Summer Pro

Man, I could do this for a living. I mean, time to do dishes, catch up on laundry, wash my hair, check the email, and even start fun new craft projects! Where do I sign up? I could totally be a housewife if it weren't for the seclusion, lack of mental stimulation and daily housework. Cuz really, doing housework when you never have time is a novelty, but I know that novelty wears off quick. And as a housewife, you are expected to have a spotless house. Because what else do you do all day? So I will just enjoy what may be my last free summer ever and savor this fleeting moment where doing dishes is a delight.

Digitization.... complete.

It used to be if you wanted information, you had to hunt for it. Check the manual to learn how to use your new camera, look at the liner notes for the indecipherable lyrics, look up a definition in a dictionary. Answer not there? Better hope you have a friend who knows all. Or at least who will enter into a spirited debate with you.

Now, if you are of a certain generation or young enough to have a certain mindset, printed materials will never be your first answer. Google is your best friend, MapQuest a lifesaver and dictionary.com quite helpful. If I'm ever lost or want to know how to get to a new restaurant we decided to go to on a whim after a long trip, do I pull out a map? No! I try to call a friend who I think might have access to the Interwebs (we don't do this often enough to warrant paying more to use the internet on our phone, but that is definitely another option). Of course, this usually doesn't work anyway, since the friend might not be home or might not answer their phone. But it's still my first instinct.

At my job at the Writing Center, though, the stack of dictionaries, thesauruses and reference books are always my first reach. Why? Simply because they are more convenient at that location, but I've noticed an added benefit. There is something timeless about it, feeling like part of a long tradition of scholars throughout history who worked as hard (or harder) as us, using very similar tools, all working together to build the foundations we rest our current research on. Even if most of the young scholars I work with will not devote their lives to study, or even continue beyond undergraduate work, while they are here, they are following the steps of millions before them and continuing in the same tradition. I like books.

Familiar and Unknown

When I flew into Reno, the pilot took a different route than I was used to, so I sat peering into the dark, trying to identify landmarks and coming up completely lost. I suddenly felt that maybe this wasn't "home" anymore, that everything that was so familiar to me might have changed to the point of unrecognizability and I would be a stranger in my own hometown.

As it turned out, they are doing construction on the main runway, so that's what caused my disorientation. Reno has changed, but I still recognized people everywhere I went, and as usual, my reaction to these encounters depended on who I happened to see. Most of them I didn't greet, either because I thought they might not remember me or because I had no desire to speak to them. Mostly the latter. Even though we've lived in Boulder two years, I'm certainly not to the point where I know people anywhere I go, and I'm thankful for this. I'm also thankful for not having drama and a past in Boulder. I lived a very boring, drama-free life compared to most of my friends, and yet even I have ghosts I'd rather not run into while shopping.

This is why people from small towns leave.

Productivity and Sloth

Wow, it's amazing how quickly I can downshift from uber-productive mode to where-did-the-day-go mode. Yesterday, I turned in my final paper, I finished a large chunk of work for one of my jobs and basically finished what I needed to do before I leave tonight. I got a lot done, and not just homework. This morning, I still had that energy, so I sewed a missing button back on a pair of shorts, mended a hole in a favorite t-shirt (both thanks to my mom, who brought her sewing machine with her from Reno and outfitted me with necessary sewing supplies and skills over the weekend), and did some laundry and dishes. Sometime between the dishes and the email checking, I shifted into Summer Mode. Before I knew it, hours had passed and I was still in my pajamas, watching YouTube videos and playing solitaire. Eek! So I went and cleaned the bathroom, did another load of laundry and tidied up a bit.

Last summer, I had tons of plans for my time, but it turned out that much of that time was spent watching The Most Adorable Baby in the World, so while it was great, I slacked on a lot of projects. This summer, Peter and I have more free time than we may have ever had before. Thanks to school shortening our summer (Maymester for him, August-mester for me) and a few longish trips smack in the middle of that, we don't have enough time to get summer jobs and the jobs we do have are quite flexible in time. The end result: a lot of free time to go camping, traveling, sewing, woodworking, photo-taking, blogging, cleaning, organizing, catching up on housework, and anything else we want to do. So exciting! Now, the trick will be to not slip completely into Summer Mode and spend my summer playing solitaire!

