Happiness Runs

We are obsessed with this song. I just downloaded two versions of it from iTunes. Isn't it freaking catchy?

I may die next semester

I've been trying to figure out my classes and schedule for next semester. Thanks to the perfect storm of a complete lack of classes in my department (due to a separate perfect storm of retirements, sabbaticals and positions not yet filled), and my attempt to take some classes to do double duty for this degree and for the next, I just might go insane next semester. I haven't yet talked to all the right people, but if my current plan stands, I will be taking 11 credits (I'm taking 9 this semester and ready to die, bear in mind these are "grad school" credits and therefore take up five times the normal amount of time). On top of those 11 credits (9 of which come from just two classes), I think I'll be working three jobs, if I'm offered the one I just applied for. One of them is fun and pays the bills (and takes 10 hours a week), one doesn't pay enough but is related to my future career, and the third is just a few hours a week sporadically and I would hardly consider it work at all. But all the hours add up and then I don't have any time left to blog! Boo!

Double Take

A few years ago, I started to notice a general pattern in my life. Whenever it came to big decisions, big life steps, other other important changes, I usually did them twice. The first time, I'm not quite ready for whatever it is, but I either am forced to do it or force myself to do it. After that first attempt (often aborted or failed), I usually wait a while, a month or a year, then I find myself truly ready for taking that step and I successfully take it. Sound weird? Wait till you see how often it's happened:

High school-chose to go to private Catholic school, not totally my cup of tea, but the lesser of two evils. Didn't do as well as I should have. We moved before my junior year, I got to start over and excelled. Not a "choice," but I did do better on my second chance.

Driver's License-I was putting it off anyway, getting my permit at 16 (at least a year late). I kept putting off the test itself, until my dad surprised me after school to take me down to take the test. I failed miserably (though a street was a one-way, when it definitely wasn't). A few months and a lot of practice later, nerves recovered, I took the test again and did very well.

Haircut-sounds minor, but it wasn't. I had had long hair (waist length or longer) since early elementary school, and I felt like I needed a change. Sophomore year of college, I got it chopped just below the shoulders and HATED it. I cried and cried and cried. A few years later, I decided to try again and I was really *ready*. I cut it shorter and loved it. Last year, I cut it even shorter (above the shoulders) and loved it even more.

MA program-I'm planning on doing two because I didn't really know what I wanted with the first one, but now I'm pretty sure I do, so I'm applying for a second one when I finish this one. Luckily they are related!

Proposal-OK, so I didn't have to choose to do this, but I did have to say yes! A year before Peter really proposed, he got inspired and started to do it (no ring, no planning, spur of the moment). I freaked a little bit, wasn't sure if I was ready (even though I had thought I was up to that point), and delayed until other people came and the moment was gone. A year later, I was *really* ready and he proposed and I really said yes!

For a little while, I was freaked out that my marriage was going to be a failure because I would have to have a "practice" marriage like I've had to have a "practice" everything (see above). I then realized I was being a total dork because I've had other long-term relationships, and therefore those were really my practice ones, so this one is fine. Also, if I need to quell my superstitious side, I just look at the double proposal and consider that the double take.

Yes, I am crazy. And I probably have weird commitment issues (weird because I don't have them in relationships).

Daily Photo

One of my favorite pictures from the football game last Saturday.

Kris's Clarinet Recital

One of our friends is a Ph.D. student in music, and one of the many things she has to do is complete 4 recitals. Last night was her first and it was amay-may! You know people who are getting flipping Ph.D.s in an instrument have to be good, but damn! We had never heard her play before and we were totally blown away. Here are some of the random clippages I took last night made into "movie" form:

Election Day!

So the results are slowly coming in from across the country. Yay for "regime change"! The only thing I'm a little sad about is that it doesn't look like the Dems will take the Senate. I'm sad for this because I heart Harry Reid, my former senator from Nevada, who we got to meet when we were in DC several years ago. He was so intelligent, well spoken and clearly important and busy, yet unassuming, that he made me proud he was my senator. He's currently the minority leader, so if the Dems took the senate, he would be majority leader and that would be so cool!

