work, work, work

This semester is wickedly busy for me, and I feel like that's all I talk about with anyone, mostly because things never get past the hi-how's-it-going phase of the conversation.  I hate it, especially because it's so me-me-me to moan about how crazy things are.  I already know that I'm busy and most of my friends do too.  They're busy too.  Everyone's busy.  But since I haven't adjusted to this level of busy yet, I don't have much time to think about anything else, and thus I don't have much stored up in my conversation-worthy-topics well.  So, sorry friends.  I suck this semester.

I was feeling like I hit my stride and things were going smoothly, but then I got sick this week.  Everything is still fairly in control, and hopefully I can still do some fun stuff this weekend, but I may have set a personal record for sleeping on Thursday.  And I'm a freaking talented sleeper.

Now that I'm able to eat more than applesauce and broth again, I finally have enough energy to get back to work.  And given that what I do (at least part of it) is called data mining, sometimes I find myself humming...

on uniforms and shirty-shirts

My wardrobe desperately needs an update. My newest pieces of clothes have all been gifts. The last items of clothing I bought were jeans, and that was sometime last year. I don't have any non-t-shirt summer shirts, and my two summer dresses fit awkwardly because they plunge too deeply and I have to do gymnastics in order to get them pinned up in a way that doesn't look terrible. My go-to-summer staple of tank top and cardigan is getting really, really old, especially in the current heat, where the last thing I want to be wearing is a cardigan. Need established: summer dresses or tops.

So now I look at my restrictions: they need to cover the shoulder for religious reasons, they need to not look terrible for aesthetic reasons, they need to be comfortable (including not deathly hot) and easy to wear for practical reasons, they need to be inexpensive for economic reasons, and they need to not require hours of in-person shopping for I-have-no-free-time-when-shops-are-open reasons. I'm doomed.

Being grumpy about all this, I've been making observations about men's clothing, at least in western culture--I'll be ignoring the anomalous instances of clothing brought in from other cultures. So let's just narrow the scope down to men's shirts. Men have three options: the button-down, the polo, and the t-shirt. You could argue that they also have the henley and the tank-top, but the henley is just a hybrid between the polo and the t-shirt, and the tank top is just a t-shirt without sleeves. Regardless of whether you call them three options or five, there are still a finite number of categories.

Admittedly, the button-down is versatile; it ranges from formal with frills to casual plaid camping shirts, but it's all the same construction. It uses a woven fabric, and just varies sleeve length and cut for the gradations of formality. It can come with or without pockets, have slightly different placements of buttons, have a graphic painted on the back, or could require cuff links. Again, there are lots of variations, but in the end, it's still a button-down shirt. The same applies to the others, but with fewer options. The western man pretty much has a uniform.

Now let's look at women's tops. Just searching on Amazon a few days ago, "Clothing & Accessories › Women › Tops & Tees › Timeless," I got the following oddities on the first page (of 48 tops, note that they update frequently so you'll probably get different ones). As the number one, I got a motley piece with a buttonless collar down to mid-chest, baggy fit, and sleeves that get pined up halfway up the forearm with snap-strips. (Colors: white left sleeve and collar, bronze left wrist and right hip, off-center bright pink in the middle, and bright orange on the right sleeve and as trim on the left side.) Not timeless, and certainly not easily classified.

Then we have a more respectable twisted top. I've seen several variants of these, but the twist is always different: shoulder, between the breasts, under breasts, natural waist, back, etc.. We also have a "rouched tie shoulder blouse" and a ruffled neckline fitted top. These are all very strange to me. Not only would I never wear them, I can't even begin to classify them. You wear them on the top of your body, that's all I can conclude. Women's tops don't have an easy classification system like men's tops do. Women can wear button-downs, t-shirts, and polos, like men, but women's clothing sellers also make liberal use of the very vague words "blouse," "shirt," and "top."

Back in college, a certain individual commented to my roommate, who was wearing a lovely blouse, saying the following: "Your shirt...it's not very shirt-y." That is the quintessential problem with women's clothes: they don't know what they're supposed to be doing. I want to look feminine, but I hate all the hoops. Why can't clothes just be easy? I want to look nice without needing to spend time and energy on this problem. Aren't we civilized enough to have solved it already?

recovering, understanding, and honeydew

I've been recovering nicely from my concussion, and conditional on my doctor's permission, I'll be going back to work this week.  Lots and lots of folks have been incredibly nice to me with well-wishes and even gifts; I'm very grateful for everyone's thoughts and prayers.

