Purpose

Whenever I think of the word 'purpose' I think of the song, by the same name, sung in Avenue Q. That song is particularly important now because I am, like Princeton, graduating with my BA in a seemingly useless major. However, I, unlike Princeton, have in fact "found" my purpose. I choose to "" found because I think that one's purpose, if a person decides that one needs this, is partially chosen by the person and partially something mysterious(ish). I mean that to a degree you need to work to obtain a "purpose" but you know when you've found it because things are easy for you to do in that field. The right opportunities just fall into place. Or at least that is what I have found with my "purpose". I have met really good people and been exposed to tools that I understand well and can execute well partially from me going out and searching for them but also because they seemed to fit right. Small changes, such as my ability to take criticism, would have completely changed who I worked with and what projects I was interested in. Thinking about those makes me realize how unique an opportunity I've had in my undergraduate degree and how good a fit my interests really are.

After some Criticism

After getting some critiques about the formula of this blog, aka basically me rambling on for no reason, I have decided to think more about that idea. Why do blogs have to have a specific theme at all? I guess it makes sense to a degree, have something specific in order to attract an audience that is interested in that topic. So, like most writings, it depends on what your purpose is for the blog. I make these silly ramblings public in case anyone were to find them useful. An average person with regular readers who are robots from Siberia I think represents an average blog. If anyone were to do a digital survey of blogs of regular people, aka not blog sensations or celebrities, they'd probably find this information useful, possibly.

To my Drama Teacher

Dear _____,

I wanted to thank you once again for four years of excellent teaching. There were many important concepts that I learned through drama that have helped me in my studies. Particularly, the concept of play. Your encouragement to have a playful mind helped me narrow down the field of archaeology that I hope to pursue, which is the study of childhood. Drama also helped me realize that many of my academic interests came down to an interest in studying people and archaeology is how I choose to pursue that. Anyways, I hope to see many more quality drama productions and once again thank you for being such a strong influence.

To More Specific People

To a couple really great Math teachers, it will include the previous paragraph and this:

I wanted to thank you for being a great math teacher. I loved how much passion you had for math and how much you cared about learning. Although archaeology may seem unrelated, the logical thinking and understanding of basic mathematical principles have become invaluable, even in my undergraduate study. Many people who go into Anthropology are afraid of, or bad at math, and so having the strong background in math that I did, because of you, has helped enormously. I am grateful that I had such great teachers and hope that you inspire many more students.

To General Teachers

The Generic one to good but not personal teachers:

As the announcement says I will will be graduating with my BA, majors in History and Anthropology. If you would like to attend, I will be participating in three different commencement ceremonies the one listed on the card at CenturyLink Field, a History departmental one on June 8th at 3pm in Kane Hall room 130, and an Anthropology departmental one at 7pm on June 9th in Kane Hall room 130. All three have limited space but if you would like to attend please e-mail me at pprzystupa@gmail.com as soon as possible. As for what happens after graduation, I will be in living in Washington until the end of July. After that I will be moving to New Mexico to pursue a PhD in Anthropology focusing on Archaeology. I will be attending the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I wanted to thank you for being a great high school teacher and encouraging me to continue my education. I hope that you continue your good work and inspire many more students.

To General Family Members

The Generic Thank you note Announcement for Family members I don't know well:

As the announcement says I will will be graduating with my BA, majors in History and Anthropology. If you would like to attend, I will be participating in three different commencement ceremonies the one listed on the card at CenturyLink Field, a History departmental one on June 8th at 3pm in Kane Hall room 130, and an Anthropology departmental one at 7pm on June 9th in Kane Hall room 130. All three have limited space but if you would like to attend please e-mail me at [REDACTED] as soon as possible. As for what happens after graduation, I will be in living in Washington until the end of July. After that I will be moving to New Mexico to pursue a PhD in Anthropology focusing on Archaeology. I will be attending the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Thank you for being part of my life and for the continued support.

Open letters

So later today, not now since I really should be getting to class on time, I will be posting my "thank you" letters to some of my friends, teachers, and family which includes a run down of what my graduation is going to be like and what is going on in my life. While this may seem silly, I feel that it is an important thing to do in order to show your appreciation for teachers, and family, who are often not given as much credit as they are due. I hope to print out some postcards with me on them, I know sort of silly, and then write on the back just short thank yous to each teacher or family member or family group so they know what I have done and what my life will be. I think its cool, and a good way to make up for not visiting in years.

