Ain't life peachy?

After too long with what I thought was just "the flu", my sleepless nights, middle of the night through afternoon fevers, constant headaches, and endless aches never went away. Just when I thought it was getting better... boom, high fever and feeling like I'm on my deathbed at 9 pm last night.

Don't blame me, I've never had anything more serious than a common cold or common flu. I can't even remember ever going to the doctor for being sick, because it just was never bad enough.

Last night and today it was so bad, my mom drove over to help me out for a few hours. By "help me out" I mean wash some of my dishes (every glass in my house was spent on hydration, bowls had gone to cereal, and mugs had gone to tea, "thera-flu", and hot milk), help me do some laundry (because waking up every night around 5 am completely drenched was taking its toll on my supply of comfy clothes), replenish my sick food (juice, crackers, soup, fruit), and take me to the doctor.

They think I have an unusual kidney infection, or maybe something else. They sent me to the lab, where they lady said, "Oh, well, we have a lot of tests to run, so I'll have to take a bit of blood." "A bit?" "Well, more than two vials." More than two vials turned out to be eight vials. I already felt weak, as I hadn't been out of my bed for over an hour in two days, and I hate giving blood, so this was miserable. They gave me an antiobiotic for the potential kidney infection and told me to stay in bed until they get the labs back in a day or two.

God knows why I'm writing a blog on this. I am so freakin' bored in my apartment, because daytime tv gets old after about two hours, and you can only watch so many movies. I'm achy, and only getting more achy because I have to stay lying down all the time or else get woozy (like I am right now from sitting up to type this). My head hurts too much to read, despite the pile of schoolwork that grows exponentially every day. And I'm not really in the mood for chatting on the phone; I'd just be the biggest grouch since betty lou who's time.

Boo, germs, BOO!! Just go away!! Leave me in peace!!

Where'd my blog go?????

Did someone send me a bloggie virus? Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Maybe this is a sign that it's time to end the blog.

WTF??

Yes, blog has reached its alltime low.

But SERIOUSLY people, what is going on here??

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes expecting

Does this mean she'll have to really convert to scientology, "for the kid"?
What happened to good little virgin waiting-till-marriage Katie?
Besides that, sleeping with someone and getting pregnant are two very different things... did we plan this, Katie?
Now there's a baby due date... but still no wedding date?

Oh, the shame of it!

I have a new KitchenAid standing mixer!!!! Greatest birthday gift I've gotten from my parents ever! I also have 2 mix CDs of Hannah's favorite artist, designed to lure me to a concert in NYC on a school night, which would be perfect to listen to while baking/cooking.

Unfortunately, I have no time to bake any time soon!

On the plus side, the Princeton bookstore has a Clinique counter, which meant that when I had to go and buy a book today, I was able to score my Clinique bonus buy. This was great, because I thought I would certainly have no chance to get one, given that I'd have to drive to the mall to get one, and really, who has time to drive to the mall?

Sick of terrorism!

While I love NPR, it has reminded me that some things are just tired. You know when there is one song they play CONSTANTLY on the radio.... Even if it's a good song, you start to hate it, because no song is enjoyable when it's played every other minute. Sort of like what happened to "Friends" and "Trading Spaces". Anyways, terrorism is the equivalent of these songs/tv shows in news story form. I am sick of hearing about terrorism and the war on terror. No one can actually say anything substantive on terrorism or the war on terror, because what is there to say about a war on a concept where there is no specific enemy or target and therefore no good way to fight the war.

I have decided there are about six stories on terrorism that simply keep repeating on the news.
1. "[fill in the blank western government] has tightened their [your choice of transportation] safety in hopes of preventing possible terrorist attacks."

2. "[fill in the blank US state] has arrested [1-9] men from [fill in the blank arab/south asian/muslim country] suspected of conspiring for a terrorist plot."

3. "A [arab/south asian/muslim] man is suing the [national/state/local] government for wrongly holding him in conjunction with a terrorist investigation."

4. "[fill in the blank government agency] is being restructured, hopefully a move that will improve homeland security and prevent future terrorist attacks."

5. "[fill in the blank senator/representative] has announced a [bill/opinion] [supporting/antagonizing] President Bush's war on terror."

