Summer Vacation

Most of my blogroll's still on vacation. Can't blame them. Can't think of anything much to blog myself, even though I've been doing all sorts of interesting things. Here, go look at pretty pictures.

OK, maybe I should take up running...

writingandliving on life after [starting] running:

I was contemplating these things last night. What gives? Why the new and improved attitude? What's different about me?

"Maybe," I thought, "it's the running." I decided to ask Theodore:

Me: Honey? Do I seem different to you since I've started running?

Theodore: Oh, yeah. I've noticed a big difference. You're more cheerful, you have more energy, your moods are better, you're happier, more patient...

While I'm pleased that the running seems to have had positive results, it would have been nice if he could have at least PRETENDED to have to think about it.

Sheesh.

Sarah on life after [starting] running:

Oh, and another thing: teach yourself to do something difficult. Something you believe is nearly impossible like, say, running. Because when you do it you'll realise that you're so damn amazing you can do anything. Even walk away from the computer. You'll even have the energy to do it.

Maybe I should get in on this... But, for heaven's sake, do you people have to be good examples in [almost] August?

...

Too many of the people on my blogroll have gone a week, or two weeks, or, in Alaska's case, two whole days without making new entries. Do you people think it's summer and you get to have vacation and personal time? Fine then, if you won't blog, I'll blog. :)

I've had an exciting three weeks on the other side of the country. We've been working hard and playing hard and I'm exhausted now so I'm not sure what to blog about.

Still trying to get control of my nasty temper. Especially when I'm tired (which I mostly have been these whole three weeks), it's easy for me to get annoyed with myself, and once I'm angry I feel like shouting at everyone. Which mostly means shouting at Boyfriend since he's there most often. He continues to outdo himself, though, in being patient and kind to me, while also pointing out that I'm really being kind of horrible.

Heading home early tomorrow morning, via my real hometown, where I will get to ooh and aah over my hordes of baby cousins -- my mother's the oldest of eight kids, and everyone's coming back to town for my grandfather's 75th birthday. I'm looking forward to the relaxation, and to seeing one of my favorite aunts, who doesn't have time to come home very often. And the babies. Ooh, babies!

(I'm allowed to be all girly... I spent the last three weeks surrounded by mathematicians!)

Happy almost-August, everyone.

You go, girl.

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I can hardly not link to it...

Cool.

I like this.

Delegar does seem awfully angry, but then, a lot of angry people have awfully good reasons. Anyway, I like this:

(In Jewish tradition -- at least the Jewish tradition I favor -- I realize Dennis Prager and his conservative ilk are pushing a different meme -- God created man to fight back: we were put here to argue with him, not submit to him. In Jewish tradition, that, among other things, is the lesson of Sodom. Not kill the gays, as the Fundavangelicals like to read it, but argue with God when he's about to do something you think is wrong.)

Food

"[I think a reasonable policy is] you shouldn't eat anything that benefits you more if you don't eat it than if you do eat it." -- Advisor

"Have you finished those plots for me? Because I'm hungry." -- Advisor, to Boyfriend

"And you saw that I ordered The Slab. It's not like you're too much for me." -- Advisor, to Skinny Boyfriend

Bits and pieces

Not only was I too tired-of-brain to blog yesterday, I was apparently too tired to actually post the entry I cobbled together from across the web. So here it is now. Enjoy!

Bitch, Ph.D. has a tremendous and insightful post on nice guys and bitchy women.

"Getting students to do great work is the easy part. Getting them to write it up is the hard part." --Organizer Person
"Well said" -- Advisor

Two finds from this week's Christian Carnival:

Jami has a nice meditation on why parents should let children help which seems to be relevant to the advisor-student relationship as well as the parent-child relationship. Anyway, I appreciate my advisor's "letting me help" in this way; I'm old enough now to know that it's sort of a fiction, but it's a useful fiction.

Rolling Stone has an interesting article on "The Young and the Sexless". The author seems bemused, but makes a rather successful effort to be fair and understanding. Christian Carnival also links to Jeremy's commentary on the article, which links to Jeremy Lott's commentary on the article.

And, from The Yarn Harlot's post on beginning spinning, some thoughts that apply to beginnings in general:

Cassie wrote about the new spinners urge to save good stuff for later, when you are a better spinner, and how she didn't really get behind that theory a whole lot. I couldn't agree more.