EDIT this also is because I forgot to write earlier this week

Week's End?

Its only day two of this week and I am already ready to be done. I really have no idea why but it just feels like it should be over already. I have the same amount of work due this week, maybe even less, and so I feel lazy. There are things that I need to do today specifically, like check my work schedule, but it feels as if the rest of the week will be lacking in interesting activities. I will have time to clean my room, which is TRASHED, but that is not a particularly exciting activity. Neither is studying. Perhaps I will drive a bit more this weekend or take my dog on a walk or play some Uncharted...I think it will be Uncharted.

n00b post

I have a lot of other homework to do this morning and so this post will be minimal. I need to turn in a reflective essay for a scholarship today by 5pm and will be editing that for the majority of this time. I also need to check and see if there is any My Spanish Lab that I need to do before tomorrow morning. I also need to edit my bagels game to see if everything works correctly but that won't be touched until I am safe at home. Gah! Also I need go to my driving class and pick up my prescription. Silly day, why are you just filled with errands?

Drives

I just took a second to think about the word 'drive' and I'd say that it would be defined as "a movement usually forward". If you think about driving a car it is a vehicle that generally propels people forward and gets them where they would like to go. If you think about one's "drives" or inspirations they do that exact same thing, minus the vehicle. Or well, the person becomes the vehicle that is moving forward. I think that they idea that the person, who is filled with ideas like a car is filled with gasoline or electricity, moves forward on under their own choice or direction is an important thing. We have to choose to engage with the things that can move us forward rather than assume that they will take us where we want to go.

Perhaps too philosophical and gramatically incorrect but whatevs.

Forgetfulness

In the last couple of weeks I have lost a few important things, like my planner and, over the weekend, my paycheck. The things that were, I guess, most important came back to me, AKA my paycheck, but my planner has still not appeared. This forgetfulness has become a problem on a daily basis since I take things that I do not need out of my backpack every night. This morning I forgot my USB port. Why was that important? Well it has the two ongoing projects that I need to work on, a scholarship essay due on Monday and my Java programming project due on Tuesday. This leaves me nothing to do between classes time and forces me to do that work when I get home, which will be rather late tonight. I find that annoying but its my fault that I forgot those items. Some have suggested that I start storing essays and other digital project on the Cloud but I am often too lazy to keep my Cloud documents well named, organized, and properly updated. For me, these instances just show how I need to pay more attention to what I am doing, in general. Though, I do often find a good excuse for most of my actions. Such as yesterday night, my dog peed on my bed, a very good reason I think to forget to put a USB port in a backpack.

Eventually I will...

I have realized over the years that I am very susceptible to the people around me and will occasionally mimic them in their actions. How so? Basically I go "Wow that was a cool idea and I'd like to that" and then think about how I would do it differently or better but never come close to actually doing it. Some of these things include: making a Steam Punk outfit, Cos-playing, and most recently writing a novel. A couple of my friends, or others I know, have written novels and some have gotten them published. I would not call them commercial successes but at least they were able to finish something like that. I, on the other hand, have never come close. In seventh grade, I started to write a fantasy novel by hand during my classes. I am sure it was pretty bad and I still have the pages so maybe someday I will type it up and see where it goes. Currently, I have been revisiting a story inspired by one of my friends but one which he never wrote either. I think that more than any of my other ideas this has some fruit, sort of. Unlike my other story, the seventh grade one, its not as limited age wise. Where I wanted the plot to go can still fit the age group that I am thinking of using and of course, like many novels, it could parallel personal successes and failures. But of course, be more awesome. So maybe, sometime in the future, when I have time as a graduate student ( HA HA) I will sit down and do this.

Join In

So there are zillions of types of social networking available on the internet. This week I joined two new ones, one in order to join the other. While I like the ideas behind both of them, sharing your thoughts or ideas or art, part of me is like "Who cares?". I guess it allows my friends, if they were to feel like it, to look at what I'd been Pinning lately and maybe buy me related gifts or to show them what I like in general, giving us more talking points. However, I am not an artist or celebrity so I hesitate to use some of these things. It would be nice if anyone cared to actually look at what I liked or how I felt but I am rather sure that if I don't tell them in person they probably aren't that high on the caring about it list. Not in a sad lonely way, but in the sense that we perceive our lives through our eyes and our perceptions come first.

