Kitchener queen

I bought a crappy car. It's a 1993 Honda Civic del sol with a lot of rust (I'm showing you her good side) and a LOT of miles. But the engine seems solid, and it's awfully fun to drive--reminds me of my Porsche. I hope it makes it to the summer months when I can actually see how it handles!

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I also finally finished up the baby gifts for one friend, only a couple weeks after the birth! I'm happy to report that a miracle did occur during blocking and I love how the blanket turned out!!



And a closeup of the lace pattern (not the true color):



And the bonnet and sweater pair:

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I also finally dug my bog jacket back out. I've been really stalled out on this--first I spun my wheels for a couple of months trying to figure out how to make the front upper chest parts match, and in the end I couldn't figure it out. So, they'll have different color stripes.



Then, I came to the point where I had to Kitchener stitch together the underside of the arm and where the single piece that came up over the back/shoulder/down the chest meets up with the flap that was liberated from the front. I'm aware that this makes no sense without having knit the pattern. Suffice to say, I had to graft 181 stitches!!! It's a good thing I like doing Kitchener! But I had stalled out here as well because I'd never grafted garter stitch and didn't know how they needed to be arranged and whenever I was ready to knit I was always to tired to puzzle it out. Yesterday TNT had a "marathon" of the show Bones, so I got out my books and my sweater and I went at it. Took me 5 hours, but it's done--it's the bottom red stripe in this picture:

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And it turns out my cat turned into a nip-head while I was gone. She just loves rolling around on this cardboard scratcher when I put some catnip on it. She rolls so hard she tips it over, then looks around with that "whaaaaa?" look, then turns around to check out the other side of the cardboard. It's good to have her back!!

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All in all, life is good.

Simple pleasures

One of the joys of being home is being able to cook my favorite foods:


A grilled cheese sandwich made with Tillamook sharp cheddar and Bob's Red Mill gluten free bread.



A simple tostada.

I could make these in Switzerland, but they were both a huge hassle, requiring several extra shopping trips across town to assemble all the ingredients or their closest Swiss imitator. It's nice to be able to get everything I need at my local grocery store and cook it in my enormous cast iron skillet on a gas stove.

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Based on the robocalls to my new phone number (when did robocalls get invented?? I don't remember them at all), the number wasn't out of service for long enough. The previous owner of this number was apparently a diabetic who owned both a car and a house and also had a huge amount of unsecured debt that needs consolidating. It's like reconstructing someone's life from their garbage or grocery list!

A few knitted things

OK, but first, to my relief:


I am now the proud owner of a US driver's license!! My last one, from New Hampshire, had expired in January after a rather confusing go-round about what, exactly, "renew by mail" means. It does not mean "if you go abroad, and are in some weird limbo with no US address, and you need to renew your license and this here one is the last one you had, so we'll renew it by mail." Instead it means, "we'll take your $50, send you a 6 month temporary license with no explanation that in order to get the 4 year version you have to provide proof of address in New Hampshire." It turns out that as long as my US license expired within the past 12 months, I had to take only the normal knowledge test and not the road test! I can just imagine trying to pass the road test after 20 years of bad driving habits.....

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I have been knitting a bit, although far less than I imagined when I planned a few months of "retirement" for myself while getting settled back into the US. I have several pregnant friends, so I'm working on some baby things. Here is an unfinished (needs the edging) and unblocked (obviously) sweater (from this pattern):



And the unfinished (needs edging and sewing up the back) and unblocked hat (same pattern):


And a baby blanket (Fiber Trends Estonian Lullaby)

I'm not so excited about the yarn (Reynolds' Hopscotch). I was really focused on finding a soft, washable, apple green, and somehow totally missed the fact that it was thick-thin, which I think makes the blanket way too busy with the lace as well, although you can't really see either (lace/yarn) in this photo. I kept knitting a bit and then putting it aside because of that, but I don't know what else to do with the yarn (which looks like some other baby effluvia...) and I don't really want to go buy even more yarn and start over. I'm deluding myself into thinking that once it's blocked it will magically become wonderful. ha ha. We all know what a great blocker I am...

And I guess I might as well show you my new couch, since it will be the background to all my knitting shots! It's leather. Kind of. It's the "Webster" sofa from JC Penneys, and it's made of "bonded leather", which is like the leather dust that's swept up from the factory floor and chemical'd into some kind of fabric. But it has 8 way hand tied springs, which are apparently the ultimate in couch technology, and it was on sale from $1000 to $400. Failing economy: score one for Andrea. I was really stoked to find a spring couch, since my $1000 foam couch from IKEA in Switzerland was already pretty badly worn after only 3 years.

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My retirement has been quite as leisurely as I'd been hoping. It takes a lot of time (and money) to run around buying cheap crap at Target to furnish a whole apartment! I'm pretty well settled in, now, and very happy in my new place. It's the quietest place I've ever lived. I'm on the steep part of the learning curve, though, and it's a bit overwhelming to have 100% new appliances and living space, so I haven't quite got all the kinks worked out of the system. I keep burning my food because my (coveted) gas stove reheats things in about 4 minutes--I guess I got used to my stove in Zurich which took about 30 minutes to heat up, so I'd put on a pan and then go off and do something else! I also got really annoyed one day that I kept having to walk back and forth from the counter to the fridge (my new kitchen is kind of long and skinny) and then I had to stop and laugh when I realized that my "problem" was that my kitchen was actually big enough to walk around in.

My old boss in Switzerland keeps adding little things to my to-do list. It's really hard to "quit" an academic job because the "lifetime" of projects is 1-2 years, so I think it's going to have its hooks in me for a while yet! The idea when I left was that I would get paid for October even though I moved back at the end of September. That way there would be a month's worth of work "in the bank" for when the reviews come back on my last paper (submitted in September). But there are lots of other little projects I was involved in which keep cropping up, so I've put in about 2 weeks worth of work and haven't even gotten the reviews back yet! Hopefully they'll turn out to be minor when they do show, but we'll see.

Happy happy joy joy

It's good to be home:



I'd ripped all my cds to my laptop before I moved to Switzerland and despite 3 years of valiant effort, I really never got used to the various cd-less technologies for playing music. I like my ipod when I'm out and about, but when I'm at home I really just want to pop 5 discs in the changer and listen to them on a stereo. So I'm very happy to be reunited with all my cds! Now, if I could only make a dent on the 100+ item wishlist I have going at Amazon..... And yes, that's some vintage VHS Spinal Tap in the corner!

