of soccer matches accompany the announcer's voice.

TV Announcer: The Continental Soccer Association is coming to Springfield! It's all here--fast-kicking, low scoring, and ties? You bet!

Bart: Hey, Dad, how come you've never taken us to see a soccer game?

Homer: I...don't know.

TV Announcer: You'll see all your favorite soccer stars. Like Ariaga! Ariaga II! Bariaga! Aruglia! And Pizzoza!

Homer: Oh, I never heard of those people.

TV Announcer: And they'll all be signing autographs!

Homer: Woo-hoo!

TV Announcer: This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on earth: Mexico or Portugal!
=============================

Now just go here to get your own genuine football name shirt, like wot I did..

Now If Only I Had Something to Sell or Buy

I admit I am finally feeling the first chill of 1984--only 22 years too late--with the advent of Google Checkout.

Feral Kitten

Feral Kitten
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Yet another baby (cord still attached!).

This is a big long story, but suffice it to know that the happy ending was that Mother Cat finally came and got the last baby after we thought it was likely abandoned.

I hope she will be able to save it after all it went through! At least it has a better chance with the mother.

Speaking of Cats

...which I wasn't, at least not here.

And I don't have one. But if I did, I would definitely want these! I've always had a problem with declawing cats, but also with letting them roam around outside (unless you have barn cats for mousing and are prepared for them to have short lives.)

Tactical Warfare

Distracting the enemy, or? Maybe they're on to something more important than simply cross-bred video games...

There Goes June

And how'd that happen?

When I say I've been "mostly" working on my data, what I really mean is that I have been really struggling to get my "quota" done, every single day. I didn't even shower over the weekend (sorry, TMI, but there it is.) It's a bit discouraging, as every morning I enthusiastically think that I will not only get my 10 surveys scored but also one or two of the other five dozen things I need to get done over the summer... and then by sunset each day I'm still just desperately trying to crank out the last of the ten surveys. I have a lot of additional unrelated things I really have to also get done before the baby comes (including preparations for applying for internships yet a-freakin'-gain.)

So basically I'm back to grad-school mode in which everything else in my life has to drop by the wayside as I try to get the work done (surveys scored and entered). This is so I can start doing the analyses and write at least a draft of my results section before the baby comes and changes everything.

Oddly, this feeling of intense continuous pressure always makes me blog more. This is partly because I spend more time in the house near the computer, and partly because I just feel more stressed and need some kind of outlet. (For complaining no doubt.)

Since a big part of the thesis of my research regards how individuals' ages and the time they've spent in college affects their level of prejudice, I am going to scream (more) if I continue to encounter primarily surveys filled out by 18-year-old freshpersons who've been in school exactly two weeks. I think they comprise 98% of the surveys I've scored so far; no exaggeration.

This is okay for the process of getting my actual dissertation done, as far as that goes, since one has only to show correct form in research and not necessarily results. However, as far as furthering the field of prejudice research, this is nearly useless and I am frankly surprised to see even the few significant correlations that are appearing so far.

An analogy would be that it's like trying to examine the coping mechanisms of people using prosthetic limbs solely in a population of professional athletes. Sure, if you get enough respondents, there will be a couple of people that may show the characteristics you're looking for, but you're sure looking at an awfully skewed sample.

I didn't realize that all the classes taught by my colleagues last fall included nothing but brand-new first-years. I really hope as I get further into the pile, I will encounter some groups of classes that include more people from other years. But I've done 70 out of 330, so that's considerable already.

The other thing that's annoying about this is that the very young can be so damned prejudiced and dichotomous in their thinking, due to their developmental stage. ("I'm right, everyone else is wrong," variety of self-righteousness.)

So I end up seeing page after page (these are loooong surveys even though they're mostly multiple-choice) of people selecting answers resembling the following: "African-Americans are lower in intelligence than other races: AGREE;" "Two women are jogging in sports bras and shorts and two men appear and rape them. The women provoked the rape: AGREE;" "AIDS came into being to punish the homosexual lifestyle: AGREE;" "Asian-American business owners are greedy: AGREE;" and even (you won't believe this) "Hitler had some justification in persecuting the Jews" AGREE." !!!

--and then on the final page, where they get to write in what has influenced their perspectives on cultural diversity, they write things like "I am very open-minded and have learned not to judge others by their race" and so forth. In fact it may be one of my findings that the higher the prejudice scores, the more likely they are to write about how open-minded they are.

Prejudiced and hypocritical little jerks. It's quite depressing and exhausting to have my face rubbed in this for hours every single day and to think that society is even worse than I imagined. It's making me prejudiced against undergrads!

So anyway. I hope that I get into some more older students soon, and I hope that I see what I predicted: they've dropped in prejudice as they've been in school.

Sundry

Lately the thing I've been doing most is scoring my surveys and entering them into my SPSS database. I have about 350 of them, and it's hard to maintain my 10-per-day quota. My best time for completing one is about 17 minutes, but in practice it comes to about 2 per hour. And it's that kind of laborious-for-your-back work that doesn't seem to go really well with pregnancy. I keep trying to get more done per day, but 10's about the limit. It seems to take at least 8 hours overall no matter how I try to arrange my time.

Last weekend, however, I did take the time to put in seedlings and seeds for a small but quite overstocked (considering the size) vegetable garden in our back patio area, which was fun. Seedlings are on sale as the normal planting season is over. I left some volunteer plants from last year (most notably tomatoes and herbs) and transplanted them to new areas. I also left some sunflowers that have sprung up underneath the birdfeeder in the window, as you can see in the photo.

My prize find was a lone, puny pot of leek seedlings. Leeks! They're hard to even find in the produce section, and of course they're TheLimey's favorite vegetable. So now we'll have our own. I also planted a modified Three Sisters Garden area with my seed packets for sweet corn, pumpkins, and beans. (By modified I mean that I didn't do the plantings of the different seeds a week apart as one is really supposed to. Nor in giant mounds.)

Other plants included several varieties of tomato (chosen for different bearing times so we won't have 500 tomatoes one week like last year), sweet and hot peppers, sage (left from last year), onions, three different kinds of basil (standard, Thai, and purple), dill (volunteered from last year's seeds), rosemary, watermelon, cantaloupe, and of course it's all interspersed with lots of marigolds for insect control. I later found some radish seeds to plant among the melons to repel cucumber beetles (which like melons), but haven't yet planted those.

I also got some catnip to plant in a far corner of the lot, since the condo-neighborhood cats have been pestering "my" critters (squirrels and birds). Or maybe I just think it'll be fun to plant catnip. Underneath the honeysuckle along the back fence we have chives and...what, oregano? And mint in a pot. I got a chocolate-mint plant to put in another pot, as well as a little bit of lavender.

