Personal Grooming Revelations

After my trip back to Hawaii, I had revelations about three of my personal grooming habits.

1. Hair. Except for a few short interludes, I've had basically the same haircut off-and-on for about twelve years: long hair, no bangs, usually worn pulled back. How did I get into this rut? I realized last week that ten years of Hawaii did it to me. It's not just that everyone has long, bangless hair (they do), it's that that particular hairstyle is the most functional one given the climate. Can you imagine bangs in 20 mph salty winds and 80% humidity? What about wearing your hair down in alternately 85 degree sun and--five minutes later--85 degree rain and--twenty minutes later--85 degree sun? Yes, my hair habit began as function over form.

2. Makeup. Imagine wearing a makeup mask in the weather conditions described above. One word comes to mind: slime. Though I've made some token adaptations in my makeup habits to my current environment, I still don't usually get very excited about the stuff. I believe the subconscious word association pair "makeup-slime" has something to do with this.

3. Deodorant. Never fear, I do wear deodorant. What I try to avoid is "odorant"--the scented variety that often leaves me wondering what people are trying to hide. I went to Target to buy a travel size deodorant for my trip (TSA--Keeping Our Economy Vibrant in Times of Terror), but they didn't have any unscented stuff. I sniffed around for the least offensive alternative and picked one out. However, about halfway through my trip, I couldn't stand it anymore. What originally smelled fairly inoffensive began to smell exactly like whatever cleaning solution Delta airlines uses to clean the airplane lavatories. Yuck. In short, my trip to Hawaii confirmed my habitual aversion to odorant.

So, in addition to being a vacation, my trip to Hawaii was a revelatory experience. Who would have thought I could learn so much about myself in one short week?

George Eliot

I am a book addict. I go through periods of remission, and then I relapse. This is the problem: if the book is any good at all, I can't stop until I finish. I'm a pretty fast reader, so this usually just means missing dinner or a late night. Sometimes, however, I run into trouble. Most recently this trouble has come in the form of George Eliot, nee Mary Ann Evans. (The picture below is the most flattering one I could find.)


I read Silas Marner a few months ago without any trouble at all. I spent an afternoon reading it and thought it was a very good book--perhaps a little difficult to read at my usual pace, but worth making it through. Not much damage done.

Unfortunately, I started Middlemarch this week. I'm not sure I've ever had a harder time getting into a book (well, maybe David Copperfield), but once I was in I was hooked. It's an amazing book. It's interesting to read a book in which the plot revolves around the character development, rather than vice versa. And Eliot has a way of describing even very faulty people in a sympathetic way that makes it not so painful to realize that you share similar tragic flaws.*

There are two problems, though. First, Victorian English is difficult to read through quickly. Middlemarch was lighter on the colloquial conversations than Silas Marner and less digressive that anything written by Dickens, but it was still a slow read. Second, it's 800 pages long, in small print. These two facts together mean that I lost a full day of work and half a night's sleep. Nevertheless, I recommend the book to anyone who is patient enough to get through 200 pages before being drawn in and who has a good couple of days to spare reading (and then thinking about) the book.

*Unless you spend more than you make to try to impress others, in which case Eliot has no sympathy.

Somewhere along the way...

Somewhere along the way I've become a computer coder. I can speak R, SQL, Stata, and probably some others that I can't think of right now. Tonight I spent the evening working on, among other things, this:

UPDATE distinct_id_and_partyids
SET true_1990 = 1
WHERE EXISTS(SELECT partyid_1990.newid FROM partyid_1990
WHERE distinct_id_and_partyids.newid=partyid_1990.newid AND (distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party1_1990 OR distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party2_1990 OR distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party3_1990 OR distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party4_1990));

and this:

library (RODBC)
channel <-odbcConnect("italymasterdb")
datavector_1989<- sqlQuery (channel, paste( "select true_1989", "from smallsample", "order by id, partyid" ))
close (channel)

How did it happen that someone as uninterested in computers as me has begun spending hours writing code and even longer waiting for it to run? Had I known that grad school would basically be lessons in learning how to use computer packages, I might not have signed up for it. However, my desire to get through has forced me to learn things I'd rather not have had to learn. I would guess that there are a lot of less-than-pleasant things in life that happen this way.

My only complaint right now is that it looks like all of these computer languages are not going to get me out of learning another real language. This fall I'm signed up for Italian 1. I'm tempted to \q ("quit") my enrollment in the class, but it will probably be good for me. È la vita, or whatever.

Serendipitous Still Life

Since I've been in "nesting mode" lately, I've begun to notice when beautiful things happen in my home. This artistic arrangement happened without any effort on my part--the fruit just fell into place, and I decided it needed to be photographed. It made me very happy.

Correction

Apparently I have been in an earthquake before. My mother informed me that shortly after I was born, she was up late at night feeding me when something started rocking her chair.

