I might be boring

I'm sitting here on a Saturday night (having spent the last 24 hours dog sitting) trying to come up with something to write about when it occurs to me that my life is pretty darn boring. It usually goes something like this. During the week I go to school in the morning, work all day on any one of 4-6 different projects I've got going on there at any given time, I teach or tutor nearly every night of the week, I come home & work some more before bed, and do it all again the next day. Incredibly dull. Even on the weekend, I usually take one day off to clean the house and do some laundry and work the other day on whatever things I got behind on during the week.

Seriously, I need a hobby. *sigh* And knitting doesn't count as I've already gotten bored with that.

My memorial

I guess I knew this on some level, but I never really knew it until I read the beginning of an article over at MSNBC today. All of the tragedies suffered by the US space program have happened within about a week of each other on the calendar. The Apollo 1 fire was Jan. 27 (1967), Challenger was Jan. 28 (1986) and Columbia was two years ago this Feb. 1. I'm certainly not superstitious or anything, it just kind of stopped me for a moment when that actually sunk in.

I can barely believe that Challenger was 19 years ago. I remember it so clearly. I am thankful to this day that I was attending a private school that didn't feel the need to take the time out of our schoolday to have us all watch the launch. A lot of schoolchildren did see it live, of course, because Christa McAuliffe was to be the first teacher in space on that flight. I'm just glad I don't have that memory. I've seen replay after replay, as has everyone else, but somehow I think having seen it live would have been even worse. (As it turned out, my mother was the one that called my school to let them know what had happened! I remember vividly when the announcement took place. I was in Catholic school at the time and we promptly said a school prayer for the astronauts. I just wanted to go home.) I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn't want to be an astronaut, so I was acutely aware of when launches were scheduled, even as a 9-year old child. (Well, as aware as one could be in the era prior to the internet). :) I knew Challenger was going up that day and was simply devestated by what happened.

I've heard it said that people of my parents ' generation all remember exactly where they were when President Kennedy was shot. For a long time, I thought the space shuttle Challenger might be an analogous benchmark for my generation. (Of course, I don't think that anymore, but that's a memory for another day.)

Anyway, I guess this is my little memorial this year to the astronauts that have been lost over the years. In my opinion, they were some of the bravest, most daring people in the world. As much as we have gained technologically from space travel, I have to admit it often boils down to nothing more than the pure pursuit of knowledge and the unknown that would drive someone to risk their lives to go into space. I admire them, and they will never be forgotten.

Today

Two big things happened today. Well, one awesome thing happened to someone I know and then one basically bizarre thing happened to me. I guess combined they make "big" things in my mind for the day. Anyway, a friend of mine got a job today. He's graduating this spring with his PhD in Astrophysics and this morning was offered a (rather prestigious) fellowship from the National Science Foundation. These things are pretty hard to come by, and it funds him as a post-doc for 3 years. I'm so happy for him! It's fantastic. Way to go Matt!! :)

The weird thing that happened to me was that the glass door on my little entertainment center basically exploded. I opened it and allowed it to swing back to its full open position where it simply shattered, sending a nice even spray of glass shards about 10 feet across the room. It was impressive, and kind of pissed me off at first. It wasn't like I slammed the door open or anything! I'm guessing that it must have had a crack or been otherwise previously stressed in some way to cause the glass to fly apart with such ferocity. There's no reason it should have shattered quite so vigorously simply becasue of how I opened it. About halfway through the hour it took me to confidently feel like I had cleaned the glass pieces out the carpet, I realized it was also a little scary. I was sitting right in front it when the glass went flying--I could still be picking glass out of my eyes! Luckily, most of the glass headed in the direction that the door had opened, so it was away from me.

So that's about all that happened today. I worked, I celebrated with Matt, I broke my entertainment center door and will live in fear for weeks of stepping on glass in my carpet with my bare feet.

My new (old) hobby

I have knitted off and on (though mostly off) for many years. I remember learning when I was about 8 from the neighbor across the street who held a little knitting class one summer for all the girls on the block. She made us the nicest little homehade instruction booklets, complete with pictures cut out from magazines of happy people knitting glued onto the pink construction paper she made the booklet out of. But I bored quickly with it, and ended up knitting, in total, a little piece that was the perfect size for me to use as an oversized shawl for my astronaut Barbie. (Meredith was a geek from day one, people).