We had a brace of baby bluejays among the flagstones for a few days, which I thought to place in a box just a bit higher on a tree branch to keep them out of reach of the cats, which were really excited by their presence. However, it turns out that baby bluejays are extremely loud and squawky when grabbed, however briefly, and that bluejay parents believe that I am as big a threat as any cat. I had to be careful just going outside for the rest of the day! I think that one lived but I'm not sure about the other (smaller) one. It didn't seem able to hop as high and fast (into the trees) as its sibling, so I fear the cats may have gotten it after all.

In other animal news, the nearest squirrel became bolder and started taking bluejay-peanuts from the chair by the sliding back door. Then a couple of days ago I got up from my nap and went to survey my garden as usual, and found that the unripe-but-getting there head of the sunflower was completely gone. !!! Based on the scraps left at the crime scene as well as the leaning quality of the stalk, I deduced that the squirrel had decided to snack on it. Little bugger!

What's even funnier is this: I keep a dish of peanuts next to the back door on a ladder-like shelf, about 4" off the floor. Later that day I found in the dish a number of gnawed and empty shells that looked suspiciously like the traces left after outside peanut feasts. And it looked like a hole in the screen door was newly bigger than it had been before. So unless my husband has changed his snacking habits entirely, the little bandit snuck into the actual kitchen while I was napping on the couch and feasted on peanuts! (Wish I had woken up and seen it.)

So, the peanuts are now going on the other side of the house entirely, before our corn starts to grow, although it may already be too late to change those habits. When I came home the other day and saw the squirrel standing at attention on the sidewalk, I noticed newly-prominent mammary glands. I guess a passel of new babies to nurse would explain her new bold voraciousness. (Not that I identify at all...oh no!)

Now, back to my data-crunching sofa, and the so-far-disappointing England v. Ecuador game that is being exclaimed over downstairs.

Reunions

Now that I've seen the posts of Library Liddy and and Library Squirrel, it occurs to me that my own high school graduation was 20 years ago this month.

I don't think the school I graduated from was big enough for the class to develop the critical mass of people caring enough to do reunions.

Not to mention, I wasn't even in the country at graduation time. I was in Norway, wishing the year wouldn't end so I could stay there.

Now, If Only We Had Startrekian Ethics, Too

At least we seem to have begun developing tricorders.

Father's Day

Now we have two new holidays to celebrate, though one could legitimately say we're jumping the gun just a little bit by claiming the "Mother" and "Father" titles. Nevertheless, it's been fun doing so. I allowed--nay, insisted that TheLimey choose activities for yesterday, after we had coffee, donuts, and newspapers in bed.

Let's just say the activities included a lot of World Cup watching, unsurprisingly, which was not terribly different from what happened the day before except it was done at home. (Although we also went to a nearby state park for a hike...okay, for me it was a hike/lumber, for him it was a mere stroll.)

I also made an orange-chocolate ice cream cake, which was fun. I've never made one before. Alternating layers of chocolate cake, orange cake, chocolate ice cream, and orange-flavored vanilla ice cream. Frosted with orange-y mousse. (I should tell you that the chocolate sprinkle topping was actually Ovaltine crystals, which sprinkled beautifully and dissolved into a nice misty chocolatey effect.)

I should also mention that the weekend started out by my using my Mother's Day gift certificate to a day spa. It was very fant-see, but I managed to get over that. (Though my car is still suffering from low self-esteem and/or resentment after being parked amongst all those Escalades.)

I could spend an entire post describing what went on there, but I'll just say that they gave me a giant wrap-around potholder (with snaps) to wear, with a matching short robe. Hee. Also, all my nails are now an unnatural shade of pink. And they used what I think was a Dremel on my toenails, though I can't say for sure as they continuously covered my eyes with one thing or another the whole time I was there, or in some cases had the lights out almost entirely. If that's not luxury, I don't know what is.

World Cup Snax

I didn't set out to make a big spread, but that's just how it turned out. At least we finally got to eat the giant whopping gobs of seven-layer dip that one is generally too embarrassed to take at a party, since it was just the two of us. There's half of the dish left, and another entire dish still left in the fridge!

1. Seven-layer dip, though who's counting the layers? I replaced the wads of iceberg lettuce with just a little tiny bit of fresh romaine. (In the future, no lettuce at all. Too soggy-seeming and makes the dip hard to scoop out.) I also added another layer--refried black beans--as well as a layer of guacamole. (How can you have seven-layer dip without guac?) Served with lime tortilla chips.

2. Deviled eggs. (I use the basic recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but use half mayo, half Miracle Whip. I also add to the plain yellow mustard an additional portion of Dijon mustard.)

3. Brat-kebabs. Johnsonville smoked brats cut in chunks, interspersed with chunks of red onion and red bell peppers. (All previously marinated in a can of beer and the juice from a can of sauerkraut.) Broil or grill. The important thing is to serve this with a dipping sauce comprised of creamy horseradish, dijon mustard, a dash of malt vinegar, and enough beer to make it dippy instead of spready. I made this whole ensemble up and am unduly proud of it.

4. Cornbread. I'm sure you have a favorite recipe. I used a mix.

5. Cold bottles of Red Stripe Jamaican Lager. (Mummy didn't get to drink it, but did use it in the cooking.)

Google Spreadsheet

From June 8: bloggerdown day.

*******************************************

What the heck is going on with Blogger today?!

In more interesting news, this morning I signed up and got me one-a them fantsee new Google Spreadsheets. I have been vaguely wanting a multi-user spreadsheet for a long time now, but this comes at an especially convenient time. I am hoping to have one or more undergrad assistants help me with this coding of my surveys, and if they can enter data online, that would be fantastic. (Of course I would have backups in case someone spectacularly messes something up.)

We have discovered that the one game we can play with the baby pre-birth is inherited from its father, with whom I can play No Sleepy Limey, with apologies to Juice. (Though really, I try not to be so cruel as to do this unless he's actually trying not to fall asleep.)

We have determined that the current baby game is No Sleepy LimeyBaby. The entire game consists of rolling over to my other side when I'm in bed, which basically turns the "room" upside down for the poor critter, so that s/he wakes up and jumps and bumps for a little while.

This is coincidentally the baby's only pre-birth game to play with me, called Kick the Mummy, apparently a precursor to football.

Kinda like now when I'm sitting here at the desk. Owtch, Baby!

For Pete's Sake

It's sure a good thing that I didn't see the Anne Coulter comments before I went to get my blood pressure taken today.

Awakening

As I have been complaining since long before marriage, this business with waking up to NPR can be very disheartening.

For TheLimey it's a gradual and gentle coming to awareness in which he doesn't hear the actual content of the news. For me the content is immediately front and center as I'm trying to awake. (Hence that ancient post about Felicity Forthright, which Blogger is now telling me can't be found in a search of this blog. Lying double-crossing Blogger.) [Ha--here it is, though I had to use Google to find it.]