I've been pretty busy the past few weeks! I rented an apartment in St. Paul. It's an enormous one bedroom with some nice older touches such as these leaded glass (?) windows in the dining room (the walls are actually white but I turned off the flash to try and catch the wall sconces):





and the exposed woodwork in both the living room and dining room:


I've spent a sickening amount of money getting it set up. It's funny, I don't mind throwing down a c-note for some books, but when I have to drop $500 at Target on "cheap plastic crap", I get all anxious about spending so much money. The couch gets delivered next week and I should be able to pick up my mattress tomorrow or next week and then I'll be all set to move in!

I'm knitting on some baby's things--pictures soon!

Some yarn and things

It's been a busy 6 weeks since I got home. Apparently once I'm no longer being paid to sit at a computer all day, I really don't want to sit at one all day! I haven't been up to much since I got back. I spent a few weeks hanging out at my mom's place in Oregon, seeing old friends there and up in Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Then I took Amtrak out to Minneapolis and have been chilling at my dad's place for the past couple weeks. I wasn't sure how quickly I'd start looking for my own apartment, but it turned out to be very quick--guess I've lived alone too long to be spending much time in the spare bedroom at home! So I've already rented an apartment in St. Paul--I got approved on Friday and hope to sign the lease ASAP so I can go buy some more cheap crap at IKEA! My new place seems enormous (1 bedroom with a separate living room and dining room!) and cheap ($700) and incredibly quiet (residential street!). I'm just eager to stop living out of a suitcase.

I had a good time in Tallinn, Estonia right before I headed back to the States. My friend and I stayed right in the old town and had a nice leisurely vacation--the kind where you sightsee about 3 hours a day and spend the rest of it lounging in coffee shops or the hotel room. It was exactly what I needed after all the stress of arranging the move and everything! I was on a mission to buy some pre-label Kauni/Evila yarn and managed to hit the motherlode. I don't have pictures of all of it (can't seem to download to my new computer and am too lazy to set the old one back up just now). I bought about 8 pounds--here is some of it drying in my mom's back yard:



There is enough of each colorway for a sweater (I hope!) and there is another colorway not shown (sort of an orangey-fall scheme) along with some undyed browns I bought to stretch out the yardage in case I run short.

I've been knitting on my bog jacket out of this same yarn but haven't been making any progress since I got to Minneapolis. My cat not only remembered me immediately (yay!) but has also expressed her infinite love of nice scratchy wool--she will not leave the sweater, so it's turned into a temporary cat bed! I guess I'll be knitting her a blanket out of one of the colorways so I can have my sweater back!!!

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I'm incredibly glad to be home and glad the economic apocalypse has calmed down a bit! I've been guzzling root beer like there's no tomorrow and sampling the gluten free goodies on offer and just generally being happy. The saddest thing about leaving Switzerland was that I really wasn't sad to leave at all, which says a lot!

I'm pathetically far behind on my blog reading--I imagine I'll get caught up and actually post more here once I have an actual desk set up in my new place! For now, just picture me curled up happily next to my cat who is curled up in cat-nirvana on some scratchy Estonian wool!

The eagle has landed

Ugh.

I just arrived in Tallinn, Estonia. My flights here didn't go so well. I had to go through security in Hamburg and they decided to swab my laptop (too many stickers on it?). It came back positive for "TNT". So did the second try. I spent the next 40 minutes standing there trying not to cry while surrounded by German policemen while we all waited for a manager to come clean the machine. After cleaning, they ran some more swabs which came out negative and eventually I was let go, with my laptop!

Note to self..... First stop tomorrow will be to buy an external drive to back this thing up--I'm really bad about keeping on top of that stuff.

While I was searching for more info on false positives, I came across false positives for semen--home infidelity tests! Sad and creepy all rolled into one!

Apparently, cleaning fluids can often be confused for TNT on these airport machines. My apartment was just professionally cleaned, so that's certainly a possibility. The real question, however, is what do I now use to clean my laptop before the next flight. I want to get rid of the old, bad residue, but I don't want to just introduce new, bad residue!! Anyone got any great cleaning tips? Keep in mind I don't speak Estonian!!!!

Yay!!

I just got word that I'm officially accepted in the teaching certification program for spring term! Yay! And tonight I finished taping up all my boxes. I seem to be bringing home a cubic meter---mostly books and yarn, of course. Next week I'm off to Tallinn, Estonia for a little sightseeing. This is the home of the yarn company that makes Evilla and Kauni: oh yes, there will be some buying!

Heh

I just came across this amusing fashion error!

I've been laying low--the air pollution has been in the "illegal" range for a week and my lungs feel like they are on fire. Not so fun. This happens every summer in Zurich and every year I forget and wonder why my asthma is flaring up (causing me to sleep poorly, making me grouchy. Oy!)

Whose dumb idea was this, anyway?

I've lived at 21 different addresses in my life (a couple of them more than once), ranging from a few months to a decade. And I've had 21 jobs at 17 different companies, ranging from a few weeks (temp work) to 3 years. I have a love-hate relationship with moving. I hate the hassle of it, and part of me hates the change (change is bad! love my routine!) but another part of me loves the change (new things to explore! get away from the people who bugged me at the last place! run away from your problems--if you run fast enough they can't catch you, right?). "Doing a geographical" is a habit I'm trying to break, because I've realized that I tend to bring myself and all my baggage (emotional and otherwise) with me, and I can also see the, well, mayhem is a bit strong of a word, but the damage it's done. I don't have a good support system set up, and I struggle with long term "relationships" with other people when I remain in the same city as them (and by relationships, I mean all kinds--coworkers, neighbors, friends, romantic types, etc). Plus actually, physically moving is so tiresome for us booklover types!

I'd honestly like to settle down and be a part of a community. In fact, I came to this realization some years ago, and my response was ... to move! Because of course, the community I was in wasn't the one I wanted to build roots in. And so, I arrived in Switzerland with that mindset, so I pretty badly was hoping I would love it (and fall in love with someone who could ease the work permit situation!) and expected I might settle down here. As I've blogged before (a, b, c, d), things didn't go as planned. And so I face another huge upheaval, fully cognizant that moving will not solve my problems, yet knowing I have to move to begin solving my problems. Well, I don't have to, but staying here just out of stubbornness (moving isn't the solution, so I better stay just to not-move) is a pretty bad reason to stay when I have literally no other reasons to stay (tramlove, sadly enough, is not enough to tip the balance). Argh! How do I get myself into these situations? Whose dumb idea was this, anyway?

