Games for grown-ups

My best friend HEB and I both have a deep love for games. I'm not sure when this came about, but it was definitely high school and later. I don't like most usual games people know

Carcassonne

This is a lovely little game that involves choosing a tile, and building roads and cities. It's 30-45 minutes long. It can be played calmly, sort of in a simultaneous solitaire (as HE, or it can be played cut throat, trying to steal each others' cities and roads (as Samir and I play).






Word Thief

This is personally one of my all-time favorite games! You get seven cards, which are letters. Each card is a suit (regular suits: clubs, hearts, etc). On your turn you spell words with your cards. If your word is spelled with letters of different suits, another player can take your work on their turn. This is a seriously fun game!

Music to quiet myself

I have recently fallen back in love with South African music. Since first introduced by my best friend HEB after her study abroad in Cape Town, I always loved it. I don't buy much music, however, and so my reliance on the radio didn't help feed my interest.

Recently, I have come back to South African music. Life has been more stressful and draining than usual for the past few months, for a variety of reasons. South African music is so calming and peaceful to me. I can't quite pinpoint why, it just has that effect on me.

If you are in need of some rest and calm, I recommend these.

First there is Vusi Mahlasela, a sort of folksie, Indie South African singer. You can listen to several of his songs at his myspace page.
http://www.myspace.com/vusimahlasela
I really love "Everytime."

Next, there is one of my favorites of all time, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Sadly, I missed their live performance at Princeton a few years ago. I post this not for the video, but just for the music. (I don't know any other way to listen to music online).





I could listen to this music for hours (and sometimes I do!)

Goals as a 25 year old

My birthday was on Friday, and at dinner I jokingly started coming up with some goals for my year as a 25-year-old.

Here's what I came up with:
1. Visit a new continent.
This will be surprisingly easy for me because I am going to India on a Princeton fellowship in December! So it's not much of a goal, since it's for sure going to be done. But hey, it's attainable!

2. Start a book.
Originally the goal was to write a book, but when I talked to one of Samir's friends who is in the process of writing a book, the look he gave me made me decide that a better goal is to start a book. I'm not talking about an academic book. Subject matter, genre, etc. to be decided. But hey, I'd like to say I wrote a book.

3. Get married.
Again, totally attainable since it's planned for happening June 1, 2008. Perhaps the goal will be to pull off the wedding as stress free as possible. I'm well on my way to that goal as well, considering that we have rented out a summer camp for the weekend and plan to have a totally untraditional, super fun weekend wedding.

That's all! I guess writing a book is my only "real" goal, in that I will have to work for it. But hey, all of them are pretty big things. Here's to year 25.

VALF endorsed candidate: Barack Obama

I love Barack Obama. I find him inspiring, new, and different. I like his rhetoric of unity, unlike other candidates who ignore this topic. I think he would make a great president. I also think it is high time we had a minority president.

I am also a big supporter of various feminist causes, and so I'm not against Hilary. I'm just pro-Obama. I also think it's time for a change. I read a crazy statistics: 116 million Americans have never lived under a president other than a Bush or Clinton. Many have commented on how the dominance of the two families in national politics is unprecedented. While I like the Clintons, I think it's time for a complete change, something new and refreshing. Another reason I support Barack. I do think he would be a new face, and take national politics in new directions. It would be refreshing!

One more: I think Barack can win. He's not a divisive candidate, at least not in the recent sense of the word. I think he could win a general election and give us a president that doesn't polarize the country for 4 or 8 more years. I think many other candidates would have that effect.

So, now it's out there: my publicly endorsed candidate. I probably have not done justice to my passion on this, but I am very passionate. BARACK IN 2008!!! Does that do it? Just read some of his speeches, and you may be swayed as well. Here is one I love, his speech anouncing his candidacy.

Life stories

Well, I'm going to attempt to bring the blog back to life.

An interesting tidbit for my Houston friends is that life stories are back in my life. The tradition of telling life stories was started by Chris and Lisa Seay, as far as I can tell, and basically involves telling the unabridged story of your life. Yes, a two-hour story narrative, with props if you want, horrors and joys of life all included. The small groups at Ecclesia, my Houston church, almost all partook in this. It was really touching to get to know people so deeply, hearing about their entire lives.

This tradition has now been brought to Princeton, NJ. I meet with a group of girls here every Wednesday night. The group was started three years ago as a Bible study, but now has evolved mostly to just a weekly girls' night. We get together, have some snacks or desserts, share about what's going on in our lives, support each other, discuss issues on our minds. It's a wonderful community that is totally "organic" and has stayed strong the past few years. I recently told the girls about the idea of life stories, and people were keen on it. We've done four now, and they are just beautiful. Beautiful! Our friend Krista shared this week, and it was amazing. I could relate to her about things I never knew we had in common, and I was reminded how much I love hearing these life stories.

Krista said at the end of the night that she thinks it's the anecdotal nature of our lives that make them so compelling. I have come to believe that stories are incredibly powerful. We learn through stories, connect through stories, share through stories. Movies and novels are all stories, as is history. I almost feel like I'm connecting to an ancient tradition when we tell life stories, or stories of our lives. Stories just resonate, are remembered, are felt. Long live our stories!