Sherlock

I, of course, love the Sherlock series from the BBC. It’s really great fun but as an introspective, perhaps to the point of narcissism, person I wonder about my fascination with this character. What does it stem from? Well, as a heterosexual female, he dresses well and is rather good to look at. However, Watson in the series is much more attractive, at least to my taste. My theories suggest that I am attracted to his mind OR (boolean operator!) that I am actually jealous of his sociopathic tendencies. Meaning, I wish that I was less emotional and am basically attracted to his brutish and honest persona since it is the opposite of my emotionalism. Some articles I have seen on other blogs have discussed this idea and I think it could fit my bill. More in-depth analysis will come later, possibly.

Marvel's The Avengers

Rocked! I would say that it was: better than Iron Man II, mostly because of the villain, better than Thor, no stupid giant robot only fight scene, better than Captain America, good but once again silly villain problems, and better than The Incredible Hulk, I watched it because my friends wanted to go and because Tony Stark was there at the end. However, the question I now face is: Was it better than Iron Man? According to IMDB, it is lower ranked than Iron Man II, probably due to villain problems, but the important thing for me, generally, is the laughter quality. The main reason that I enjoy Marvel films is the humor. Quips such as: Thor, "Where do you think we are?" Tony,"Shakespeare in the Park? Dost Mother know thou wearest her drapes?" have me rolling on the floor. The Avengers also fixed the villain problems, to an extent, because they chose Loki as the villain and they were able to balance advance all of the Avengers' personalities, grow the Avengers team plot as a whole, and keep it funny. There were still things I would have liked to see more of: Scarlett Johansson moving her face a bit more when changing emotions, or maybe that's her spy character, personally, I couldn't tell, and a little bit more of that fish out of water humor with Thor. Do those detriments weigh more than the giant terrible lack of a villain in Iron Man? Probably not, but, I think I still enjoyed Iron Man more. Why? Probably the laughs or my mild obsession with RDJ. This also probably relates to the fact that I was basically a Marvel Virgin when I saw Iron Man, I expected nothing and got a whole helluva lot in return. My interest in Iron Man launched my interest in the American comic book genre and now as a mildly more informed audience member I see the movies differently. So as much as The Avengers fixed the problems of the previous films and kept the good qualities, I don't think I can, in good conscience, say that I enjoyed it more than Iron Man.

Mind Bloggling

I think a zillion people have actually explored the fact that there is a helluva lot of information on the internet. (la uva is Spanish for grape! and always sounds funny to me...). With that large amount of information I think one can find evidence to back almost any current opinion. However, there are still many things that do not exist on the internet. There are thousands of historical documents that will lie in boxes for years with no one giving money to digitize them. There are foreign language histories that are not thought to be important enough by the often western-oriented proprietors of the internet to be translated or made available online. Those things make me sad but also encourage me to continue my interest and pursuit of a graduate degree. Following reading another thought-provoking (in the sense that it made me mildly angry and then made me think about the issue) from Gawker. Academic research is the first step towards knowledge that the entire populace can benefit from. It opens the way for non-academics, starting as undergraduates, to be involved in a never explored topic and to show its importance. An attack on graduate degrees could then be taken as another extension of the obsession with now and that only the information of today will further the future. Thoughts like this remind me that all humans build on the things that came before us and without studying those things and utilizing what they give us will will not be able to advance much farther.

Doctors

So after getting into college I realized that there are many ways to be a doctor. One can be general practicing medical doctor, a jurist doctor, or get a PhD in any particular field. I want to address the sort of "fear" that I think many people have of going to the medical doctor. This comes in response to an article on Jezebel a site whose articles I generally like. The particular post suggested that many doctors, who they identified as being specifically male by the use of the pronoun "he", are making it difficult for women to obtain birth control by making them come in for yearly check ups. My question is, why the hell is this a problem? A yearly physical can be really good for you since most people are not aware of the warning signs for certain illnesses. Also its a good time to check up on other possible STDs since, although clearly written on the label, not very many people acknowledge the fact that the pill does not stop STDs. It gets women into a clinic to make sure that they are actually as healthy as they think they are. It is also I think a good idea to realize that not all doctors are men and that not all of them are in it for the money. I have been going to my GP who prescribes my BCP for years and we have a good working relationship. When I had problems with the type I was prescribed we worked out one that was a better fit for my body. The problems that the article outlined suggest a problem not with "doctors" as a whole but with communication. If you don't like how your doctor acts, get a new one if you can afford to do so. If you can't afford to find another doctor then you probably are not in an income bracket to really worry about this problem. While I don't think its a problem to make BCPs more widely available, from my own experience I know that just getting a generic kind, without the aid of a doctor who knows what they do, is not the best way to go. They are still medicines that react differently in different people and it is much more comforting to have a person specifically knowledgeable about the topic explore why than just asking the internet.