Some big transitions in my life:

• Age 7: parents getting divorced
  

  No, no, no starting this far back would make this a book. We'll move along. Anyway, insert the standard story here (one promiscuous sister, one goody two-shoes, all survive and grow up, eventually).

  
  
• Age 25: ending first big adult relationship. Lived with an awesome guy for 7 years (all of college and a few years after).
  

  Whoa, long story. Most of us have been here. My transition involved exceptional quantities of alcohol, more than enough for a lifetime. Definitely (to misquote Dickens) it was the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst thing that ever happened to me. The 'ship needed to end, as we'd grown apart, and it ending led me to directions and opportunities I'd never have had otherwise, but boy hardy the transition was tough. Hadn't realized how much my identity had been wrapped up in the "us" that was no longer.

  
  
• leaving south pole
  

  Going to south pole was fun. Dream come true, lots of self-pinching to see if it was real (really, though, the constant frostnip should have obviated the need for the pinching!). Leaving was tough. I'd lost the majority of my social skills (whaaaa? indoor snot rockets are considered rude? and my favorite thing to say was "noted" in this really dismissive tone of voice. That came from the weird habit people develop when being cooped up too long with each other with nothing to do: coming up to you and saying something either totally obvious or totally irrelevant. Like if I am eating dinner and someone comes up and says "you are eating dinner" or "you should eat the peas first, not the hamburger". I mean, WTF are you supposed to say to that? At first I'd whip out my little "green brain" (notebook we all carried everywhere to combat the severe memory loss we all developed) and my pen and pretend to write it down, saying "your input has been noted." Eventually that got shortened to a dismissive "noted".), and emotionally I was just shattered. I had had some high expectations about how my friendships would evolve once we left the station. People pretty much went their own way and I was "left" all alone and was incredibly bitter about it and felt very "abandoned". I now see this was a slight bit of distorted perceiving/thinking on my part, but that insight took several years to coalesce. I might add that I was a very bitter and unhappy person by the end of winter, so I'm not surprised (in retrospect) that nobody really wanted to be around me!
  
  I traveled the world for a couple months grudgingly and resentfully--we basically got a free round-the-world ticket (15 stops in unlimited countries), so everyone felt "obliged" to make a big world tour, but most of us were emotionally too wrecked to enjoy it. I spent two months circling New Zealand, basically dragging from hostel to hostel and spending a large portion of my time crying in my bed. I didn't speak to anyone, and I didn't laugh for about 4 months after I left (if you know me in person, you know that I laugh all the time).
  
  I came home, lived with my parents, and took up meditation, although at one point my dad said "if you get any 'calmer' you'll be dead!" because I was nearly catatonic, emotionally. It was weird, because I was clearly broken somehow and had little emotional affect, but I was working full time at the video store AND revising and defending my master's thesis, so I'm hard-pressed to call it depression (since it had no effect on my productivity, sleep, appetite or sex drive, nor did it cause the various kinds of bad thoughts that normally signify depression). I just simply had no idea who I was, and I mean that in the most literal sense. I was just broken.
  
  I didn't know what was important to me, or what I liked to do, or what kind of people I liked, or if I could trust my own take on events. A lot of this came from having been deeply invested in some perceptions of life/situations at pole that turned out to be different than I expected, leading me to no longer trust that I knew what I thought I knew, about pole or anything at all, actually. One example was about role in station life. I had thought I was a "good comrade"--I was funny, excellent at hanging out (seriously, this is a legitimate skill needed in order to survive 8 months in a cold, dark, isolated place!), involved in community activities, cooked dinner for the whole crew (50 people) several times (there were no meals cooked on Sundays, so it was fend for yourself from the leftover fridge most of the time), organized some social activities. Sure, I was a little non-plussed with the cooks, and I was vocal about my opinions, but the vast majority of the time I was simply saying what others were thinking but didn't say (I know for a fact this is true). At the end of the winter, we had a performance evaluation, and suddenly it turns out I was one of the worst crew members on station, several letters had been written to the station manager complaining about me, I had made the station a worse place, blah blah. There was a loud screeching sound as my grasp on reality broke. I mean, I know everyone tends to have slightly unrealistic views about themselves and how they come across, but this was too much. I suddenly had no idea who was "right", and if I couldn't trust my perception of events on this, then really, I couldn't trust anything I thought I knew, could I?
  
  Anyway, meditation firmly in hand, I moved to a cabin in the woods (although sort of also on the rural highway), to lick my wounds for a couple more years. Eventually I "humpty-dumpty'd" my personality back together, did some serious emotional surgery to cut out the festering wounds, and, well, I got over it!
  
  Mostly got over it. I have lingering health issues from that winter, and some permanent, well, brain damage is the only term for it: memory loss and slight cognitive impairment. My IQ dropped like 15 points over winter. Literally. I tested it. Most of that I was able to recover, but there are definitely things that I can't do or are harder for me to reason out now. It's scary, but in a way it's good because now when age-related mental decline comes, I won't have to freak out!

  
  
• moving to Switzerland
  

  Hey, why not? How hard can it be? Ha ha. I went through the classic stages of culture shock:
  Arrival to 3 months: wow, this is paradise, OMG, this is the most amazing place ever!
  3mo-6mo: I hate this place, I can't find x, y, or z and everyone's weird and I'm tired and I want to go home.
  6mo-12mo: ok, some things are better here, some are worse, ha ha, wasn't I so hysterical the first 6 months in my opinions about this place!
  12mo-18mo: look at me, I'm still so sophisticated with my "living abroad" and "being so balanced in my perspective", but really, the idea of being an expat is so cool, I'm going to stay here for the rest of my life!
  Then I diverged onto my own path, which mostly was a self-reinforcing loop of
  
  

  
  
• Repatriating
  

  This is the upcoming transition, two of them, actually. Returning to the US, and leaving research science to become a teacher. I'm excited about both of them, and a little nervous. I'm worried about "reverse" culture shock, although I haven't experienced that on my trips to the US since I've been here. What's far more likely to happen is I gain 20 pounds from a daily dose of gluten free donuts... (donuts! People, I had no idea it was so good in the US!) I find myself anxious and fragile right now--I'm not quite at the point I was when I left pole, where even breaking the lead on my pencil would cause me to burst into tears, but I'm definitely easily verklempt, especially around things that have been important parts of my journey here. In particular, I am finding the weekly Anglican/Benedictine Evensong (done in Gregorian chant) service that I attend to be pretty emotional for me, as this has been an important part of my spiritual life here.

