2009 Books

I read 128 books in 2009. Dude, that is a lot of books. I think that is my highest number since I started keeping track. I think it is explained by two things: 1) I have started reading before bed at night and 2) I read a lot of YA novels, which go pretty quickly for me.

Here are the ones I rated 5 stars on Goodreads. For 2010, I want to get back to posting my books here, we'll see how I do with that.


* The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
* Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy (Bloody Jack, Book 1)
* Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (Bloody Jack, Book 2)
* In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber (Bloody Jack, Book 4) by L.A. Meyer
* What Was Lost by Catherin O'Flynn
* The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
* Peeps (Peeps, #1) by Scott Westerfeld
* The Hunger Games (Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins
* Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
* The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
* How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing by Paul Silvia
* In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
* Dreamhunter (The Dreamhunter Duet, Book 1)
* Dreamquake (The Dreamhunter Duet, Book 2) by Elizabeth Knox
* Winkie by Clifford Chase
* The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
* Watchmen by Alan Moore
* The Riverbones: Stumbling After Eden in the Jungles of Suriname by Andrew Westoll
* Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
* The Known World by Edward P. Jones
* The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller

2009 Movies

Here are movies I saw in 2009 that I remember especially liking:
John Adams HBO miniseries
Lars and the Real Girl
Air Guitar Nation
Double Indemnity
Man on Wire

I remember this from last year, I seem to be less likely to give high ratings to movies than to books. But there you go. I highly recommend all of the above.

Blinding you with science

I am not sure I have shared here how I never planned on being a scientist. In fact, it is still kind of shocking to me that I am indeed one. Here is my deep dark secret: I only liked biology in high school and in college the only science I took was intro psych and one semester of ecology and evolution. Yet here I am, an actual scientist with a science-y dissertation and attendance at science-y conferences. Aw yeah.

I have been thinking about this lately, as I am teaching science to non-science majors right now. Many of them are scared of science, and math. I have been thinking I should share my circuitous journey to science with them, so they can know that you can start out not liking science, and totally change. Also, I am still scared of math.

I have been struggling with some new to me statistics that I need for my dissertation. I was having trouble figuring out how to best look at some data, and one of my committee members came up with some ideas which are great, but which mean I need to teach myself some stats fast. I am not comfortable with math, and stats has always been the hardest part of science for me, but I am persevering and it is making me feel really smart and good. It has been quite awhile since I really had to learn something totally new and unfamiliar, and I am proud of myself for doing so. Here is a picture of the books I have been reading, so you can be impressed with my smart, science-y self.

Dentistry

After an embarrassingly long hiatus due to the fact that I haven't had a full-time job (aside from student, which does not come with good benefits) since 2000, I have re-entered the world of regular dental care. My new job does come with dental insurance, so I set off for the dentist a few weeks ago. My dentist is awesome and I told them how embarrassed I was about the long gap in my dental care and they were so understanding and not naggy and kind. I got x-rays taken and was shown alarming pictures of my wisdom teeth. My wisdom teeth are alarming, as there is room for them, but apparently not enough room to brush them super well, so they are getting yanked. But other than the wisdom teeth, I did not have a single cavity in the rest of my mouth. Right on, genetics! Thanks, Mom and Dad! I went back for a real cleaning today and am enjoying the very clean teeth. And I am going to the oral surgeon Friday, where I will be knocked out and have the offending wisdom teeth pulled while I sleep. R thinks my wisdom might go with them, but I am sure I have absorbed all the wisdom they have to offer by now.

Writing Well Challenge: Character

As I am more and more convinced that more writing=better writing, and while most of the writing I do is comparatively dry as it is academic, there is no reason for it to be crappy. To that end, and because I like programs and systems and because I keep forgetting to blog, I am doing the Writing Well Challenge. Here is week 1, which is about character.

As I approached the coffee shop I was worried, it was finals week, and cold out, and there might not be spare seats. I did find one, although it was right by the door. As I struggled through the old, discarded library book (bought cheap from Half.com!) on learning and instinct in animals, I kept looking at a woman right in front of me. I couldn't help it, she was in my staring-off-into-space line of sight. She was all in black, with dark curly long hair and a bubble gum pink pashmina. Somehow, in the dim coffee shop and her black clothes the pashmina glowed, drawing everyone's attention. She was working hard on her computer, drinking cups of coffee, ordering soup after she determined it was dairy free. She seemed like a normal grad student, typing a paper, like all the rest of us there that day. Later, though, I realized she was entering numbers from tiny slips of paper into a spread sheet. Number after number, from many tiny sometimes crumpled pieces of paper. A mathematician? A spy breaking a code? Just doing her taxes? Finally she left, wrapping the bright pink more closely around her as she went out into the gray and rainy day.


