24 minutes of blogging

I started my second semester yesterday, and I'm sitting here in my health services survey class with 24 minutes of time left on my battery. So here's 24 minutes of my thoughts!

My first semester ended on a really positive note. My grades were good, but most importantly, I really saw my ability to focus and get shit done. Honestly, when I started, that was my biggest worry. As a recalcitrant procrastinator when I was an undergraduate and even when I was taking grad classes in Arizona, I became pretty convinced getting anything done was always going to be a struggle. But in the middle of the semester, something changed. I realized I wanted to be here, and that this work was important to me. I also realized that the sky wasn't going to fall if my work wasn't perfect. Yup, that's right, I'm a perfectionist who procrastinates, imagine that.

This semester is looking okay so far. I'm excited for my regression class and for econ, and less so for the health services survey class. My politics seminar has a lot of potential, and I'm oddly excited for a presentation-based class. I'm going to make the world's most awesome PowerPoints. I'm also trying to get into a class on decision-making and risk simulation stuff, in my ongoing attempt to be 70% as cool as Nate Silver. I want to learn Monte Carlo simulation!

Kitties!

Sometimes you just need something to take you to your happy place:

Ah, Internets

Here is what has been distracting me today:


For those of you not familiar with (fluff)friends, it's like a tamagotchi for your Facebook profile. You can pet it and feed it and it can race with other people's fluffs. I'm sort of in love with my pet radish, who in turn has a pet tofu. I can almost understand the pain of the 7th grader in my gym class senior year (I was a teachers assistant in gym my senior year for reasons still not fully understood by me) who had her tamagotchi thrown over the fence by a very mean boy. The background picture and speech bubble are new as of today. Yup, I can have a politcal virtual radish if I want it.

I need to dig myself out of the long tail of the Internet and back into the stuff I have to do for tomorrow.

Great Obama Video

100th post!

I'm going to use this opportunity to let all you googlers know that I have no idea if Zach Braff has a beard or not, but this picture seems to indicate he does.

A glimpse into my wikibrain

The last seven wikipedia pages I have visited:

1. Juan Soler
2. Cataplexy
3. Burma-Shave
4. Frank Drake
5. Savasana
6. Abaya
7. Benazir Bhutto

Why 7? Because it's the most illustratively biased sample!

blogging from my iPod

is less than ideal. Does anyone know how to copy/paste on the iPod touch or iPhone? Is it possible to save images off the web? At least I'm getting better at the keyboard.

Yes we can!

I love the song in this video, "Fake Empire" by The National, but the video's pretty sweet too.

Wikipalin

This entry from Sarah Palin's Wikipedia talk page is just too funny not to share. Some dude watches a YouTube video where he decides Sarah Palin looks cross-eyed. He then creates an account on Wikipedia called "Esotropic Flautist" (she's playing the flute in the video) to discuss why her vision issues haven't been discussed in the mainstream media. The internet sure is changing the discourse...by making it stupid!

Oh no they didn't!

Oh, yes they did. The New York Times has an article posted comparing the mechanics of the current financial crisis to those that caused the Great Depression.

Just in case this post doesn't clarify what I've been doing lately, I've been reading a lot of the New York Times in between studying and watching episodes of Scrubs. I'm studying econ for a midterm on Thursday. Drawing pictures of demand curves seems especially quaint in the midst of what apparently may be the dawn of the new depression, but I suppose an understanding of microecon will help me with my macroecon?

As a side note, when I was home this summer, my mom kept telling me that I was "really intense." I never quite figured out what that meant, but it had something to do with always discussing really serious topics. Today as I rambled on the phone about the likely voter models used in polling, I couldn't help but giggle at the fact that I'm also the person she comes to when she has a serious question.

This election has me on the edge of my seat. Watching what the polls do in the next week and a half...it really could go either way! (Although I think Obama will outperform the polls due to on the ground organizing. It's an official prediction!)

Rich people discover buses

Apparently rich people have discovered buses, reports the New York Times in their hard hitting look at what happens when rich people stop taking planes and start taking buses. Did you know that sometimes buses don't run on time? But that while you are on them you can do other things? Also, they cost less than airplanes! And you can use your laptop THE WHOLE TIME!!!

Hi rich people, glad you've discovered something normal people have known forever. My name is Heather, and I took the bus before it was cool.