Curious, I looked up this incident. With not too much trouble, I discovered that said event transpired at 2:13am on February 21, 1981. It was a 3.6 magnitude quake. Boy do I feel bad about keeping her up that late...

The Gold Couch Gets a Makeover

I have an old gold couch. It used to be nice, but the last 30 years have been hard on it. I dry cleaned and re-stuffed the seat cushions, and it served its function valiantly. But it still looked like a 30-year old couch. (I've put in a sepia-toned picture in the true spirit of before/after shots.)

Then, one day after a trip to Anthropologie, I realized that I could spin this couch. Instead of thinking of it as "old" and "worn," I needed to think of it as "vintage" and "well-loved." In other words, I discovered that it could be an asset. After brainstorming and a trip to the fabric store, I came up with this:

Not too bad, eh? Once I hang the picture, it'll be downright funky. The inspiration for the framed canvas-and-felt creation: Kandinsky's Farbstudie Quadrate.

The pillow on the right is modeled after an artist whose work I discovered at the Centre Pompidou and have always remembered with a smile, Sonia Delaunay. Some samples of her work:
The best part? The whole makeover cost me about $20.

Terra Firma?

Last night I felt my first earthquake. Wow! It woke me up. After everything stopped shaking I went into the bathroom and put my contacts in--there's nothing more distressing than feeling uncertain about the stability of your surroundings and not being able to see. (In fact, if I were going to make a horror movie, it would involve such a scenario. Oh wait, Hitchcock beat me to that plot line.) Once I was pretty sure it was all over, I went online to the earthquake website to see how big it was. Check it out: http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/. It was a 4.6. That was plenty big enough for me!

Two good things came out of the quake. First, I picked up my glasses from Costco and placed them on my bedside table. Don't want to be without them again! Second, I finally replaced the Clif bars that I had eaten from my 72 hour kit. Nothing like a false alarm to motivate you to get ready!

Old Flame

I went to Williams-Sonoma the other day and ran into an old flame. Someday I will own this ice cream maker.

In the meantime, I will share with you the best recipe for coconut ice cream. This stuff is so rich, you can only eat a few spoonfuls. I'm serious--I love ice cream and this stuff is almost too much for me! Enjoy!

Really Rich Coconut Ice Cream

1 1/4 c. sweetened flaked coconut

1 1/2 c. half and half

3/4 c. canned sweetened cream of coconut (Coco Lopez)

6 egg yolks

1/3 c. sugar

1 1/2 c. heavy cream

Brown flaked coconut in a saucepan (medium high heat, about 7 mins). Add half and half and simmer (don't boil). Remove from heat; cover and let sit for 30 mins. Strain mixture through a sieve to remove coconut. Return liquid to the saucepan. Add cream of coconut and simmer (don't boil) on medium high heat. Remove from heat.

In a metal bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until blended. Place a towel in a ring around the base of the bowl to stabilize and slowly whisk in coconut mixture. Return to saucepan and cook slowly on medium low heat until the custard is thickened (about 5 mins, but maybe longer). Do not boil. Add cream and stir well.

Refrigerate until thoroughly cold. Follow directions on ice cream maker. Once ice cream churned, place it in a tupperware and put in freezer to harden it up. If you want to prevent ice crystals from forming on top of the ice cream, pat down a layer of plastic wrap over it before you put the lid on.

Nightmare

I had a nightmare the other night. Right as I was about to defend my dissertation proposal, my advisor in my dream (hereafter "dream advisor"--though, as you will see, he was not dreamy) informed me that he was expecting to see a handwritten draft of my dissertation before I submitted it for final approval.

"You're joking," I replied, laughing. "No, of course not." I turned to the person to my right--my real-life advisor--who nodded in consent. Apparently, it was common knowledge that my dream advisor required this of all of his advisees. He probably saw it as a useful strategy for keeping his advising workload down, though I'm sure he would tell his students that it was a test of their commitment to the project.

I got extremely indignant as I looked around the room and everyone seemed unfazed by the demand. I managed to wake myself up, but I've been thinking about it for a couple of days. Of all of the disturbing aspects of this dream, perhaps the most disturbing is this: I could see it happening.

Beginings

Begining a new journal is always difficult. It seems like you have to write something profound. Example one: I purchased a new journal while I was in Paris and decided that the only appropriate way to open it was in French. I filled out half of that first quadrille-lined page in halting French ("Donc, j'ai un nouveau journal...") and then switched to glorious English when it came time to actually write something ("I woke up this morning with a stuffy nose from the ambient smoke in this dingy Formule 1.") Unfortunately, I never actually finished that profoundly-begun journal.

Example two: I purchased a dissertation notebook about two months ago. It took me a week to get up the courage to start writing in it. I finally tricked myself by leaving the first page blank and writing on the second page--telling myself that I would go back and write something profound on the first page later. It worked. I've almost filled it up, and somewhere in the process I tore out the first page to leave a note on someone's door. So much for the importance of beautiful beginings...