I have since picked it up off and on, but never long enough to complete any single thing. I guess I never got good enough to be able to knit without looking at my hands (as other people obviously can do since they watch TV while knitting or even read a book! ) But the other night I actually had a night off from teaching, tutoring, and working and spontaneously picked up my knitting after a solid year of having it sit in the basket next to my chair, completely untouched. (This spontaneity on my part is probably a direct result of having so many friends and family members that are avid knitters right now). I finished my scarf tonight! I use the word scarf loosly as it's just really a long, skinny piece of knitting, but still. I actually finished something! And it's a pretty, light blue chenille so that's cool too. I guess at this point I'll make another scarf and try some different patterns out to see if I can get good at it. Maybe someday I'll even graduate to making a cute hat or something!

Mascara

In my old age I have developed an increasing affinity for makeup. As youth (and by youth, I mean in high school), I rarely wore makeup. Unlike 90% of the other mothers of teenage girls who were running after their daughters, baby wipes in hand, trying to wipe off the pounds of added color, my mother would actively encourage me to wear makeup. "You should put on some rouge, Meredith," she would say, "you look pale."

Now, though, I love it. I have a whole drawer full of makeup in my bathroom. I've got lipstick in every shade known to man, lip gloss, lip balm, bronzers, shimmers, cheek stain, creme blush, powder blush, and yes mother, even a rouge. But, I especially enjoy eye makeup. I don't have a lot of bright and glittery shades, nor do I do the dark, charcoal/heroine-chic look, but if you name a neutral-ish eye makeup color, I probably have 6+ shades of it. Having said all this you might think I wear all this mess everyday. I don't. Not by a long shot. But the one thing I cannot live without is mascara. I love it. And I am constantly on a hunt for the perfect tube. A flawless mascara must abide by the following rules:

(1) No flaking--I hate having little pieces of mascara flake off my lashes as though I had black eye dandruff.
(2) No smudging--I do not in any way want to resemble a racoon by the end of the day. (Also, see above comment disavowing the heroine-chic look for me).
(3) No clumping--I have few enough lashes as it is, I don't need them all to stick together and make it appear as though I have only 3 ginormous lashes
(4) It must be waterproof, and both separate & thicken my lashes (after all, isn't that the point?)

I have tried oodles of different brands, wands, and application techniques and it turns out conditions 1 & 2 above are the hardest to satisfy. (The smudging is especially a problem for me.) The ones that do the best job I have found so far are Benefit's BADgal Lash, Lorac Lashes, and Maybelline Great Lash (all in the blackest black available). Still, none have reached that status of the simply perfect mascara.

So let's take a little mascara poll here--does anyone have suggestions for new ones for me to try in my quest for eyelash perfection?

Home again, home again

I'm "observing" right now, meaning that I am sitting at a computer at school and controlling a telescope about 700 miles away. If I were a better astronomer, I would relish these winter observing nights; these are the nights when it gets dark at early and the sun doesn't come up until late. Yet 'abhor' might be a better descriptor of my thoughts immediately upon seeing that my "night" started at 5:30 pm today and ends at 7 am tomorrow. But whatever. I think it's been pretty well-established that I am neither the perfect grad student, nor astronomer. (If I were, I would surely be graduating this spring!)

So here I sit, looking out my window at a clear, dark sky while I wait for the clouds to clear elsewhere in the world, and I actually have a few minutes to write something. It's apparently been a while since my last post. I spent a week in San Diego at a conference which was good, yet made my brain hurt. These things are so packed with talks and posters and just astronomy 24-7 that I end up leaving at the end of the week feeling completely overwhelmed and certain I will never be smart enough to survive in this field. From there I went to San Francisco for a weekend to see some friends for a little bit and that was fantastic. Exactly the relaxing, low-key break I needed. Yay!

Now, of course, I am home and hip deep in my January of Suckitude. It's really not a good month for me, work-wise. I simply have too many things due in too short a time. Papers, proposals, topic for thesis... Plus, I have started teaching my MCAT students again which, while generally enjoyable, does take a chunk of my personal time. I am teaching at night twice a week this semester, so it turns out to be a sizeable committment. Still, both of my classes appear to be pretty fun and I'm looking forward to working with them.