6. "President Bush is on vacation in [fill in the blank place] despite [fill in the blank tragedy/mass protest/terrorist event] happening in his backyard."


Lastly, I have decided that I could definitely be a terrorist were I in some of the situations of the worlds' people. For instance, if I were a Palestinian refugee who grew up in a refugee camp my entire life, not granted citizenship in Israel or the country I was a refugee in, refused jobs, good education, or any way out of my plight, watching my parents suffer while Israeli Jews lived in the house they were forced out of... well, chances are I would be a terrorist. The same with many other situations around the globe. Peace talks would hold little promise of help. With no military, political, or economic power, what else is there left to do? I really do understand why people resort to terrorism. If your voice is constantly being muted by the international community, where do you turn? I am not condoning terrorism, just accepting that sometimes there is nowhere else to turn.

Before you say, "But never! I would never turn to terrorism! How barbaric!" consider other hard-to-face facts. A famous set of experiments known as the Milgram experiments were done after World War II. The motivation was to see how nice, normal German people could have turned into Nazi murderers. The experiments showed that almost all Americans would obey an authority to the point of physically harming another human (even while the person's screams were audible). Read about the experiments for more info. The study was very controversial, and I think most of that controversy was because no Americans wanted to admit that they could have been Nazis were they simply in a different place at a different time.

In any case, I have decided that we need to stop making such a big deal about terrorism. If the conditions are right, most people (including you and I) would become terrorists or murderers. So why don't we start working on fixing the conditions that produce terrorists? It's the only way to end this stupid, ridiculously nebulous war on a concept of terrorism.

Raking in a haul

Two nights this week I have had the luck of hanging out with Hannah. Luck because we are rarely on the Main Line at the same time. By "hang out" I really mean help her unpack from her year in DC in order to re-pack for her move to New Haven. Being a genius, she is heading to Yale law, to join the ranks of all my other genius friends in various top law, medical, and grad school programs.

I have always been a believer in watching out for other people's junk they don't want. At the end of senior year in college I raked in a gold mine of laundry detergent, dishes, foodstuffs, and the like. Tonight I acquired: a set of red, green, and yellow tin plates (perfectly matching my Pier 1 place mats); an old timey flour sifter; an unopened jar of vanilla; and a set of brightly colored plastic mixing bowls.

I also got a bunch of recipes from Hannah's mother. This was perhaps the most exciting thing (rivaling the plastic mixing bowls), as I aspire to be Hannah's mother. She is the best cook/chef/baker I know. I have rarely tried any of her creations more than once because there is so much variety, and everything I've tried has been downright fantabulous. If I ever am a housewife, I aspire to kitchen skills of her caliber.

We watched Spellbound while we packed. For those of you who haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. You'll never appreciate how un-nerdy you truly are until you hear from middle schoolers who study the dictionary six hours a day to learn spelling words. You'll also meet some truly freakish people. For instance, one Indian family was going to pay to feed 5,000 hungry people in India if their son won the national spelling bee. Talk about pressure. "The hunger of 5,000 people is riding on this word, son." The kid didn't win. So did they not feed all those people? I don't like to think about that.

Sociology on crack

Let me tell you about this little conference known as the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, one I attended for the second time this past week. Basically, it's the invasion of around 5,000 sociologists (yes, five thousand, I didn't put extra zeroes on there by mistake) to several downtown hotels in a brand name city. The conference is strangely scheduled over a weekend, but that doesn't stop everyone and their dogs who do anything related to sociology from showing up.

There are about 500 sessions where people present the research they doing, all across the sociological spectrum. Everything from the demographics of immigration to the state of race relations to the sociology of food. There are plenty of sessions whose names I don't even understand, so I'm sure I wouldn't understand the presentations.Here are a few examples:
"Hansel's Pebbles: Theory as Wayfinding in Communication and Information Technology Research"
"Animal & Homo Sapien Interactions: Theory, Symbolic Interaction, and Policy"
"Identity, Discourse, and Civil Society"
"Social Construction of Intelligence: Towards a Sociology of the Institutionalization of Human Cognition"
You got me what any of that junk is about!

Last year I attended sessions. Most of them are freakin' boring. Everyone wants to be accepted to present research because you can put it on your resume. Nobody actually wants to present.