So anyway, the worst is hearing ol' GW first thing in the morning. At the best of times, hearing his voice makes me shout "shutup shutup SHUTUP!" out loud as I reach out to turn off the radio just long enough to not have to hear him. But first thing in the morning that is difficult, especially as the radio alarm is on the other side of the bed.

Therefore I am stuck hearing whatever he has to say, which is particularly crappy of late, now that the political war machine is gearing up for elections. This has begun literally giving me nightmares.

This morning I dreamed that the US was becoming a Nazi state, complete with snipers shooting at my curiously windowful and curtain-free home (which was also in a river subsidence area and subject to frequent 5-foot floods.)

Aquifer and Conifer...

...The two lovely terms from my undergrad science course that I have been saving for about ten years to use as names for girls... probably not going to use them after all. Darn.

That was a really great general science course. I remember things from it almost daily. The instructor was the hugest geek possible, so I think he really knew his stuff. I especially enjoyed playing Fish Banks and Strategem, games which I intend to find an excuse to purchase for my own classes someday--to illustrate economic principles, of course.

Anyway, I've been thinking about hydrogeology again today, as one does. The information about our shrinking aquifers really stuck with me all this time, and I think subliminally informs my ideas about where I want to live eventually. Not that there is any place really safe from our water-strip-mining, but some places are already a lot worse than others (>cough< Colorado River area >cough<).

Noooo, Not a Sandra Bullock Movie!

Sometimes (rarely) my fiction ideas pop out of my dreams, quite conveniently. A few months ago I had what I thought was a really cool dream that I might place in my idea bag and eventually write up as a story.

In the dream, TheLimey and I were just meeting each other again, but it turned out that we actually lived about 50 years apart and were in separate times. That is, I could see him, and he could see me, but we couldn't see each other's surroundings, and our acquaintances couldn't see the other person. (If you see what I mean.) So we could only meet in places that existed in both times, and so forth. We also couldn't physically touch each other.

When I woke up I began thinking of a lot of the ramifications of such a relationship, and how it could be made to work, and of course weird things like: what if whoever was born first was still alive (but old) when the other was born? If we had kids (it could work, with technology!) would they be able to see both of us, unlike others around us? And so forth.

I thought it would make a great sci-fi story of the kind that I like. And before you say Somewhere in Time, please note that we were not time-traveling, but remaining in our own times. Which is the plot difference that makes it sci-fi and not just another Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court with kissing (or trying, anyway.)

But that's all blown out of the water, as now I've seen the trailer for The Dumb Stupid Lake House Dammit. My story would just seem derivative! And worse, derivative of a Sandra Bullock movie. With, I might add, Keanu Reaves to boot. Good grief.

@merican 1d0l

I hate that BS. And I am so sick of it being everywhere. I can't believe someone is spamming my blog about it, no less.

Did you hear that the number of people who voted for this dumb thing last night is nearly the same number that voted for each candidate in the last presidential election? (That should tell us something about the results of elections in general, too.)

Occasionally I have watched part of the initial program, in which they're in a mall (or whatever) and scads of random people come in to try to qualify. It's funny because of the really, really bad ones. But even those still make one cringe in embarrassment.

The Crazies

I had this one professor whose advice I always believed. Even the advice that I pooh-poohed at the time turned out to be right later, of course. So one thing that he always said worried me for a long time. He used to say something to the effect that "it's after marriage that The Crazies come out".

It doesn't matter how long you've been dating, or whether you live together, or whatever--making that commitment to make the person legally your family is the acid test of the relationship. And it usually happens right away!

This makes a lot of sense, as we've all seen those couples who've been together for seven years, get married, and are divorced within three months. There's just a different type of interaction when you're really viewing the person as family, with all those associations, good and bad.

You can often get a preview of what's ahead by viewing your own family of origin. I know every family has their thing, but my family certainly has its share of issues, I'll-tell-you-whut.

Therefore I was secretly worried for quite a while about exactly what kind of Crazies would come out if I got married. Would I suddenly turn dependent? Mean? Ravenously insecure? Depressed? Lose myself entirely? Be argumentative? Turn out to be lazy and selfish? (Okay, that one's not a big stretch.)

And this was just the potential for my side of the problem. Who knew what a completely other person would have lurking inside.

However, I have been waiting for the shoe to fall for ... oh, about nine months now, and I'm relieved to say that I really don't seem to have changed very much at all, and neither has my spouse. In fact, I would say that grad school changed me a lot more within nine months than marriage has.

Overall, so far the whole thing is a lot more easy and pleasant than you'd think, based on popular culture. I guess given my field I'm not very well-placed to see all the people who are doing just fine thanks, so I may have a skewed image from a personal viewpoint, as well.

But so far, it's really quite fun! Even just sitting around together. A lot of the time it's like having a constant sleepover. I mean, sure, we've had to work out agreements about money and so forth, but once you're in agreement about that, it doesn't seem like a big deal. Well, as long as you both follow through with the plans you make, of course. (I know that money is a big marriage-buster, if not the biggest, so that's one you really do have to hash out.)

Even after spending all this daily time together, we can still laugh ourselves sick over something silly. Oh, our kids are going to be so humiliated by us. (But they'll thank us for it later.)

Now, kids--that's another point where The Crazies come out. I guess we'll see soon enough...

Non-entry

I wrote a more or less proper post, but it hung when I tried to post it, so there it isn't.

I don't feel very bloggy lately anyway. Probably because I don't need an outlet for everything going on at once, for once.

Anyway, the image I was posting, in a nutshell:

background: captured from TV ad for allergy meds
image: added in (obviously) to show our future ideal living room

Library Versus Squirrel Librarian

Now this is just wrong (though it's somewhat old news).

(I hear that her previous infraction was caring for a baby bird on her breaks.)

Good Stuff

This is good to know:

Scientific American: Working Moms Healthier than Full-Time Homemakers

And this is just good to look at:




(If I already posted this pic before, then...I guess you're just lucky.)

The connection? Hmmm....

Well, I could make the point about the wire monkey mothers and the fur monkey mothers that this blogger has already made, but she's already made it pretty well.

The moral I get from it is, treat yourself well, thrive, and be a Fur Mummy.

It Figures

That my superhero results'd turn out just like my sister's.

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 90% Spider-Man 90% Robin 80% Wonder Woman 77% Supergirl 72% Batman 70% Green Lantern 70% Iron Man 70% The Flash 60% Catwoman 40% Hulk 35%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Maybe I Was Wrong

After hearing the Colbert roast of Bush, I wish I could remember in which class we learned about the greater number of neurons in the gut than the brain. Because I passed that on to my own students. They probably think now that not only was I wrong about that (and I still don't know if it is true or not), but that it casts doubt on my entire philosophy.

And tangentially, two organizations in which I can't participate fully for at least another year.