Before this accident, and even when I first came to, I didn't really have a good understanding of how severe concussions can be.  Once I was able to remember the things N was telling me, I was like, A few hours ago, I used to think it was 2011.  How silly of me--I'm so glad I'm better now.  Lots of people get concussions, especially kids; almost everyone I've talked to has either had one or someone close to them had had one at some point.  Like anything, though, there are different degrees, and I came to realize that my accident was on the medium-to-severe part of the spectrum.

It's like comparing a freshly sharpened knife to an old dull blade; I had no idea a week of recovery would make this much difference.  All I did the first few days was watch mind-numbing TV shows--America's Got Talent and Gilmore Girls--and was completely enthralled.  N and I watched Star Trek First Contact one night, and I got so excited by the scene where they put on space suits that he had to turn it off.

I'm still overwhelmed by some things, especially crowds of people, which aren't exactly my forte when I'm well.  I'm also more sensitive to my migraine triggers.  But all in all, I'm feeling much closer to normal than I was a week ago.

One of the things this experience taught me was a better understanding for people with certain mental challenges: either those with low IQ or those with mild mental disorders.  A short experience obviously cannot compare to a lifetime of struggle, but it gave me a glimpse into the frustration of knowing that you're limited or not being in total control of your mind.  All I can say is that I respect people with mental challenges so much more now.

I've been trying to ease back into things.  The progression has gone from TV to video games to reading.  A few days ago, I decided to test my scripting skills.  What I needed was a way of sending reminders to N of the various things that he needs to get done.  This was especially important for this summer, when I see N less because of my internship, and doubly important now that I don't feel like I can trust my memory as much, at least for a few more weeks.  Someone once called this kind of spouse-to-spouse list a "honeydew" list, and that name stuck for this mini project.

I use OmniFocus to keep track pretty much everything in my life, so I wrote an applescript based on this one to grab all incomplete tasks from OmniFocus with the context of things assigned to N.  Then, I used python's smtplib to send an email if there are any incomplete tasks.  Glue it together with a bash script and tell cron to run it every day at 10am and 4pm, and you get an auto-reminder for the honeydew list.  There may be better ways to do something like this, but this is what was easiest for me.

After putting that together, both of us craved honeydew, so we got one and downed the whole thing in a half hour.  Life is beautiful.

at the end of the week

I almost wish it were a headache; at least that way I could take an ibuprofen and be done with it.  Instead, there’s a dull ache in my jaw from a set of teeth that would churn the world into butter overnight, if they had the chance.  The idea is to keep eating pretzels until it goes away, but it might not be as simple as that.  These pearly whites, or at least chocolate-stained creams, also set themselves against a deck of psychological desires, and not least of all the desire for purpose.  There are no pretzels for that. 

So I sit at the window and lust for the past.  I certainly don’t have enough money to create such a fantasy for myself--an elaborate historical reenactment--but nor do I have so little as to be driven to action by need; there’s an odd blessing in poverty. Sometimes it feels like the entire world is static, frozen in one moment for all time, and everyone reaching simultaneously, no one satisfied.  But then I emerge from my narrow view as if God pressed the play button in my brain, only to realize that it’s not one moment but several, playing indefinitely, over and over again.  I could probably make some kind of connection to the frame rate of this eternal moving picture, but the analogy is stretched already and I need to sweep up the pile of salt that has accumulated.

What I would really love is a farm: acres and acres for fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers; chickens, waterfowl, and sheep.  (I’d still import my chocolate, vanilla, and sugar; there’s only so much you can do on your own.)  I’d love to wear wool and make wooden furniture; bake bread and press cheese.  I want to do it now, I don’t want to wait until I’m no longer able physically.  But I won’t be financially able for a while.  Owning land is no trivial business, it seems.  I also want to go to grad school.  I love what I’m studying.  Is it odd to want to be two different people at once?  Don’t tell me, I know I need to find the balance between the two. But I'll keeping coming back to the impossible dream and repeating myself as long as the balance is still off.

deep breath

Alright, now that that’s out of my system, I can go clean the house.  Maybe I was just trying to find the motivation to do that. It's all just a mind game sometimes. The whole lot of it.

stepping back

A while ago, N and I tried limited our recreational internet time.  We set the limit at an hour a day and I tried a bunch of different timers like iChrono, StayFocused, and Thyme.  It worked for a while but we eventually lapsed back into our old habits.

I get distracted easily, which is no news, but recently I've been less satisfied with my online distractions which mostly consist of news, comics, blogs.  I feel like there have been some excellent things that I'm glad I've read, but that I'm starting to be apathetic about most content.  Part of me just wants to buckle down and write a smarter RSS aggregator, but part of me wants to just take a break.