While (clearly) I have no issues with hoarding lovely fibres (and clearly, neither does Cassie) until their day comes, I also think that there is a great deal to be said for learning to spin with the best materials you can afford.
Nobody needs to be hindered by things that are barely usable, and nobody needs to feel that they are a crappy spinner (or just more crappy than they actually are, since we all suck in the beginning and it is only the length of time that we are sucking for that is really variable among learners). Good fibre makes good yarn.

Good things inspire you. Good things get you to try harder. Good fibre actually helps you spin. Beautiful fibre gives you something to live up to.

Crap fibre depresses you, frustrates you and encourages you to give up and (in the less determined) could cause a fledgling spinner to wander off entirely, thinking that they obviously aren't meant for this...given that they keep turning out crap yarn. Even the best spinner is going to end up with crap yarn if you start with crap fibre, except at least they are going to know why they apparently suck so hard.

I'm a Ravenclaw!

I'm a Ravenclaw!

All about the money?

Darn it. I unplugged my laptop by accident and lost a whole post. :(

Basically it was a rant about money matters. I'm actually fairly lucky, money-wise. For a graduate student, I'm well-paid. I have a small supplemental fellowship that allows me to have a one-bedroom apartment to myself in a nice area of town. I have a summer job. Because I went to a state school, I was able to patch together a full-ride set of scholarships for myself, so the college fund my kind parents set up for me many years ago is still untouched. Those same kind parents are still helping me with smaller financial matters to this day.

But this afternoon I was feeling very bitter, in relative terms, about my cash flow. Most of my friends are paid more than me; some are paid much more. Boyfriend, this fall, will be going to grad school full time, with no teaching or research-assistant duties for the first year -- and he'll be collecting his full salary, which is between two and three times my annual total from school-year and summer work. My summer job, which normally pays for summer housing, and adds a per diem for employees who have completed at least a bachelor's degree, isn't giving me either of these benefits, because my having a job at all this summer is a bit of a special favor; taking my current rent as The One True Rent, this amounts to at least a 40% pay cut.

Adding to my own feeling of monetary suffocation is my fanatical insistence on saving for my retirement. In my mind, the benefits of compound interest are too great to ignore, and the possibility of being forced to scrimp and save when I'm older (and perhaps have more people than just myself to pay for) frightens me much more than the prospect of more-or-less choosing to be frugal now. Besides, I'm very seriously considering staying home with my children when, someday off in the future, I have them, and that will effectively remove me from the money-making-retirement-saving pool. I have to get a head start now in order to keep options like that open for the future.

I'm not exactly starving on the streets; I have a nice apartment, I eat good food, and I can pay for weekly riding lessons and the occasional book (many more books if I hadn't signed up for the riding lessons!). I have enough money to give some to good causes, although I'm a bit paranoid about figuring out who, exactly, my money is going to, and so I seldom end up giving as much as I plan to. I have reinstated a regular savings program -- my summer paycheck is higher than my school-year paycheck, so I'm saving the difference, plus an extra $50 or so just to get me in the habit of living on that little bit less. Automated savings programs are a really good idea. And, as an extra bonus, my advisor decided that I couldn't be an effective grad student if my dying laptop battery kept me tethered to the wall, so he bought me a new battery out of one of his grants!

So why am I so annoyed at Boyfriend and at our other friends for having more money than me, and for being able to think (for instance) that $8.50 for a movie is a reasonable expense and not highway robbery? Certainly I'm spoiled; I miss being on my parents' dime, when a laptop battery was a little thing. My mother still thinks I'd be better off living partly out of my savings instead of keeping such a tight budget. Boyfriend suggests that I journal, or something, and try to think of solutions instead of just biting his head off whenever I'm reminded (as I was today) that eeeeeverybody makes more money than I do.

This money stuff keeps getting all tied up with feminism (it definitely seems not to be sexism, so why am I making less than my friends, who are mostly boys? is it a coincidence that one of my few[er] lower-paid friends is also female? how do I pay my own way on dates, and still do what Boyfriend wants to do, when he's making so much more than me?) and with figuring out my Life Path and One True Career (should I even be caring about the money stuff? would I still do what i'm doing if it didn't pay? how do I bring up money things and not look like I'm just in it for the cash? and how on earth do I decide about this stay-at-home-mom thing, and shouldn't I start planning now so I have all the options?) and so on.

Anyone got any Sage Advice?

