Grr!

I feel like kicking something. I have been trying to get this stupid filemaker script to work for several hours now and it's still refusing. It's the same script I've used many times before, but for some reason today it has decided that it can't collect error messages. Argh! I have so many other things I need to do tonight, but my advisor needs the results tomorrow to convince people to give us money.

Argh, again! My advisor just emailed to say "while you're at it, could you also create some other elaborate figure?" No. No, I cannot.

Update: I gave up on Filemaker and decided to try to cobble together a figure in Excel, but now it's freezing every time I try to do delete a column. Grrrr!

today is not any different

So, here's a meme:

95%ALCOHOLIC


The classification of my results amused me, since the list of beverages I like is fairly short, and none of the entries are alcoholic. Since this post is contentless enough, here's the list:

1. water (only still)
2. chocolate/vanilla milk (or milk shakes)
3. hot chocolate
4. juice (apple, orange (with pulp), pineapple, pear, peach, watermelon)

There might be something obscure I've forgotten.

blog procrastination

I remember last November having all these things I wanted to blog about, but never getting around to it, despite posting every day. The same thing is happening again. I think I might still have drafts of some of those year-old, now irrelevant posts. I keep thinking I'll write them when I have more time to think about them and I'm not so sleepy, but then I spend far too much time online doing nothing especially interesting, so obviously it's not just a lack of time that's putting me off writing them. Probably, I'm just trying to avoid thinking seriously about things that are slightly uncomfortable to think about. Just like I've avoided doing my group therapy homework...

There are only a couple of sessions left and I've been disappointed that it hasn't been more helpful. Even so, now that it is a bit more specific than it was, and potentially more helpful, I'm avoiding putting in the effort to make it work. The things I've been meaning to blog about are things that have come up in ordinary therapy, so it would be good to think more about them before I go back there, next. Somehow, though, finding another blog to read seems more pressing. Maybe tomorrow will be different.

so sleepy...

I went to bed way too late last night, given that I had to get up at 7 to go ice skating. I thought I'd be too sleepy and uncoordinated to do anything, but I went backwards! I still suck, of course, but much less so. Oh, and I decided I don't mind my headband after all.
Anyway, I need to go to sleep, but I had to post something for NaBloPoMo. I hope you all had a good Monday.

maybe I should've just bought a hat

When I pulled out my winter things this year, I couldn't find my favourite hat, or my ear-warming headband. Then on Friday, I stuffed my ugly hat in my pocket while walking to the pool and presumably it fell out at some point and so I was left hatless. Last year I bought all the yarn to make a cute hat and scarf, but those will take me a while, so I thought I would make myself a new headband to keep my ears warm in the meantime. I found a pretty pattern with a woven stitch and sat down to watch DVDs while knitting. Two movies later, I'd started and pulled apart 3 attempts at the headband and the resulting beginning looked ugly and brown. So, I pulled it out again and just started knitting a plain ribbed band. The colours look much better when they change gradually, rather than overlapping and blending into brown. It was a lot faster to knit, too. But now that I'm done, I think it's too wide and probably too loose. I bought a whole bunch of this yarn, thinking I might make a jumper out of it, so I'm glad I like the colour after all. I might pull this apart to use for that, but at least my ears will be warm on the way to ice skating in the morning.

Yes!

I just woke up to very happy news. You should be happy too, even if I'm being cryptic. The powers of evil have lost a little influence in the world.

I've figured out how to enjoy ice cream in winter

1. put on fleecy tracksuit pants and jumper
2. get into bed, under a down quilt
3. work (or play Scrabble) on your laptop for several hours
4. when you start feeling overheated, quickly run to the kitchen, grab the ice cream and get back into bed
5. eat and enjoy!

I'm not sure my laptop is very happy about being used as a heater, but I'm nice and cosy, even after eating yummy s'mores ice cream.

things I talked about on the phone with my mum

• what I did for Thanksgiving
• her plans for the weekend
• complaints about my brother's Spanish mobile phone
• how to solve grade 10 maths problems for one of the students she's tutoring (she works on helping students cope with learning disabilities, not so much on content, and usually the kids are younger)
• how much my little brother is working
• her friend's theory about how children don't ever actually want their parents in their lives and only have anything to do with them out of guilt and feelings of responsibility
• whether or not that was the case with my brothers and I
• why her marriage broke up
• whether or not she should just become a hermit
• weekend plans again
• C'landian politics
• this great book she's reading about how women just want to be loved and men just want to be respected (and it's clearly universally true, because in the bible men are supposed to love their wives and women obey their husbands (and there was no patriarchy in biblical times...))