The second thing people do at these conferences (and really the much more important thing than presenting or going to sessions) is networking. Everyone sets up gadzillions of meetings with the people who do research in their field. People looking for jobs do this even more, as they are trying to get some foot in the door with the people who are looking to hire. Given that there is just a hotel lobby for people to meet in (all the meeting rooms are taken up by the hundreds of research presentations), it seriously looks like networking gone bonkers. Hundreds and thousands of people trying to find places to plop down and have one-on-one conversations. I seriously think the hotels we meet at must hate us for infesting their lobbies for days on end.

The third thing people do is eat nice meals and drink a lot. All meals you get reimbursed for, since it's the equivalent of a business trip. People go crazy with nice dinners, ordering everything they want. And second, people go crazy at night going out to bars. I think lots of people come from small college towns with a limited selection of restaurants and bars, so being in a big city unleashes the beast inside them. Luckily, you can just play off heavy drinking as "networking" and nobody can think badly of you. It's pretty amusing watching your professors get drunk at these conferences and then have to preside over sessions with a hangover.

I would also like to highlight the extreme nerd factor. Pretty much, if you're at a sociology conference, you are a nerd. Sure, that fact gets diluted in your mind because you are surrounded by thousands of other nerds, but the fact is EVERYONE there is a nerd! The last day of the conference they had a student book giveaway. All the book dealers at the conference who had extra textbooks and sociology books they didn't want to ship back give them away for free. There was a huge line and a CRAZY mad dash for books once the doors opened. I had one book snatched out of my hand while I was picking it up from the table. These people are not only nerds, but CRAZY nerds.

So, for an amusing time, come to Montreal next August and witness the comedy of an annual ASA meeting.

Married couples, how does it work?

I expect all of you to comment on this, married or not. (although I'm particularly interested in the marrieds/involved in healthy serious relationship people).

Your spouse/significant other: source of your biggest frustrations, or source of your biggest comfort?
I imagine it is both; the person closest to you in the world would easily have the ability to most frustrate you/make you upset. For example, if your acquaintance breaks your lunch date for lunch with another acquaintance, you'd be put off, maybe. If your friend breaks your lunch date for lunch with another friend, you'd probably be upset. If your spouse breaks your lunch date for lunch with another lover, well, you'd be mad beyond belief. Granted, it would rarely be this extreme, but I can think of less extreme examples. For instance, simply because you are around your spouse so much, they have the opportunity to annoy you more than joe schmoe walking down the street.
For the second part of the question, I think a spouse would probably be your biggest source of worldly comfort, for obvious reasons.

So what about when these two roles come to heads? If your spouse makes you upset, do you then turn to them for comfort? Or do you turn somewhere else for comfort? Do you force yourself to make up so that he/she can comfort you? Or do you ever have to go to comfort in another person? Going to someone else could be dangerous... ratting on a spouse to friends/family when needing comfort after a fight could come back to bite you in a big way, the least of which is people knowing your marital problems and at some point having a closer spot to you than your spouse.
On the other hand, is it healthy to bottle stuff in if a fight is ongoing? Is it really possible to make up soon after every spousal fight, so you don't have to turn outside to another person for comfort? If you do make up after every fight, can the person you just fought with really comfort you well after that fight? Sure, in some way, they are the best one to comfort you. But sometimes it seems things would be a bit too raw for real comforting/consoling.

What do you married people do? And what do you other people think? I plan to leave up this post until lots of people have commented, so please get going!

There's no turning back

Today, I have twice been disgusted by the smell of food in my house. (Sorry, fam!) Now to the credit of the chefs, none of this food was cooked poorly. I realized that my tastes have simply changed quite drastically.

Apparently once an employee at an Indian restaurant in South Bend told some of his customers (my friends) that once you start liking Indian food, you can never go back to non-spicy food. I entirely agree with this statement. While I still like some American food, the list is small. Usually now I have to go for food that is much more full of flavor than American food. This is generally available in a large selection of ethnic food, including a lot of Mexican and South American, some Italian (lots of garlic, basil, Oregano, tomatoes, and flavor-full cheeses are necessary, we are not talking spaghetti and acme-brand sauce), lots of East Asian food, Indian food, etc. However, your regular old American food won't cut it. I was thinking back to what I ate every night my sophomore year of college: a piece of chicken breast, some spaghetti and sauce, and frozen vegetables. Yuck I want to gag thinking about eating that now! Rice won't do it for me unless it's thickening a very spicy Thai or Indian dish. Even mashed potatoes or regular steamed vegetables don't cut it.