Here are some others who have completed this same challenge:

Long weekend

Happy Thanksgiving to the people who celebrate it! Hope you all had a good one. I had a great day. My whole family gathered at my youngest brother's. He is only an hour away from us, so we could sleep in, go have Thanksgiving with everyone, and then come back home and sleep in our own bed. I got to see the new niece again as well, and she is funner than ever, with added new skills of smiling and making little babbling noises. Also she has a very cute yawn.

We ate and ate and then played some Trivial Pursuit (the women beat the men) and some Wii bowling (which my mom loves). It was all very good times. Just don't ask about any dance offs. :)

Muppets!

Happy day before Tofurkey Day! Enjoy the Muppets covering Queen. So awesome.

Further adventures

I am glad I am recording all the adventures I have been having, as sometimes I feel like I am boring, but then it turns out I am not!

So additional adventures:
1) Some friends and I went to see Margaret Atwood in a dramatic reading of her new book, "The Year of the Flood". I was intrigued, because I loooooove Margaret Atwood, but also mildly concerned, as I thought a dramatic reading with songs written based on the book could also just be weird. It was totally awesome though. Margaret Atwood looked like she was having so much fun and the readers and singers were great. Also, it is a brilliant idea for a book tour as they read up to like the climax of the book and then did not tell you the end! So now I have to buy the book! Which I did, and am waiting for Amazon to get it to me. Barbara Kingsolver also benefited from this dramatic reading as Amazon told me she had a new book as well, and as I love her nearly as much as Margaret Atwood I bought that book too. I barely ever buy fiction books. My last book purchase was Seasonality in Primates. I know you guys don't want to miss out on that one.

2)The same weekend as Margaret Atwood, R was out of town so I took advantage of his absence to have a Naked Lady Party. Don't be scared to click on the link -- it is a clothes exchange. I had some friends over and cooked up a tasty strata (I left out the ham and subbed kale for the zucchini) and served mimosas and we had a fun time exchanging all our old clothes. I still need to take the unclaimed clothes to Goodwill though.

This weekend, we are going to a play! ooh! Fancy!

Adventures of late

Here are some of my recent adventures.

A while ago R and I went to see Chuchito Valdes, a Cuban jazz pianist. So good. I highly recommend seeing him live if you can. He is crazy with his fast moving and hands and jumping up from the bench a lot. So much energy!



The leaves began to change, and there were many many yellow ones. I did not take any pictures, but here is one from frozenchipmunk on Flickr.



I went to a two day Darwin conference which was super cool and inspiring and like a rock concert for evolution nerds. It happened to fall on Halloween, so for a friend's party I dressed like Darwin.

Laaaaazy

People, I should get an award for the amount I have accomplished in my life thus far, despite the fact that I suffer from a sever case of lazy. Seriously. I am really lazy. You may not believe it, as I am so accomplished, but just imagine what I could do if I were not so lazy? I would be setting the world on fire.

I have not been blogging much due to the aforementioned lazy. I think of posts, but then I am just too lazy to write them. I means, signing on to Blogger is just too much work when I could more easily play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. I do manage to prep my classes, grade papers, and work on my dissertation, but cleaning the house? Nope. Defeated by the lazy. Also, I bought fabric and frames from IKEA to whip up some nice wall hangings for my office on campus, but how long have the materials sat here on my desk collecting dust? Quite a while, I tell you. And a friend of mine can tell you how long it took me to season the new wok I bought in Chinatown. I actually had to throw out the old wok and have an urgent need to stir-fry before I could off my lazy butt and season up that wok. I did manage to put up inspirational monkey pictures above my desk at home, a mere year after moving in. I count that and the fact that I got the wok seasoned in a matter of months as two small but important accomplishments. Sometimes, due to all the work I have to do despite the lazy, the lazy builds up and builds up until I give in. The last two days I have greatly enjoyed lying about and reading, and am still in my pjs at 2:00 pm.

I plan to emerge from this wallow in the lazy fresh and clean in order to tackle many Things That Must Be Done over the rest of the day. I am having people over for brunch tomorrow, so I am also counting on this deadline to help me clean the house. And important part of this morning has been spent contemplating the best direction in which to clean. What do you think? Start in the kitchen, followed by the dining room, bathroom, then living room (the bedroom is exempt from cleaning)? I am worried this plan will result in me running out of energy before the living room, which really needs the most cleaning. It contains my desk, and I have come to accept that I work best surrounded by alarming piles of paper and a fortress of books stacked on the floor. Seriously, I've been kicking it on the dissertation pretty well, and am surrounding by so much clutter in a perfect arms' width semi-circle. Also, I envision the party tomorrow taking place mostly in the living room, so perhaps I should start there.

Wish me luck that the lazy can be out run just for today.

Harvest time!

So it was getting dangerously close to frosty time and I was going away for the weekend. As head gardener, it was my job to decide if we should bring in the green tomatoes on our porch or not. I decided better safe than sorry, and picked them all. I also picked the basil and spent the Thursday before my trip making some pesto. The pictures show the lovely fruits of the garden.