I wanted to interrupt some of her negative thinking and tell her some of the stuff they say in group therapy, but I stopped myself because I don't like talking about it. Now I wish I'd said it anyway. Although, I'm sure she's heard/read it before.

I almost told an anecdote about something in group therapy at dinner today, but then I realised where it came from. I also had to stop myself from contradicting my housemate when he said that our health insurance limits us to 6 mental health visits a year. I'm less regretful there, but maybe I shouldn't be so secretive.

thanksgiving

One of my non-American, fellow vegetarian housemates and I are going to cook Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. I would've been happy to just make a bunch of side dishes, but he has all these fancy ideas about nutrition and wanted something with the right kind of protein, so now we're having some kind of main dish with beans and mushrooms. I'm making some kind of stuffing (not something I'd ever eaten before my first Thanksgiving) and green beans (my concession to nutrition). I think the stuffing recipe I found will be enough for four times as many people as are coming, so I might be eating that for dinner for a while. I won't mind, assuming it turns out okay, and it's probably better than some of the things I've been eating for dinner lately (that has to be the focus of next month's Plan).

We did all our grocery shopping this evening and the supermarket was surprisingly deserted (although we did go to one of the least appealing in the area). I think I managed to offend the guest who drove us there by saying that I don't like cranberry sauce. The group therapy people claim that it's irrational to think that people might be offended by just stating your opinion, but I'm not so sure... Although, I guess their claim is more that there won't be any horrible consequences if someone is offended, which I guess was still true.

I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving!

kill me now

I'm in a class and the instructor just told us to find some text on a webpage by clicking "edit" then "find". Thank FSM I brought my knitting with me.

the most horrifying thing I've read in a long time

"Over a 13-month period, Nilsen scratched and scratched, despite her best efforts not to and despite her horror at the growing lesions she saw in the mirror. At the time, Nilsen says, she had no idea that the damage she was doing to herself was more than skin deep, but she ended up in a Boston emergency room with brain tissue protruding through a hole she'd scratched in her skull."

Follow the link for a photo of the x-ray of her skull with a surprisingly enormous hole in it. I'd put it here for those of you without subscription access, but I'm not sure you'd thank me.

I skated! and other good things

My first ice skating class was this morning and I actually moved around the rink! I didn't suck more than the other people, either (except one person, who was well ahead of the rest of us). We progressed a lot further than I was expecting in one lesson. I managed to lift my feet off the ice, stop, kind of go backwards and do a couple of other things I can't explain. It seemed so much easier than last time I tried and I didn't even fall over.

That got my day off to a good start. I also got my pretty, flannelette sheets today (since I wasn't loving my cosy, warm bed enough, or having a hard enough time getting out of it in the morning...) and I bought myself an advent calendar when I went grocery shopping. When I was a kid, my brothers and I would fight over who got to go third in the sequence of opening windows, since that person would get to open the last, biggest one. This was even more pathetic, since my mum never let us get a chocolate-containing calendar, so we were just fighting over opening little religious pictures. So, anyway, I thought an advent calendar would make it feel more like Christmas, even if I don't have anyone to fight over the crappy chocolate with.

In other happy news, I started playing with my data and it looks all cool and exciting! I haven't normalised anything yet, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but I may have cool results! Yay!

enriching activities

I always like reading the community education brochures and picking out classes that sound fun. I've taken a couple of photography classes, although I didn't really do much with the information. I took a ballet class a few years ago, which was a lot of fun. I still want to do tap dance. I just discovered a weight training class, too, so maybe I'll sign up for that, since I'm still mainly ignoring that section of the gym. I'd like to relearn some French, too. And there's an art class that sounds fun, and not too scary.

My problem is that after reading all the interesting descriptions, I start thinking of why I wouldn't be able to make it to the class, or why I wouldn't fit in or be able to do whatever it is properly. I'm nervous about ice skating (it starts tomorrow), but I'm glad I signed up. I also start to get demoralised before I even sign up, because I don't think I'll keep doing whatever it is after the class is over. I'm much better at starting things than finishing them, or even continuing them.

