Surprising Activity

This past Sunday, I woke up very sore.  At first, I thought I was just suffering a bit from having done over 8 miles on the treadmill plus having spent 2 hours playing golf the previous day.  (Well, not actually playing golf, per se.  1 hour of golf lesson in the morning plus 1 hour of putting practice in the evening.)  But as the day wore on, I became more exhausted, got a headache, got a fever, got a stomach ache, and generally felt hammered.  Although I was sick for a couple of days, it was strangely comforting to realize that I was just ill and not in fact so generally wimpy that a day with a bit of extra exercise knocked me out.  So while I recovered, I didn't play golf or use my treadmill; instead I spent time mostly kicking Robert's ass at Tri-ominoes. (Oh, and also watching a bunch of the first season of Glee, which is a crazily addictive show.  Getting me hooked on Glee is perhaps my mom's revenge for getting her hooked on Buffy.)

So what's up with the golf, right?  Well, in April, Robert took a series of beginner golf lessons and he's been playing at a 9 hole course not very far from our apartment.  It sounded like fun, so I decided to take this set of lessons this month (and Robert is retaking them with me).  We had our first lesson last week, on putting, and tomorrow we will learn chipping (whatever that is).  There is a practice green at the course where we can bring balls and practice putting and chipping for free, which is nice.

One thing I like about this golf thing so far is that because it is totally new, and I have no expectations of being "good" at it, I am able to experience it in a relatively non-evaluative way.  It's somewhat unusual in my life right now to engage in an activity where I just experience/enjoy it without having to think about whether I'm doing well at it.  Don't get me wrong -- when we did the moderate length putts in class, and I made two of them (while most people made none), I was pretty excited about it.  But I'm mostly only interested in monitoring my performance to calibrate what I'm doing.  For example, when I was practicing putting from an awkward position (relative to the slopes of the green near the whole), I didn't care if it took me 5 tries to make the putt because I was enjoying the experience, and part of that enjoyment was trying new things (e.g., what happens if I hit the ball harder and at this different angle?).

You know how on TV it looks like putting should be easy -- I mean, it's hitting a ball a short distance on a flat surface, right?  Um, yeah, no.  What seems "flat" when you're walking or riding your bicycle across it is most definitely not flat when you are trying to roll a ball across it.  Also, it's a relief to figure out that hitting the ball yourself is approximately 1.29 million times more interesting than watching Tiger Woods do it on TV.  Of course, it's possible that with enough experience, a person can look at a situation on TV and be able to see how difficult the shot is, but I kind of doubt it.  I suspect that the perspective you get from TV is weird and screwy and does not at all well give you the sense of what the golfer is facing.  But given that a lot of people watch golf on TV, I'm not sure about that.  (Note: even if I do keep playing golf in some capacity after these lessons are over, I do not plan to become a person who watches golf on TV so I will probably never know the answer to this question.)

She Lives!

Wow, I guess the month of May really did go by in a blur. 

• Finished my first year of the PhD program.  "Disappointed" a professor.  Found out that disapproving professors are not as fun as disapproving rabbits.  Got my first B+.  Survived it.
• Tam came to visit for about 4 days.  This was the first time in several years we actually spent more than a day together, and it was completely great.  
• Got sick, got better, got sick again...etc.  Right now I am in the "got better" part of this cycle.
• Purchased a shiny new desktop computer with two big-ass monitors.  I am right now, at this exact moment, downloading the latest Ravenhearst game, which will be the test of my computer's mojo.

Tonight I ordered a Wii console and the Wii Fit Plus game package.  I had meant to do this last summer, got busy, and forgot about it. 

I'm still trying to settle into my summer schedule.  I've got several different projects I'm working on, plus I'm trying to develop some new ideas.  And it would be really helpful to me if I got up to speed on the basics of R (the powerful free statistics software) for the regression course I'm taking in the fall and learned some HTML/Javascript so that my online surveys are easier to build.

After watching The Big Year a couple days ago, Robert was on the American Birding Association website and we remembered that we can get listed on their site/magazine once we hit 500 species.  I'm 24 species away and am feeling eager to get some new birds on my list.  We were planning to go out this past weekend to a relatively nearby park, and I went online to see if it was within walking distance or not.  Imagine my surprise when (using the Yahoo maps feature to which the park website linked) I encountered this:

Indeed, 1303 miles is a bit far to walk.  I'm not quite sure how this park ended up in Vermont, but whatever.  Google maps came through for us.