Other things of note: on the TV scrolling info, they have several races where one candidate got 0 votes. As Peter said, they would have at least voted for themselves! How can it be 19,000 to o? Plus, it's sketchy because they claim 0% of precincts are reporting. 19,000 people is 0%? Weird.

Also: Possibly super sad, the current votes are showing that Ref. I is down (but not by much). I really hope it passes; it would give same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples. Gay marriage would still be illegal, but at least with I, partners would be able to visit each other in the hospital and have the same legal rights they deserve. The campaign tagline was "It's not marriage, it's just basic legal rights." I will be very sad if this doesn't pass, esp since it's looking like the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages will pass. Yeah, that SO needs to be in the constitution when we already have a law against it.

(PS Our new [Democratic!] governor just called us "Coloradoans." I thought we were Coloradans?)

Are you ready for some football?

I'm working for the athletic department now as a tutor in sign language, and as an employee, one of the perks is free tickets to the game for me and one other (very restricted, not even all immediate family members qualify) person. So Peter and I are going to our very first, and possibly last, big time university football game. I medium-enjoy sporting events, though I always have much more fun cheering and groaning with the crowds than actually really following the game (since I usually have no idea what's going on). The real reason I really really wanted to go to game is because our mascot is a real live buffalo and the tradition is to run her into the field with the entire football team behind her to start the game. Doesn't that sound cool? Plus, one of Peter's classmates is one of the selected few Ralphie handlers, which means he gets to lead her onto the field and help care for her (it's a her because female buffalo are smaller and slightly easier to handle, which is rather important).

It's also fun that we are finally going to a game because we live so close to the stadium that we can track the success (or not, this season) of the team by the noise of the crowd. When I hear a really long, extended cheer, I usually run upstairs to the bedroom window, get out the binoculars and check the scoreboard to see if we scored. The picture on the left is of the scoreboard the only time we've won this season. I'm hoping we'll be a good luck charm today! We're so close that they sell spaces in our parking lot for tailgaters, so it's fun to walk around and see how crazy people get, but it's also annoying because we feel like we can't leave on game days because we're never sure if they'll sell all the spots, leaving us with no where to park. But after being on the outside so many times, it'll be fun to be on the inside for once!

Why I don't know why I don't own ten of these at this very moment

These are Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppies and I *will* have one one day! Here are two images from cuteoverload.com. If you've never been there before, you must go immediately for vast quantities of the cutest animals ever to walk the face of the planet (animals of all kinds, they don't 'scriminate!). Without further ado:





And the killer:





Aackk!!!! How can you resist??? (AOUS????)

Reno hotel burns

Very sad story, about a fire in a historic hotel in downtown Reno that killed at least 6 people. Not only are the deaths very, very sad, but so is the gutting of a landmark. The Mizpah wasn't on the sight-seer's to-see list, nor was it a cherished landmark in a city that earns its living from the newer, flashier casinos, but it had a quiet dignity that can only be found in those grand old buildings just a few blocks off neon-lit Virginia Street.

I love Reno and its old buildings, partly because they are generally so unloved. Here in Boulder, old downtown is celebrated and has been gentrified. The old buildings are occupied and still very much alive in the heart of downtown, overlooking the parade of street performers, vagrants and vagabonds, shoppers, restaurant diners and tourists. Everything is generally clean and happy.

But Reno's historic buildings have been pushed aside from the hub of activity, sometimes physically (several historic buildings have been moved, several times) and sometimes metaphorically. As newcomers stream into town, different areas become hotspots for new activity and building, and the town's collective history quickly dims in the memories of the shrinking percentage of natives. Most of the historic buildings are now in less than great areas of town, occupied by tiny businesses and the less-than wealthy. They are the kinds of places you don't want to linger after dark, they are haunted by their own pasts and by people with their own haunted pasts. They are unnoticed, unremarkable, merely average... until you look up. Most of them might be plain brick or stone at street level, but at roofline, their Art Deco roots show in the ornate tiles and other detailing. It's this hidden surprise in plain sight I love so dearly. That so many can pass by them day after day and never notice what a gem sits glowing under that slight film of grime.

