Johari Window

Ooh, I want to be a lemming too!

Hat tip to Phantom; I've created a Johari Window. Go check it out, and help me be omphalo-contemplative!

Spread the word!

Annika could use our help. Here's why. Here's what's going on.



Click on the button (or here) for more information.

Arabic

Amira asked:

Did I know you're studying Arabic? Fusha or colloquial?

I'm just starting my second semester of Arabic. Fusha, but I had to use Google to check my guess about what "fusha" meant. :) I'm surprised I haven't come across that word before. Thanks for teaching me!

It probably hasn't come up on the blog before that I'm studying Arabic. I like learning new languages, and I figured that I'm much more likely to actually learn something about a difficult language like Arabic if I study it in class while I'm at the university. I'm extra-lucky, because this university has flat-rate tuition, so studying Arabic doesn't cost me any extra!

I'm just about to head off to class right now, as it happens. When I get back (or when I remember!) I'll write a quick post about what we're studying...

UPDATE: I keep trying to update this post with a list of what we're studying, and my computer keeps crashing. I'm putting this whole endeavor in time-out for a while, so I don't have to take a hammer to the laptop. :)

Getting better

Friday was, in some ways, a terrible day. I woke up in a bad mood, and since I had almost nothing planned, I never really reached "escape velocity" to get back into a decent frame of mind. So, on Friday night, I decided that I would make a Really Detailed Plan for Saturday. I made a list of things I wanted to get done, and about how long I thought they'd take -- everything from "work on homework" to "switch laundry" to "get up and dressed" -- and I assigned everything a time of day, and every time of day had something for me to be doing. I got up at 7, and only planned up until 4 PM (to allow flexibility and re-planning), so I got somewhat less done in the evening, but I'm amazed at everything I did do:

I did FIVE loads of laundry. (I live alone, so I'm amazed I could even accumulate that much laundry and still have clean clothes and towels...)
I rewrote my Arabic writing exercise, listened to the audio lesson, and did the comprehension questions.
I figured out all but 2.5 of my homework problems (I didn't write any up nicely, though).
I superglued the broken piece of my alarm clock back together.
I mended a hole in my blue shirt.
I cleaned off my desk(s) and put away one box of stuff.
I took out the kitchen and bathroom trash and cleaned the counters in those rooms.
I wrote & sent my rent and IRA checks.
I went grocery shopping.
I sent some planning e-mails and some e-mails to my boyfriend (these intersect).
I finished prepping a birthday present.
I knitted some.
I practiced piano for 40 minutes.
I baked cookie bars! Yum!
I re-budgeted my budget because I figured out I made an error in my riding lesson costs. :(

I also read a lot of the internet, but I mostly did that while I was doing other things, like cleaning or folding laundry.

I made a plan again today, but I didn't stick to it AT ALL. I think that's because it included too much homework time -- I was a little burned out from yesterday, and I really missed the internet-time, which doesn't mesh as well with doing math! So today was nothing like yesterday's whirlwind, but I did still get a fair amount done.

I'm hoping this plan keeps working on school days; in any event, it will at least be a good strategy for the occasional Power Day when I need to catch up on things.

On a somewhat related note, I spent a lot of my internet time this weekend looking at Steve Pavlina's personal development writing. It's definitely inspiring. I can't decide if it's the most life-outlook-changing thing I've read in a while, or just really good "productivity porn*"...

*don't worry, this link leads to a definition, not something obscene...

International De-Lurking Week

Oh dear, I've become a lurker on my own blog.



Fellow lurkers, unite! Leave a comment on this thread for International De-Lurking Week!

(thanks, Julie!)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Winter!

On the road again

This blog has been suffering terribly since I started writing in my actual paper journal again... Blame it on graduate school!

I'm all packed to go home again, although the appointed day and hour have yet to arrive. My apartment is an unredeemable mess -- well, probably a redeemable one, but not in the time I have before I leave. January will be a very housework-y month.

Boyfriend is out Christmas shopping. Soon he'll return, and we will head off to a fancy dinner and a Christmas concert in the city. Tomorrow morning, we'll have "Christmas morning" at his place, and he'll drop me off at the airport many hours early, to give him a chance to get home to the mountains before too late at night.

I can't believe it's only four days to Christmas. Will the years keep on getting shorter and shorter the older I get?

Merry almost-Christmas, everybody!

Eating habits

All of a sudden, when I want a snack -- particularly after dinner -- I'm as likely to want, say, a little bowl of Boyfriend's beef stew and a biscuit as I am to want a zillion cookies.

It's amazing what a little mindfulness, along with keeping the pressure off myself as much as I can (which isn't much), can do.

Or maybe it's that I keep reaching my absolute sugar consumption LIMIT earlier in the day, being surrounded with Christmas cookies. :)

But I like the mindfulness answer better!

Aw...

Both Boyfriend and I are nearing the end of a 24-hour take-home exam.

Boyfriend just knocked on the door of my office, entered, left half a dozen Christmas cookies and a cold bottle of water on my desk, and left without saying a word.

Self-education 2006

From Seasonal Soundings:

Now is the time to start thinking, planning, gathering, and preparing for your reading and self-education in 2006. You know, if you aim at nothing, you will hit it everytime.

January 1 will be here in, what?, 31 days!

I have been planning my reading for several years, and it has made a world of difference even though I'm never without a book in hand. A plan, a system---flipping around what Alexander Pope said, I say "Without a plan, you have a mighty maze."

We need a variety of selections.....
---for our hearts, some inspiration, some fluff, some brain candy;
---for our souls, some constancy, some daily reads;
---for our intellects, some meat.