Grad-yu-a-shun

The Flatirons
Originally uploaded by shanbrite2.

I've officially completed the graduation ceremony! Yay! I still have several papers to write, then I will *actually* graduate in August! It was a great time; my parents came in from Reno, we went to multiple parties with our friends and the weather was absoultely perfect. The best part? I didn't get sunburned at all!

So... close... to... the... end!

Just a few more days, and my semester will be over! Hopefully by that time, I will have passed all my finals (2 to go), finished any and all course requirements (possibly another paper to go), and then I will be done! My parents come in Thursday night and I want to be done with everything by then. I can't wait!!!

It's just that time of semester

Everyone is on the verge of a meltdown. I have more things due next week than I really care to think about and I'll probably spend most of this weekend working on them. I'd like to actually complete all course requirements this year and just be done! Graduation is in two weeks, and though I still have a teeny bit of work to do before I officially get my diploma, I'm so close I can taste it!

Also fun is that this summer is shaping up to be filled with traveling and visitors. My parents are coming for graduation, then I'm going to Reno for my brother's graduation shortly after that, then we have a possible trip to Northern Nevada with Peter's family, then Peter's family is coming here, then we go to ALASKA!!! Very exciting. We haven't traveled very much at all in the past few years, and we (I) have missed it. Be sure, I will be taking a LOT of pictures (especially in Alaska), and hopefully I will get some of them posted here.

It's very hard to write a 10 page paper on hereditary neurological deafness when I can daydream about all our fun trips!

Super busy weekend

Remember how weekends are supposed to be the time you get to relax and unwind from the stress of the week? Yeah, me neither. Today, when I was eating my lunch at 4 PM at work, my boss said, "Hey, you do know it's Sunday, right?" Yeah, I'd almost forgotten :-)

Yesterday was Earth Day, so this being Boulder, we expected it to be a city-wide holiday. Sadly, we quickly realized that in Boulder, they must subscribe to the "Every day is Earth Day" philosophy. In Reno (not the hippy-est town), Earth Day was huge, with GIANT tents with dozens of cool vendors, live music and everything to make a good festival. And it's not that Boulder can't throw a good fete. In May or June, Boulder's Creek Festival is amazing, with more vendors than Reno's Earth Day and lots and lots of activities. So with these facts in mind, we set out Saturday morning to the farmer's market, which is right next to where most Boulder festivals take place. Last week, there was a big "save the planet" rally there, so naturally we expected something this weekend (the actual weekend of Earth Day).

Last weekend:

Hug your mother:This weekend:

Crickets chirp...

So while we bought some lovely fresh food at the farmer's market, we had no Earth Day. Since this is practically Peter's favorite holiday, we tracked down the "main" action. It was at NCAR, which we'd often heard about and could see up on the hill from town, but had never been to. All I knew was that it was designed by I.M. Pei, which makes it important. While the Earth Day stuff was a bust (I think we were the only people there without kids and it showed, though the exhibits were cool if you DID have kids), the going-there was great. The view is incredible and the location can't be beat. There are beautiful trails all around that are more easily accessible than some of our other favorites. We will definitely be bringing visitors there now, especially if they like science, since they have some great weather exhibits in the public lobby.

"Fly fishing" under the Flatirons:


After that, we accidentally found out about "Astronomy Day" at the CU Planetarium. I'd been in there for a lab once, but Peter had never been there. We were in for a cool experience.

The planetarium had just recently acquired a "Science on a Sphere" exhibit, of which there are apparently only two in the world right now. It's basically a huge floating spherical screen that has four projectors projecting images of planets, moons, and pretty much anything else onto it. The system makes the images rotate, which makes the sphere look like it's rotating itself. It's incredibly beautiful and amazing to see the individual craters on the face of one of Jupiter's moons so clearly. Here's a video that sort of shows it, but it is much, much cooler in person. If you get the chance to see one of these, definitely do.