However, for a limited time I could be in this activity, if we held one around here. (Notice I said could, not will.) It doesn't really seem like an equal trade...

Gmail RSS feed / Web Clips

Maybe one of you has an idea. Here's a question I recently posed to an online help bloke. I can't seem to find any reason for my inability to do this, nor any discussion of anyone else having the problem anywhere on Google. (Certainly not in their help section!) What am I doing wrong?

******

Dear [web guru],

I have had a Gmail account for quite a while now, and I love its many features, including the customizable webclips. Therefore, I am in the process of converting my husband to Gmail (Oh, he'll do it, eventually).

I set up an account for him a while ago, and I recently thought it would be fun to customize his clips so when he starts using it in earnest, there will be items on Mars, robots, Italian cookery, and his wife's latest blog posts.

Now, everything works fine up to the point where I try to add the custom clips. (My blog or our friends' blogs, specifically.)

If I use the search feature, for example: "doctorlizardo", my blog feed does appear as an option to "add". But when I click "add", it says that the feed url is invalid.

I logged back into my own account and tried deleting a few of my favorite blog feeds and re-adding them. They worked fine.

But when I log back into my husband's account, I still can't get it to add those feeds, even if I search using the exact feed address (for example, http://doctorlizardo.blogspot.com/atom.xml --it just comes up nonexistent in the search.)

Now is the Time on Bloggets Vhen Ve Dance

Life is beginning to resemble an episode of Sprockets.

(I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing!)

Maybe "beginning" is the wrong term ...Now, where's my black turtleneck?

Happy May Day

If this image doesn't capture the spirit of Spring, I don't know what does.

Stupid ISP

I had a ton of student wrap-up work to do today as their grades are due, so of course our internet service went out as soon as I got online this morning. And now that I finally did everything I possibly could do offline and then gave up--and it's almost midnight--it's back up again. Blasted company. It's not the first time, either!

Close Encounters of the Chromatic Kind, or, Math is Cool

I have to steal this find of Mark's, just because I'm so taken with it. (Note: noise will occur when you click on it! And colors, but that's less intrusive.)

I think numbers 10 and 13 are ready for parts in scary movies, while number 6 should somehow be associated with the work of this site's creator.

Those Crazy Kids

Okay, I have to admit, this probably is the "best home made lightsaber duel video ever," as it claims to be. I think that Dorkman kid has had fencing training, though. (And possibly krav maga, based on those doity tricks.) Good ending!

Careers

Yesterday TheLimey sent me this link and pointed out that between the two of us, we have four of the Top Ten Jobs in the country.

He also expressed, shall we say, interest in how much the average Psychologist makes [and that high-end salary, too], according to this article. I raised a skeptical eyebrow at the putative amount.

"Don't forget," I reminded him, "I'm also a woman so I'll be making 72% of whatever the real amount is." (Technically inaccurate if they're taking both sexes into account in the figure, but I'll certainly be on the lower end of whatever it is. And anyway you get the point.)

So, men--hetero men at least--if you want more money in your life, work for higher pay for women. (You gay men can go on being selfish by that argument, but of course women's rights also generally advance LGBT rights by association.)

Progress

I'm very excited (probably unduly excited) that two people have joined my art support group. One is a new father in Spain and one is a mother of three in...somewhere in Canada, I'd guess, based on her email.

And it's going to be 72 degrees F this afternoon. Yippee! Pretty shocking considering that two weeks ago it was actually snowing.


Well, it'll all be completely different (and worse) soon enough, as we learned watching that NOVA program last night about global dimming.

TheLimey proclaimed "global dimming" to not be a scary enough term for how catastrophic a concept it is; therefore I propose we all start calling it "global nightfall".

16 weeks

16 weeks
Originally uploaded by doctorlizardo.

Okay, now a normal person could tell I'm showing.

Try not to look at my chin(s).

I swear it's just the angle. I blame the photographer.

Half Annoying, Half Pathetic

I tried looking at some Yahoo groups to see if there were any likely potential members for my own group. What I found was a cartload of stay-at-home-mom sites, each with thousands of messages that were obviously spam.

Apparently these group spammers think that stay-at-home-moms either want to start some scammy pyramid scheme in their living rooms, or are all looking to sell their bodies online.

"Wanted! P* rn-Style s 3x!"

Yeah, get in line, pal.

Gfrustrator

After being recruited (brainwashed?) by my personal human internet-service filter (sister) yet again, I decided to go ahead and try out the Google calendar. I was particularly interested in the capability to share calendars, as TheLimey and I have been threatening to have a mutual calendar for our mutual events since we got married (even just a paper calendar.)

I was pretty excited as I synced up my PDA and prepared the various paths to my files, up to the point where I hit "IMPORT". I was brutally disappointed when all I seemed to be able to get to was a mini-"page cannot be displayed" thing inside the importing operation field.

Maybe a gazillion other people are trying to do the same thing and we all crashed it.


UPDATE:

Okay okay okay---I take it all back.

The initial simple instructions make it appear (to the severely uninformed, like me) that a person can simply import one's Outlook format calendar into Google Calendar without further ado.

However, upon closer inspection of various help pages, it turns out that you have to open your Outlook and do some fantsee savin' and exportin' of your data in 1-year chunks into CSV format. Which I now know exists.

This finally worked for me, although GC didn't appear to want to keep any events older than 1 year. Understandable, I guess.

Recruiting

But not any kind of money scheme. Thing. Stuff. Niner.

I like the kind of support found in the Yahoo group I'm in that is for mothers juggling family and PhD demands. Therefore, I decided that I'd start something similar for parents who are visual artists. So if you know any mums or dads who've put their art on the back burner for now, send 'em on over. I'm lonely with my three sketches per decade.

Chevy's Open Door

Ha ha ha!

Speaking of making your own movies: if you haven't already seen this story about SUV ads, check out the examples mentioned on the sidebar of this story. Before they take them down. (Note: I couldn't get some of them to load. Maybe they were the ones with the objectionable language.)

I can be a little smug about this now, as we've just turned in our (relatively small for an SUV) Jeep Liberty for a Pontiac Vibe.

All Organizey

Have been too busy being volunteer coordinator for this upcoming international event to do much else.

Some of the work can of course be summed up in three words: drama, drama, drama!

Other than that, it's just organizing. I call my Excel spreadsheet of volunteers' availabilities and duties the "Tetris Spreadsheet" as that's what it looks like--a big mass of tiny varicolored blocks.

Oh yeah, I also did the graphics and set up souvenirs for the event. And alternate souvenirs that are only available online, since conflicts over which design to use were about to come to blows (by me).

The Orange Ball of Women won out as the official design for the overall conference instead of the Multicolor Intersecting Women one that I preferred, but the Women of Color Caucus did like my Standing Together Women design for their items. >haughty sniff<

Cosmic Sounds

If I were only a rocket scientist, too, I would totally want to be in this ensemble.

