give and go

This morning J shaved off his beard and went off to his first day of work. I never thought I liked beards very much, but it looked good on him. I was a little sad to see it go. I felt a little like I was sending a kid off to school, with a shiny apple and a turkey sandwich on wheat. I am really glad that the timing of his master's defense and this job worked out so well. Huge sigh of relief!

I've been playing a lot of hockey this year, and I'm really enjoying it because my skillz are improving - the biggest challenge for an inexperienced hockey player is to be able to go where you want to go. Even if you see where the puck is going behind you, if you can't move your feet and get over there, you just feel ineffective. I feel like this is becoming less and less of a problem for me, and it's awesome! However, the other side of playing with the club team for me is that I'm a captain. I've been a captain for 3 years now, and it's never been as much work as it is this year. Being responsible for making the team run smoothly is incentive to really make sure everything is taken care of and done right! But sometimes I really get tired of dealing with some things, like convincing people to come to practice, convincing people to play in goal, bugging people for dues, and dealing with people who come to practice with attitude. I mean, this isn't my job, but I do care about the team and I put a lot of thought and work into making sure everything is taken care of! So it would be nice for some people to realize that and maybe give back a little! I will be happy when it's time to elect new captains...

little thrills

James got me a piano keyboard for Christmas, and it is just about the greatest thing ever. I wake up in the morning and put on a hoodie, and before even entering the kitchen for breakfast, I turn on the piano and start banging out a Regina Spektor intro and attempting to sing some words over it. Sounds a little groggy after I just woke up. It's been like 10 years since I've lived in a house with a piano, and I am reminded how awesome it is to be able to sit down any time and pick out a tune I recently heard! Okay, I don't have a piano bench yet, so right now I just stand, but it's just as good. I taught James how to play chopsticks, and it seems that he likes to play as if there's a fire chasing him, i.e. as fast as possible, allegro, presto!

I am growing a mini cactus farm in the office - I ordered some seeds for cacti and succulents, figuring that they are some of the few plant types that I haven't yet killed. I bought some cactus soil (a little sandy) and hitched a bright light above their tray. Now I have a bunch of tiny cacti growing in row! They are only like 4 mm tall, or less. So cute!

three strikes of inspiration

It is incredibly daunting to start writing one's PhD thesis. I have a blank page in front of me, which means that even writing a single word would constitute progress, and still I can barely look at the document for more than five seconds. I've extracted myself from my office, where I sometimes get uncomfortably antsy and start glossing over art blogs without reading a single word, and have situated myself in the stata center with a caramel macchiato and three lab research notebooks. The place is only about 15% full, but I've managed to park myself next to a girl with an annoyingly loud laugh, or so it seems to one trying to concentrate on work. I know I just need to get into the groove and my brains will just start working like they need to.

As a side project this month (like I really need another one), I am redesigning my dad's blog. Currently the overall layout and color scheme just drives me crazy, especially when I get lucky and see one of those header pictures that are all stretched out. It's visually painful! And this is not my dad's area of expertise, so maybe I can give his blog a little boost, and then I won't be embarrassed to pass on the link to other people I know. His blog is done through Wordpress, which I have never used before, but I figure it's probably one of the easier interfaces to work with, right? Otherwise it wouldn't be so popular? The challenge is turning the visual layout in my head (which I sketched on paper) into an actual webpage, without having to learn html. Stay tuned.

I am excited about this year. Besides my renewed resolve to graduate (which is exciting in itself), I'm looking forward to continuing to cook amazing food with J, knit cute things for J's soon-to-be niece, and keep playing hockey (with my new shin pads!). Plus things couldn't have worked out better with J getting a job that's only 20 minutes away and starts at the end of the month! Yay and yay.

Okay, thesis time.

new resolve

Here are my resolutions for 2010. Maybe if I post them on the internets, I will actually get them done.

1. Graduate!
2. Eat less meat.
3. Lift at the gym once every week.
4. Improve my wrist shot on the ice.
5. Read one book per month.
6. Graduate!

holiday goodies

Home! Just as I remembered it. The house is covered with lovely xmas decorations, my dad is blasting cheesy Christmas music from his computer, my mom is stressing about baking cookies and making hors d'oeuvres, I've had an argument (or two) with my sister, and I seem unable to resist picking a mini-candy out of the bowl in the dining room every time I walk by. I'd better hit the gym tomorrow. My task for tonight is to bake some candy-cane cookies, which are a classic from our childhood. My parents used to have these huge Christmas parties every year, inviting all their friends and their kids, with tons of appetizers and holiday cookies, and group carols sung around the piano (complete with lyric books printed out just for the occasion). I remember one year, our little Jack Russell terrier, D.J., jumped up and ate some candy-cane cookies! But otherwise I just know they were fun to make, twisting together the red and white dough logs to make a swirl. When in doubt, fall back on the old classics. What I'm most excited about is making some holiday cocktails! On my agenda are Winter Sangria and Hot Buttered Rum. I've never made the latter but it sounds like it would be delicious, no? Gotta drink something with a little kick in it to get through all the awkward forced small talk with the parents' neighbors. :-O

ooh, life is juicy

It's the last week of work before the holidays! I didn't take any classes this semester, so this week is no different than any other since August, but there's something in the air that feels like finals week, and I know I'll be home in San Diego a week from today. I'm trying to ignore that fact and still get some real research done this week, because I know it will take me a few days to get back in the swing of things when I get back from Cali. It's hard to focus when I know there is laundry that needs washing, presents that need choosing, cookies that need packaging and mailing, an apartment that needs cleaning, xmas cards that need designing and constructing, xmas menus that need planning... Oh the holidays! I bought my very first wreath for the front door, and got some sparkly turquoise wired ribbon to wrap around it. It's harder than you think to wrap that evenly, and my beautiful bow kinds of gets squashed by the screen door. But it still makes me happy to smell that evergreen smell while I fiddle with the keys in the doorknob.