Sunday was even busier for me, but it was mostly work stuff. We did get to see our friend Kris perform in one of her clarinet recitals for her PhD in music, which was incredible. If you are a music buff on a budget near a university, try to find out when recitals are. The talent was incredible, it was totally free and I think things like this happen all the time.

Hope everyone else had a nice weekend!

Spring snow tomorrow?

That's what the forecasters are saying. Apparently, we could get up to a foot of snow by tomorrow evening, which makes me sad. All the flowers and trees are blooming, unaware that their effort will shortly be buried under snow. I guess I can't blame them, as the early bloomers tried last week and got snowed on, then frozen under sleet. As soon as the weather cleared and the temperatures warmed again, anything that hadn't bloomed before furiously worked on the task. So now the campus is filled with flowers of all kinds and I feel compelled to photograph them all. I love taking flower macros, and now that we've been here long enough to experience all the seasons, I've learned that I really have to seize the day, for they may not be here tomorrow.

R.I.P.

Kurt Vonnegut has passed away. The world has lost someone very unique and our culture has lost an important voice. I am very sad. I've read and loved many, many of his crazy books. I always thought of him as immortal, but at least his words are.

Honeymoonin'

Yay!!!!! At long last, we are taking our belated honeymoon! When we were planning our wedding for August of 2005, little did we know that I would be starting my new MA program just a week after our wedding date, several hundred miles away. We picked up the moving van the day after the wedding, so needless to say, our honeymoon had to be delayed.

Fast forward to now, and we are finally taking it! We had talked about Iceland, Costa Rica, Europe and other places as well, but thanks to some free tickets from my wonderful parents, we are going to our 45th state together: Alaska! Neither of us have ever been before, but we've heard such wonderful things about it from friends and family who've been.

Yesterday, we booked all the basic/important stuff. We have the place tickets, the ferry tickets (the Alaska Marine Highway, AKA a ghetto cruise, but actually it's supposed to be way better than a regular cruise and WAY cheaper), and even our car rental. Now I just can't wait for the semester to be over so we can see some gorgeous stuff! I'm planning on taking a TON of pictures and we are figuring out how to rig stuff so that we can upload our pictures to our iPod so we can clear out the memory cards. So exciting!!

Easter Party 2.0

Today we had our second annual Easter brunch (yes, I'm aware we were a day early, but that's how the fates aligned this year). Last year, we had an easter egg hunt in our living room, a bunch of great people, good food and a ton of fun. Part of me was a little worried this year wouldn't live up to last year's fiesta (it was the only party we had that people still talked about months after the fact). Would people be too busy on Saturday? How could we top last year's egg hunt?

Thankfully, I needn't have worried. We have awesome friends and the weather was extra crappy, so I guess we were the best thing going :-) That, and Peter had plans to expand the hunt considerably. I accidentally bought way more eggs than he had planned (they were on sale!), so we had 103 and a half eggs to hide in our rather small apartment living room. Amazingly, it wasn't that hard at all and we could have hid many more quite easily (next year, Gadget, next year).

Thanks to my sell-out video, I learned how easy and fun stop-motion movies are, so I decided to make this my next project. Want to see how crazy 20 people hunting for 100 eggs in 250 square feet is? Check out the video:


Looks like fun, huh? Join us next year when we hide 200 (or more?) eggs!

Holy crap!!!

I juts got the email that said I passed my comprehensive exam! I really thought I was going to get called in for oral exams, and I'm not really sure why I didn't, but I'm happy!

Luxury

The past few days have been heavenly. I've done pretty much nothing, or only exactly what I want to do. It all ends tomorrow, but I've certainly enjoyed the time I've had. I like working hard, but I also like doing *nothing* really productive when possible (like most people, I'm sure). Today I was thinking about when I was a kid; I couldn't understand the concept of adults liking work. I would hear people talk about feeling productive like it was a good feeling and all I could think about was, "How is this better than playing? If you have the chance to play and choose to 'feel productive,' how is that good or fun or even remotely preferable?" I understand it now, though I'm not sure exactly when that transition took place. I can only "play" for a few days now before I start feeling restless and need to be productive. In fact, many of the things I do for fun are actually productive in some sense (or at least give me the feeling of being productive). I like making movies, taking pictures, writing blogs. Even getting through more of my Netflix queue makes me feel good in that I feel like I've accomplished something by taking three more movies off my list.