Alas, this is somewhat distressing; ignorance is bliss, and while I love all the new food, it probably would be easier to live in America and around whtie Americans without a hankering for really flavor-full food. However, now there is no turning back! So, thus continues my quest for more flavor-full cooking talents. I'm going to get some non-American cookbooks from the library right now.

Strategic Ads

Long gone are the days when blogspot put ads at the top of our blogs. But oh, those were the days. I don't remember too much, except they were hilarious. My ads usually were something like, "Discrimination and housing law: Fight discrimination in the housing market!" Kevin's were all about the Iraq war. I think Cohen had some save the animals ones. And of course Dave got the scientology ads, God knows why, followed by an ad for online counseling for extramarital affairs. Too bad the ads departed before we could have a contest on who could get the best ads at the top!

I did get some amusing ads in gmail, from time to time. These are from an email string a friend and I were having, that eventually turned to the boyfriend of one of our other friends that we weren't particularly thrilled with.

Breaking Up
Offering advice about breaking up using the theory of love economics ...

I Used to Miss Him
But My Aim is Improving: Not Your Ordinary Breakup Survival Guide

FantasticBoyfriends.com
Nominate your Boyfriend for Boyfriend of the week or reserve ...


Now, my blog doesn't get ads on the top, but apparently I have attracted the robots placing ads in my comments. I direct you to this comment on my last entry:

Feeling lonely? Hook up with Real Singles now for $4.99 to connect, and only $0.99 a min. A true match is only a phone call away. Give it a try 1-800-211-9293.

Apparently my concern for the lack of clean water just screams "I'm single! Help!"

Cute dresses lead the way

Well, after waiting, oh, five years since I moved out to clean out my room at my parents' house, I embarked upon the mission yesterday. The great thing in waiting five years to do the job is that I've got almost no sentimental value attached to anything left in the room. My brother is having a garage sale soon, so most working things just go in boxes for his sale, and really crappy stuff I just toss.

I seriously spent half an hour (or less) total cleaning out the entire closet. It would have been significantly less but I found some uber cute dresses from when I was about fourteen, and I just had to try them on. Well hey, what do you know, they are still uber cute and they actually fit! I guess I outgrew my Moroccan baby fat finally (read: the 30 pounds I gained in Morocco thanks to the most bread, butter, jelly, and meat laden diet you could possibly imagine). My mom's great quote, "I hate to say this, but you're so much skinnier than you were in high school!" Now, I couldn't really argue with this. I had on the cutest sundress I think I have ever owned, light blue with a tiny periwinkle flower pattern. I'm proud to say that the dress was a steal from good ol' Delia's, usually the purveyor of the hoochiest of the hoochie. In any case, the dress was actually large on me. Nice! Except now I'm going to have to alter it a little bit.

Apparently lots of people have gone the route I have. My mom likes to update me on everyone in my high school class and what they are up to. Several times yesterday my mom would tell me about someone and then say, "Oh, I saw her recently, and she was really skinny and pretty!" What's with everyone graduating college and being skinny and pretty? I guess while there might be a freshman 15, there also seems to be a senior slough-it-off whereby girls lose a bunch of weight and become "really skinny and pretty." Hm.

I guess it proves just how self-centered I really am when one thought that came to my mind was, "Darn it! I'm not special for finally losing all the flab!" As an American, we all think it's just the biggest accomplishment of the century to get down to what nutritionists would dub an "ideal weight". My friend David once mused what people from a thousand years ago would think if they heard what life was like today. "People just run when they don't have to? They exercise for fun? People try to lose weight because society has too much food??" Ah, how true. The modern diet and exercise industry would seem absolutely ludicrous to a 1st millennium man.

Anyways, I digress. Now it is back to my pit. Things are going nice and quickly, and I think I should manage to have the whole room empty and organized in the next three hours. All the typical justifications for keeping junk pretty much fly out the window in this case. If I haven't used it for five years, there is no way in heck to justify keeping it.