Whether the Weather

So, I have to commute to school every morning. I leave at about 7:30 am to get to school and need to make quick decisions on what I wear. It is also possible that I have already addressed this problem in a previous post. Nonetheless, this little commuting fact makes it difficult for me to choose appropriate footwear for the day. If it looks like clouds are coming my way I put rainboots on because, more than anything in the world, I hate having wet feet. However, just as regularly I put those boots on and end up traipsing around campus in boots that are not appropriate for the sunshine. To top it off as well, I didn't bring sunglasses. Those days, which occur so often in spring, make me sad. Today is one of those days.

The Week's End

Although I worked every night this weekend, it was both a relaxing and productive set of days. I discovered that I did very well on my CSE exam, which was a relief because I studied very hard for that exam. Mychal and I went shopping and I got some new, and surprisingly shiny, red tights and other clothes, which I probably didn't need but, hey, why not? The weather was not great but that was ok and made working at Zeek's later that day much easier. On Sunday, I attended la misa en espanol for practice and drove my mother and I home from microsoft campus, which was scary. I took a few minutes to warm up to driving and then we went home. My least favorite part, slash what I need to practice, are speeding up to appropriate speeds after turning and changing lights.

This weekend also opened up the coming week. My Saturday outing included purchasing opening night tickets for The Avengers. This starts an interesting cycle of getting up early, going to school, staying up late for the movie, repeating steps 1 and 2, going to work till 9pm +, followed by cleaning on Saturday for The Good, the Bad, and the Guilty , then some stuff on sunday, work, then Sherlock Series 2 to top it all off. I think this will be a good mid-quarter break. The murder mystery party will be great and I can't wait to dress all western and deck my house out with crazy western styled regalia and have Mexican food! However, I am in need of one more girl and possibly one more boy depending on the responses I get from others. I also then need to cast everyone!

So far, it appears that this quarter will be my "vacation" before graduate school and this week will be a great example of that.

Over the Midterm...

I took my midterm. I wrote code or code related things for 50 minutes and then I was done. To realize that was really a nice feeling. However, we will have a new homework project over the weekend and this sort of ridiculous last minute studying reminded me that, like any other skill, I need to practice programming a little more. I spend enough time on my homework assignments but I should also take the time to construct little things on my own and go through each step of the process to know I understand what we are going over. Its just one of those things that, since I seem to be understanding things pretty well right off the bat, I feel I don't need to study much. However, my java class is only going to teach me as much as I am willing to learn and to squeeze everything out of it that I can I need to work a little bit harder on it.

Midterm

So I have a midterm tomorrow in CSE 142. I was thinking I was doing pretty well in the class but now I am not so sure. There are a few things that I am still not comfortable with so I am going through as many practice coding problems as possible to study. Though it is a little sad to note that the online program I was using has since crashed and won't start again. Was it my fault? I have no idea but it does not bode well. So until that program gets righted I will be coding on paper which is good considering I will have to do that tomorrow.

The Search Continues

I still have not been able to find my planner! I have looked in all the places I was on Tuesday-Thursday and still have not found it. I called metro and e-mailed Condon both of which collect lost and found items for their respective agencies. I went to local lost and found areas, at Suzzallo Info and in multiple offices in Smith, and still no planner. My house has been searched and there is no evidence that it was eaten by my dog. So I continue to wonder, what the hell happened to it. It feels like this might be an item that surfaces in a year or two in some unexpected place. I am also baffled as to what someone would do with it if they found it. The inner cover has my name about a zillion times in it, a product of my use of it in 8th grade, and so if you do a quick google search of my name you'd be able to find me and reunite these things! If you do find it please tell me, I miss the tacky little thing.

