Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

I've barely posted here for a while because I've been SO BUSY. I have: * moved 99.9% of my possessions to Durham, and completed most of the paperwork that goes along with that. * procured all the required paperwork, etc. to begin grad school in August (this includes some shots) * purchased a moped * worked on wrapping things up at my current job - this includes supervision of the summer undergraduate research program * taken 3 summer classes * sold many of my worldly possessions, working on selling more In essence, I am tired, but I'll post pictures of my bright orange moped after I have it. :)

Sometimes I'm very hard on myself, and getting ready to start school again full time has me in a bit of a tizzy, so today I started listing all the stuff I've done that I think is cool.  It's a good pick-me-up, and you should do it too.  Then tell me about it so I'll know how great you are. In no particular order: 1. Raised and trained a puppy. 2. Taught myself to knit. 3. Crocheted some extremely complicated, beautiful things. 4. Learned to tat (and crochet) from my momma. 5. Saw the ocean floor in a submersible. 6. Been a published author of scientific papers, one of which won an award. 7. Lived in a foreign country. 8. Taught high school. 9. Taught in a foreign language. 10. Studied alligator genetics and mussel microclimates. 11. Cultivated my love of solo hiking despite my fear of injury due to my insane clumsiness and crappy knees. 12. Joined Seal Team. 13. Refinished furniture. 14. Owned and operated a full suite of yard maintenance equipment, whi...

I got busy! I fell in love, I got into grad school. I took an epic road trip. These things will appear online very soon, but in the meantime, all information regarding Speech Language Pathology (SLP) matters will be posted on my new blog, Babbelje . Check it out.

* Trigger warning for sexual assault content. It's coincidental to the story, but it's in there.

I'm in Love. As in all romantic comedy story lines, I met my love while life was not going me well. In fact, it was kind of kicking me in the nuts. I have issues with depression, and my psychiatrist told me to work out five days a week. Know what sucks worse than being depressed? Working out at the gym five days a week by yourself. My boyfriend broke up with me on a sidewalk, and obliterated me from his life in an impressive 15 minute purge-a-thon of social media. Work was kicking my ass, and grad school applications were filling me with anxiety that no amount of fish oil or emotional eating could mitigate.* I was down, feeling unsure of my ability to make change, ready to embark on a quest of some sort. Maybe I'd drop everything and go on an around the world tour getting to know myself. But alas, not enough money! Maybe I could have a summer fling who would teach me how to trust my inner voice, but the seasons speed by for no woman. And then, surprisingly, unexpectedly...

★ ★ ★ ★ I read this whole book in a single day. It was an easy read, but good.  Audrey Niffenegger is also the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, which I've also read. I enjoyed this book a lot more although there are clearly some themes that the two books have in common. The theme of individuals traveling and communicating in ways that aren't typically possible is at the forefront, as well as some rather twisted personal relationships. I was incredibly uncomfortable about the romantic relationship in The Time Traveler's Wife, which, although made to seem beautiful, was in actuality somewhat disturbing. He knew her as both an adult and as a child, which is, at the least strange, and at the most somewhat perverse. In Her Fearful Symmetry, there are ghosts, two sets of twins, and some very strange familial/sexual relationships. The tone of the book is sufficiently dark that you can anticipate the plot twists with relative ease, I thought. Basically, if there is a...

★ ★ ★ I wanted to like this book more than I did, but I felt like there was too much going on for me to become involved in any one character. The book is the story of a family holding onto the past and trying to make sense of what's happening to them and to their nation. With so many characters who all have a different response to what's happening, it's somewhat confusing as to what viewpoint we're supposed to identify with.  There are also a lot of themes at play here - racism, colonialism, family struggles, the relationships between generations, traditionalism vs. modernism, and a large group of people attempting to make sense of the world in the midst of incredible changes of a magnitude that far exceeds their ability to cope.  In some cases, this plays out almost ironically. When Daniel Dorai decides to return home to Chevathar and reboot the family farming colony, he finances the endeavor with earnings from his skin whitening cream. He knows how to be...

★ ★ ★ ★ When I saw this book on the shelf of the Edisto Island Bookstore this summer, I was instantly interested in reading this.   I should admit up front that part of the appeal of this book was that it was fictionalized Jewish history. I love books about Jewish people.  When I said that to Patrick, he looked at me like I was crazy. It does sound exoticizing*, but I feel this way because books about Jews make Jews less exotic, not more.  Growing up in South Carolina, I knew one Jewish person, and I had no idea what it meant to be Jewish.  I certainly never got any history lessons or world culture lessons about Jews.  I did not understand, for instance, that they are a vast and diverse culture spread across the whole planet that is made of many different groups with their own individual cultures.  Even more interesting is that I was raised in a Baptist church and grew up with the stories of the Old Testament, but no one ever told me...

★ ★ ★ ★ I read the first book in the series years ago, and only just now returned for 2 and 3.  In the intervening years, Stieg has lost none of his appeal.  I think we all know what an incredible character Lisbeth Salander is, and honestly Blomkvist is still about as appealing as an over the hill playboy ever is - so sometimes a lot, sometimes less so.  The confusion I felt about her being hung up on him at the end of the first novel was reiterated once again at the beginning of the second.  He proves incredibly loyal through books 2 and 3, and clever besides, and yet it never becomes at all clear why Lisbeth would fall in love with him.   I think the primary appeal of the novels lies neither in the plot nor the characters, but rather in Stieg Larsson's writing style. He is practically a documentarian, providing details continually throughout the entire novel that most authors wouldn't have provided to begin with.  For example, he provides incredi...

★ ★ I'd heard a lot of comparisons between Battle Royale and The Hunger Games , so I wanted to see if they were well founded.  Other than the central concept of kids battling it out, it is not particularly similar.  I realize that to say that them having the same central concept yet being totally different sounds ridiculous, but I think they are. The main act of Battle Royale is the fighting, and while the fighting is important in The Hunger Games, it's used as a way to pull out other issues.  The relationship with the state and the purpose of the games is much clearer in Hunger Games.  I think this makes the violence in Battle Royale more menacing, in that it seems without purpose, but it also makes it seem less important, almost trivial.  This is stupid, kids are killing each other. There is, perhaps a lesson there, that we need the context of Rue and Katniss's family and relationships made clear to us before we care that kids are killing each other. So...

★ ★ ★.5 When I first picked up this book, I thought the title was referring to an entire continent.  I was intrigued by the idea that the title was reducing a whole continent down that way, as simple the light between two oceans.  As it turns out, the title is both more literal and more metaphorical. The main characters are Tom and Isabel, and the story is told largely through Tom's eyes, although the omnipotent narrator provides insight into the other characters increasingly more often as the book continues. The story begins as Tom returns from the Great War to Western Australia, where he begins tending lighthouses for the government. The work is governed by strict rules and an order that Tom finds appealing after his experiences at war.  At one point he says that rules are what prevent man from becoming savages.  He clings to the safety of this order as well as his dedication to something he perceives to be larger than himself - the Janus lighthouse guidin...

I started a new job about a month and a half ago, and it's been quite a ride so far.  My titles are the most impressive I've ever had, Program Coordinator and Managing Director (It's a joint appointment).  It's a great opportunity for me to grow and expand my skill set, and I'm enjoying it, but there have been moments when I've wondered if I can accomplish everything that needs to be done, both in terms of quantity of work, but also the level of quality that I want to achieve. One of the things I've struggled with in the past is delegating, which would seem to be at the center of both managing and directing, and would also go a long way toward helping me to accomplish everything I need to. So far, I'm doing better in this job and I've discovered a few things about why that might be.  First, there's just too much for me to do alone - asking for help is the only way to make it work.  I'm nothing if not pragmatic. Second, delegation is about...

★★★★ As I observe my neighbors across the street yelling at their kids as they are often wont to do, I think about Nell and her primer.  I'm also thinking about the Mouse Army and whether they ended up better or worse off than the boys born into their families. They didn't have families, but they had each other.   Patrick and I are having an ongoing discussion about what men and women (generalizations, heyo!) look for in media.  Someone posited that women look for a story, words they can sing along to, characters they like.  We're narrative.  Men look for a mood, an experience, a feeling, a setting.   I didn't immediately agree or disagree with him, but I've been gathering information and observations and I keep revisiting the conversation, both mentally and with him.  It's made me wonder how we would perceive this story differently. The technology is a huge part of it - it's at the center of the story - the fate of nations and the entire ...

★★★★ It's not that I resisted reading this, it's more that it just wasn't really on my radar.  It was gifted to me by a friend as an epub, and I knew it was fairly long so it appealed to me as something that I could read while traveling.  I made the mistake of starting it last Thursday, and devoured it in a weekend, and anticipate starting the second book in the series as soon as I can get it loaded on my iPad. I resisted looking at anything about the HBO series until I was finished with the book.  I really like being able to imagine the characters and wonder about how they look when they do things.  Characters are seldom well visualized from the beginning for me.  It takes a while before I know what they look like in my head.  I didn't want to spoil my own imaginings with how some producer thinks they look.  I took a peek after I finished the book because at that point, I felt like my ideas were well enough ingrained to resist alteration by some pict...