  
  

On some level I feel like my experiences are not at all unique--what I mean is that all of us humans go through tough times and have emotional reactions. The particular details of my stories may seem more glamorous and exciting, but the same kind of profound changing and growing experiences can be had by someone who's never left their home town. Marriage, divorce, having a child, losing a child, changing jobs, or even just waking up one day wondering "who the hell am I? It was all so clear at 22" are things that can be just as powerful as any international adventure. I've learned a lot from my knitting, actually, about patience, correcting mistakes, accepting imperfection (and the wisdom to know the difference!), about process (the present moment, the journey) being more important than product (the goal, the future) and, hell, I don't even have to leave my couch to knit!

Of course, this doesn't diminish my delight in the details of everyone's version of the human experience. Because the details are where it gets interesting! I recently read Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser, which is about these kinds of phoenix processes. It was a fascinating read--so many people, so many transitions! I can't wait to read the rest of this blog carnival!

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August scientiae-carnival

That's Dr. Elf to you!

My defense went great this morning. I am HUGELY relieved it is all over and am off to fritter away the afternoon before a celebration dinner. Yippee!!!

Nostalgia

I'm reading a really interesting book called Cut From Whole Cloth by Richard Franke. It's an interesting hybrid of family history, biography, and fiction. The author traces his grandparents' immigration from Germany around the turn of the century and the family experience in later generations. He takes an interesting approach, though. After doing tons of research on his family through oral histories and looking at documents, he takes the facts of their lives and blends them with some creativity and the book literally reads like a novel. It's very well written, but I find myself having trouble maintaining suspension of disbelief--I keep thinking "how could he know what they were thinking", then have to remind myself that he's trying to capture the spirit of their experience.

I'm especially interested in immigrant experiences (being a temporary emigrant myself!), so this book caught my eye. What's really captured my attention while reading it, however, is how the many children in the first generation go about their professional lives. Because I've been struggling so much with my own path and what appear, in retrospect, to be such bad choices*, I'm fascinated by how other people make choices about what to do in their work life.

[*To be fair, my choices weren't really bad in the grander scheme of being able to learn from all experiences. It is true, however, that for the past 5 years I've been in job situations that really don't suit my personality or needs on a day-to-day level.]

The family patriarch started a tailoring business which expanded into dry cleaning (then brand new!) and all the kids (about 8!) in the family eventually wound up working there. What's interesting to me is how clear each person's function seemed. Things along the lines of "Suzy is good at math, so she'll do the books" or "Hank is a whiz with machines, he'll keep the machines running". Those with people skills did customer interfacing or sales. It was all just so clear and easy. But then I have to suspect I'm adding a real patina of nostalgia onto this, and of course I'm totally ignoring the fact that there weren't a lot of options for people (especially women).

It's true that fewer options to choose from does make a decision easier, but it also can leave a person feeling trapped or permanently underemployed. I certainly don't want to return to the days of "pick your career: teacher, nurse, or secretary", but I am struck by the general notion that more is not always better. I've found personally that I enjoy occasional periods without things because it makes me appreciate them that much more when I have them. I learned that lesson about fresh fruit after wintering at the south pole. That first orange I had when the station opened up after 8 months of complete isolation--I can't even describe what that was like it was so divine. To this day, when I'm in a funk I can just look at a banana or an apple and think, "hey, at least I can enjoy this luscious fresh fruit, totally on demand" and that bit of gratitude often lifts my mood.

I guess in a general way I'm speaking to the idea of Lent, or of voluntary simplicity. While these concepts seem obvious to me in regard to stuff, I'm also finding new application in the realm of ideas, and of how I choose to spend my time.

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I just ironed my shirt and pants for my defense tomorrow. My grandma would be proud. Well, she'd be proud that I ironed at all, but maybe not so proud of the results! I iron in as many creases as I remove, but things still look better since the majority of the tiny wrinkles are gone!

I've been a bit, erm, hysterical this week, going from imagining I'll win the ETH medal to rewriting my resume in my head to cover my tracks here when I fail the exam. Heh. I've finally gotten my talk to a good place (after having lost my mojo for a few days--that was scary!). I'm normally a good speaker (loud, clear, funny, and extremely enthusiastic) so I was pretty disoriented when I couldn't seem to get my talk together last week. I have just 20 minutes to present 3 years of work--luckily I'm also one of the fastest talkers I know....

Space

I'm fairly large for a woman. I'm tall (5'9") and busty and am probably best described as "solid" rather than curvy. I've never been ashamed of how I look--sure there are the odd bits that I'm not thrilled about, but all in all it's a pretty decent package. The only time I ever feel bad about my body is right after I visit a doctor, where they inevitably harp on me about my weight. It's pretty tiresome, especially when they seem to miss the forest for the trees: I walk everywhere, I eat healthy foods, I have a quick (and awesome) smile and laugh, and an eager, playful approach to what I think is a well balanced life. In the grand scheme of things, I can't believe 20 extra pounds really matters. But doctors seem to make it their special mission to humiliate overweight people, and blame as many of our ailments on our weight as possible. It's like they had a whole class in med school about bullying techniques and diverting the attention from what really matters.

I've noticed a pattern in my Alexander Technique lessons, where my instructor will have been repeating a certain phrase or action for weeks (months!) and I have no idea why, and then suddenly, it clicks. One of her longest running expressions is about me having "enough space" around me. Sadly, it's one of the few that I haven't entirely been able to understand (which is surely why I'm still going!). I suspect that my habit is to kind of withdraw my limbs and head into my body as much as possible, which is a tense way to hold and move my body.