HTML

I guess I have been doing this "blogging" thing for a while, when I actually think about it. Way back in 2003 or 2004 I got a livejournal and my friends and I would all post crazy stuff about ourselves. Slowly, of course, that fell out of favor and things like MySpace and Facebook began to rise and you could share more than your thoughts on the internet. However, it was those small beginnings where I got introduced to basic programming skills like bold italics and possibly Marquee just to look super funny. Those little things have made it easier for me to keep the formatting for things like forum posts for class (GoPosts) simple and consistent and to help out others who didn't have those introductions, like a friend of mine. While I really do not know much about the intricacies of HTML I know enough about "coding" in general to help out some people. The untrained eye did not notice the changing of the HTML code when it went to visual view and back again but I did! So we were able to fix some stuff like that. Anyways it made me feel good to know that my young teenage whining brought a bit of a skill forward.

Sleeping In

Greetings after the weekend. I had a really hard time getting up this morning. Strangely enough this was accompanied by terrible dreams in which I was late to various things, class and work etc. I thought it was rather ironic that although I was sleeping, and therefore could be late, I continued to dream about what would happen to me if I continued to do the same thing I was already doing. Sleep has a very odd effect on people in that way. I find that very minute changes in my sleeping routine, the temperature of the room the type of sheets, completely change how I sleep. The warmer I make my bed, having flannel sheets or having a blanket underneath me that I sleep on, I have a harder time getting out of bed, probably obviously, because it’s too comfortable and warm and I don't feel like facing the cold morning. What I dislike about that though, is that after sleeping in for the extra ten or so minutes I often end up feeling much worse than I did when I woke up the first time. Yet, I continue to sleep in even when I know this is what will happen to me. This suggests to me that sleep, like any other thing that we can have too much of, is addictive, although probably the mildest thin you could possibly be addicted to. However, it still makes me feel like crap and is why, even on weekends, I try to be awake before 9 am. Or else I generally waste a day feeling groggy and unhappy and wishing I hadn’t slept in.

Planning

I can't find my planner! It doesn't look like a planner but it is very important, and of course a little tacky. I turned a faux snake skin journal into a planner because I almost always get a journal as a present and rarely use them for journaling purposes. However, I see the use of a planner as a sort of journal actually. It records in minute detail the things that I need to do and they are often the banal things I wouldn't think to tell people. It would be the perfect thing for an anthropological discussion of the average college student because it records the habitus and living rituals rather than just the special events. I think it will be fascinating when, and there probably are people working on this, but exploring the minute bits of information that people leave around the internet and around the house that would help to build a concrete understanding of what "american culture" looks like now. More than anthropological interviews looking at a group of people's tweets or status updates or google calendars might give more insight to their lives and the social skills they aquire than asking them a bunch of explicit questions.

Summer

I don't think I've had a "regular" summer for about three years now. I don't think I've gone swimming in a couple of years and all in all summer never really seems like a relaxing time of the year. I have spent the last few working or traveling to work and not really had a lot of free time in my home town. However, I've liked my busy summers quite a bit. I got to go on probably my last family "road-trip" and see some very interesting places, like Salt Lake City and Yellowstone. I got to go on my Archaeological field school in the summer 2010, which basically changed the orientation of my life. I then worked in Australia for summer 2011. So the months leading to this summer (2012) are interesting because its going to be a bit of the same grind of the last few summers with some new things mixed in. I am going to finish the Spanish 100 series at UW and so I'll have Spanish from 8:40am-10:50am M-F, probably work at Zeek's a few times a week, and then be planning my big move to ABQ. I don't know if that will be super hectic or boring but I hope to make it a good summer, regardless.

Taking the Time

This quarter I have been trying to incorporate the relatively long walk from SR-520/Montlake to Campus in order to get some exercise. While this may seem trivial or not really enough physical activity to be considered "exercise", I find the walk calming and very enjoyable. I feel better when I arrive on campus because I got to see the area I will soon be leaving and listen to music. It allows me to experience the gorgeous views from Montlake bridge over Lake Washington and then towards the Cascades. Even on days when you cannot see very far the view of the closer shores or just the houseboats on Lake Union are still awesome. These walks give a sort of half routine to my morning, since the walk is the same, but what I see around me is different. It also reminds me that I need to take a picture of the construction going on and do some hilarious photoshopping.