Some people lament this change from the days when playing pretend in a field was all we needed to be fulfilled. I think it's just a necessary step for a functioning society. If no one ever derived any satisfaction from a job well done (or even a job simply done), would anything ever get done? And if things did get done, would anyone ever be happy? I think it's good to enjoy doing work, but it's also good to play pretend once in a while.

Sold Out

I do polls sometimes for Harris Poll. Not to get any money, since I've never won the "sweepstakes" they always claim they have, but because I can earn points for overpriced prizes with very little effort. A week or so ago, I filled out yet another survey, only this one asked to call me with a follow up. Sure! Why not? So I get the call this week, and they want to pay me real money ($75!) to make a short movie about how I use media in my life (more or less). I just have to sign something and upload the video to their website. Fine. I sure could use $75 and I can make a 1-2 minute video, no prob. Before I get the contract to sign, I'm thinking about what it might say. For SURE I think it's gonna say they get the rights to my masterpiece. So I think, well, I'll just do a half-assed job; it's not like my $75 depends on it actually being GOOD! Especially if they broadcast this shize on CNN or something (I think that's one of the sponsors of this poll).

I get the contract, sho 'nuff, I have to waive all my "moral rights" to my video. And TimeWarner can show my video "without limitation throughout the universe in perpetuity by any and all means now known or hereafter discovered..." and I won't ever get more than my $75, even if my video rocks the foundations of civilization as we know it. OK, so I just make a crappy video, right? Yeah. I wish I could. Now the video I've made is so cool, I want to make a *practically* identical video so I can show all my friends. Cuz it's pretty cool. If you are near me, or are related to me, or otherwise want to see this video, let me know and I will figure out a non-illegal way to show you (read: no YouTubing it for me on this bad boy. It's totally right in the contract).

Man. I sold my creative soul for $75. Ah well, now we know my going price.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Yesterday:

Today:

It's all good

I took my comprehensive exam for my Master's degree on Friday. Phew! I'm just glad it's over and I can let my brain relax a bit. Last week, I had two other major tests in addition to the comps; I honestly don't think my brain has ever been that full before. This week is Spring Break, so I've just been trying to decompress, catch up on the little things around the house I've been neglecting, and just take advantage of the eye of the storm. One of the things I want to do with this time off is post a bit more to this blog :-)

Overloading Cute Overlaod

Like Cute Overload, but wish there were more puppies? Me too. Enter The Daily Puppy, uber puppy goodness. Check out the videos too. Try not to squeal so loudly you wake the neighbors.

Awesome Video

If you've ever wondered what a man getting chased by a cartload of monkeys would look like, here's your chance to find out. (Oh, and definitely check out the first link. Guaranteed for at least five minutes of fun and wonder at our crazy language).

Taste of Spring

Today was absolutely gorgeous. May I order another, please? I was more inspired to take pictures today than I have been in quite a while. Maybe it was the light, or the spring fever palpable across campus, but I just wanted to pull out my camera and capture everything. I took the photo to the right while I was talking on the phone with my mom (As a side note, she does not have thyroid cancer! Yipeee!!!!). I balanced the camera on my knee, tried to aim a little bit, and shot. This was by far the most non-crazily-lopsided take of the bunch.

Also inspiring me photographically is Threadless. I've blogged about this great site before, but they are having another sale, so last night I went on a shopping spree (well, a spree for us, anyway). They have a thing where you get credit for taking pictures of yourself wearing their shirts, and you get more credit if they love your picture, so I've been trying to think of some really creative, pretty ideas for compositions. My biggest obstacles are: free time while there's still daylight, free time in general, and a photographer. Since I have to be in the picture (wearing the shirt), it may be hard to get the results I want with someone else shooting. It's not like I have anything too fancy-shmance in mind, but I do have something in mind, you know?

Anyway, that brings me to what I've been thinking about more lately. I need to do more posed photographing of people. I'm a crappy people photographer right now and I'd like to change that. All I need are some willing subjects. Any takers?

Here are some portraits or a more (or less) willing subject: