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.