:)

Boyfriend and I went to the beach with his college friends today. We ran around in the sand, and his friends tried to drown him, and we played with a waterlogged foam frisbee, and Boyfriend body-surfed far more than was probably good for him ("I hab salt wadder id my BRAIN"), and we built an elaborately defended sandcastle and watched the tide erode it away. And tonight, after he took his sand-filled contacts out, when I was singing the same song for a thousandth time, he dug through his iPod and played me Mozart to get the song out of my head. I'm still listening to Mozart piano sonatas and blogging away happily. That boy, he's a good one.

(Congrats to Alaska and Chris, who just celebrated their tenth-anniversary-re-wedding-hoopedoop!)

On educating women (etc)

A quote I want to copy down for myself (cribbed directly from got me a college girl):

"Women have been able by nature to be exceptional, but have chosen lesser goals. For some women are concerned with parting their hair correctly, adorning themselves with lovely dresses, or decorating their fingers with pearls or other gems. Others delight in mouthing carefully composed phrases, indulging in dancing, or managing spoiled puppies. Still others wish to gaze at lavish banquet tables, to rest in sleep, or standing in mirrors, to smear their lovely faces. But those in whom a deeper integrity yearns for virtue, restrain from the start their youthful souls, reflect on higher things, harden the body with sobriety and trials, and crub their tongues, open their ears, compose their thoughts in wakeful hours, their minds in contemplation, to letters bonded to righteousness. For knowledge is not given as a gift, but [is gained] with diligence. The free mind, not shirking effort, always soars zealously toward the good, and the desire to know grows ever more wide and deep. It is because of no special holiness, therefore, that we [women] are rewarded by God the Giver with the gift of exceptional talent. Nature has generously lavished its gifts upon all people, opening to all the doors of choice through which reason sends envoys to the will, from which they learn to convey its desires. The will must choose to exercise the gift of reason.

"[But] where we [women] should be forceful we are [too often] devious; where we should be confident we are insecure. [Even worse], we are content with our condition."

Laura Cereta, 1488

Update: I also want to re-read this piece on the simple life when I'm more awake...

London Times

My brain's already gone to sleep, it seems; I can't seem to post coherently about today's news from London. I seldom have time to watch the TV news, so tonight was the first time I heard that London will be hosting the 2012 Olympics. It was also the first I heard of the rush-hour bombings there.

Julie at Happy Catholic has a nice collection of news and commentary on the bombings (can't say I agree with all the commentary, but that's about par for the course -- I'm feisty).

During my tube rides in London this spring, I saw dozens of "Back the Bid" posters showing gymnats pommel-horsing downtown buildings and other pleasant silliness. Where are they now? Have they already been taken down, since the "bid" is over? Have they been distributed as souvenirs to those who helped back the bid? Or have they been torn or blackened by the subway bombs?

They're only posters, and they don't matter anywhere near as much as the people involved. They're just what I remember -- part of an embarrassing, but very human, instinct to make the tragedy something that impacts me directly. Why do we do this? Is it an attempt to make ourselves more important, to get some of the attention? Or is it a blessing, an instinct that points us in the direction of compassion when a tragedy seems too big and far away for us to remember that there are real people involved?

The Pollyanna Game

Yes, Pollyanna is a bit dorky, but I suspect that it would do me good to try playing the Pollyanna game, as Ann at Holy Experience is doing.

"Oh, yes; the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about--no matter what 'twas," rejoined Pollyanna.

Gas-card blues

Just back from vacation at home. Someone jimmied my car, threw everything around inside, and stole the credit card I use for gas.

Now, I'm lucky in many ways:

• I have a credit card specifically for gas -- and my parents take care of it. This means that
  • I don't have to pay for gas, and
  • I don't have to take care of reporting the credit card stolen, since I'm not the actual cardholder.
• The car was parked at Boyfriend's house, and another friend was with us when we got back, so
  • I had lots of moral support, and
  • I didn't have to call the police (because Boyfriend took care of it, not because Boyfriend lives in a shack where there are no police patrolling...)
• Although my car is a mess, because I have lots of junk in there and ALL of it was thrown around, it seems that nothing was stolen except the credit card. This is lucky because
  • nothing's gone, and
  • I'm not really sure how I'd figure out exactly what was gone anyway...

So, yeah. I'm annoyed that someone touched my stuff, especially since they had to break into my car to do it, but basically I'm pretty lucky.

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