And, wow, lots of public domain old-tyme recordings! As a secret librarian-type, I am extremely happy that this preservation project has occurred. It's about time.

When I was little, I knew a family who had a wind-up gramophone. I still remember a number of the songs. I would like to have a gramophone someday myself. Hey, now that I think of it, I believe I do have some gramophone records mixed into my general unsorted pile of vinyl...now if only I had a turntable! I have long thought I would use them as samples...or something.

Maybe after my internship, since between internship and new baby I won't have time to even fantasize about music geekery.

Ah, Weekends

I'm still g r a d u a l l y creeping past the constant-nausea stage of this whole making-another-person project. However, I was able to enjoy lounging in bed on Sunday morning, although only TheLimey was up to having the obligatory cup of tea. (Have been pretty much off "real" tea, coffee, wine, and beer even in my imagination for the past couple months. Bleah!)

I was going to continue to sleep, but he had brought to the bed some light reading that ended up sucking me in: The Economist, Robot, and Scientific American. I'm pretty sure that this is exactly what marriage is supposed to be like: lounging and geeking out.

I see that Robot's website has exceeded its bandwidth. Guess they didn't expect the flood of interest! In other news, I learned that prions have recently been found in wild deer, so I guess my theory about hunting being a potentially safer form of meat-eating than animal captivity, is not necessarily true either. Go figure.

I Could Do Better!

(No offense, Salon.com guy.)

In this letter and response, the answer is so philosophical and abstract as to be no answer at all. And look how it ends! "Adulthood is not all that much fun"? If that's how he feels, I definitely don't want his advice about my life, I'll tell you that much. (Only ask people for advice who are reacting to life in a way you wouldn't mind doing yourself.)

The real (short) answer? I saw this quote somewhere just the other day: "To find a soulmate, you have to have a soul." Which is just another translation of the cliche "to find a good partner, you have to first become a good partner." Which includes being a whole person.

We're all attracted to partners who are being what we want to be, doing what we want to do. If she's attracted to pierced coffee-shop employees with skateboards, then she's obviously feeling too buttoned-down herself. She closed off her choices too early! Her identity status is obviously in foreclosure, probably in several areas!

And if she doesn't bust out and express that wacky side of herself soon, then she will (I guarantee you) have what is popularly known as a "midlife crisis" in not too many years. Probably after she's married some guy she thinks she's "supposed to" and also had the kids she's "supposed to", who will then be damaged by the whole thing.

The alternative is to do what you love, and then adulthood is pretty dang fun. (I'm not saying it isn't scary.) It doesn't only apply to work. In fact, much to my surprise, adulthood has only gotten steadily more fun with each year. (Now, I'm not saying grad school has always been easy and fun, but that's only a part of it.)

I would recommend she get an identity status interview and see what areas of her self she's foreclosed on. And as she enjoys "snobby" (ok, "hip") pursuits, I would recommend she do some reading on the Shadow Self and take it from there. Go do something "bad"! (But not illegal, as she's not under 18 any more.)

Just One More...

...picture that I stole from a sc r e e nsa v er site with dorky trailing cursors and other annoying elements. Since all the images there were were obviously just scanned commercial greeting cards, I simply can't bring myself to feel too guilty.

When Irish Squirrels are Smiling

When Irish Squirrels are Smiling
Originally uploaded by Terry_Lea.

I can only wish that I had made this image.

Anyway, have a green beer for me since I can't this year. (Perhaps in memory of the indigenous religions of Eire. Yep, I know how to suck the fun out of pretty much anything.)

Not Used for Meat! I Swear!

I'm a bit disturbed by the frequent insistence that any particular Mad Cow is not a danger to the public "because it never entered the food chain." To me that's a little like telling your parents that the broken window couldn't be from your rock, because you still have a rock in your hand.

See, USDA, it's not that specific cow that is so worrisome--it's all its cohorts that did make it into the food chain.

In one of those links above, I was especially repulsed by the discussion of "restaurant plate waste" being a vector for giving cows BSE. It's gross enough that "restaurant plate waste" is being fed to herbivores in the first place.

But on consideration, I realized that what should disturb me a lot more than that is: people were eating whatever was on those plates before the cows were! And as we all know, prions never die.

Of course, if we were all vegetarians (or even just carnivorous hunters), this wouldn't even be a concern.

Scary Old Movie Spoiler and Kind of Newer One Spoiled a Bit, Too

Shortly before bed the other night, I saw the beginning of Scary Movie 3. As my movie-going habits have been sparse at best for the past five years, I probably missed a great number of pop culture references. However, I did recognize the sequence that was taken from The Ring.

I enjoy scary, creepy supernatural movies (though I truly dislike gory, splattery human serial killer ones). So at one point I did actually buy a used VHS copy of The Ring, but I never got to see it because I loaned it to a neighbor and never got it back. I almost never loan out my movies to people specifically because of how often they don't come back.

I have loaned movies out to maybe three people in the past six years, and now that I think of it, only one person has returned those movies. In fact, I think the person to whom I loaned The Ring later denied that they had ever borrowed it! But when there are only three people in so many years, it's kind of hard to forget, you know?

So anyway, the upshot is that I still have never actually seen The Ring. However, I did recognize the imagery from the trailers and so forth when I saw the Scary Movie sequence. However, I wasn't expecting that ghost-thingy to actually come crawling out of the character's TV screen, so I found that image pretty disturbing.

Normally, the one redeeming thing about scary movies is that there is a discrete boundary between me and the events in the film (the screen), which allows me to watch all kinds of scary stuff without taking it too seriously. I think that image of breaking boundaries between reality and fiction got around that defense into my subconscious and freaked me out a bit.

When I awoke in the middle of the night to make a bathroom run (as I always do these days), it was the first thing that popped into my head. I had to peer over the living room balcony as I went past to make sure that nothing was crawling out of the darkened TV screen below. Also, I had to scamper back to the bedroom really fast.

When I squeezed uncomfortably close to my sleepy husband and mentioned that the movie had scared me, he very helpfully pointed out that the TV was turned off and was thus unlikely to produce any frightening creatures. On the other hand, he continued in the same helpful vein, it was much more likely that something would crawl out of the monitor of my computer that I had left on in the office all night. (Ha; I had already considered this. Why else would I have to run past the office so quickly to get back to bed?)

Luckily, morning revealed that apparently nothing had crawled out of anything during the night. Now I am simultaneously interested and completely against watching The Ring, given that just a silly take-off scene of it scared me.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine came over during the day to relieve my cabin fever by watching with me my recent acquisition, the South Korean frightener A Tale of Two Sisters. There aren't too many friends with whom I can watch horror flicks that are also in Korean (subtitled).