Espanol Eager

This blog is going from "intellectual" to "informative" rather quickly but hey, some writing is better than no writing (I hope). Anyways, I really enjoy speaking Spanish and will hopefully be adding in a third quarter of it at UW after I graduate. It will be rather early in the morning and almost two hours a day, five days a week, but I get to speak and learn more about a language I really like. Similar to Java, which is also a new language, I find knowing more words and phrases in Spanish empowering. It opens up new places to study but also a slightly different way of looking at the world. It's also cool because it will hopefully help eliminate with my language requirement at UNM. I hope to e-mail someone about that by the end of this week so I have an understanding of what it entails and how to get it out of the way but I don't think it will be a problem. Anyways, me gusta espanol!

Rainy Days

Here in Seattle we have been having some very nice weather, though, I only got to experience one day of it because I was in Spokane from Thursday until Saturday evening. After all this wonderful weather Seattle always gets a dousing of rain, a fact that I actually enjoy. Well, I enjoy it until around this time in the year when I get my type of half-assed allergies. What is this you ask? I will explain. I could not name the things that actually give me allergies, there are no animals that make me break out in hives or foods that make my throat swell up. However, in spring time I tend to get semi-rampant bouts of itchy eyes and runny noses. Maybe I am allergic to spring, a fact that I would be ok with except that these bouts hit me when I have just settled into a comfy spot to study and cannot leave my things alone. Those are the times when my nose is dripping like Niagara falls and there is no one trusty worthy around to watch my things that I hate these "allergies". They make me look like a swamp monster to the surrounding people and act erratically since after sitting down for about 10 minutes I have to hurriedly pack my things to run to the washroom, only to return 2 minutes later and unpack my things. While some might argue that I should just leave my stuff, I refuse to leave my things unattended because 1) I make fun of people who do that 2) There is like a 1000% chance it will get stolen. Like many other things that annoy me, it is not the things themselves but the WHEN that they occur that irritate me the most.

Reading Room

I haven't been in the University of Washington Suzzallo Reading Room for a long time, but since I rented a laptop for this week its a good place to sit and study. It was interesting to wait outside the library, since for the last two years I would have been able to enter almost 2 hours before the library opened since I worked here. It was also very nostalgic to climb up the spiral stairs towards the reading room knowing that I had a finite time to use it as an undergraduate student. While that might matter to many people I am, probably a little ridiculously, a sentimental person. I am fond of places that change from being habitually used to places that I remember I habitually used. That feeling also makes me upset when I forget what my routines used to be, such as making sure I had enough cash to buy a cinnamon bun at Parnassus. So I enjoy returning to old habits, if only for a day, in order to relive old habits that fit me at a different time.

Georgia From Georgia

The conference has been going well. I had a great introducer who ended up being a very cool lady named Georgia and from Savannah. My friend and I talked to her for multiple hours after my paper reading portion had been finished and she had some very cool things to say. We talked about everything from Froyo to serious issues such as this . What was great about it was the ease with which this academic felt that she could converse with us undergraduates. She was smart, funny, willing to listen, interested, and positive which are things that not all professors feel are necessary qualities. For me it made the idea of being part of the academic bureaucracy more approachable because it was another example of how being smart doesn't mean stuffy or singularly focused. It also doesn't mean needing to give up the other things that interest you. While this great lady was definitely interested in her specific academic topic, Ancient History, she made sure that it identified with the issues of today. This connection between past and present is what makes studying history and archaeology so important and why I like studying the topics I do. I feel that academia can exist for its own sake but that it is better if this search for knowledge is coupled with an interest to use it to bring all people towards a better understanding of the world around us.

Conferencing

I did mention this on my other blog Deir el Feminina but I am currently at a historical academic conference in Spokane, Washington. The city is quite nice with many turn of the century buildings and the hotel we are staying at is super swanky. The tower were we are has a safari theme which is fun but also just reminds me of English and European colonialism more than anything else. I present in a couple of hours (1:45pm) and have read through my paper and feel pretty comfortable with what I am about to say. Though I very much wish I had turned it into a presentation rather than a paper because I am historicizing visuals. Other than that things seem lined up to go quite well. I am very excited for Leah's Paper on Sex and the City and Beth's paper on miracles. Other than those there aren't really any other papers that jumped out at me as really wanting to hear.