My own personal temple is the Art Deco post office next to the river, the "main" post office for the city, though no longer truly the hub. I can go in there and feel my soul relax in its vaulted ceilings and gorgeous "silver" detailing present everywhere. Even the tall tables for sorting mail were designed to live in this building, echoing the "futuristic" style of the 1930s seen in the window casings, the service windows, the mailboxes themselves. At one point, there was some talk of tearing it down to accommodate the flood plan, but if such a thing ever comes to pass, I will chain myself to its glorious walls before I ever let them tear down such a beauty. And yet no one says anything about its architecture, its decoration... no one even talks about it at all! If I ever mention to anyone how beautiful it is, the most I'll get is an odd glance and possibly a remark about the length of the lines there.

But if everyone loved it, I would not feel so passionately about my "secret" bit of beauty.

**Edit: Someone else loves my post office too! See some pictures of it here and read about its history here.

Also, I was looking for pictures of the Mizpah to show you, and came across this:


This is funny because this is a different Mizpah hotel located in Tonopah, NV, one which looks nothing at all like Reno, let alone the actual Mizpah (pre-fire):

Those silly Canadians...

Thoughts on learning

My favorite class (the one I just had the midterm for) is child language acquisition. There's more we don't know about this than what we do know at this time, but research is making leaps and bounds.

What's interesting is that there are primarily two camp: one believes that languages is innate and doesn't have to be "learned," the other believes that there's nothing in the brain pre-wired just for language and that kids are more active in the process in figuring language out.

Our teacher is strongly in the latter camp, which of course influences the class. Of course I am also on that side now, not only because of the structure of the class, but really because the research strongly supports that theory (IMHO).

The main problem I see between these two theoretical viewpoints is the claims they are making. The innate people say that language is far too complex and variable a thing for very young children to learn as quickly as they do, therefore there must be something inborn in them to facilitate this. Kids can't pick up algebra by 5, and yet they can produce incredibly complex grammar by that age. The cognitive people say that kids have lots of abilities that help them learn and it isn't too hard a task, given the skills and other non-language specific aptitudes they have.

The issue is that it seems like the burden of proof is on the cognitive side, since it seems difficult to prove that something is impossible (like "learning" a language). Happily, it seems like there are many great researchers up to the task who have discovered some surprising things about "facts" linguists have taken for granted for quite some time. This field is still relatively in its infancy (no pun intended, I swear!) and with technological advances, I think we'll be learning a great deal about this in the future.

We need to institute siesta time

I cannot live without naps. I know I used to, I used to be able to get through days of work and school without any kind of catnap, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to that. Even if I get home at 6 PM, I still enjoy a quick little nap before dinner if I can get it. As much as I love any nap, I have a few favorite kinds:

Sunny afternoon nap: This nap usually takes place in the summer. The sunlight is filtered through our blinds to make a warm, diffused light, everything is warm and sleepy, the pace of life is slow. Lay down to read a book and the quiet warmth steals over you until sleep is inevitable. This may be a shallow nap, but still lovely.

Winter afternoon nap: It may be sunny, or it may be snowing (this IS Colorado!). It's chilly outside, but the down comforter (or knit blanket) is warm and inviting. Snuggle in whenever possible, maybe with a bellyful of delicious hot chocolate in you, and escape the cold world outside for an hour or two.

Snuggle nap: May take place in any season, only requirement is a co-snuggler. This may be the best nap of all. Snuggle with the one you love on a lazy day with no obligations (thus its comparative rarity) and sleep in each other's arms (or comparable mutually comfortable position). Truly something to be treasured.

*Yawn* Now I want a nap! Luckily, I'm done working in half an hour, and I might be able to sneak home for a little sleep after this.