It's a strange comment for me to hear, because, of all the flaws I might have, overdoing self restraint in limb movement has never been at the top of the list. I'm one of those eager, clumsy puppy types, arms and legs flying all over, knocking things off walls and tables, hitting strangers in the head on the street, and making shop clerks very nervous. I've always sat with my legs sprawled out, knees wide and ankles flung out, often an arm draped over the next seat if it's empty. All my friends know that when I arrive anywhere I sort of take over the place--bags and hats and coats distributed across all surfaces, inching into their space.

And yet, somehow, this other me has edged in, one who needs to be told to take up my allotted space. I think some of this may be my (possibly misguided) attempt to "grow up" and toe the party line in terms of "how adults behave". Moving to Switzerland has surely made that worse--in an attempt to fit in and not be the big loud American, I've felt myself getting more stiff, trying to control my movements and those damn limbs! My first year here I tried to dress "European" (leather shoes, blouses and slacks), and I even kept my hair all bound up in Pippi Longstocking braids. Talk about symbolic. At some point, though, an acquaintance mentioned that I even "walk like an American", at which point I realized the jig was up. There was no pretending I fit in, and I have since reverted to wearing sneakers and a lot of t-shirts, and I let my crazy hair fly loose. Even in the US I'm a bit eccentric, but it's OK to be eccentric in the US. I'm looking forward to not feeling like a freak of nature every time I step out of my house, of letting my loud voice boom away at it's natural, unrestrained volume, and letting my crazy-fun personality flourish the way I used to.

The other "space" that I have not been fully using is my contribution to groups, especially meetings at work. I've always been the type to speak up and express my opinion or ask questions, but I've really struggled with that lately. After I read Why So Slow by Virginia Valian , I realized that when it seemed like my input at meetings was repeatedly being ignored, that feeling isn't all in my head. And the wind just went out of my sails. Valian talks about how continuing to speak up in group situations and being ignored can actually be ultimately damaging to a woman for a couple of reasons: one is that all her colleagues repeatedly see her speak up and then be ignored, which harms her reptuation, and the second is that it's damaging to self esteem. And it's true--no matter how many times I tell myself it's them and not me, it still hurts when I'm ignored, and I find it ultimately less painful to just keep my mouth shut. I'm pretty disappointed about this (both that I'm in such a situation and that I don't seem to have the energy to fight this battle right now), and it's another thing I hope to work on in the future.

I've certainly consumed more than my share of adventure-space, leading a lot of people to tell me I must be really brave. I'm not sure brave is the right word--it's more like I have no idea what I'm getting into, and I perpetually think, how bad can it be? I'm pretty proud of myself for this: acting despite my fears, pursuing my life-long dreams, and biting off more than I could chew a time or two. But I've always survived, and I have a raft of great stories to tell, and I like knowing that I can try my hand at anything that takes my fancy. I hear so many women undercut themselves before even trying something new, even something small like knitting a more complicated pattern than they've ever tried before, and it's so sad. It's not like someone will die if the sweater sleeves come out the wrong size! I think my freedom from self-limiting beliefs is one of the things I treasure most about who I am because it means that anything is possible in my life.

For the June, 2008 Scientiae.
Tag: scientiae-carnival

thesisizing

I just handed in my thesis to the school! One down, one to go. I have my defense next Friday--I'm expecting it will go fine. I'm good at giving talks and find them very energizing, which means I tend to sail through the questions in a haze of that natural high we get when doing something we're good at.

But it's been a long haul for me, getting this done. I wrote the following post about a month ago, in the depths of the misery:

Writing my thesis has been a semi-nightmarish process for me. It's strange, because in other contexts I like writing. But this is an endless stream of the particular part of my job that I hate. It's like that one chore you just totally, unreasonably, can't stand. For me, that's taking out the trash. Seriously, I will let the bags pile up for weeks, garbage juice leaking out all over the floor. Dishes? No problem. I could wash dishes all day long. But the garbage? Nope, just can't deal.

Scientific writing is like that for me.

It's not so much that I have that much work to do, although there is quite a bit. It's more that I sit at my desk, unable to concentrate, yet totally stressed that I have to try to keep working. I normally have pretty high levels of self discipline, so when that breaks down for me, I sit there, paralyzed, unable to work and unable to convince myself to work. Sometimes I'm tired and can't really think straight, but it's more often that I'm just bored by the detail of it all, or I simply don't want to do it. Then comes a flood of low-key panic: how am I going to get this all done if I can't actually get myself to work on it? How can I force myself to do something I hate? I've been sitting here for an hour trying to convince myself to work and it's not succeeding--the jig's up. This time I'm going to fail.

A Jungian friend of mine talks about our "inferior functions", and how when we have to perform an action that relies on that part of us, we trigger these bizarre, unreasonable, out of proportion doom emotions. Sometimes I think I'm going to die from sitting here trying to do this work. Not "think I'm going to die" like a panic attack, but this deeper sort of "I'm literally going to vaporize with the strain of this becoming-not-me that this task requires". I know the Jungian typology is a bit controversial, but what my friend says really captures my experience with these things. In this case, an attention to obsessively small points of detail is not one of my strengths, but is exactly what scientific writing is all about.

I tend to be pretty highly somatic, as in, when I get stressed out, all my little strange aches and pains flare up to remind me that part of me doesn't like what I'm doing, as though I didn't already know that. Pretty much every single mystery pain I've ever had in my life has flared up in the past couple months! I'm sure that some of my health problems are psychosomatic. That doesn't mean I've made them up--the physical symptoms are real. It's just that some of the underlying cause might be stress or frustration or unhappiness rather than a virus or a mechanical defect. Everyone has this to some degree--asthmatics can have an attack brought on by stress, for example. It can be pretty maladaptive, though--feeling crappy just makes the icky task last longer because I can't work as efficiently when I'm in pain.

I recently had some bloodwork done for one of my semi-psychosomatic things. The technician drew my blood without wearing gloves. Then, because my pathetic little veins collapse and no one can ever get much blood out of them, she wound up using about 4 little vials. Then she popped those little colorcoded rubber caps off the vials she'd used and poured all the blood into one. All without gloves. My eyes about bulged out of my head. Anyway, it turned out to not be what I feared (rheumatoid arthritis) Instead I discovered by accident that my swollen joints (and night sweats and mood swings) were from eating soy--I went on vacation and ate differently for a few weeks and everything cleared up. Got home, hit the soy latte, and they all came back.