Right on.

Some things on my list for January:

Daily Mass readings.

Rice's statistics textbook, because I need to learn a LOT of probability.

Stephenson's Quicksilver, because I'd like to eventually someday finish it.

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, ditto.

Fruits and Vegetables

Lately my body and mind have been dragging a lot. I have riding lessons on Sunday and Monday -- my major exercise for the week -- and by Wednesday I'm still not just sore but exhausted, dragging myself up the stairs on my way to class. My brain doesn't seem to be working quite right, either. Since "graduate student" is my main occupation right now, this is kind of a problem.

There are a lot of things I need to do to fix this: get more sleep, eat better, work more effectively, relax better. Right now I'm thinking about eating better. My eating habits right now are sort of bipolar. My meals are really pretty healthy -- whole grains, plenty of milk, and so on. On the other hand, I'm not always eating enough at meal time, and my snacks are not especially nutritious. I also don't eat nearly enough fruits and vegetables. The obvious solution would be to eat healthier snacks. The obstacle: at snack time I want sugar! And chocolate! There's nothing wrong with chocolate, but it's not a great nutritional stand-in for fruit. Peanut-butter toast often satisfies me when I think I want a donut or cookies, but I'm already having it for breakfast nearly every morning, and my diet's lacking in variety even more than it's lacking in veggies.

Finally, I've tried, but my warped tastebuds refuse to accept good, plain fruit as a complete snack. What's a girl to do?

Here are some ideas to remind myself:

• Salad at dinner
• Fruit salad for lunch or snacks
• More expensive fruit (peaches, berries...) might be worth it if it gets me eating fruit
• Frozen veggies to microwave with dinner
• Carrot sticks and something not too overwhelming to dip them in
• A supply of plastic cutlery for my office!

I'm starting to feel a little bit like I'm feeding a stubborn toddler.

Got any other good ideas?

Breakfast of champions

Tall Little Brother (I still can't believe he's a frat boy now) emerges from the basement bedroom just in time to grab some food and catch the end of the Macy's parade.

Mom: Ham sandwich and a beer? Breakfast of champions!

Hope you're all having a delightful time preparing for turkey dinner, or whatever floats your boat.

Home again

It's good to be home.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

I'm sorry.

Boyfriend, who checks this thing more regularly than I do, pointed out that I should at least say:

Hello, Internet... I am alive.

See? Boyfriend just took this picture today...



Those are pine needles, not leaves... Pine trees are deciduous??

Sorry if I worried anyone - I'm touched that someone noticed I was gone :)

Be back soon. Sooner than this time, anyway. And I'm quitting with the memes for a while. So depressing to find nothing but memes on my front page...

Updates? What updates?

You fit in with: Humanism Your ideals mostly resemble that of a Humanist. Although you do not have a lot of faith, you are devoted to making this world better, in the short time that you have to live. Humanists do not generally believe in an afterlife, and therefore, are committed to making the world a better place for themselves and future generations. 20% spiritual. 40% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Finally, an update....

I'm embarrassed to admit that, when I'm on the Internet, my attention span is SO short these days that I almost ran out of attention before I finished this post, but I'm glad I didn't let that stop me. I found it strangely moving, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes after "part one".

Quack

This is Julie's fault again...

You Are A: Duckling!

The cutest of the cute, these baby ducks are often spotted in the spring following closely behind their mother. As a duckling you will grow up quickly, becoming one of the adult ducks seen commonly in ponds and streams. Playful and timid, charming and vulnerable, ducklings are nature's very definition of innocence.

You were almost a: Duck or a Frog
You are least like a: Groundhog or a PuppyWhat Cute Animal Are You?

Great Blogroll Purge

A blogroll, a blogroll, burn it!

All right, that's it. Dy and her family have REALLY BIG NEWS, and I didn't find out about it until today because my stupid Blogrolling update notifier didn't notify me.

This might not be Blogrolling's fault -- it's entirely possible that I just didn't look at my blogroll during my update-notify time window -- but the fact remains that this tool is not working for me.

Furthermore, I'm spending WAY too much of every day looking at blogs, and WAY too little living intentionally and dealing with my (inevitable) woeful ignorance.

It's getting to be a problem.

I'm not taking a blogging fast or an internet fast or a blog-reading fast, though; I'd hate to cause pain to any of my fellow addicts. :)

Instead, I'm making a Great Purge of my blogroll. Sort of. I mean, I have vast affection for every one of you on the blogroll (and a great many who aren't), but it's just too much temptation, having all those titles there waiting to be clicked. On the other hand, I still believe in the Mystical Power of Linking Good Blogs. So the whole blogroll is still there -- but it's further down, and in a smaller font. There's a Special Abbreviated Blogroll at the top.

I don't want to step on any toes, so listen up, this is important... The blogs that are in the super-secret tiny blogroll are blogs I love just as much as all the others. But, for any number of reasons, it's not the best use of my time to check them compulsively. Some don't update daily. Some, I've found, I enjoy more when I can read a whole glut of recent entries all at once (as I've mentioned before, I like to treat some blogs a little more like novels). And so on.

Another mini-post

I guess my Gentle Readers will find out if this is one of those "you had to be there" things... But, I have to say, this sentence (at least in context) brought me joy and laughter far disproportinate to its length. :)

"Nu? What's with the brown challah?"

I what?

Unfortunately, this result isn't reproducible, since the Advertising Slogan Generator gives you a new random slogan everytime.

But, really and truly, the first slogan it gave me for Hypatia was this:

Hypatia Saves Your Soul.