I'm reminded of my new year's themes, particularly the first one: physical over virtual, though others apply as well.  Given that, I think I'm going to take a week off from reading online content that's not related to either 1) work/research/school or 2) Russian History.  I want to break the habit of "I'm bored.  I'll check Google Reader."

I have a quilt to complete, a pile of papers (and then some) left over from the move that need to be sorted through, plenty of academic work to do, a string of guests arriving over the next month, several half-finished books, and a million other odds and ends to manage.

Anyway, I'm reinstating the StayFocused extension for Chrome with a time limit of ten minutes a day; the goal is to keep it enabled for a full week.  We'll see how long it takes me to get twitchy from withdrawal.

what's the point?

Every so often N or I get in a mood where we feel no motivation to do anything.  It's the kind of very mild situational depression that I think many of us experience from time to time...like when an all-consuming project ends, or when something wonderful in one's life goes sour, or some other change recently occurred and you're floundering for a hold on life.  When this happens to one of us, we communicate it to the other by moaning, "What's the point?" with a healthy helping of humorous dramatic flare. 

I experienced one of these moods recently, which is odd because I've been fairly busy.  Usually the remedy for me is to just stay occupied with whatever nonsense I can conjure until I find my hold again.  But I've had no need for conjuring of late: we went up to NY last weekend to see friends that were in town (the High Line is amazing, btw); two separate jump-starts occurred with my work this week, so that's kept me busy; my garden has needed a bit more work than usual since many plants are starting to bloom and I needed proper supports in place (we harvested the first lettuce this weekend--yum!); I started work on a quilting project; I visited with another friend that was in town; I made strawberry freezer jam with a yet another friend; and N and I went to the opera in Philly last night.  Lots of friends and lots of busy-time.

Admittedly, I don't feel the apathetic mood currently (the opera kind of cured it--N decided to buy tickets a few hours before the show, so it was wonderfully spontaneous and just what I needed), but it occurred over parts of the last week and it made me ponder the causes of such funks.  In particular, I want to contrast the funk mood of this past week with a meditative experience I had about two weeks ago: I had recently read about wandering thoughts during meditation and how one should acknowledge them and let them pass.  One night I tried this and it worked phenomenally.  I was already relatively calm to begin with, but I had some elements of stress in my life--deadlines and the like.  When a distracting idea came, I more-or-less said to myself, "yes, that is a thought" and centered again on the focus thought of my meditation.  The acknowledgement made it so much easier to let the distractions pass since I was no longer focused on trying to forget them.  The point of mediation in my own life was made clearer...it was a chance to relax from stressful thoughts by allowing them to pass through rather than sit in the mind.

The "what's the point?" funk is on the opposite end of the spectrum; stressful thoughts, if they exist, are pushed away easily in the flood of apathy.  Stress is almost desirable and the mood is sometimes cured by artificially created stress.  However, I wonder if meditation can help cure these funks; if you create a space for calmness to pool, you may feel increased drive in other areas.  Next time the apathetic mood comes, I might have to try meditation and see what happens.  That is, if I feel like there's a point to even trying.

the hard way

The descriptions I have read concerning hardening off plants--the process of getting it used to the outdoors after beng germinated indoors--range from detailed descriptions about tediously moving plants outdoors over the course of two weeks, increasing their daily exposure in hour increments to the simple one liner: "Before transplanting, move to a sheltered area outside for a week."

Given that I'm passionate about my little garden and have read what I thought was too much about germinating plants indoors, I was totally flabbergasted when I didn't transplant them outdoors properly, by which I mean I failed to harden off the poor dears.  I thought hardening a plant mostly had to do with temperature, but I learned that hard way that it's also preparing it for sun and wind exposure.  How on earth did I fail to see how important this was??

The real guilt lies with my laziness and impatience.  There is quite a colony of rabbits near our garden plot and I didn't want to harden the plants before I had a proper garden fence erected, and that took a fair amount of time and effort to build.  After that was done, it's no trivial distance from our apartment to the garden, at least while carrying a huge tray of plants.  It would have been doable to make the several needed daily trips with my various containers, but not desirable.

So in my foolishness, I decided to just open the windows by my seedings for a few days (going back to thinking it was mostly a temperature thing).  Once that was done, I brought out the main tray and planted four varieties directly in the ground.  I left the remaining plants in the tray out with the transplanted ones overnight.  After several days of glorious temperature, I thought they would be okay for a night.