It was a gorgeous day and we saw some nice birds.  Nothing completely new, but several that were new for our state lists, including the Baltimore oriole and the indigo bunting.  Oddly enough, those same two birds were new for our NC lists exactly 3 years ago to the day (during our visit to My Masters University to find an apartment prior to my starting the program).

Schedule Rotation

I don't have class on Monday (I guess that's today now) for the first time and already my sleep and work schedule has rotated.  I went to bed last night like normal (around 10:30 p.m.), woke up at 2:30 a.m. and started to work.

More than anything else, I think this reflects the fact that before going to bed last night I truly realized for the first time how completely fucked I am trying to finish the papers and presentations I have due Wednesday, Friday, and next Monday.  Basically, I need to work every single moment that I possibly can and this morning at 2:30 a.m., working was possible. 

(Last night I also realized that I had failed to put Wed. morning's seminar on my Big Calendar of Doom, which features for April a rabbit who is surprisingly non-disapproving*; rather he seems to look more and more concerned as the month marches on.  Yeah, me too, little bun.  I have all my deadlines through next Monday laid out on this month's page, so Worried Bunny will be my companion until May 8.  Then no doubt he will be replaced by a more traditional rabbit who will disapprove of my unrealistic optimism as I plan to get a ton of work and fun accomplished over the summer break.)

* The calendar is not specifically a disapproving rabbit calendar but it's still a bit surprising to see a rabbit who looks so free of disdain for the dumb-ass-ity of humans.

Now I'm going to take a shower so that when Robert's alarm goes off, I can join him for breakfast (I am really hungry) then immediately return to the paper I'm working on.  Well, I guess before returning to work I should check that Worried Bunny has not committed suicide so as to avoid watching my academic career go up in flames...

My Un-Facebook-Able Life

Talking to my mom on the phone this week and in my motivation seminar yesterday, the topic of relationships and Facebook came up -- and particularly, the idea of Facebook as a potential source of bad feelings.  My primary observation is that it's easy to use Facebook to make yourself feel good or, especially, bad through the process of social comparison. 

Last night, I checked in and was reminded that a friend of mine from college is dealing with cancer in his family and found out that the mom of somebody I went to school and church with as a kid has recently died -- sad news (but thank god it's not my family member with cancer or my mom who died, right?).  But once you get past the inanities (one high school friend who likes to share a million music videos in a row, people expressing a general TGIF attitude that I can't share because weekends don't mean the same thing for me at all), what's left is pretty much dozens of posts about people doing or having just done sort of or very interesting things, usually with other people. 

That's not my life.

There are some people whose life has this flavor more than others.  My sister's life especially does, since she lives in like 3 places right now (both coasts and smack in the middle), is always traveling, and her main passion in life (dance) involves collaboration and frequent performances.  She doesn't have children, but her grumpy old cat and sweet new puppy more than ably fulfill the "awwwww" niche (and personally I'm not crazy about kids anyway).  She's beautiful and her husband is a brilliant photographer, so the photographs are great.  She has a smart phone that makes it easy to share with us the strange and wonderful things she sees and does while she's out and about all over the country (and beyond). 

Do I sound envious?  Really, I'm not.  I love my own life, as un-Facebook-able as it usually is.  I spend a lot of time alone, reading and thinking and writing, or in the lab, where I have to mentally put on the white lab coat and exert self-control to deal with other people in ways that violate social norms.  I frequent the same half dozen places in this town, often on a regular schedule.  All this partly reflects my nature and my preferences, and partly is just a part of life as a grad student/academic. 

But looking at Facebook, even I occasionally get that feeling, which I understand is quite common, of being left out of some big, exciting Life that "everyone" else is having.  People don't post a photo of their desk at work with the comment, "Yep, it's a weekday so I'm at work, filling out forms."  People tend not to share, "In five minutes I'm going home from work and watching TV all night like I always do."  I have never seen anyone say, "I went to a party Saturday night but it was actually pretty boring and annoying.  I should have stayed home and organized my sock drawer again instead."