To date, it is probably the scariest movie I have ever seen. Even though I didn't understand the plot while it was happening, until the last five minutes or so. I thought at first this was just because my Western-cultured linear-processing mind was not used to the story-telling direction in which Korean horror has evolved.

However, when we watched the interview with the director afterwards, it seemed that quite a few of his Korean critics were confused and unhappy with the non-linearity of the film. Personally, I can't say I was unhappy with it: I just didn't understand what was happening. This did not, however, detract from the scariness one bit. I like a mental challenge in film sometimes.

We spent most of the movie shouting out our theories about what was happening: "I think this means the older sister did this and the younger sister did that!" "Who was that? What was that?" "I think it was the stepmother's imagination of blah blah blah!" "Now I think these two people are actually the same person!" "I think the father did such-and-such, and that's why this is happening!" "That thing must have been the mother's." "I think that person was there out of the blue because she represented so-and-so."

Scariest movie moments (without giving away the plot--heck, it didn't even give away the plot during the film): 1. A scene in which a character awakes in the dark to find that someone or something is in the room. And then down by the foot of the bed, you see only the top of its head moving silently along behind a sofa; 2. The stereotypical "something reaches out from under something and grabs someone"--but done so surprisingly, and done so well, that it was really a shock. (This was the point where our screaming might have disturbed the neighbors, but no police ever arrived.)

Now my dilemma is whether I should watch The Ring, or its supposedly scarier Japanese predecessor Ringu (which purists love above the westernized version, of course), or skip both as being too scary even for me.

A Rambling Lecture About Commitment, Dating, Marriage, and Misuse of Terminology

Note or warning: this is definitely a lecture, just because I feel all lecture-y. I usually can't say things like this to my clients directly, after all.

I recently read an article in what I happen to regard primarily as a decorating magazine (Real Simple) in which a guy described how a family tragedy changed his feelings about commitment. And in the article he did that thing that drives the therapist-me nuts, which is to misuse the term commitment-phobic. (Or commitmentphobic with no dash, if you like, and I think I do.)

Now, to confuse the issue, the dynamic of the situation was such that he did actually behave in a commitmentphobic way. However! However, his description of what about him was commitmentphobic was wrong, all wrong. At least wrong in a popular, yet dangerous, way.

What he said was something to the effect that because he did not want to get married, he was commitmentphobic. And he's not alone--you'll hear a lot of people using it that way.

People, please. Not wanting to get married, or even not wanting to just have a committed Significant Other, is not in itself commitmentphobic. A person can be a perfectly legitimate, honest, upstanding rake or tramp who only is interested in one-night stands*--this does not make them commitmentphobic.

--And here's the caveat: as long as they are up front about it!

That's right; the minute you say one thing but do another, that does make you a prime suspect for commitmentphobia.

Such is the case of the stringer, who doesn't want to break up, but also doesn't want to go to the next level (going steady? marriage? whatever), and strings their partner along with hemi-demi-semi-implications that someday, if you can just be patient, they probably will want that. Maybe. Just not now. Of course, the longer this goes on, the more clear it becomes that they really are a stringer or commitmentphobe.

Why is this the definition of commitmentphobia? Because the person can't commit to either course: leaving or staying. They can't commit to making the choice.

They don't want to cross that bridge, but are also reluctant to burn it. They want to "keep their options open" or "keep a foot in the door". And this, this, is the dishonorable act, which is suckier by far than any cad or sex kitten at the bar who only wants one thing. At least you know where that person is ... --never mind, that was going to be a bad choice of words.

I recently picked up a controversial book about finding marriageable men in the bookstore (and I'd like to see you reconstruct that sentence so it doesn't sound like the bookstore is where you find the men). I was reading this book because when I am in a bookstore I find myself reading the most disparate, oddest things, even if they don't seem to have any relevance to me, simply because they are at eye level and have a nice color of cover. I often don't get much farther than 10 feet into the store because I am so immediately arrested by any book. But I digress.

So anyway, regarding this book, yes I'm blatantly ignoring some of the giant questions going begging like the fact that it's always a book about women getting men to marry them; the heterosexual focus; why we as a society have such unbalanced relationship goals; and so forth.

Anyway, one thing that I thought the author got pretty right-on was that if a guy says he's not interested in commitment, then his partner should believe him. (All this would apply to the genderly reverse, by the way. However, I get more women clients in this position than men clients. Not all, but more. Studies suggest men stay home and drink instead of going to the friendly neighborhood therapist--booo!)

I would extend the author's statement to say that if a person says they're not sure what they want, then you can be sure they don't want to go to the next level. (Even if they act all tortured and pitiful when they're saying it. Yep. Maybe especially then.)

If you're someone who doesn't want the level-up, then hey! No problem-o. But if that is secretly (or overtly) what you want, you're not doing yourself a favor by a) staying, or b) pretending you don't want it, in hopes that not pressuring then will make them blossom into a marriage-wanting ... blossom. (Or something.) That means, don't waffle. They're probably already waffling enough for the both of you. And pancaking-fried-egging-and-French-toasting, and pretty much every other breakfast fooding.

One study showed that when people broke up after long uncommitted relationships and got married relatively quickly to the next datee, it was primarily because that next person laid it on the line: "I am in this for commitment, otherwise let's not bother." Notice: not because the first person wasn't sexy enough, or rich enough, or sophisticated enough. No--it was because the first person didn't back up what they said with actions. ("It's been 18 months, we're in or I'm out--nothing personal," for example, would be good.)

A lot of this comes down to being unafraid and unapologetic about your needs and wishes, because if you don't want what the other person wants, you shouldn't be together anyway! Right? Right?! --NO, I don't want to hear any of that "but they have so many wonderful qualities!" That's nice. So does most of the human race, really.

Bottom line: same relationship goals = go forward!; different relationship goals = getoutgetoutGETOUT!

As a dear old auntie of mine has said, the only man you can scare away by being yourself is your future ex-husband.

If accepting this is a hard pill for you to swallow, then my favorite book recommendation is Don't Call That Man. Again, applies equally to women too, but we still raise men and women to approach relationships differently, so it often ends up being expressed differently in practical terms, blah blah blah disclaimer. Also, you don't have to be breaking up with anyone to read it, though if you are breaking up, it's great for your mood.

And while I'm handing out unasked advice: While recuperating on the couch the other day, I saw an episode of Blind Date. The first thing the woman did was to tell the guy that she didn't trust men, because a lot a lot a lot of men had cheated on her.

Okay, don't do this. This goes for guys, too. You don't immediately douse a new date with exactly how terrible your ex was. Why? Well, for starters, picture seeing a man or woman sitting there with their drink telling how much wrong they been done. Oh so wrong! That's not a great mood to set right in the beginning.