Tea Time

I like to think that it was at an early age that I became interested in Tea. However, the earliest time I can remember going out of my way to make a cup for myself was probably my junior year of high school. This corresponds to me being about 16 years old but I do rather vividly remember drinking only tea when I was a camp counselor for CYO's Camp Don Bosco, which would place it at about age 15 and that's not particularly young to be doing anything except for, perhaps, driving. A habitual morning tea would have started sometime around then and corresponded with the availability of travel mugs since, at least at my high school, there was not any real way to keep a beverage warm without one. I started with a liking for Earl Grey and slowly widened my horizons. Entering my freshman year of College I became much more infatuated with loose leaf teas, an interest that my father first had. I ate a couple of local Tea Rooms and began exploring the availability of loose leaf tea shops. Since then I have enjoyed picking up different loose leaf varieties where ever I go, most recently at the Phoenix Farmers Market . The only bad experiences I have really ever had with tea were in England where the water can really make a good tea go bad.

Yelle

I really love using shuffle on my music player because it reminds me of the variety in musical tastes I have. Today, it reminded me not only of Yelle , whose music I stumbled upon one day while using my MIA Pandora station, but that I should try to keep up my French. Currently, the language on my mind is Spanish because I am taking it as a class and because I have, to a certain degree, an academic interest in the language. This stems from my interest in the Spanish Civil War and the Franco period, facts which I've repeated almost a zillion times now in my short compositions for Spanish 101 and 102. However, I think attempting to keep two Romance languages under my belt would be great and help to keep research opportunities open to me. Although I will not be getting my Ph.D in Canada any government job there requires bilingualism in French and English. Why would this be important to me? Well, because Canada is the nation of my birth and the home of the best sitcom ever . I will be sad to lose my access to the CBC which has Dragon's Den, which is much better than its American Rip-Off , and George Stroumboulopoulos. So if I could work in the land of the CBC as an archaeologist that would be great and so French would be a necessity. My attempts to keep French in my brain though will be limited by my time and access to materials with which I can practice the language. So, for now, I will be just listening to pop music.

Steampunk!

So I've almost always been interested in fantasy costumes, stories, etc. This lead to my interest in archaeology because it was the only profession I could think of where I could study people AND have really cool adventures that mirrored the stories I enjoyed. However, my dabbling in theater during highschool picture copyright Mac, also made me very interested in other costume "cultures". Most recently Steampunk . I saw some really great costumes at Emerald City Comicon two weeks ago but part of me began to see a lot of repetition. The Victorian Superheroes I saw were pretty cool but I was a little annoyed by the lack of cultural diversity. Some have already discussed this but I am very interested in making or commissioning a South Asian, Spanish, or Middle-Eastern themed costume because there are so many possibilities for cool detail and costume forms. If I were to actually do this, which is unlikely, I would begin with at Steampunk Matador Costume and then go from there. It would include some great goggles and plenty of tiny gears.

Lump Sum

Well, I guess I am better at being regular with things that are not blogging. That's fine. Over the last five days, in which I have not been posting, I have come to some very important decisions. I will not yet reveal these decisions though since I need some things in writing before I proceed. Although, I will say that I have at least one less thing to think about right now. On other notes, I drove for the first time last week, which was very exciting. I felt that the pedal did not require as much pressure as I thought, which rather scared me, and that the wheel needs a lot more turning. Some have asked, "What did you expect?" and my response is that I have no idea. The only cars I've driven recently were in Halo, Uncharted, and possibly that racing game in the wet mess at Olympic dam and all of those operated much differently. Two of them required joysticks and not wheels. My dad's car is good to practice in I think since it is large and takes a bit more effort to use. Therefore, I will be using it as my “car” to talk about today in my driving class. His 1997 Nissan Quest has some problems but I will not be mentioning them since they would cost more than the car is worth to get fixed. Probably not the best choice but currently I am driving under 10 miles an hour in it so I doubt there will be many problems.