It turns out that I don't think it has actually frosted here yet. We are close to the lake, and thus are temperatures are often 10 degrees off those inland. It has been cold and rainy, though, so I am going to believe the tomatoes would not have ripened anyway and that I made the right call.

We had a super tasty dinner the other night of the green tomatoes sauteed and mixed with angel hair pasta and the homemade pesto. Yum.

Messed Up

Hello! I arise to tell you a story that really crystallized for me how messed up we are in the US about thinking about how women's bodies should look.

Last night I was at a party for R's department, talking to a student who knew the part of the world I do research in. She was asking about my research and if I was "tough" because of having to live in harsh field conditions. I told her the only harsh condition was the food, which resulted in me quickly losing a lot of weight. But when I returned everyone kept saying how good I looked like 20 pounds lighter. And I had to reply -- I don't look good, I look starved! This is not healthy! The other woman has a similar experience where she was really sick for awhile and lost a lot of weight and everyone complimented her on how good she looked. Both of us were amazed at the experience of being malnourished and sickly and yet receiving more compliments on our looks than ever. Dude, that ain't right.

State Fair!

A little while ago we went to Minnesota to celebrate a friend's marriage on a boat in the Mississippi. We also got to go to the State Fair. It rules. I want to move there so I can enter something in the State Fair one day -- maybe some seed art?

Aunt!

My brother K and his wife L had a baby girl this morning. I am an aunt! Very exciting -- it is my first niece. Let the spoiling begin!

Personal stories

For me, health care reform is really a moral issue. I don't understand how we can limit people's access to doctors! I have so many friends who have not gone to the doctor when sick, or postponed going to the doctor, because they didn't have health insurance and did not have good enough health insurance. I have had times in my life without good/any health insurance and even today I always balance how much something might cost with what I (not a medical doctor) judge to be the severity of my sickness. So today, here are some personal stories demonstrating the need for health care reform.

Stories of the uninsured.
A nurse's view on health reform
What one family has to do to keep their daughter insured.

Isn't our health care system the best?

No! Here is some info on that:
Five myths about health care in the rest of the world.
Comparing Britain's health care system to the US.

Why reform health care at all?

Today I want to give you some links on why we should reform health care at all?
Short, simple cartoon explaining problems with our current health care system.
Harvard study finds that 62% of personal bankruptcies were due to medical costs, and 78% of those people were insured.
And, finally, health care explained on 4 napkins.

What, exactly, is in the health care bill?

I am going out of town for a long weekend, but I am still very concerned about health care reform, so while I am gone I am going to queue up some posts to give you some more info. It can be confusing, but just a little time reading can clear up a lot of myths and misconceptions.

Also, I made phone calls in support of health care on Saturday, and if anyone else wants to get involved in volunteering you can do so here.

For today I give you: (1) the actual bill with fact sheets prepared by the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
(2)Health insurance reform myth vs. facts
(3)FactCheck.org debunks some lying ads

nom nom nom

R and I don't really celebrate our wedding anniversary, because although we partake in the institution and are into each other, we are not into legal marriage per se. I feel like I always totally shock people when I say this, but there you go. Legal marriage -- I could take it or leave it.

BUT my parents and R's parents celebrate our anniversary and send us gifts, which is awesome. Thanks to their very generous gifts we were able to go out to this restaurant last night and enjoy 5 amazing and tasty courses of vegetarian food. And a bottle of wine. We called it a celebration of our mutual awesomeness.

I don't think I've ever gotten the tasting menu at a restaurant before because they often contain meat. It was super to have dishes just appear before me, each one super tasty in its own way. I have been vegetarian for over 14 years now and I don't at all feel limited by it on a daily basis. I don't feel like it is any kind of sacrifice. It is nice, however, to periodically go to a restaurant where there is a whole menu of stuff for me to order or where I can just let the waiter bring me anything and I know I will be able to eat it.

Health Care!

People, I have been very concerned about the health care system here in the US for a long time. As a graduate student, my funding did not include health insurance. I have been paying a TON for this for a long time. Right now I am on R's insurance. He is lucky enough that his funding pays for his, but not for mine. When I start my new full time job in September my employer will give me insurance and we will all of a sudden be saving about $2000 on health insurance. Seeing this stark difference close up really makes me appreciate how lucky people are who have employers who insure them. And how bad it is for people who work slightly less than full time, or not close to full time, or who are laid off, or who have employers with bad insurance plans. Really, for my entire adult life I have always considered the possible cost of care when deciding whether or not to go to the doctor. This is not right. People should go to the doctor when they are sick -- not wait around trying to figure out if they feel really bad enough or not to make it worth it.

So I finally got off my butt today and read about the actual health care bill. Since there is so much going on with people misrepresenting what the bill actually does, I recommend everyone start there as well. Then, please write your elected representatives and tell them you support the bill. You can find those people and very convenient web forms here and here.

It won't take you very long, and it is really time we fixed health care in the US. Really, it is appalling.