This week has been quite stressful, but it all ended yesterday. I handed in my midterm for my hardest (and most favorite) class, I performed my belly dance at the drag show and now I have a TEENY break until I have to tackle all my other projects (like a book review for a book I received last night due on Friday, all my other projects I ought to be working on all semester, etc.). I think everyone who like naps ought to try to catch one soon!

Triple Mimesis

Thursday night, I performed in a drag show. I was a female performing female and I did a belly dance. I'd been preparing for this for about three weeks, and it was the first performance I've ever done that was almost completely improv, but I think it went pretty well. I got a lot of compliments and people seemed to like it, but the whole thing was kind of a blur for me. I was more concerned about feeling like I was coming out of my costume, not being able to hear the important parts of my music (the balance in the audio was off) and I was extremely thirsty, so the reality of performing didn't really hit me. As always, I feel like I could have done better, but such is life! My dearest husband also dressed in drag as a female and looked fetching. I know some of our friends took pictures, so when I get those, I will try to post some!

Why I should always listen to my husband (because he's pretty much always right)

Yesterday, he put out the last Yoplait yogurts we hadn't eaten, because he was going to throw them out (after taking and washing the breast cancer prevention lids, of course, because that's the kind of good person he is). I saw them, saw that it wasn't an "expiration date," but a "sell by" date, and commenced eating one.

Apparently, that was a really bad idea.

Almost exactly 12 hours later, at 3 AM this morning, my stomach began really, really hurting. Obvs, I was asleep prior to this, so I drifted in and out of consciousness while my body did it's thing. This is where the fun happened.

I had just finished reading Into Thin Air for the first time yesterday, so I had these weird, half-waking dreams about my pain and being on Everest. I'm also clearly going to have multiple personalities someday when I completely lose it, because in my dream, if I was laying on my left side, I was somehow a woman named Laura who was being dragged down Everest to safety. If I lay on my right side, I was man (can't remember the name), and if I was laying on my back (the only position that didn't really make my stomach go nuts), I think I was helping other people. So weird!

I'll spare you the details of the rest of the night and morning, but suffice it to say, I didn't really sleep much, and it says a lot about our bed (and my husband's sleeping) that Peter didn't even know I was sick until he woke up and I told him. I'm feeling a lot better now, but still weak. I didn't go to work, and I'm mighty glad I didn't because I can't imagine how uncomfortable I would have felt (and looked) sitting at the front desk with a still-tender stomach and no food in me. In fact, I'm 99% sure I wouldn't have made it up the hill between here and work; someone would have found me collapsed in the last remaining snowdrift :-)

Post 100!

I just wanted to say that. Real post to follow. Commence the celebration :-)

Bordieuan Condescension

I think this is my new favorite phrase. To be used when describing frat boys wearing trucker hats, models dressing as refugees and the Olsen twins dressing like hobos. I can't tell you what it means, exactly, since it took us a three-hour class and three incredibly dense papers (by Bordieu) to talk about. Not recommended.

Triadica

Supposedly, good things and bad things come in threes. I've never experienced this before, but I've never really paid attention, either. I'm officially over my limit as of now, though. So much bad stuff has happened to people I love in the past month that I've decided that this October (one of the very few containing a Friday the 13th) is cursed. I'm at 4 bad things within a few weeks, and not just little bad things. Big, major, life changing, life ending bad things. The upside of all of this is that (sadly) I'm no longer shocked to my core when I get an unexpected phone call with unexpectedly awful news. I just add it to the well of sadness and love I feel for these people who have been so devastated. Amazingly, I only feel brief periods of deep sadness, probably because none of these events have happened to me, and therefore I can not think about the badness for longer periods of time and therefore be my normal happy self. I've heard that many deaths and other sorrows happen around the holidays, presumed to be due to the sadness and feelings of loss older people have, therefore making them less willing to fight for life. I think the sad season is starting early this year, and I blame it all on Friday the 13th, which ironically enough, was not one of the worst days of the month for me!