Edit:date fix

Blind Man's Bluff

I had dinner last night at The Blindekuh (Blind man's Bluff), a somewhat famous restaurant here in Zurich where you dine in total darkness. I was planning to have my post-defense celebration dinner there but one of my close friends won't be here in June, so we decided to have a "rehearsal dinner" before she leaves!

I was pretty excited about eating there, as it's actually really difficult to find complete darkness in the modern world. I've been in it before, at the south pole, although not for very long, so I wasn't totally sure how it would be. Apparently it's not unusual for people to freak out and find the darkness claustrophobic. One of the aims of the restaurant (aside from serving excellent food!) is to let people with full vision get a glimpse of life as a person with a visual impairment. I have to admit I was curious about the people who freak out in the total darkness of the restaurant--presumably if they lost their vision they would learn to deal with the darkness?

I found the meal itself really fun--I got to eat with my hands and no one looked at me strangely. There was a knife and fork, but to be honest I'm not that good at using those tools even when I can see (I eat nearly everything with a spoon, actually), so I didn't even bother with them. I also felt free to hunch up over the plate to avoid spilling food on my shirt. I spill food on my clothes all the time, partly because I'm naturally endowed with quite a "shelf" but also because I've never really figured out the trick of getting food from plate to mouth without some of it jumping off the fork/spoon. It's kind of sad that at this age I'm still really not adept at using cutlery, but I guess if I haven't learned by now I'm not likely to. So at home, I like to just hunch up over the bowl (why yes, those spoons generally come with bowls) and avoid the whole issue, but when I eat out I always feel compelled to pretend I'm a civilized adult and sit up.

We arrived at 1830 when it was totally deserted. Not too many early bird specials here! We were there for about three hours (typical length of time one spends eating out here in Switzerland) and only left because the noise level got quite high. When we got to the dimly lit "re-entry" corridor, I got really dizzy at first--it was like my brain had forgotten how to process visual input! It only lasted a minute, but it was a bizarre feeling.

I think the most difficult thing my friend and I experienced was keeping our conversation smoothly on track. The couple next to us was also speaking english, and there were several times when one of us thought they (or the waitron) was speaking to us and it kind of derailed us. And when we actually did have a little aside with them once or twice, it was hard for us and them to tell when it was quite finished and thus go back to our private conversations. It's one thing to talk on the phone to someone and miss out on visual cues, but normally there's just one conversation going on. I guess what happened in the restaurant is like when someone on the phone starts talking to someone near them in person without moving the receiver away from their mouth. I did continue to make a fair number of hand gestures and nods, although I do that on the phone too. I did enjoy the freedom from worrying about people scrutinizing my body language (or cretinous eating posture...). I hadn't realized quite how much pressure I feel about that (all surely from inside my own head) and how nice it was to hunch up weirdly against the wall and fiddle with the knife and fork to keep my hands busy.

The biggest thing I noticed was how sad I was to be back outside. In retrospect, I had found it incredibly restful being in the dark for two reasons. The obvious one is just the vast amount of visual stimulus that I didn't have to deal with for a few hours. Apparently my brain spends a lot of time filtering all that stuff out (or maybe that's the problem--that my brain isn't filtering it out very well) and it was nice to not have to do that for a while. The other is that I naturally moved much more slowly in the dark to avoid knocking my water glass over, and moving slowly and mindfully is, of course, extremely calming but is something I'm rarely able to manage to do in my daily life.

I was reminded of a section in the book They Severed the Earth from the Sky by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul Barber where they discuss the vast amount of cosmological information that has been packed into myths over the years. The idea at first strikes a modern reader as preposterous--how could normal Joes possibly collect and collate vast amounts of astronomical data? But they raise the point that before the invention of both artificial lighting and the written word, people would have had a lot of time on their hands after sunset, which would (in warm climates and seasons) naturally be spent sitting around, perhaps gazing at stars.

That isn't exactly the same thing as being in total darkness, but it does get at the same idea, which is the ability to look away from the shiny. I find that hard to do. I already live a more, shall we say, contemplative life than many people I know. I don't get out much, and I'm aware of having to consciously choose what to do with my limited amount of time every day, but I guess I'm still feeling the rub of frenetic modern life. I have my hand in the cookie jar and I can't get it out because I don't want to let go of any of my activities. I would love to find some non-eye-dependent activities so I could give my eyes more of a rest, but I haven't been able to come up with much. I have trouble focusing on audiobooks (although I keep trying) and of course I'm always tempted to knit when I have one on, reintroducing the eyes and some shiny (multi-tasking). I guess I could try having "dark hour" with the book playing and see how that goes?

I'm in the home stretch of things at work--my thesis is due to the department in 8 days, and then I have 2 weeks to get my defense presentation together. I get only 20 minutes to present three years (and about 100 pages worth) of work. Good thing I talk really fast!

where'd you meet?

There's a fun discussion thread over on Ravelry (registration required) about where people met their partner. Being the nerd that I am, I couldn't help but take notes as I read, allowing me to create this interesting plot (click for a larger version):



As I plan to jump back into the dating pool when I'm settled back in the US, I thought this was actually extremely helpful data points for myself!

Some elaborations:

random includes:

• state fair
  
• airplane
  
• concert
  
• street corner
  
• literally bumping into a stranger
  
• baseball game
  
• commuter bus buddy
  
• skating rink
  
• testifying at court
  
• restaurant
  
• ???
  

IRL (in real life) "club" examples:

• dining club
  
• Toastmasters
  
• church
  
• SCA
  
• AA
  
• scuba class
  
• dance class
  
• climbing
  
• skiing
  
• parents at a kids activity
  
• running group
  
• knitting club
  
• sports fan club
  
• member of another local band
  
• early music festival
  

Yes, I am a data taking nerd. I once collected data about outdoor temperature, wind speed, my furnace setting and indoor temperature in the hopes of understanding the relationship. My furnace just had 1 to 10 on the knob, no temperatures, and I was spending US$300 per month to heat a tiny (clearly leaky) cabin. Alas I was never able to grasp the relationship between the variables....

hidden footprint

Recently a friend and I were having a conversation about our carbon footprint (calculate here or here) or more broadly, just our ecological* footprint (calculate here) and discussing things we could do in our day-to-day lives that we thought would make a Big Difference. I found the conversation kind of frustrating, because I could come up with some ideas but in the end I was left with this nagging feeling that they were just a drop in the bucket. Yes, it's easy enough to buy compact flourescent bulbs (and cut my lighting-energy use by 90%!), but if CF bulbs were enough to save the world, we'd all have bought them and there'd be no more reporting about the climate crisis. And anyhow, if you live in an area with carbon-neutral energy (hydro or solar or wind or even nuclear, to some extent) your lightbulbs don't matter. And if it was as easy as just buying carbon offsets (which for me are about US$100 per year) then we all would just go do that and the crisis would be, again, over.