I already have a bunch of commitments, anyway. I have ice skating and knitting and book club. Although, I started thinking about the art class again today, because it meets at the same time as book club, so I'd written it off. I found out today that one of the book club people is moving away in a month, though, and there are only 3 of us, so I guess it'll break up. It's a pity, because I've enjoyed it, but the person who's moving is the one I find easier to talk to and when she's been away, the other person and I haven't met. I get the feeling that the other person finds me hard to talk to as well. So, I'll be sad at not having book club, and sad that I won't get to see these people again, and maybe become proper friends.

Mostly I like the idea of these classes just because the activities sound fun, but it would be nice to make friends, too. I'm okay at getting on with people within a group and being friendly enough, but I'm no good at shifting to doing things out of context, or even when it's just one other person. That seems somehow related to my inability to finish and/or continue with things. Or, more likely, maybe it's just my lack of self-esteem. This has rambled in a direction I wasn't planning, although I think I have more to say about that (in another post).

Should I take another class? Am I just wasting my time? Should I work on something I have kind of let drop by the wayside, like piano or photography, instead?

someone really likes Panera

I checked my credit card balance online today and discovered someone had bought two $199 Panera gift cards with my card. It seems like an odd choice to me. I would've thought buying two of the largest possible gift cards would seem more suspicious than some larger item, but apparently not suspicious enough to alert anyone. I was once woken up at 8am on a Sunday by someone from the bank wanting to check an online order was really me (it was). It was a little annoying at the time, but I was glad they seemed to care so much about security.

Now I have to wait until late next week to get a new card, and try to figure out what automatic charges are set up that need to be switched, but it wasn't a big deal to get it sorted out.

The fraud person I spoke to was also concerned about the $95 charge to emusic.com, but sadly that was me just forgetting to cancel my annual subscription before it was automatically charged. I haven't been very good about remembering to download my alloted songs every month, and I haven't even listened to quite a lot of them, so I wanted to stop it. I had a feeling I'd just missed the deadline. Maybe I should cancel next year's payment now so I don't forget again.

maybe I'm enjoying my cosy, new bedding a little too much...

It's 2pm and I have no desire to get up. Although, on second thoughts, I am getting a bit hungry and starting to want to do something vaguely productive with my day.

maybe I should be thinking more about graduating...

I gave a talk on my research today. It wasn't a big deal, so I didn't spend a lot of time preparing for it (although, I did waste several hours between 11pm and 2am last night procrastinating on making the last couple of slides - "future directions" are always hard for me since I never think enough about the details until I'm actually about to do the experiments, but I don't want to sound too vague). I was tempted to say this could be my homework for group therapy, but I don't think it was challenging enough for that. I was still nervous, mainly because I hadn't really run through it (I've given the same talk in various forms before, since I don't seem to be accumulating any new data that would require changes), and I realised halfway through that I mustn't have been breathing properly because I was a bit out of breath and then I got worried about people noticing that a bit. It was fine, though.

What I really wanted to write about was the reaction it got from the post-docs in my lab. They cornered me afterwards to convince me that I should be graduating in a year. They seemed to think I have a lot more data than I do, or maybe just that it would be much easier to finish the follow up experiments than I think. My advisor seems to be more of my view, but maybe that's the problem. It would be nice to finish sooner than I anticipate, but the idea is kind of scary, too. I don't know enough to be a post-doc! I guess I should be thinking more about what I need to do to graduate, instead of just muddling along, though.

I'm also not motivated enough to be a post-doc, possibly, considering that I haven't analysed all my beautiful data from yesterday still. You'd think having no substantial results for ages would make me appreciate it more, but not enough, apparently. If someone else set up the databases for me, so I wouldn't have to do those painful steps, I'd probably be happy to play with the data. As it is, even though I thought I might have sufficient momentum to keep working beyond the star-mandated time, I stopped as soon as I hit the first snag.

good things

• pretty data, 9,216 points of it, in fact

• curtains (they're kind of ugly, but within an hour of hanging them up, my room was 1.5 degrees warmer, in Celsius, which is more significant, and today it was a balmy 17C/63F in my room!)

• my new, cosy, down comforter/doona (I made Phantom and her kids hang out in the textiles section of Ikea for far too long while I was indecisive. I'm still not sure I made the right choice of doona cover, either, but I'm looking forward to going to bed tonight, and the stripy sheets still make me happy)

• friends who are willing to drive to Ikea (and wait for a very late train beforehand and drive in the opposite direction to their own home afterwards to take you and your new bedding home)

• Jens Lekman, in particular, Jens Lekman as sung along to by small, adorable children

I didn't need the laser beam eyes

(Sorry to disappoint you, Sheepish)

I met up with S last night. It was kind of awkward, but not so terrible. I was very unimpressed when he said the thing he wanted to talk to me about was the same question about why I didn't want to go out with or be friends with him years ago. I'm also kind of unimpressed with myself that I didn't say anything about how I thought it was going to be something much more urgent and important than that.