★ ★ ★ ★   I was ridiculously ill with a sinus infection when I found this on the living room sofa like a literary present to the part of me that wanted to be a kid, reading in bed while my mom brought me something hot to drink.  I had to make my beverage myself, but finding the book was a really nice treat.  It was Kristen's and I stole it for the 2 hours it took me to read.  The Bad Beginning is a short little novella and a great read.  Having never seen the movie, I was still able to very vividly conjure up images of the characters.  The descriptions are not particularly thorough,  but the details Mr. Snicket (a pseudonym) does provide are incredibly evocative and allow you to fill in all the gray areas with the physical characteristics you think go along with his opinionated descriptions.   The writing is clever enough to be entertaining for an adult, but simple enough to be appropriate for children. I was really surprised by how many thin...

★ ★ ★ I'm sick of Chuck Palahniuk, which is kind of too bad since I've really enjoyed his books in the past.  I like his stories, I like what he has to say, but it's so damned heavy handed.  There's no subtlety - it's all shock and awe and in your face. A few other trends I've noticed.  His characters find themselves in cars a lot.  It's like they don't belong anywhere, so they have to be mobile.  Also, they are almost universally awful.  Would it kill him to write a character I don't hate once in a while?  Finally, only batshit crazy things ever happen to them.  I find it hard to identify with individuals who are clearly nutso. I listened to this in the car on the way to SC - it took a little less than 6 hours, which is pretty short for an audiobook.  It was good for listening in that the fast pace kept me interested, but I didn't find the characters particularly compelling. The girl who read the audiobook did the best Evelyn (prono...

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Bill Bryson rocked my world with A Short History of Nearly Everything, and this one book is somehow even better, maybe because the histories he's telling deal with our most intimate surrounds. Bryson marches through our houses room by room, answering questions most of us have never even thought to ask. It's a fascinating premise for a book, made even more so by Bryson's conversational writing style*. I stretched out the reading of this book because I didn't want it to end, but found no difficulty picking it up and putting it down and devouring it in little bites. It's like running into a particularly fascinating friend on the bus. Even better, the information turns out to be so immediately applicable all around you. For example, I read about Henry Dreyfuss and his design of the cradle desk telephone and then that day went to buy stamps and he was featured on the pioneers of industrial design stamps, and I knew why. It was oddly satisfying. Since...

I debated about whether or not to blog about this bc well, it's my lady parts.  But with all the crazy legislation lately about what I can and cannot do with my bits, it seems that it's on the public table, so I mean, why not?  Also, people talk about having babies all the damned time, I can talk about not-baby-having. I had an IUD put in today.  It's not something I'm particularly thrilled about because it's a long-term birth control solution, and I don't want to believe that I need a long-term birth control solution because I'm about to turn 31 and I'm never going to have babies, and oh my god, I think I'm crying a little.  Okay, not really.  Not right now.  But I'm not thrilled is what I'm saying.  I went with Paragard because it's non-hormonal (more on that in a second) and it can be left in for 10 years.  You can have it taken out much sooner, which I hope will be the case for me.  Other non-hormonal birth control options are thin...

It was a very productive craft night...  In addition to finishing off my hat, I tried out a new Epicurious recipe: Maple Tart Tatin , which is a take on the classic French apple tart tatin, but with the addition of some maple syrup.  It was incredibly easy and I highly recommend it.  I'm not a huge fan of just eating raw apples; for some reason they always make me feel more hungry after I'm done eating them.  Plus I'm not a fan of red delicious apples (I don't think they're that delicious), and most apples are too big for a snack for me.  However, I've been getting a ton of apples from the CSA, so this was a great way to use them.  The maple syrup is more of what Nj brought me, and Market Street Market had puff pastry so I could just stop and pick it up on the way home.  You have to cut out a round from the puff pastry, but I took the corners, baked them, punctured them with a fork and drizzled more syrup into them.  Also delicious. Photo cour...

Lauren went to Canadia, and brought me back some lovely kelly green wool yarn.  I used it to make a snazzy hat.  It took a while, but only because I'm so busy.  The actual knitting was pretty quick and the pattern works up quickly and beautifully.  I put a marker between each chart on my circular needle and then transferred two repeats to each dpn (4 total) once the hat was too small for my circular needle.  I used a medium sized pot lid to shape the hat and then today I wore it for the first time. I used the medium size, and I think it would have fit better if I'd gone with the small, but the measurements put me at a medium.  However, my yarn was larger than what was called for, so I think I got a little extra circumference because of that.  Either way, it's the first hat I've ever knit and I really like it.  Oh yes, this is the Brambles beret from knitty. These pictures really don't do justice to the color of the hat, but when I tri...