This nagging feeling is strengthened when I do carbon footprint calculations, and I still come up with 9 tons of CO2 (or 1.6 earths or 6 kilowatts per year or 50,000 kWh per year), which is about half the amount an average American uses, about equal the amount an average European uses, but is still more than I "should" get for keeping a lid on disastrous warming (2 ton CO2, or the 2 kW society).

This study, which looks at carbon footprints of a variety of lifestyles in the US, helps me put a finger on what's going on. They determine that there is an apparent minimum carbon footprint for a person living in the US--even a homeless person or a monk living in the woods half the time still has a pretty big impact, due in part to institutional factors such as using roads or libraries or police services. I also suspect there is a lot of hidden energy use in the manufacture of goods that must add up to a significant amount in the end.


I guess I'm bothered as well by the idea that if I, who am pretty committed to "the cause", struggle and ultimately fail at living a sustainable lifestyle, where does that leave someone with less, shall we say, enthusiasm?


*I find it a bit of a quagmire to understand my footprint. I think it's because there are two axes that I tend to confound. One is carbon, as in global warming, which has some obvious solutions (use less fossil fuel and more renewable energy). The other is a general ecological harm or lack of sustainability, which can be much harder to address. Things get tricky when you look at CF bulbs (less energy! good! more mercury! bad!) or solar panels (free energy! good! heinous toxic chemicals in manufacturing and disposal! bad!)

Moving target

When I was five, I announced that I was going to be an airplane pilot when I grew up, and that I would fly a pink jet. This amused my parents to no end. Aside from the pink fixation, I was not a girly girl, playing exclusively with my Legos, Tinker Toys, and this horrible old electric train set that filled the whole basement with smoke.


In high school, I wanted to be an auto mechanic. I went to a votech school for grades 9-11 and took tons of shop my freshman and sophomore years (including the woodworking class where I clocked my teacher in the head with a 2x4 that was over my shoulder. Oops!). When I had to choose a "major" my junior year, though, I wound up picking drafting. If I'd taken automotive, I wouldn't have been able to take any more math or science.


My senior year in high school, I switched to a regular school and buried myself in another world. I took western civ, latin, and as many writerly-type things as I could find. Now I wanted to be a writer.


This dream took me through the first year of college at The Evergreen State College. Evergreen is an "alternative" school where you mostly take one (massively interdisciplinary) "class" for an entire year. My first year I took "Great Books". We read a book a week--yeah, a book being Homer's Illiad or Plato or Aristotle--and attended a lot of seminars and wrote an essay about the book. I don't remember any of it. One of the core professors was a physicist and I developed a huge crush on took a real liking to him, so I decided to take whatever "class" he was teaching the next year.


That turned out to be "Energy Systems", which covered the math and science and technology behind how we create and use energy in the world, from coal fired power plants to internal combustion engines to solar panels. We also looked at the social implications of technology. That year was about the best year of my life. I absolutely loved the class and loved being back in science. Suddenly, every question had a right and a wrong answer, and if I worked hard enough, I could usually find it. Even if I couldn't figure them out myself, just knowing the correct answer existed seemed comforting to me. I also had a sweet internship at the Thurston County Solid Waste Department writing a report about cloth versus disposable diapers, instigating my lifelong secret obsession with solid waste. I'm fascinated by garbage and all things municipal.


But Evergreen doesn't really let you "major" in anything, so after that year I left and moved to San Francisco, to study physics at SF State. I loved that department, and more good times were had. I worked as a research assistant in the Underwater Acoustics Group, and I even had a fun internship in the theoretical physics department at Ford Motor Co. (No, I didn't know there was such a thing, before the job offer.) I decided I would eventually work in research and development in industrial physics, or possibly at a government lab. This meant I needed a PhD in Physics (or something close).


But first, I wanted to take a few years off and work. I found a great job as a development engineer at QualiTau, right in the heart of Silicon Valley. There I designed some new electronic instrumentation and wrote some software. And got thoroughly sick of the semiconductor industry which is a crazy, manic, cutthroat kind of industry.


Then I started a PhD in materials science at the Univ. of Minnesota. I'd promised myself I wouldn't work in semiconductors anymore .... and wound up in a semiconductor research group. I flailed away at a flawed idea for a couple of years, but my heart wasn't in it.


I needed an adventure.


So I signed up for a gig at the south pole. I was a research technician, caring for and feeding 6 mostly automated research projects over the winter. Yep, I loves me some adventure. Here I learned the lesson be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.


I was beamed back to earth, dazed (to put it mildly), and with a newfound love of weather. I went to work as a weather observer on Mount Washington, home of the world's worst weather. The world record wind speed (231 mph) was measured there in 1934. Damn that place is windy! My "personal best" was 140 mph. Then I moved into a staff scientist position in the valley research office and digitized 70 years worth of weather observations.


Then I saw an ad for a PhD position digitizing old weather observations in the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH (sort of the the MIT of Europe) in Zurich Switzerland. And here I am, getting some more instruction in be careful what you wish for (one, two, three, four)... But this life of typing quietly to myself is a bit hard on my back and my eyes and my soul, so as we know I've decided to become a public school science teacher.


I've had a paying job of one type or another since I was 14. I have never not worked. Sometimes I fantasize about it would be like to be unemployed or retired. I've worked as a warehouse order-filler, a daycare attendant, a library clerk, at a movie theater, at a video store. I've done temp work in offices and department store returns. I worked as a secretary and a customer service rep for an industrial magazine publisher. Can you tell that I have a short attention span? And that perhaps I misinterpreted the encouragement "You can do anything you want in life" as "You should try everything in life"?


As to the careers I've considered pursuing? A, perhaps, unknowably large number.