I was, however, very happy to hear that the reason he was asking was that he's met someone new to date and wanted to know if there was something he did wrong that he should avoid doing this time. He met this new person at church (I was reminded of this Onion article, since he was an atheist when I met him) and apparently she's even more shy than him. They've been hanging out for a while, it sounded like, and she was the one who started asking him to do things, so I assume she does actually like him and so the same problems won't apply.

I relaxed a bit after that, since it was clear he wasn't just trying to make me feel guilty and his life hasn't turned out so terribly, after all. I still didn't have much to say, though. I was still a bit worried that he would want to be friends, at least, since it wasn't quite so awkward as last time we ran into each other. He did say he'd be happy to be friends, but I was sufficiently non-committal that I think he got the message. I accidentally mentioned facebook and then worried that he would friend me. He only poked me, though, which I ignored.

I told him about the group therapy thing I've been doing and he was surprised that I still have any social anxiety, since I have friends and do things with them and stuff. It selfishly made me feel a little better, that someone would think I was as un-shy as I think the other people in the therapy group are.

At one point, he said something about how I could thank him for being at Prestigious U. When I wrote the LtEHB series, I wasn't at all sure that I wouldn't have given up the chance to be here if it would mean that I could make it all unhappen. I'm still not convinced that studying at Prestigious U alone would have been worth it, but certainly enough good has come of being here that I'm glad things happened as they did. I'm glad it seems to be working out okay for S, too.

a tip for lecturers hoping to avoid grading

If you want students to choose the other lecturers' questions to answer, don't make yours much shorter and easier than theirs.

He seemed so confused about why everyone answered his one sentence "how are these things alike and different?" question instead of one of the paragraph-long ones, with multiple conditional parts. I wonder if he'll figure it out for himself, because none of us was going to tell him the real reason.

serendipity

Yesterday I went to the library because I was almost out of things to read at the gym. When I got there it was unexpectedly closed, which was annoying, but someone had kindly left a big box of books for people to take and I found The Secret History, which I've been meaning to read for ages.

Today started off suckily, but I'm not going to dwell on that, except to say that I was very tempted to give the day up as lost and just do all the fun errands I wanted to get done (going to the inconvenient Target for curtains, trekking to the far-away sporting goods store to find ice skates, going to the gym). Instead, I reminded myself that I had to get my star because the ice skating was meant to be a reward, so I went to lab and did my experiment. While I was waiting for something to incubate, I checked craigslist for ice skates and found a posting for a pair that were half a size smaller than my shoe size. I emailed anyway, because I'm not sure how skates compare to shoes and the person said she usually wore the same size as me. I wasn't sure I'd even be able to get to where she lived to try them on, but it turned out she lived right next to the inconvenient Target! I somehow managed to finish my experiment (I'm not going to dwell on the further suckiness that arose there, either), go to the gym just in time before it closed at 7 for the holiday and get to inconvenient Target, discover that the skates fit perfectly (and she'd just relisted them at a reduced price because they didn't sell before), get my curtains and get back on a bus that was just arriving. The skates are so pretty, too. They're purple and grey, with matching blade guards, and they're all comfy and padded and thinsulate lined.

I just realised that I haven't signed up for the class yet and it could potentially be full, but everything else has worked out so nicely, so I'm sure it'll be fine.

remember S?

Of the LtEHB saga? I just got an email from him saying he's not trying to be friends again, but he has something he really needs to talk to me about and he can't talk to anyone else. He wants me to meet him in person, but he'd settle for talking on the phone or, at worst, online. I'm not sure what to do.

I'm a lot happier and less emotionally fragile now than I was last time he contacted me, so I'm in a better position to be generous and do what he wants, without being guilted into anything I don't want to do. Plus, I can spot his guilt trips more easily to begin with. The phone would be more awkward for me than talking in person, I think, but should I meet with him or just find some way of talking online (I'm certainly not letting him on any contact list where he could see when I'm online)?