Haircut, and a comment on the lighting in cuban restaurants

The combination of lighting in a restaurant and using your computer's LCD as a flash leads to not a great picture, but here it is nonetheless:

Abbreviated blogging:

So here's what's going on, in digest format:

• this was a tough week. the newness of grad school gave way to the realization that this crap is hard, and there's a lot of it. my study buddies are a great help.
• i need to focus on sleep. when i get anxious, i sleep less, and when i haven't slept enough, it makes me get more anxious.
• i ran this week! god, it feels so so good while i'm doing it, and so achey afterwards.
• i've committed to working for the obama campaign until election day in any way i can, and am working on a cogent statement of why i want him to be our president.
• more than obama winning, i just want there to be an HONEST political discourse. so keep talking to each other, or start the conversation if you haven't yet.
• tomorrow i have a picnic and econ study group!
• i REALLY need to find the good bike light.

That's all for now, I really need to sleep. On the agenda for this week: research calls, Obama campaigning, plenty of studying, and even a first time RL meeting with a WoW friend!

grad school and ical

My first week (really, more like three and a half days) of grad school was crazy amazing and overwhelming at the same time. Today I actually sat down and made a chart of deadlines in iCal. The good news: I know when everything is due. The bad news: I have a TON of work to get done.

Coming back to school was a difficult decision for me. In all honesty, I wasn't the world's best student as an undergrad. I pulled off decent grades, but it always involved a lot of gnashing of teeth, a few all nighters, and occasionally getting trapped in a construction site and wiggling through an 8 inch gap in a fence. This time around, I am a lot more focused, but there's still a certain amount of self-doubt lingering about my ability to really hunker down and get work done. Never mind the self-doubt about my ability to consistently show up for an 8 am class two days a week. (Biostats, no less!)

All that said, I'm pretty excited about my classes. And the most reading intense classes are also the two areas I'm most interested in - policy and program evaluation. My research also looks like it's going to be challenging and fun. I'm still waiting to find out if I get an office or not, but in the meantime, the HMP student lounge appears to be sorely under-utilized, possibly because it doesn't have a coffee maker.

Anyway, I'm headed to bed now, although staying on a reasonable sleep schedule is already a challenging area. *sigh*

bicyclist = whore

So today I was riding my bike from the School of Public Health to downtown Ann Arbor. Stupidly, I used Google Maps to plot out my route, without consulting the Ann Arbor bicycle map. I chose to ride on Huron St., which as it turns out is the only east/west street that is NOT a recommended bike route, and is also under construction.

I am riding in the traffic lane, which I am very much allowed to do as a cyclist. I am following the "as close as is practicable" to the curb standard, and as far as I can tell, there is enough room for a car to safely pass me. In fact, at least two cars passed me in the construction zone. Then a car pulls up behind me, and I hear yelling. They repeatedly curse at me and call me a whore, yell at me that there is no bike lane and scream that I should be riding on the sidewalk. I figure there's no way someone is intimidating me off the road, but they keep at it for six or seven blocks. Finally, when I see a safe curb cut at an intersection, I ride up onto the sidewalk. They call me a whore again and speed past.

It bears noting that I am a VERY experienced bicyclist, and not easily intimidated. I have ridden thousands of miles, been cat called, been buzzed by trucks and SUVs at high speed, ridden on the FREEWAY, and had things thrown at me. None of them have ever left me as rattled as this encounter did. I was honestly afraid they might try to harm me if I didn't get off the road.

As it turns out, Michigan doesn't actually have a safe passing law for a car overtaking a bicyclist. Arizona's three foot law and the high visibility of cycling seems to have created an atmosphere where everyone implicitly knows that bicycles belong on the road. Here in Ann Arbor, the city actually occasionally reroutes bicycle traffic onto sidewalks. I think sidewalk riding is SO dangerous for both pedestrians and cyclists, that I have entirely ignored those signs. The sidewalks they are routed onto are cracked, have dangerous grades, and apparently are not maintained in winter. This is what passes for a bike path here?

First Day of School!

Today was my official first day of school. It began with me waking up at 6:20 am when it was still dark out. Apparently it gets light late when you live on the western edge of your time zone. I had, I kid you not, programmed my coffeemaker the night before and laid out my clothes before bed. So I woke up this morning, put on my clothes, drank some coffee while I threw breakfast together, and put some coffee in my thermos for later. At this point, I am running about a minute late. It's 7:11. My bus comes at 7:14 and is about two blocks away. So I grab my bike and hop on, ride to the bus, and make it with time to spare.