The girlie girl inside

Somewhere along the way growing up I missed a lot of girly-world. For instance, I never practiced giving an academy award acceptance speech. I never learned to correctly apply eye shadow. I never blow-dried my hair. While I was an avid reader of Teen and YM in middle school, once I quit those subscriptions I never signed up for Cosmo instead. I still don't own any lacy bras. I never had a manicure or pedicure until a few months ago. I've always had some girlie qualities. I can talk on the phone for hours, I love wearing cute skirts, and I love to gossip. But overall, I never qualified as girlie.

Sometime recently I realized I had become much more of a girlie girl. A few things were cues. Once, I lost my liquid eyeliner, and I flipped out! I actually stopped at CVS to buy a new one before going wherever I was going. Next, I found some cute tissues that were bright pink with flowers on them. My thought: "Oh my gosh, these are SO CUTE!" and then I promptly bought them. Third, when I folded a pile of my summer shirts and tank tops out of the laundry, I noticed that besides one brown shirt and one yellow tank top, the entire stack was all various shades of purple and pink.

I pretty much feel lame: who becomes more girly at the age of 22?? Most people are uber girlie when they are fourteen, and grow out of it by 22. I'm apparently throwing convention to the wind: the more professional and serious my career life gets, the more girlie I become. On the other hand, I'm not really losing old things I enjoyed, so there are some strange paradoxes. For instance, I'm an eyeliner obsessed Star Trek fan. Or, in one shopping trip I search for both a laptop with a 2.0 GHz processor and lipstick in the right shade to mach my purple earrings.

So, let this be a tribute to my late girlie-girl coming of age, including wearing a full face of makeup (foundation, blush, eyeshado, eyeliner, powder, mascara, lipstick, the works!) and feeling naked without it, falling in love with the colors pink and purple, wearing a significant amount of jewelry, reading Cosmo, owning multiple purses, dying for laser hair removal, changing my nail polish to match my outfits, loving pedicures, and using multiple hair products post-showering.

One request, however: If I ever wear TWO pieces of pink clothing at once, hang up a picture of a kitten, or wear anything with feathers, please drag me to a pit and throw me in a mud wrestling match.

Everybody Likes Girls

In my social psychology class in college, our professor told us that pretty women sell. "Look at magazines for men. What do you see? Lots of pictures of beautiful women. Look at magazines for women. What do you see? Lots of pictures of beautiful women."

I have a new piece to add to the "everybody likes girls" theory. In my search for an apartment, my ideal situation is to live with one or two girls. And I have noticed that pretty much everyone wants to live with one or two girls. Girls who post ads for apartments almost always are looking for female roommates. Even if they have one guy roommate already there, when they are looking for a second roommate they say things like "Sorry, has to be a girl, I don't want to live with two guys!"

Guys posting also want to live with girls. There are definitely some sketch-balls out there, like some guy who has repeatedly placed his ad looking for a female to share his room. He started out asking for $350 (in a fabulous part of North Jersey where a 1-bedroom usually goes for no less than $1600), also mentioning things like "Should be open to doing things like lounging in her underwear." While Mr. Wants-A-Piece-of-Ass says he's not looking for a girlfriend, he is clearly hardpressed to find a female to share his room, even though he has cut his price to $250 and deleted underwear comments from the ad.

In any case, there are tons of guys who have apartments who prefer female roommates. Why? One can only make some educated guesses. The 700 Club would probably say that these guys are looking to take advantage of a girl, or hopefully catch her in a revealing moment (ie in her skimpy towel between the bathroom and her room). I won't rule that out, but I'm betting there are also some more platonic motives. For instance, girls on the whole are cleaner than guys. Girls are far less likely to be dirty, and less likely to be messy (there is an important distinction between dirty -- ie starting an environment conducive to growing fungus -- and messy -- simply letting clutter pile up). Girls are probably more likely to cook. And while girls have more drama, they probably also are more likely to be the sweet, caring roommate that most people want.

My point: WOULD EVERYONE STOP TAKING WHAT I WANT?!?! I'm a girl, and I should get to live with a few nice girls. Whenever I see an ad where two or three fun/friendly/laid back girls are looking for another roommate, I know that everyone and most of their brothers are replying and hoping to live there. Sheesh. It makes my search quite difficult, when rooms listed for less than a day are already let by the time my email even gets opened.