So I guess that's it. Here I sit. Posting, working on papers and proposals, painting my nails, adding movies to my NetFlix list...whatever I can do to stay awake while I can't observe. And I only have 8 more hours to go!

I got skills

My talent for procrastination has been finely honed over the years. Yet I am still astounded on occasion by how long I can really wait to start and/or finish something important. For all the complaining I do about how silly my students are when they don't pay attention or do their work or expect me to give them extensions on assignments because they simply didn't do it in the first place, I have to say that I can procrastinate with them best of them. As I'm doing right now.

Why is it that my marketable skill set includes procrastination and wordiness, rather than a deep and thorough understanding of the physics related to the interstellar medium? That would be much more useful to me right now.

Near Death Experience

So I could have died yesterday. And I say (write?) that in all seriousness. I'm ok, no damage done to anyone or anything (except perhaps the alignment of my car, though it seems ok), but still. It could have been really really bad. It snowed yesterday, and though there wasn't much accumulation the roads were not well-plowed. I was turning left from a stoplight when my car simply lost all traction. (I had started from a red light, so I was going ~5 mph when this happened.) Halfway through the turn I started sliding. Outward. I tried to get control as my car then skidded so that I was facing left; we turned 180 degress back to the right. Then another 180 degrees back to the left at which point I went up into the grassy median (where there is certainly potential for having screwed up my alignment). At this point all I did was make sure no one was behind me, backed off the curb, turned around and headed back on my way.

The strangest part is that the whole thing went so slowly in my head! As I'm skidding back and forth I remember wondering if the cars behind me were in the way (and thus I was trying to avoid a 360 degree rotation), but I wasn't going to check over my shoulder as there was nothing I could do even if they were in the way and taking my eyes off of what was going on in front of me seemed the wrong thing. Luckily, everyone behind me saw the Mystique squirming out of control and managed to stay out of the way. And as I went up into the median my only thought was, "Damn. I'm headed into oncoming traffic and am going to need a new car after this." Bizarre.

And still, after all this, it didn't even phase me last night. I knew it was not good, and there were about 12 times that I could have been seriously injured or killed if I had gotten hit. But I just went home (after a little more skidding on my slippery street) and it wasn't until this morning that I went to go get in my car and had a moment of "Dear goodness, I cannot possibly ever drive again after that experience." I quickly put that out of my head and went on my merry way, but it was a completely delayed reaction. Delayed by like 12 hours.

So that's my story. I feel really lucky right now. It's not like people don't have bad driving experiences in the snow all the time, but this was the closest I've ever come to being in serious trouble. I don't care to do it again.

Day 2

I spent New Year's in New Orleans with some friends again this year. My friends, by the way, are totally fabulous. Someday I'll write a whole post (or series of posts!) on my friends, but for now suffice it to say that I am incredibly lucky to have so many great people in my life. But getting back to the trip. We did all kinds of crazy touristy things, including a paranormal field investigation and a cemetery tour. (Sadly we did not see any ghosts during our field investigation.) And of course there was evening frolicking on Bourbon St. But mainly, we ate our way through the city. Seriously. It was great, but still. We ate a lot. (I highly recommend Commander's Palace, The Palace Cafe, and NOLA if you ever get the chance!)

Therefore, today is the second day of my New Year's Resolution Diet. After a week at home with my family, 4 days in New Orleans, and about 6 months of not paying close enough attention to my eating habits it's time for me to diet again. As so many other people are doing, I will partaking of the South Beach Diet. Before you leap down my throat about jumping on the fad diet bandwagon, let me say this: after careful review and consideration of several diet programs, I chose to do this diet about 2 years ago and exercised conscientiously for a total of about 9 months. In that time I lost about 35 pounds (yay! go me!) and I felt great. Since then, of course, I've gained about 20 of it back because I got tired/busy/bored/insert-appropriate-excuse-here and didn't pay enough attention to what I was doing. So here I am again, back in the ballgame.

But damn if I'm not hating the thought of sugar-free jello for an afternoon snack when the memory of Cafe du Monde beignets or Brennan's bananas foster is still so near....