My favorite job, bar none, was at the video store. I loved that store. I liked the coworkers, I adored and respected my boss, I liked (most of) the regular customers. I loved that I was getting paid to stand around talking about movies, watching movies (free tape!), repairing broken tapes, and, best of all, just interacting with people all day. I've always seen myself as an introvert and reliably test that way on personality "tests", so it was a bit puzzling that I always loved my retail and customer service jobs. I've recently seen that paradox from a new perspective: in work, I am an extrovert. I like to interact with people. In my private life, I'm in introvert. I find socializing kind of tiring, especially if I don't know you. I feel uncomfortable with unstructured interactions with strangers, but when I know my role, what's expected of me, I excel in dealing with people. And I love people. We are all such fascinating creatures, each of us living out the same storyline (be born, live, die) and wanting the same things (food, shelter, love) but none of us with the same details or tactics or outcomes.


I am excited to embrace this new side of me, and to let myself flower and use all of my natural skills and talent. I am looking forward to the next chapter in this story.


For the May, 2008 Scientiae.
Tag: scientiae-carnival

How we learn

Jonah at The Frontal Cortex just published a great post about how much college has changed in the past decade. When I went to school, we sat around with pencils and notebooks taking notes. Some of us were eager beavers [raises hand] and brought a tin of colored pencils to keep up with the profs who lectured with colored chalk. Nowadays the vast majority of lectures are powerpoint with a copy of the slides being distributed and students take notes (or not) in the margins. This whole topic kind of makes me see red. I feel really strongly that there are going to be some surprise consequences of this. I know change is inevitable and colleges are hardly about to revert to chalkboards, but I still feel pretty freaked out about it. It also was very eye opening for me, especially in light of becoming a teacher. I have a lot to learn about how other people learn!

Here is my comment to his article (also posted on his site):

I am a "senior" grad student (35 year old PhD candidate) and recently made the same (horrific) discovery about how much Things Have Changed. I attended a summer school last year that was 11 days of 9-5 powerpoint lectures (each an hour long) and it became clear that this was the preferred mode of giving a university course. I was horrified. There is no other word for it. I was also exhausted in a way I never have been (in my entire life!) from "learning". I felt like I'd been steam-rolled, and that far, far more material had presented than I could ever hope to assimilate in the time alotted.

I ranted and raved about it for several weeks. This actually turned out to be productive because it was pointed out to me (as is said above) that some people learn best by listening, so for them this is a great improvement--no more need to pretend to take notes, feel bad about not taking notes, or try to take notes and find it hindering. I had never thought much about the variety of learning styles before then.

My concern is that for those of us who learn by the written word (more on this below), we are left with no real options. A lecture given by powerpoint by definition moves at a faster pace than a person can keep up with, meaning there is no way for me to "learn" in class. Just scribbling occasional notes in the margins of a printed slide doesn't do it for me. In college, when I was "in training", I could write nearly verbatim the professors' words using a kind of shorthand I developed over the years. The lectures went at the speed of the explanation. What concerns me is that a lot of students probably don't realize they are learn-by-taking-notes types, and might not discover this when notes are handed out.

A further note about learning by writing--in my case, this is very specific to writing, not typing. Typing is too abstract for me and somehow my brain doesn't process the information. When I've tried to take notes by typing, I come away with nothing (except irritation at how loud my keyboard is). And yes, I still write first drafts of everything on actual paper with an actual pen.

To summarize: People who learn by listening can listen in on old school lectures and new school lectures. People who learn by writing and taking notes are now left with a reduced set of options.

This issue is a huge pet peeve of mine. I've actually been trying to figure out some kind of little study to do on this, because I think the impact on people with different learning styles is pretty profound. I'm concerned about the usage of powerpoint in grade schools. I don't mean to be a luddite, but I do think the questions need to be asked.

How's your binocular vision?

I have been getting a lot of eyestrain headaches lately from working on the computer all day. This is incredibly bad timing as the big push to write my thesis has just begun (no doubt the stress of that is compounding the eyestrain...). Last month I went to see an optician to get checked for some middle-range computer glasses. She spent an hour testing my vision and apparently I "failed" some of the tests because at the end she said I needed to see a specialist.

A month passed waiting for the appointment. I had a headache on all but two days of it.

Yesterday I finally saw the specialist who spent 2 (two!) hours testing my vision. It was interesting--at least an hour was spent with a red filter over one eye and a green filter over the other to see how my binocular vision was. Turns out my eyes don't "play well with others" and it seems I have some convergence insufficiency. The second bulleted list under "symptoms" at that description is a disturbingly accurate description of me. I wound up quitting a tee-ball team in frustration after a year because I couldn't hit the ball. Yeah, the ball that wasn't moving? I still couldn't connect the bat to it. I've also been terrified my whole adult life of passing cars on undivided highways--I can't judge very well how fast the oncoming cars are moving and thus whether I have time to pass. I've always known that I see pretty much only with my left eye. When I have to use the right eye for some reason, it feels as strange as trying to write with your non-dominant hand. You can test your own binocular vision here. When I do that test I see just one thumb/eye.

I'm not entirely sure how "handicrafts" slipped into my life, although I'm actually a pretty crappy knitter from a technical point of view--my stitches are sloppy and I am constantly splitting yarn or popping stitches off the needle or "air knitting" (missing the stitch entirely). I'm also really good at correcting mistakes! It's the same as how everyone who hears me type thinks I'm a really fast typist because there are tons of keystroke sounds. They don't realize 70% of them are backspace...

I see yet another specialist next week to discuss whether I want to do some "eye PT". This training tends to turn up on quackwatch type sites because it tends to get overpromoted as a way to solve all learning problems. For kids who actually have a seeing disorder like the one I apparently have, this actually will help.

The good news is I dusted off my spinning wheel after neglecting it for a while because my back hurts. And because for some strange reason I had decided that I "should" spin some lacey yarn. I hate spinning such fine yarn because it takes forever, and also because I can't really knit with it!! I knit so loosely that most fine gauge yarns are off limits if I want any kind of structural stability in the final fabric. Plus I have trouble seeing that kind of stuff. Life is definitely too short to spin yarn I don't even like!! So I plied up the crazy thin stuff that had been blocking me and moved on. Here's a shot of the 2 ply result. Left scale marker is a 5 Euro-cent coin and the right is a US penny.