The night turned out to be windy and many wilted leaves wrapped around themselves and dried that way--little bunches of once-leaves.  The next morning I took the tray in for emergency care and prayed over the ones still outside.  We then had a torrential storm.  Of those left outside, some of peppers maybe maybe maybe might survive, but the tomatoes are done for.

After a few days of nursing and taking the main tray outside, I finally planted all of those, but they were so damaged from that first night that I have low expectations.  The few thinned tomato plants that I put in odds-and-ends pots are doing alright, and I'm trying to do those the right way, but we shall see.  At this point, I don't trust my own judgement of the plants and their hardiness.  Everything could be dead come next week.

Ugh.  Lesson learned.

I was far too ambitious this year.  I need to take the time to learn about gardening in this climate instead of jumping straight into expecting a killer harvest with a million varieties.   If I need to, I'll buy a few plants from a local nursery and practice seed saving on those, become familiar with the problems associated with this area, and not waste my garden plot.  I've changed my goal to have this year be a learning experience.  The more mistakes I can make now, the better; that way I won't make them later.

Next year, I think I'll just try one variety of tomato and order from the Seed Savers Exchange, which I like much better than Burpee anyway.  I think I might go for the 250 seeds of the Amish Paste (which was one of the ones that got totally decimated this year), and I'll harden them off properly and go from there.  The hardest part is that I need to wait a full year before starting over again.

It's been frustrating and draining (emotionally and physically), but I'm really glad I had the experience of totally mucking up.  It has humbled me, shown me how much I care about gardening, and taught me the dangers of carelessness.  Forward!!

bleh. again. Or, a tribute to walks in the woods.

I had one of those days where I did basically nothing.  I've been battling myself to optimize my time usage and boost my productivity, which will be discussed in a later post, but it backfired today.  In some ways it was wonderful, but in other ways it was incredibly frustrating.  I painted for fifteen minutes.  I dumped out a drawer of clothes to put it back almost exactly as it was.  I made lunch.  These were the highlights of the day up until about 5 o'clock.  I found myself looking for games online and unread books on our shelves--I'm already reading half a dozen books, why start a new one out of boredom?  I was unfocused, undirected, and unorganized but trying to fill my time with some semblance of meaningful activity.  Awful.

So I took a walk.

A long, lovely walk through the woods.  I discovered a few new trails, watched the geese fly overhead, and sent some deer running with their white tails flashing.  It cleared my mind unbelievably well.  I need to take a walk every day.

I came home, made dinner, and am now able to enjoy/use the remainder of the day.  Tangentially, dinner was lentil soup with two tiny savory pastries for each of us.  The filling (which was really more like a topping, since they didn't keep their shapes): goat cheese, lime juice and spinach.  Way yum.  I even tried making my own pastry dough, which was pretty good for being a shortcut variety (lots of folding, but minimal chilling).  Eventually I'll try the full-fledged version when I get a marble board, but that's likely a ways off.  Regardless, life was obviously a lot better after the walk.

a case of the crazies

It's February.  This means that I'm very anxiously awaiting responses from the graduate programs I applied to end of last year.  I shouldn't hear back until mid-month, but it weighs on me.  That plus cold enough weather that I need to stay indoors most of the time has lead to a major case of the stir-crazies.

Food-wise, I baked eight loaves of french bread earlier this week, made my own chicken stock, concocted Zuni Cafe's Chard and Onion Panade with said bread and stock (and fell in love with Swiss chard--I couldn't recall having it before, can you believe it?), and made a simple but colorful pilaf with barley cooked in the stock, kidney beans, onions and Italian parsley.  The last item was pretty normal, but made for a nice picture (right).

Art-wise, I started a new oil painting and did a one-night watercolor landscape (below) for which we happened to have a fitting frame.  I've been practicing the guitar daily, which is a novelty, and started reading the 50 cent used copy of War and Peace which was re-discovered in a giant stack of books when started filling the new bookcase we bought last weekend.  (Incidentally, it still doesn't get rid of all of the book piles.)  N and I have also started building an igloo outside.

I suppose I'm always up to these same things in varying degrees, but I feel more crazed right now.  Oh!  One more thing: N and I made a pact to not spend more than one hour of goof-off time on the internet per day (I don't count writing blog entries because it's mildly creative in nature, but I do count reading news/blogs) and we both installed the Thyme application, which is helpful in monitoring that commitment.  The reason I mention that pact is because it's yet another contributing factor in my needing to distract myself--one of my defaults is now limited.  At this point, I almost just want to know one way or another.  N says we'll be celebrating either way.  Only a few more weeks to go.