Would everybody stop liking girls, please?? Just for a few days, so I can find somewhere to live!

Creativity, where art thou?

I came to the conclusion a month or two ago that I completely lack creativity. I am totally a product of the American system of teaching people to do things well, but without any of their own creativity. I've noticed this in many different areas of my life. I've played piano for years, and while most of my friends who play decently can fiddle around and compose, I (literally) never deviate from the notes on the page. I love to cook and to bake. Most people who love to cook make up their own recipes, try things out. I don't.

Perhaps most importantly, I lack creativity in sociology. You may be thinking, "I don't even really know what sociology is, much less why you'd need creativity for it!" Unfortunately, almost the opposite is true. The best sociologists are creative. They combine ideas never combined before, think of new ideas never thought before, and are generally just... creative! I lack the spark these people have.

So, where does one get creativity? I feel like I've missed out on it since I was a little kid. While I'm certain that some part of creativity is hardwired, I'm also certain that creativity can be cultivated. For all the talk schools do about stimulating creativity, I don't think mine was ever stimulated. About the most creative we were ever allowed to get was choosing which pictures to paste on the social studies collages in middle school or choosing which font to use on title pages for our high school papers.

Where were the projects that really help you learn the creative process? I was reading random blogs awhile ago, and I read a blog of a fellow Rice alum now teaching seventh grade science. For the final project, she assigned something along the lines of making a comic book story that used physics. Now, first, props to this girl (Laura) for coming up with such a cool idea. She mentioned a few of the things the kids came up with, and it really made me appreciate combining science (usually one of the more rote subjects) with creative thinking. I don't remember ever doing anything like this.

I think creative thinking also needs to be stimulated later on in life. I wish more of my college professors had assigned us projects involving creative thinking. Off the top of my head I can think of only one such project: at the end of my class "African Americans in Society" we had to write a paper coming up with a policy that would somehow improve the position of blacks in America. While for many papers you have to come up with a topic or an idea, few papers require much more creative thinking than that.

For me, I also need to recognize that creativity involves risk. I think I stick to my recipes and my notes on the pages because I'm afraid of screwing up. When I do exactly what I'm told, I know I will have a fine (or sometimes great!) product. Why mess with that, just to be creative? Surely I will fail at a much higher rate if I venture into creativity. My analytic cost-benefit analysis combined with my history of little creativity always leads me back to the tried and true.
Anyone who can suggest ways for me to work on my creative side, please comment! I don't want to be stuck to the instructions forever!

Most amusing conversation of my last two weeks in the Bend

From my astute sociology colleague Matt Loveland (fellow grad student at Notre Dame), a happily married 27 (or 28?) year old guy, to Brandy and I (two unmarried girls in our 20s).

Context: Brandy, 27, never used to want to get married. Now she does. Why? Because all her friends have significant others/spouses now, and there's no longer that person who she can call whenever, because all her friends have a significant other to be that person. Essentially, she wants a lifelong partner for the companionship. She specifically noted, "I don't want it for sex. I could get sex if I wanted. I mean, I could probably even get it anonymously if I wanted."

Matt: "Oh yeah, women can get sex whenever they want. Not like guys. You two could get sex right now if you wanted. [pause while he thinks a second]. In fact, I'm married, and you probably still could get sex before me. If we started the clock right now, I bet you two would win."

[Bob, a pious Mennonite and ridiculously gorgeous blonde guy in the sociology department, walks by. Don't get any ideas here; unfortunately Bob is happily married to a ridiculously gorgeous and super sweet Guatemalan girl who we all love].

"Well, Bob might be able to beat you two, sorry."

Wiping the dust off my shoes!

Okay folks, I'm in my last 2 hours here in the Bend. WOOHOO!! My apartment is all packed up, I just have to load up my car, pick up a memory stick I ordered at Best Buy, return a library book, and eat some Indian Buffet (Star of India, even on a Sunday, Steve). And then it's BYE BYE SOUTH BEND!!!!!!!!