Next, and you're going to hate this one, it cognitively lowers the threshold of what they think you are willing to accept as behavior from a partner. Not consciously, of course. But we all want to outdo our S.O.'s last partner. So if you portray that last partner as a horrible ogre, then what's to outdo? And what does it say about your spine that you would tolerate such terrible treatment?

Next, and you're going to hate this one, too, the more you emphasize how you've been mistreated, the more likely you are to push away someone who is healthy and attract someone who has a rescuer complex. (This doesn't sound so terrible, but believe me, it'll end up that way.)

Finally, how someone talks about their ex is also how they are likely to talk about others--including you. Your date will know this, and will be somewhat more repelled the more you speak negatively about others, no matter how terrible that person really, truly was. It makes you sound hostile and/or disrespectful. It makes it seem as though you could view them in that negative way, too.

Besides, what you focus on is what grows. Do you really want the focus of your date to be your misery? Because then I guarantee it'll grow.

So, what can you say that doesn't sound pollyannaish and fake?

Well, if you tell someone that your last relationship was nice enough, but you just had different goals, or personalities, or grew different ways, or whatever, that sounds respectable and respectful and reasonable. There will be plenty of time dish and gripe about your ex later, gradually, when you're all involved with each other. That's what 3am emotional talks are for.

Oh yeah, that TV couple with the distrustful woman (Ms. Trust, let's call her)? There was a setup with a hottie private eye who hit on the guy using a hidden camera. He was great. He respectfully turned her phone number down and said he was with someone else.

He was very kind and respectful to Ms. Trust the whole date through. I liked him a lot! In the post-date individual wrap up, he was eager to go on another date, whereas she flatly said there would not be another date. >sigh<

My guess based on that "a lot a lot" (a clear relationship pattern) is that she seeks out men who fulfill her cheating expectations, and he simply couldn't live down to them.


*Or someone who is completely uninterested in any of that kind of interaction at all.

Very Useful for Students or Tourists

I'm upset that I didn't think of this site myself. it seems like such an obvious move! Guess I can't do everything.

I did, however, email the webmaster with some better squirrel stories and pictures of my current school, so that he might upgrade the ratings.

I think it would be fun to go on a cross-country squirrel road trip to check out the veracity of the reports.

Those Sons-of-Tribbles

If you haven't seen How Liddy and I collaborated to simultaneously mutilate both Lyle Lovett and Star Trek, you really should.

Waitress, where's my hot Earl Grey tea? ...it's so melancholy when the holodeck's all but gone.

Technical Data

For those who wondered how the Match works, the algorithm is briefly explained here, with links to more detailed explanations. (So whoever wrote that if you don't get your first choice, it's randomly assigned from the subsequent choices, that's just wrong. As I thought.)

I also read (somewhere) that when they first started using the Match system, the algorithm began with the preferences of the internship sites. People (interns, probably) complained that this gave sites a power advantage, so they tried out the current system, beginning with applicant preferences. Although this showed less than a tenth of a percent difference in placements when applied to previous Match years, they decided to adopt that system anyway.

Amazon Love/Hate

I was so proud of my review that I decided I might as well post it to Amazon--why not?

The page that allows one to preview the review correctly displays text markup stuff like italics. So thinking it was just as I wanted it, I published it. However, when the review showed up on the site, all the markups were annoyingly displayed throughout the text naked--wads of various characters and punctuation marks.

Once I tried to edit a review and the edits never showed up, so I thought instead of editing this one I'd just delete it and rewrite it with no text fanciness. However, when I tried to save that one, OOPS! I'm not allowed to write more than one review for a product.

And while it's easy to look up any product, it's hard as heck to navigate and find information on Amazon's own processes. I often just go to Google and look up whatever Amazon operation I want and get in from there, because Amazon sure as heck isn't going to help me navigate itself.

Stoopid Amazon.

Sarky Book Review

More a sort of book-mocking.

One of the many informational books I've been hoarding in case of pregnancy is Your Pregnancy Week by Week. The cool part of this book is that it has a sketch for each week to show how the baby is developing, and how big it is, and so forth. I do like it for that reason.

However, in overall tone it is extremely condescending, to which I'll return in a moment. It' s also a bit scary, as each week's chapter contains a list of every possible thing that could go wrong with your pregnancy. It's also a bit impractical in odd ways (do you really want to find out only near the end of the first trimester that electric blankets might mutate your baby [especially if used in the first trimester]?)

But back to that condescending thing. It's to the point where it's kind of funny. "Make sure you eat healthy foods!" "You might be able to get a 'picture' of your baby, called a sonogram..." "Wash your hands frequently throughout the day!" "Don't use recreational drugs!" Well, duh.

It treats mothers-to-be as though we are all careening stupidly on the knife edge of disaster but for this kindly intervention that is for your own good.

"You can't just eat anything you want." Puh-lease. You just try and stop me, Mr. Paper Doctor. I can and I shall eat anything I want--which is probably not that terrible to begin with, anyway. And I resent your patriarchal assumption that only you stand nobly between me and the monstrous results of my out-of-control wishes!

There's a particular phenomenon (that I have discussed in my Psych of Women classes) in which society tends to infantilize pregnant women, as though we aren't carrying infants, but becoming infants. (Despite the fact that pregnancy has been shown to actually increase IQ by a couple points. --Yes, ha ha, I'm still waiting.) This book definitely expresses that societal attitude.

However, the effect is not restricted to the mums-to-be. In the authors' view, dads are apparently not only equally as stupid as mums, but are uncaring clods as well. There are one or two little paragraph-length text boxes in each chapter ("Dad Tip!") since clearly men can't be expected to read an entire book (because you're illiterate, on top of all that?)

Dad tip: "Give your partner a lot of hugs." "Bring home flowers..." "Clean or vacuum the house without being asked." "...Change the litter box..." (This tip is in week 8, so the pregnant partner has already been handling dangerous cat feces for two months and it likely killed the baby, you illiterate uncaring clod.) "Remember to call her if you go out of town." "Pregnancy is a miracle despite headaches, morning sickness, and changing waistline." (Despite changing waistline?!)

We started making up our own helpful tips for Dad in the same vein: "Try not to make fun of your partner for being fat, as often as you usually do." "Wait until she's done throwing up in the morning to tell her to make your breakfast." "Don't get drunk at home so much--go out to the pub." "Try not to be a complete ass, at least not all the time."

Another humorous thing about the book is that each week it compares the baby's size to a food item: "Your baby is about the size of a pinto bean," "...a green olive," "...a peach," "...a lime." Which is a little disturbing. I'm not growing it to harvest and eat!

Of course we had to start making up our own comparisons. "Your baby is about the size of a 1-pound box of expensive chocolates with gold wrapping." "Your baby is about the size of a succulent filet mignon, served medium-rare with sauteed mushrooms and onions."

So all in all, an entertaining read, especially if one is a smartass.