I don't know if I'm just thinking I should be obliging, because of course I should always do what other people want me to, because they matter more than me, or if it really wouldn't be a big deal to me to meet him, so why not just be nice? I think it's more of the latter, but is that a good enough reason? At least I'm not thinking that I ruined his life, therefore I'm obliged to do whatever he wants, other than actually be friends with him, so that's progress.

ice skating

I just noticed that the gym is running a 4-lesson ice skating class for $20. Ice skating always sounds like fun, but it hasn't been so great in practice because I suck. I can stay upright, but I don't actually go anywhere. Last time I went (several years ago), my friend would do about 10 laps for every one of mine, even though she'd stop and chat as she passed me each time. I also sucked at cross-country skiing for the same reason: I can't bring myself to take one foot off the ice/snow, in case I fall over.

So, I think a class would be good, the only problem is I would have to provide my own skates. At first I thought that would be too much, since I probably won't skate much, but then I saw that Target has skates for $30. Of course, as I kept looking, I started thinking maybe I should get more comfortable ones, since the stiff ones I've hired at rinks before have always made my feet hurt. It wouldn't be that much more... Except, the class starts on Monday, so I'd probably have to pay extra for faster shipping and I don't even know if they'd fit. And I can't find anywhere that sells ice skates in this city so I could try them on or not have to pay shipping (there must be places, but they don't have a great online presence and I went to Sports Chain today and they pointed me to a rack containing two styles of men's hockey skates and one of kids' skates when I asked). I'll probably miss one of the four lessons, too.

So now I'm thinking it's probably ridiculous to spend $60 on ice skates when I've barely skated before and don't have anyone to go with in future, so I probably won't use them that much. But, I was all excited about the idea... I was thinking it could be a good reward for getting my star every day this month, since I haven't managed to come up with a reward so far. So, what do you think? Anyone have any ideas for finding cheap ice skates? Should I sign up anyway?

progress?

I asked a question in a real seminar for the first time ever last week. I tried to ask another one today, but I was sitting at the back and the people with the microphones refused to look in my direction. I went up to the speaker afterwards to ask, though. Two of them, in fact. I hovered around another person for a bit, but she seemed very involved in conversation, so I gave up.

I also argued with someone who was trying to take my elliptical machine at the gym. He insisted he'd signed up for it until I brought the sheet over with my initials on it. Then I felt kind of bad because he ended up on the machine next to me so I could've just taken that one. Still, he shouldn't have refused to believe me even after I went back and checked the sign-up sheet.

Of course, now I'm hiding in my room, trying to decide if I'm hungry enough to brave the housemates who are in the kitchen... I haven't done my group therapy homework yet either, which was to talk to people I usually ignore at lab.

In unrelated news, is this not the most hideous website you've ever seen?

I suck

Instead of writing a real post, I've wasted the last hour and three-quarters losing games of five minute Scrabble. I signed up for NaBloPoMo thinking it would be good to get back to blogging more, but posting lame excuses for not blogging properly is probably worse than nothing. And I know there's nothing stopping me from just quitting, since it's not doing anyone any good, but I still have hopes of getting better. Sorry for clogging your feed readers in the meantime.

I'm trying to think of something that's not an excuse to add to this post, at least, but I only have five minutes left in which to blog now and I don't deal well with time pressure (hence the losing at five minute Scrabble). Maybe I'll go and start writing tomorrow's real post so it's all ready ahead of time.

I remembered this being a lot easier last year, so I just went back to look at what the hell I was posting about. I'd forgotten I was also trying to do project 365 (which I think I've accepted I've given up on this year), so I at least had photos to post every day. I also posted a bunch of memes. I was trying to avoid that, but this isn't exactly better. If you have any better suggestions for things to blog about, please tell me in the comments (otherwise you'll get a lot more of this crap).

firetruck #2

Apparently this has become an annual tradition. We only got one firetruck this time, though, since I guess they remembered it wasn't necessary last time. Sadly, the kids across the street were already in bed and missed the excitement, but their dad and the older couple who like to sit on their porch and watch the neighbourhood still came over to chat with the fire crew. I also didn't have my camera with me, again.

I did get to be the person who called 911, though, since I got home to an empty house that smelled of oil. I was expecting the person who answered the phone to ask what kind of emergency it was, so I got confused when he mumbled something about how I was being recorded and had to make him repeat it, which would've wasted valuable time if it'd been an actual emergency. I had to call other people first to see what I should do and if calling 911 would be overreacting, but I still felt like maybe I was wasting their time.