Holy crap, cancer is scary.

I recently found out that a good friend has a horrible kind of cancer. Not that there are any "good" cancers out there, but there are operable cancers, treatable cancers, manageable cancers. This cancer is ferocious, horrible, mostly inoperable. The five year survival rate is 30%.

It's a freak case. People who get this cancer have an average age of nearly 70, and my friend isn't even 30. The doctors have all said they have never seen or heard of a case like this.

My friend is going with the most ambitious route to get rid of the cancer, a surgery that is the best recommendation from doctors consulted all around the country. The dangerous part is that the procedure has a 20-40% mortality rate. Holy crap.

First I cried, and then I was generally shell shocked. I felt small and my own problems felt smaller (as cliche as that is... it's totally true). Then I felt at a loss. What could I do? All I want to do is help, but how? What can I possibly do? Sure, "be a good friend", "be supportive". Do you know how ridiculously meager that feels in the face of what my friend is facing? How much it feels that can hardly express the care and concern I feel?

I can't believe I made it

So, the way graduate school works is something like this. You show up, take 2-3 years of classes, and somewhere at the end of year 2 or end of year 3 write a master's thesis. Then somewhere in years 2-4 (after you are finished all your coursework and after you have finished your master's paper) you study for a few semesters and take exams. They are called various things: comprehensive exams, qualifying exams, general exams, area exams. Basically you read everything ever written in your two main fields of study then take a massive exam on it, unless you go to Princeton and then you read everything ever written in THREE fields and take a massive exam.

Well, years of coursework and 1 master's paper later, my exams are here! I recently numbered my reading lists and discovered I had around 250 books and articles that I was supposed to have read specifically for my two exams today. I did manage to make it through the vast majority of that reading, amazingly!

And now the test! I have 24 hours straight of open book essay writing fun, followed by an oral exam on Wednesday. I'm off to start in less than an hour. Woopeee!!!!!

Death, heartbreak, and responsibility

Warning: this is potentially a very controversial post!

655,000 Iraqis dead since invasion, study says

The study was done by several PhD researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. It's disputed because other independent groups put the toll far lower. Groups that have these lower counts rely on media reports to total deaths, and admit these media reports probably overlook some if not most civilian casualties. This study, however, relies on a survey of a sample of over 1,800 Iraqi households for a total of over 12,000 residents. The estimate around 600,000 Iraqis have died in violence, and 31% of those deaths are attributable to coalition forces (as opposed to suicide bombers, insurgents, etc). The rest of the 55,000 deaths are due to much higher rates of heart disease and cancer among Iraqis since the war started. As a sociologist and demographer, I can tell you that the methodology of this study sounds pretty darn good as compared to how other counts are totaled.

In addition to this heartbreaking figure on deaths, we must face the facts that everyone who is anyone--American generals leading the fight in Iraq, independent observers, the international community--says Iraq has slid into a civil war. And add to THAT the fact that the CIA reports America is actually less safe from terrorist threats after invading Iraq.

These facts make me ache inside, and sometimes tears literally well up in my eyes. 600,000 deaths! Civil war! My chest feels so heavy when I think about it, and it makes me so angry! So many innocent Iraqis losing family, homes, possessions, livelihoods, safety... It is unbearable to think about, and it makes me both sad and infuriated, because it could have been avoided.

I hate the lack of accountability, not just for leaders but also for citizens who supported the invasion. I debated and argued with so many people who claimed it was "necessary" or "the right thing to do" or whatever the explanations were. I want the people who were the 60% majority of the American public who supported Bush's invasion of Iraq to feel responsible for those 600,00+ deaths. Yes, our government did this, but only with the support of so many Americans. I also want the people who voted for Bush both in 2000 AND re-elected him 2004 and now don't approve (because more than 50 percent of the popular vote went to him, and now his approval is in the low 30 percent range) to take responsibility. I hate the immaturity of saying "I told you so!" but when I look back my memories are vivid and harsh. The (literally) tens of millions of people around the world who staged protests against the invastion (in Morocco alone one demonstration drew over 1 million people, and there were protests all over the world of that magnitude). The many people who accurately predicted that however quick the invasion went, fighting would last a long time. The evidence from many countries that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. The people who asked, "What happens after we get rid of Saddam?" The people who predicted a long fight, and possible civil war. All theis evidence was not secret, but was being broadcast around the globe and around our own American scene, and so much of the government and American people chose not to look, not to listen.

I admit that now I am at a loss, as I think are most people who once were against the war. We presented evidence, we reasoned, we wrote letters, we yelled, we protested, all with one aim: Don't invade Iraq! It's an unjust, illegal war! Now I am left speechless, along with the pacifists, liberals, Democrats, and everyone else who opposed the war. What do we do now? We have created a civil war, and while I so vehemently opposed American pre-emptive action, I also believe we have a responsibility to clean up the mess we have made. Republicans criticize the Democrats for offering no good plan of their own; I think this is because there is no good plan. How do we clean up from a mess we not only opposed getting into but has now slipped into complete chaos and anarchy?