I have to say that xmas shopping is about the most difficult thing ever! I'm browsing hand-picked gift guides galore, and really only coming up with cool things that I want for myself, and nothing that any of my family members would remotely like. Also a lot of things that are way outside my price range. I think it's about time to hit a real-life store instead of just web shops.

What I'm more excited about is the holiday food! I'm sure my mom will be baking all kinds of amazing things, and I'm hoping to make some spiked apple cider for their xmas open house on the 23rd. My parents live in a neighborhood that turns into Christmas Card Lane in December, meaning that every house in a half-mile radius puts a giant lighted cutout or mural in their front yard, each with a different cartoony theme. The 'burby street attracts cars moving along at a crawl to see each display, and the neighbors tend to make hot chocolate and light their driveway "campfires" to sit around and enjoy the holiday spirit. Only in San Diego would it even be warm enough to want to sit around for hours on December evenings.

I want to sing some Christmas carols too (not in public of course). It's no secret that I'm a HUGE FAN of the show Glee, I've seen every episode at least twice, and I've been singing Barbra Streisand around the house for the past week, thanks to Glee's performance of Don't Rain On My Parade on the last episode. The show is hilarious and inventive, but it also makes me wish that we could just burst into song in real life when we felt the need to express some emotion. Wouldn't that be fabulous? When my experiment goes well, I could sing down the hallways, with labmates and other bystanders falling in behind me with some backup dance moves. Jazz hands too, of course. I wish I lived in a musical...

finally, an upswing

Nothing like a little tiny success in the lab to make the whole week seem like a good one. I successfully etched off a 160-nm layer of nitride after firing at 1350C in the furnace by undercutting the oxide layer beneath it! Fabuloso! Walking into the lab and seeing that shiny silicon surface at the bottom of the beaker just made my entire day. It also helped that I got to see Padma Lakshmi (of Top Chef!) give a talk this afternoon about her struggles with endometriosis, which I'd never heard of before, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see her in person! She is a great speaker - eloquent and lively, and I only hope I look that good when 7-8 months pregnant. I mean, who can pull off patterned lace tights under a sweater dress while pregnant? Kudos to her. ;)

Anyway, I also made some headway in the modeling part of my thesis work, with a little help from coding-superstar Tony. What would I do without him? I'm getting a little better at manipulating this Python code, which at first glance each time I open up the file still looks like a gibberishy robot language. Bit by bit I'm able to pick out pieces of the code that I need to modify to fit my problem, slowly starting to understand more of how it works and what I can do. I certainly don't feel like an expert, which I should get closer to if I want a PhD for this, but the small successes at least give me the confidence to think I can continue to increase my comprehension. I also got a super tiny boost from my advisor this week (I'll take what I can get) when he suggested that I could write three papers, one for each area of my research, and make those basically the three middle chapters of my thesis. Just the knowledge that he wants me to do this gives me so much motivation to do some publication-worthy work and do it SOON! Oh, brains, work with me now. Let's make this happen.

I've started really thinking about Christmas presents to give to my family. I want to get this stuff done early so I don't have to hit the mall craziness on Dec 23 in San Diego. All my favorite blogs are coming up with amazing gift guides for the holidays, but the end result is just me finding a bunch of lovely things that I want for myself and can't afford, things that I'm pretty sure my weight-lifting protein-powder-drinking doesn't-even-own-a-laundry-hamper little brother would not like to receive on Christmas day. Oh well, I still enjoy looking at these lists! I especially love this one by Creature Comforts or this funny one at DesignSponge. *sigh* Can one earn a PhD in Blog-Reading? Perhaps in Multitasking?

Anyway, we had a fabulous Thanksgiving celebration at Auntie Kumu's house in Connecticut, with many of the cousins and also the next generation, which currently consists of only boys. Someone had the brilliant idea to buy them Nerf guns, and an all-out war of capture the flag ensued one evening, engulfing both the little boys and the big "boys". Yes, pretty much anyone male could be found running around the house, hiding behind the kitchen table, panting and grabbing yellow foam bullets from the cracks of the sofa cushions. We dainty ladies tried to avoid being hit in the cross-fire while we put together a lovely countryside puzzle. Oh, it was quite a sight. After that exhausting weekend, it seems strange that xmas is only a few weeks away! Where did this semester go? Wasn't I going to have a lot more work done by this point in the year? Well, those questions can be answered later. It's Friday and I'm ready to cook a delicious meal with my good-looking crazy-family-tolerating boyfriend. Hooray!