I love it that Tam sends me photographs from her daily (grad student) life - the huge white desk in the library with her especially horrifying math book, paper, pencils, and eraser laid out; lunch in the cafeteria; an undergrad wearing especially ugly shoes.  It's like seeing a somewhat different version of my own world with its little points of interest.  And of course, as with seeing my sister's life on Facebook, I do like the feeling of having a better sense of where she is and what she's doing.  But there's also something very intimate about it, which Facebook doesn't provide, and for some of us, I think the "this is all for public consumption, something I am sharing with you and my 200 other 'friends'" nature of Facebook doesn't meet our needs well at all.

So anyway, here I am:  sitting in my home office, surrounded by books and print-outs of journal articles and pieces of paper where I have jotted down research ideas, facing a wall covered with pictures of bunnies - including my own sweet buns on a homemade birthday card from Leo (I think he got help), wearing mismatched striped & floral pajamas and a pair of Texas Aquarium socks with sharks on them, hungry, thirsty, and thinking I should see if Robert is ready to wake up and have breakfast, the exact same breakfast I have every morning.

The Kind of Day I'm Having

I just spent 30 seconds in confusion looking for my second sock.

It was already on my foot.

Yep, about right.

Now if only I could realize that I have already written my three papers and just forgot that I had saved them on this thumb drive... Of course, in my current state, I wouldn't be able to find the thumb drive.

Death by Walking

This week I was talking to my mom while walking home from campus, and as I was crossing over I-35, I said, Sorry, hold on, this car is trying to kill me.  It occurs to me that this kind of comment can really imply that I am taking my life into my hands every day I come home from school.  Actually, that was a very strange event.  Typically, when I'm walking, I need to remain vigilant to cars because when drivers see a person on foot heading toward an intersection (let alone already there), they will often slow down to let the pedestrian cross even if the driver clearly has the right-of-way. 

Robert recently sent me info on the most dangerous major metro areas (1 million+ population) for pedestrians.  The top five were (with "pedestrian danger index" in parentheses):

1) Orlando (255)
2) Tampa (213)
3) Jacksonville (178)
4) Miami (168)
5) Riverside, CA (139)

Nice job, Florida!  You dominate the country on pedestrian danger!  (If I were a more enterprising soul, I think this would make a nice bumper sticker sales opportunity.)

Other notable cities:

9) Houston (128)
10) Dallas-Fort Worth (119)
18) Austin (96)
24) San Antonio (88)

Way to go, Texas!

22) Oklahoma City (90)
29) Denver (74)
30) San Jose, CA (68)

And down in the bottom 10:

41) San Francisco (39)
48) Snow City (35)
50) New York City (30)

So by moving here from Austin, I've cut my pedestrian danger to a third of its previous level.  I mean, as if walking was ever really a viable option there.

Speaking of walking, I have not yet been able to visit this experience on anyone but Robert, but I look forward to this in the winters to come.  (This winter was so mild and relatively snow-less that I did not even get a chance to wear my awesome tall snow boots!)

Maru Counteracts Ego Depletion

I've been working all day but I'm not feeling brain-dead or depleted, I think because:

(1) I'm framing this as doing "my work" rather than "coming up with a research idea for Monday's seminar" and working toward intrinsic (own) goals is less depleting than working toward extrinsic (set by someone else) goals; and

(2) I've watched this unbelievably awesome Maru video a couple of times already for replenishment (hey, it's Maru or Blue Bunny Bunny Tracks ice cream, you know?).  Note how Maru's right front foot looks around 0:32.  It's like the world's perfect furry cat foot (a white foot on a striped cat = gorgeous) mimicking the shape of an elephant foot.  Strangely, I was just last night mentioning to Robert that elephants have the best looking toenails of all animals.  Um, OK, yes that is inherently a strange thing to say.  But I don't know whether thinking of elephant toenails primed me to see an elephant-foot-like quality in Maru or what. 

Or possibly it's (3) I've used my mad psychology-magic skills to drain cognitive resources from Robert to increase my own power.  (This is a kind of mana leech spell, I think.)  Poor Robert had a bad headache for most of the day, and that was before he started working on our federal and two state income tax forms.