I load my bike up on to the front rack, get on the bus, and happily settle into listening to NPR. I get off the bus and go into class, only to discover that apparently in Michigan, classes start 10 minutes after the actual starting time to allow people time to get to class. It is at this point I open my bag and notice there is a bike lock in there. "Hmmm...that's curious...OH CRAP!"

Yes, I left my bike on the front rack on the bus. Luckily I have AATA's phone number programmed into my phone. I give them a call, describe the bike and the bus I was on, and they confirm it's at the Blake Transit Center. I tell them I can come by later in the day to pick it up.

I dash back into Biostats before anything has really happened. Biostats is uneventful. I'm taking the slightly more advanced class, which hopefully will keep me interested in the material. It looks like the first third or so will be review, which I need badly. SPSS is the statistical software package. Not my favorite, but probably won't kill me.

Next I go fill out my employment paperwork and find out where exactly my financial aid money is (answer: no one knows). I grab another coffee and head back into class.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have the unfortunate schedule of 11:30 to 2:30 straight. First Econ, which terrifies me. We talk about indifference curves. I felt pretty indifferent. Then my Health Services System class. It's the class that collects tiny details about health services! I'm SO excited.

Once that was over, I went and picked up my bike. I got thai at "No Thai", whose incomprehensible naming story can be found here, and did some shopping at the food co-op in Kerrytown. Headed home on the bus, watching my new secret shame, "The Hills".

Overall, a good first day. I am still totally wiped out every day by 3:30 or so, but I think it will get better. I'm just trying to balance getting stuff done with getting enough rest to stay calm and relaxed. Time will tell how well I'm doing.

Olympics for Insomniacs

Due to a four hour mid-day nap today, I am sitting here wide awake at 4:30 am, watching coverage of the mens 50k racewalk on USA. It is hilarious. First, I have learned that racewalking is a "highly technical sport" and therefore we should expect China to excel at it, much like gymnastics and diving. Second, for those of you who don't readily convert kilometers to miles in your head, that's 31 miles of racewaking, which as far as I can tell, consists of getting as close to running as possible without getting disqualified. Finally, racewalking is considered a track and field event, so the D list commentators had the opportunity to comment AGAIN on how both the mens and womens 4x100 relay teams dropped the baton. As if we hadn't heard about that yet.

On an unrelated note, apparently 5 am is not the best time to deal with Bank of America customer service about them repeatedly fucking up your credit card billing for six months in a row. By the end, I was given another phone number I can call at 8 am to "help me understand my products and services better." Riiiiight. Me not understanding is the problem.

Ann Arbor!

I'm finally here AND in my new place AND have internet access. This morning I picked up all my stuff from the post office. I walked up to the counter and said "I'm picking up A LOT of general delivery" and the woman at the counter said "Oh, are you the one with ALL those parcels?" Apparently my stuff is well known among the fine folks at the main Ann Arbor post office. I had hired a guy with a truck, Eric, to actually move my stuff from post office to my second floor bedroom, so all I had to do was watch and direct and try to stay out of the way.

Then Dave and I went for a gourmet lunch of McNuggets, then to Target for the usual move in stuff (hangers, a floor lamp, pillows, a fan that immediately broke when I plugged it in) and Trader Joes for my food basics. All that is good, because I am a little overwhelmed by settling in, and having food and some basic stuff is making it easier.

My biggest thing about Ann Arbor so far is that I have to figure out transportation. And get furniture. Those two things are loosely related, due to me not having a way to actually pick up any furniture. And until I have at least a little furniture, there's not much point in unpacking, other than to laugh at how poorly I packed.

Oh, and I need a coffee maker. Someone should try to talk me out of buying one of these.

So much to say!

I have a ton from the trip I want to write about, but I am SO exhausted. I fly to Ann Arbor tomorrow (well today according to the date stamp on this post), get my stuff on Saturday (dear God, I hope my stuff is at the A2 post office), and should have a "real" computer set up by Sunday or Monday.

Overall, the road trip was a TON of fun. Carolyn and I pretty much laughed the whole way across the country, although I'm going to guess the majority of our stories are going to be of the "had to be there" variety. I coined the phrase "giggle spiral" to describe the phenomenon of uncontrollable contagious giggling that seemed to afflict us for a good portion of Iowa all the way west.

Sometime yesterday the reality of everything I have to get done before school starts began to set in, but it's a bit of a "one day at a time" thing right now. Next step: actually get to Ann Arbor.

George

We met George at a produce stand in Iowa, and he was so dynamic, we decided to take him with us.