I'm sad only to leave for three reasons
(1) we finally got nice weather about two weeks ago, and finally the trees are green again, so it's actually pretty just when I'm leaving. Houston is a furnace right now, so it looks like this year I'm really having the extreme weather (snow EVERY DAY for the winter, sauna EVERY DAY for the summer).
(2) rent is freakin' cheap in the Bend
(3) my office was sweet, and my office computer was darn fast.

But really, those three reasons are pretty much pennies in comparison to the sacrifice you'd have to make socially and culturally to live in the Bend, and I'm sooooo excited that it's time to go! Tonight I get to see my friends' new house in St. Louis, and tomorrow I'll be in Houston.

Could I be any more excited??

If your mood needs lightening

First, I have recently discovered a great new stress reliever: bags of frozen vegetables placed on my face. Why this works, I have no clue. I know some people use ice cubes on their eyes after they cry to make their eyes less red and puffy, but I am talking about a full bag of frozen peas/corn/broccoli/whatever placed across my eyes and nose. And not for post-crying, but to calm me down and make me less stressed. Strange, but true. I love it!


Second, I got something in the mail today from Cambridge University Press. (We get lots of mailings from the various social science presses, advertising new books and all). I opened it up, and the first line says, "A vital resource!" Well, hey, a vital resource...

The Association for Jewish Studies Review.

Um... okay. We can debate whether or not ANY of our sociology junk is important at all, much less vital. And the Association for Jewish Studies Review? I had to laugh at that being called vital.


Third, this is the funniest website. I am probably a bad person for laughing so hard at it, particularly since I don't have kids. Oh well. Now you can be a bad person, too.

Lag time

Many of my friends are doing very exciting things right now. Travelling, for instance. One of my friends is in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles for two weeks. One is in New York, Orlando, and California for three weeks. One is in Taiwan. One is heading out to northern Minnesota for hiking and some family events. One is going to Europe for a conference. My sister is going to Morocco for a week. I would not hesitate to take any of these options.

Then I have several friends who have just moved (or are about to move) somewhere, either for permanent or for the summer, be it New York, Seattle, Dallas, Los Angeles. Again, starting something new, often in cool places.

I am still in South Bend, finishing up a bunch of research. It's not really so bad, but when I hear about all these fun places... well, then I wish I was travelling somewhere fun! Namely: in California, at Disney World, on any nice beach, or in any beautiful mountains.

On the positive side of things here in South Bend, I managed to get a $35 library fine waived on Friday. Maybe I'll put that money in my "fun trip" fund.

I suck at waiting...

...At least when it comes to knowing things. If someone tells me they have a secret I'll "find out about soon enough", I go crazy not knowing what it is. I like to know where I'll be, what I'll be doing, what plans are, where exactly I'll be living, NOW. And let's not even discuss cliff hanger season finales!

The worst part is that I suck waiting on information about other people too. I'm always wanting to know where my friends are going to live next, where they are going to move next, etc. For no particular reason except by obsession with knowing what is going to happen in the future.

I hate hearing, "Well, we can't figure out anything until after X." Ack! Why can't it just be figured out now?? The worst is when the "X" is subjective. For instance, "Well, I can't figure out where I'll be next year until I hear back about my admission to my law schools," is pretty much a done deal. There is no possible way for me to know anything. On the other hand, "Well, I can't figure that out until I talk with my husband about it. I don't want to talk to him until he's found a job and is less stressed," drives me up the wall. Vague generalities based on talking to someone "when the time is right" annoy the heck out of me.

I don't know why I'm obsessed with knowing what's going to happen. It's not even that I'm usually worried about things not going right... I'm just obsessed with knowing the information!

The good news is, I've gotten much better about it in many respects! While in the blog entry I probably make it sound really bad, I'm mostly talking about how it used to be. In particular, luckily I've become less obsessive about my freinds' futures. And a good deal less obsessive about my own future. (i.e. I'm not freaking out about where I'll be living come August). Still... tips on how to get over this strange obsession?

Biggest compliment of the year

"See, if we're going out to eat, I only want to go somewhere that's fast. You cook as good as the food we get in a restaurant, so why should we pay to eat at a restaurant unless it's really fast?"


(As a side note, "learning to cook well" is perhaps the only goal I have ever set and completed in my life.)