Anyway, now that it's over and the oil repair person has been and gone without finding any other problems, I still have to finish enough work to get my star. You don't get a more interesting post, either, sorry.

excuses

I know yesterday's post was lame and it's only day 7 of NaBloPoMo, but I can't write a real post again today because:

• I'm tired
• I have to get up at 6.20am tomorrow if I want to go to the gym (do I really want to?)
• I've been getting up early every day, so I need to go to sleep earlier
• I just had group therapy, which only partially sucked, but will still depress me to blog and/or think about
• I then had to finish another 45 minutes of work to get my star before 10pm
• I came home to find a dinner party going on that I'd forgotten about and had to hide from
• all the things I kind of want to blog about will end up making me sad and self-pitying if I think about them now
• and the posts will take ages to write

I promise I'll write something better tomorrow.

autocomplete

For a while, every time I thought "god damn" (surprisingly often, given how infrequently I say it out loud), my brain would finish the phrase with "little man, quit poking me" but now it's switched to "I missed the last tram. God damn. God damn".

RBOC

• It makes me smile that the saved orders section of the website where I order oligos (pieces of DNA) is called my wish list. It's like they think I've been coveting these primers for ages, dreaming of the day I can afford to treat myself to the fancy phosphorothioate backbone.



• Now that it's been getting down to 11C/52F in my room, what I'm really coveting is a cosy down comforter. I'm tempted by the ones on sale at Overstock.com, but they all seem to have some comments saying they're nowhere near as warm as they claim. Do I have to spend $200 on one? Will I be too warm if I get one of those super-fancy ones? Anyone have any recommendations for me?



• At least someone finally gave in and turned the heat on in my house, although it doesn't seem to make a huge difference in my room.



• I just got an email from the C'landian student I was partnered with for the international student host program here. Her subject line was "It's so cold!!!". I was starting to wonder if I was exaggerating about it already being far colder here than my hometown ever gets, but I guess not.



• Walking to the gym at 7.20 this morning was a lot nicer now that it's not daylight savings time anymore. Unfortunately, walking home after it gets dark at 5pm is going to suck.



• I discovered that I was unknitting my messed up stitches in a far more laborious and painful way than was necessary. Of course, even that method seemed more appealling when faced with actual work as the alternative.



• Luckily, I rechecked the pattern before I started knitting again, as I still had the sequence wrong.



• If I keep thinking of random bullets, can I put off work indefinitely? I guess I'm the one making myself do 3.5 hours of work a day, so that wouldn't help. I'll go and start now.



• Please answer my question about down comforters so I don't freeze all winter out of indecision.



• Can I be a good vegetarian and still get a down comforter? Are down-alternative ones any good?



• Would curtains make my room any warmer, too?

argh!

I just finished knitting 198 stitches of 2-yellow-1-green and realised they should've been 2-yellow-1-green-3-yellow-1-green. Now, am I brave enough to pull it off the needles to undo, or should I try to be patient and unknit all those stitches? I guess now would be a good time to stop and go to bed, in any case.

lazy day

I spent three weekends in October travelling and one having someone visit here. Now I'm back to being lazy and aimless in the absence of any structure or other people to help me get moving. I'm still in bed, having spent the day reading and playing Scrabble. I guess it's nice to not doing anything occasionally, but I did have hopes of doing something productive today. I do still have to feed my cells and go to the gym, so I guess I'll have to get up at some point.

I thought some larger point might emerge when I started writing but apparently not, other than that I really need to get up and do something now, before it gets dark (I enjoyed the extra hour of sleep, but not the earlier sunsets that come with the end of daylight savings).

books #101-111 (2007)

I'm starting again at 101, because I haven't read much further in Mysteries of Udolpho and, as I've been told, life is too short to persevere with boring books. I was thinking I wouldn't read as many books this year as last, but I'm not far off already.

101. Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres ***1/2. I think there were parts of this book that I wanted to comment on, but I've already returned it to the library... I did find it very interesting, anyway.

102. Austenland by Shannon Hale *. I foolishly took a 5 hour bus trip with only this to read. As soon as the main character mentioned that she hadn't drawn or painted in years, since graphic design was a much more sensible job, I realised my mistake. I used to be able to enjoy chick lit, but I guess I shouldn't try anymore. I'm wondering if this should put me off the Jane Austen choose-your-own-adventure book I saw recently, too.

103. Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham ****1/2. I don't often buy books at the moment, but I needed something for the return bus trip, since I'd finished Austenland well before the first one finished. I'm glad I got this one. If I described it, it wouldn't sound that good (it follows several generations of a family, where the father worked his way up from a non-English speaking labourer to rich developer), but it was great.

104. The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher ***1/2. I enjoyed this book about the search for an ancient book depicting the animals that didn't make it onto the ark. The search benefited from several (possibly too many) lucky breaks (of course, there wouldn't have been a story otherwise), but the relationships between the main character and his family and friends made for interesting reading, too.

105. Best American Science Writing 2000 edited by Jesse Cohen ***1/2. I read a blog post about the latest edition of this series, which is what I thought I put on hold, but apparently not. This was interesting, anyway.

106. La Perdida by Jessica Abel ****. I liked that the main character in this graphic novel didn't have some big epiphany and find herself by living in Mexico for a year, although in some ways she was annoyingly naive.

107. Tell Me Everything by Sarah Salway ***1/2. Neil Gaiman mentioned reading this a while ago, so I read her first book (did I somehow not list it? I can't find it now). I've started questioning his judgement, given a couple of books written by friends of his that I didn't like at all, but this was good. The main character starts out homeless and alone and tries to sort out her life. Again, I liked that she changed without it being overly dramatic, and again she was annoyingly naive.

108. The Best Place to Be by Lesley Dormen ****. I wasn't sure I was going to relate to this much, since the main character is a baby boomer, but I liked it. It's a novel of linked stories from different stages in her life, as she figures out family and other relationships.

109. Goodbye Lemon by Adam Davies ***. The painful family relationships were interesting in this book, about a man who returns home after his father, who he blames for his brother's death years before, has a stroke. The resolution was way too neat, though.

110. The Devil, The Lovers and Me by Kimberlee Auerbach ***1/2. I read this because I enjoyed the author's edition of book notes at Largehearted Boy. It was better than I was expecting, still.

111. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby ****1/2. This might be my favourite Nick Hornby book, although it's not as funny as some of his others (although it still is funny in places). I recommended this to someone recently and realised I wanted to reread it, so I got it today, when I was stuck without a book for the gym. It's about a woman whose husband starts trying to put into practice all his (and her) liberal beliefs about helping the homeless and so on, rather than just talking about the problems and occasionally donating money. He becomes impossible to live with, but how can you complain about someone who is just trying to do good and help people, without seeming selfish? I like that it grapples with what it means to be a good person, without offering any easy answers.

scrabble dilemma

I've been playing a lot of Scrabble lately, mostly on facebook (and I would love to play with you!). I tried playing Scrabble online a couple of years ago, but I got too anxious playing with strangers because I kept worrying about taking too long to play or not playing well enough. It only took a few games of 5 minute Scrabble to be cured of taking an eternity to play my turn, as well as most of my anxiety about playing with strangers. Playing on facebook, with people I know, is mostly even less anxiety-provoking, but I did just have an awkward Scrabble situation.

This professor that I don't really know challenged me to a game. I get both blanks on my opening rack, but can't play them. I also have on my rack CCMIT, so I have to play off a C. He plays MOUSEY, with the U adjacent to the double letter scores. Clearly, the best play is CUM. But, do I really want to play CUM as my very first turn with a professor I don't even really know? I played CITE. MICE probably would have been better. What would you have done?

luckily, leaves are a renewable resource

I'm turning over yet another new one. I've started my star plan far more times than I've finished it (I really shouldn't have taken a break when I went home), but this time I really am going to do it. I changed the plan a bit to make that more likely, but I've also been going to bed earlier, which I think will help a lot.

Inspired by this post about completing things, I made a new set of lists out of my mostly abandoned GTD projects and I actually got through almost all of today's work-related tasks, even though I didn't feel like I was being very productive. I did finally email a professor to ask about a reagent I'm using, after putting that off for weeks. I'm hoping he will be like the professors in my program who said they're less likely to ignore or get annoyed by email from students than from other people. I still wasted a lot of time on this cool vocab testing site, but at least I was earning rice for hungry people while procrastinating.

I'm hoping to get more organised outside of lab as well. I signed up for NaBloPoMo again, because I really do want to blog more and I respond well to structure like that. So, this is a fairly lame starting post, but I do have more interesting things planned (plus I can always catch up on the memes I got tagged for and never got around to doing...).