I also had a Spanish test that I thought went well but only the grade will tell. I really like my professor and she is quite hilarious. She hates pencils and with legitimate reason. If you write your test in pencil you can then erase it, once you get it back, change your answers, and then report the grader for being unfair. I wouldn't ever do that but I know of people who would and have heard stories from teachers who were accused of grading incorrectly. It is a scary prospect to think about how much power students can have to ruin the lives of beginning teachers or older graduate students who are instructors. An accusation like that could completely wreck someone’s career. Therefore, I am totally OK with her requiring pens for tests and other work. Besides that it is rather fun to hear a Spaniard actually speak their language rather than someone who learned Spanish as a second language. She pronounces her /z/ like a /th/, which I actually doubt are the properly linguistic tags, and often arrives late to class. I find both of these things to be fun little tidbits that make the class feel less like a college level course which is very serious and more like an informal language lesson where we are all attempting to learn something that is difficult. Sometimes I feel that people assume that things like science and math are harder than foreign language but I feel like all those subjects can be equally difficult if you want to learn them well.

In the Morning

I started the day off right today, with a bowl of Lucky Charms and an article on the Schuyler Mansion Orphanage. Why? Well if I want to continue to do research into the archaeology of childhood and incorporate a landscape or spatial component it would be best to target areas where children were definitively. For Non-historical, aka most archaeological sites, it is difficult to detect a separation between adult and children's artifacts but places, such as schools, orphanages, and daycares it is much easier. These places still maintained a power relationship between children and adults but unlike other areas where adults would outnumber children the reverse was true. This, in some ways, constructs these institutions as children's, more than adult's, places. I want to read more about this and I hope that it will help me select which university will be better for me and my interests.

Uh oh! Missed a day!

There are a few things that that phrase could describe. What I was referring to was the fact that I did not write a post yesterday, quel dommage. A phrase probably used incorrectly here as my French has been winning the get out of my head as fast as possible race. Well what do I feel like writing about today?

I will discuss the fantastic, and a little horrible, fact that my graduate school prospects have changed up slightly. Of course after leaning towards one school rather than the other, although only a smidgen, I get a great but vague e-mail from one of the schools about funding. It suggests that they would be able to give me a two-year TA ship or such deal. YAY! They are the better ranked school but I am not sure I want to go there still. *sigh*

Why? I don't know if I feel like being, as I would describe it, "on" all the time. Maybe that's how you should be for graduate school but part of me wants to relax, sort of, and I doubt that feeling would be achieved at this other school. Also, because of my previous shake up about my (possible lack of) writing ability and looking over a syllabus, I feel uneasy about my skills. Cue rant about not being worthy and definitions of worth.

I am evaluating many things about each school, such as job ops after graduating and theoretical variety in the faculty, but these factors do not always overlap. The decision feels too much like comparing apples and oranges rather than one type of fruit. Each would require concessions and could be tailored to my interests, whatever those happen to be, but which is the "best" seems like an unfair question. Also, I feel like either way I will wake up in the night dreaming about my life as a graduate student at the other university. However, in which city shall I be sleepless? I have about a week more to decide and feel free to discuss I want as many perspectives as possible.

Lack of grammar

Ah HA! I've started another blog! Por que? Since I have no classes in which I am required to write, I thought it would be good to continue to practice. This also follows on the fact that I apparently have not mastered English grammar or punctuation and that this would be an embarrassing (and terribly sad) thing to realize only in graduate school. So I will attempt here to produce grammatically correct paragraphs that progress thematically and, in the process, say something meaningful, which is much less likely.

I guess I will just gush a bit about how much I enjoy programming. The story begins with the final quarter of my last year at the University of Washington, which is occurring as we speak/read/write depending on when is now for you. This quarter I chose to take the CSE 142 introduction to programming course because I thought it would be a useful addition to my skills with GIS. This is because many GIS may be altered using a programming language, often Python . Why GIS? The ability to use GIS such as ArcGIS and GRASS is an important skill in archaeology since the steep learning curve of any GIS tends to scare away those who enter into the Anthropology major. However, with my strangely strong background in Math/Physics, at least in comparison, I have found myself drawn to these tools.

This background also pushed me towards quantitative courses at UW and it was there that I was introduced to R . R allows the user to combine different statistical tools available in the program into a function. One could use R to create a bootstrap distribution or other resampling tools from scratch. I enjoyed building these functions so much that I thought that knowing the underlying language of those functions would be just as useful. So, I began the course and am quite enjoying playing around with all the things I can do with my little java programs.

My only wish so far is that I could better evaluate redundancy/confusion in my programs. However, I assume that will come with time.