I don't want American citizens to pay for their misjudgement in supporting the war, but I do want people to take responsibility for their votes, their voices, and their arrogance in ignoring those speaking against the invasion (including not just the 40% of Americans but more or less the rest of the entire world). I want people to take so much responsibility it never happens again; that is, no one falls into following rhetoric without examining facts, evidence, international law, and international public opinion. May we never start a mess like this again, and may the American public feel the weight of the 600,000 deaths as if they were our own.

And please, please, I don't care if it's a Democrat or a Republican or a man from Mars: someone find a way to stop the death toll from rising, stop the civil war, and stop the utter destruction that is everyday life in Iraq.

P-ton, aka "Privilege Town"

For my long lost Houston friends, here are some of my friends here in P-ton.

Here are David and Sheherazade, my dear friends and next door neighbors. David is also one of five people in my demography class here and is an urban geographer. Sheherazade is an admissions officer for Princeton. When we are all in town, it's sort of sitcom-like living next door and spending tons of time with each other. David and Sheherazade got married a few weeks ago, and had perhaps the most fund wedding in the history of weddings.

Here are Rania and Elisha, of my demography class as well. Rania is from Egypt. Elisha is from Tupelo, Mississippi, home of the famous annual Oleput celebration. Not only does she have a master's degree in statistics, but she also was Homecoming queen at her high school. You might want to hate her for her beauty and brains, but she's just so darn nice she'll win you over in a second. This picture was taken at Six Flags, the day after we finished our qualifying exam (and the million hours a week for months studying for it).

Here we have Courtney and Alex, a married couple of Rice grads. Courtney is an attorney for the general counsel's office of P-ton. Alex is a seminary student / bodybuilder. He also is the creator of the Original Arnold Schwarzenegger Game, the newest fad going around Princeton. It is fun, fun, fun! They don't always look this scary, but the only pictures I have are from a round of pose-offs from that very game. I have a bunch of other great seminary friends, but sadly no pictures of them.

This Carol Ann MacGregor, more often known as CAM, or sometime C-Mac. She uses the verb "to phone" instead of "to call" because she comes from the fair land of Canada.

Last but not least, here is my boyfriend Samir (and his newest nephew, on the left). He minored in practical jokes while at the University of Chicago getting his statistics degree. He is a marathon runner, yoga expert, and Alias afficionado, amongst his many other talents.

As a bonus, this is my grad housing apartment here in P-town. The complex is called the Butler Apartments. We call them the Butler Projects. They are reminiscent of mobile homes. Come winter, I will have to post a picture of the heating, which has only one vent which blows directly at the front door.

My first sari

Here it is, for David and Sheherazade's wedding last weekend. Despite my best efforts at tying the correct way, in the end it was held up by the traditional Indian binder clip (not shown, the binder clip came after these pictures).

My friends

I think I have some of the best friends ever, objectively speaking. They are fabuous and wonderful and I adore them. When I have a bad day, they send me funny emails and silly cards to cheer me up. When I am having a bad time, they call me morning and evening to see how I am, and they tell me they want to kidnap me to New York City for a fun evening, even if they are super busy and have too much to do themselves. They don't hate me when I don't talk to them for months at a time. They make me laugh and laugh at my silly ideas. They send me the sweetest and most supportive emails ever. They are so amazing, that I feel guilty being sad sometimes. How can I be so selfish as to be sad about something when I have such wonderful people filling up every piece of my life?

My friends give me hope in humanity, as trite as that may sound. My friends all over the country send me emails that are remarkably similar in that they are supportive and caring and full of love, and they all love me so much in all their own ways. Either I have the best taste in friends, or the world really is full of amazing people.

Girl friends are great

Preface: Lori has never hung out with Johnson (name changed to protect the innocent: namely, me.) She barely knows who he is. Conversation over dinner.

"Lori, I have a huge crush on Johnson."
"He likes you."
"He brought me a little violet, in a pot."
"I think he likes you."
"How do you know he's not just a really nice guy?"
"He definitely likes you."
"He could just be a really nice guy doing something for a friend."
"No, he likes you."
"Lori, you have no data to back up that claim."
"He definitely likes you."
"Why do you keep saying that? You have no idea!"
"You're a really attractive girl. Why wouldn't he? Really. I'm sure likes you."

My doctor has a way with words

I had to get an MRI done a bit ago. My doctor was concerned I had "neurological problems" (she kept saying that, "neurological problems") causing my headaches/ eye aches/ all too frequent sickness.

"What kind of neurological problems are you talking about?"
"Well, for instance if you had MS [multiple sclerosis] it would show up on the MRI a certain way."
"What? I might have MS??"
"We're just being complete."

Right. I thankfully do not have any neurological problems. I do have some something-cysts in the something-passage that is somewhere behind my eyes/forehead. Now she is sending me to an ear nose and throat doctor.

"It'll just cost you a co-pay, unless they decide to do a procedure."
"A procedure?"
"Well, they might go in and look at the cysts."
"How do they do that?"
"They go in through your nose to look at them and see if you need surgery."
"Surgery??"
"We're just being thorough, don't be concerned."

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.