Incomprehensible

So unfortunately, TV has put on a fair number of decent shows (so far), forcing me to watch far more television than i ever have before (it didn't take much, really). One of the shows we watch comes on right after Deal or No Deal, so we usually end up watching the last few minutes of that show, which probably could be in Swahili or Urdu or Czech for all I know what's going on. I've never seen it before, and have no idea what the rules are, so every action seems totally random and meaningless. I actually quite enjoy not knowing what the hell is happening. I don't get stressed out like I usually do watching those kind of shows because I don't know what's a "good" thing and what's bad. Plus, they always leave the last person hanging, so I don't even know how one would win anyway!

Not cool! (not literally)

We're supposed to get snow tonight and/or tomorrow. Le sigh.

Method is the best!

A little while ago (maybe last week?), I came home to a package by our door. There is nothing I love better than a package! I wasn't sure what it was, though, since I hadn't ordered anything.

It was a present from Method! They make home cleaning products that are environmentally safe and very chic. Some time ago, I had signed up to be a Method Advocate, and as such, they sent me a free (awesome) t-shirt that I wear all the time, plus free samples to tell my friends about Method.

But what was this package? It was heaven in a box, I tell you.

Inside this clever little package was Method's new lineup of microfiber rags, along with sample bottles of each of the cleaners.

Each flap of the square had
one of the towels (wood, granite, window + glass, stainless steel) and the center square had all the cleaners. I immediately went into the kitchen (where all our stainless steel lives) and started cleaning so I could actually get to our SS appliances to clean them. By the time I was done cleaning, I only had the energy to use the towel and cleaner on a few things, but it worked beautifully on those! We have a SS tea kettle we leave on the stove at all times, which means it gets very dirty from oil splatters and other little food bits. It had lost its glory :-( But the combo of the towel and the cleaner gave it a new lease on life!

Next up was the window/glass cleaner. I cleaned our teeny little mirror in the bathroom, and it seemed to do well on that. No streaks and it only took a little elbow grease to get the toothpaste spots off. The real test, though, was going to be our giant sliding glass door.

Previously, we only had $.99 generic window cleaner on sale from Target to clean the windows. It was fine, but streaked like mad no matter what I did. I could never get the sliding glass door clean. Unfortunately, it was night time when I wanted to try out the Method cleaner, but I went at it anyway, blindly, since I couldn't see where if there were spots that needed extra attention. The next morning, I came down and it looked like the door was open, it was so clean! The towel was filthy with the dirt from the window, but the best part about the towels is that they are fully washable and reusable! Less waste for the environment!

I haven't cleaned off enough wood surface to try that one out, and unfortunately we don't have any granite in our luxury family housing apartment, but I do have a glorious little color-coded towel I can use if we ever do get granite countertops.

In sum, if you have a lot of a specific surface you clean often (esp. SS or glass), it's quite worth the $5 for the rag and about the same for the cleaner because these do their job quite well and they are lovely little products. Thanks, Method!

OK, I guess I like Autumn...

Last week, Jena and I went up to Rocky Mountain National Park. I really wanted to get up the the mountains before all the color was gone, and since Peter wasn't too keen on going, I decided to ask a friend to go instead. Luckily, Jena is a fellow shutterbug, so I knew I could wander around taking close-ups of leaves and bugs and things and she would be just as happy doing the same, whereas saner friends might get a bit impatient and want to keep walking or something.

We only had the afternoon, but we certainly made the best of it. We got to see some incredible golden aspen on the drive up (no pictures, sorry. My windows were too dirty.), we found a stand of the most perfect, brilliant gold aspen in the park, and we saw a bunch of wildlife to boot! Jena got to see her first elk up close and in person, and we got as close as you really want to get to a bull elk in mating season to get some great pictures. We also saw a herd of bighorn sheep, as well as a mama deer and her two babies grazing by the side of the road. I haven't seen her pictures yet, but I can't wait!

Here are some of my favorites:

Jena's first "close" elk:


















See more on my Flickr page.