I Got Yer Diaper Cakes Right Here, Ma

Now that I know where to start looking and making preparations, I've been looking up diaper services (to no avail so far, unfortunately). On one search I got this odd result (above--click pic for legible size):

At first I thought it was just one of those weird fake search results that tosses your search term in with random other words just to make you click on it. I mean, diaper cakes?! Yes, I'm pretty sure anyone can make diaper cakes, if you know what I mean.

But my curiosity led me to actually search for diaper cakes, and it turns out it's an actual item that is associated with baby showers: a "cake" made out of diapers and other baby accessories.

It can be taken to ridiculous extremes, as seen here.

Anyway, I just wish I could find us a nice diaper service...I only found two in Michigan overall, and the closest was in Kalamazoo. Which will be a couple hours away. (So no dice.)

Yippee!

I am very excited to report that I have been matched to my first-choice internship site, which is at Relatively Nearby Local University. This is great for any number of reasons.

Since we won't have to go out of state, it will be a lot easier to negotiate parenthood, training, and so forth. Also, I have lived in or near that town on and off for at least half of my adult life, so I'm familiar with the support systems and have good friends who live there. And that site has partner and dependent benefits, and pays a smidgen better than most sites.

Oh yeah--and they have a great multicultural program, which is my area of emphasis.

Furthermore, the campus is beautiful, old-buildinged and tree-riddled with a big river in the middle of it; chock-full of hungry squirrels and ducks. (They have two varieties of squirrel: gray and black--wait, now that I think of it, I've even seen some cagey little red squirrels there betimes.)

Bastion of Healthitude

I have been eating a lot of "bad" food (to give it a moral characterization) since I've been pregnant. This is mainly because I've been so sick that I was actually losing weight for a few weeks there and could only tolerate bland, processed, sticky, comfort foods.

Therefore I was really quite excited to see that Kraft had recently come out with a new, supposedly more nutritious version of Mac & Cheese (or Kraft Dinner, for those north of the border). Especially exciting was the part about its containing whole grain, since highly processed starches are among those few foods that I deem about as nutritious as whipped toilet paper.

Now don't get me wrong--I'm a junk food advocate, and believe that the demonization of individual food items contributes to America's bizarre come-here-go-away compulsion around eating. Therefore, it's important to focus more on increasing healthful components to one's diet than to focus on restriction and denial of those less-nutrient-rich components. (I did my Mistress's thesis on aspects of this, so for once believe me when I say I actually know what I'm talking about.)

Eww. Restriction and denial: bad!

So anyway, it's not that I'm against even empty calories, but I do try to emphasize foods with more nutrients than not. This normally does not include Mac & Cheese to any great extent. In fact what I have often done--you may laugh if you like--is to get a big box of whole wheat elbows and several boxes of Mac & Cheese, and just use the wheat elbows in place of the Kraft ones, which I would throw out except for the seasoning packet.

But since they've started making Mac & Cheese with ("with"?) whole grain, maybe I wouldn't have to do that at all. In viewing the ingredients panel, I noted that the whole grain was second in the list after wheat (read: white, since it's not preceded by whole) flour. In my jaded food-analyzing experience, this means that the second ingredient is there primarily as a token, though not always.

I finally found a site that describes the food as containing 8 grams of whole grain per serving ("a good source"!) Well, okay--except that the entire box of noodles contains 170 grams--three servings--meaning that a serving is approximately 57 grams of noodles.

Using my superior and highly advanced statistics training (also a calculator that can divide), I therefore conclude that the ratio of processed to whole-grain flour in this product is about 6:1. (Disappointed sigh.)

Nevertheless, I will likely continue to eat it for a little while, as I shall eat anything that strikes my fancy enough for me to overcome my general queasiness and put it into my mouth.

Less-nutritious food is far better than no food at all!

Fun With Genetics

For some reason I found myself looking up information on eye color genetics. (For some reason.) Given the Wikipedia definitions of various eye colors, I figure that my eyes are green with a hazel-y twist, while TheLimey's are very blue-green.

The cool thing is that there is (of course) an eye-color calculator, albeit greatly simplified from how eye color genes actually express themselves in real life.

According to my calculations (me = blue/blue+ green/green; him = blue/blue + green/blue), our kids are all destined to have green eyes only. But if I change my green gene to a green/blue, then a few blue-eyed kids are thrown in the mix.

The Future of Robotics? and Other Pillow Talk

So TheLimey and I were discussing what kinds of systems are already functioning in our mini-offspring, and how tiny those little systems were. He seemed overcome with the realization that there were functioning mechanisms (i.e. heart, digestive tract, hearing, etc.) that could be that small, and suggested that this meant that eventually we (humans, that is) could create robots that small. (To play with!)

"But why couldn't we do that now?" I asked.

"Because you can't make functioning mechanisms that small," he replied.

"Well, yes, I can, as a matter of fact," I retorted. (I really wish I had thought to say "Au contraire, mon frere.")

We giggled at that for about two minutes, during which time I was subjected to the characterization of being a smartypants, though perhaps not in those exact words. (Personally, I like to think of myself as a skilled manufacturer of extremely small systems.)

Subsequently, I pointed out that there were already very tiny functioning biological mechanisms, such as those in insects and those micro-fish that were recently discovered. I suspect it's just that growing one of our own design (you know what I mean) makes it seem more real and salient.

So clearly, it isn't lack of biological examples that keeps us from mini-robots, but the state of our technology.

The Rationale

Oh yeah, that's why they do it this way. See, it does make sense.

If you look at this page, and scroll down to the section that is headed by "WHY IS APPIC DOING THINGS THIS WAY?" there's an explanation.

Basically, it's just to allow a buffer of time for those who didn't place to prepare themselves for the Clearinghouse process, without allowing internship sites to do illicit cherrypicking of unselected candidates beforehand.

Phone Tree Day--I Mean, Match Day

Yes, I got a placement.

7 of 10 of our applicants got placed, so our program is now officially up-and-coming in the world of Psych PhDs. I am really surprised at some of the non-placements, who I really thought would place above anyone else, especially me. So who knows what the heck these sites are looking for?!

Of course, I won't know until Monday what site I was matched with, which is maddening.

There is a perfectly logical explanation for why they do it this way, which makes sense every time I have read it, but then when I go away from it, I can't remember its logic at all.

Match Day

Tomorrow (Friday) morning I find out whether I got an internship placement. If I did, then I will find out which site it is on Monday. Everyone is waiting with teeth on edge, but I kind of don't want to know. I'm not ready to start preparing yet! Mentally or otherwise. There's too much going on already, especially in my abdomen.

I think many of my colleagues will be unable to sleep tonight. I, however, will probably have a hard time getting up to force myself to look. Part of the problem is that I want only my first choice, although we're supposed to be greatly relieved to get any placement at all.

Well, good luck, me.