Busy as little Grad Student Worker Bees

If there's anyone still reading this, you may have noticed that I've changed the blog around a bit.  I decided to mess with a new template and made it very very purple.  We are back from Ohio and are back to work.  Dan is teaching a class on Modern Political Theory that is going pretty well so far.  He's also supposed to be working on his dissertation and getting papers out for publication. 

I am supposed to be reading for comps, and working on publications, and preparing for the class that I might be teaching in July and August. What I have actually been doing is conducting a massive cleaning/organizing spree of the apartment.  I'm almost done, so I should have pictures up next week (pictures of where we live, only a year after we moved in!). 

I leave for a week long ICPSR workshop on time series in Ann Arbor, MI on the 19th of June.  This is also affectionately known as math camp in our department.  I'm pretty excited, although a little worried that my stats background will not be advanced enough.  I'm sure I'll be fine though, I'm a quick learner and I'm persistent enough to bug the professor teaching the class if I'm not getting it. 

On Saturday my friend Jamie and I are throwing our friend Sarah a baby shower.  I'm super excited about it (and about Baby Hampson)!  Hopefully I'll be able to take some pictures there as well.  I still need to write up a post with pictures from Chicago.

Another post that I have been meaning to do is a recap of PAX East, which was amazing.  The primary reason for the delay was the great camera fiasco of 2010.  So we forgot to bring our camera to PAX.  Because we are idiots or something.  I don't know.  It was even on the list.  But we left with no camera.  And realized as we were waiting for the train near our hotel to take us into the city.  I watched someone else take a picture of his friend and it hit me, our camera, at home, not with us, OH NOES!  So after a quick consultation with Dan, we decided to hit up a Best Buy or other such store, pick up a cheap digital camera, and use that, because decent disposable cameras cost usually around $10 each, it would make more sense, and be easier to carry, and easier to put the pictures on our computer if we just got an inexpensive digital camera.  So we did that.  Best Buy had a camera package on sale for like $50, and we grabbed a larger memory card and thought we were all set.  The camera works fine, we get tons of pictures, very exciting.  We bring the camera to school on Monday to show everyone pictures.  The next day we can't find the camera.  We look everywhere.  We empty all of our bags.  We search the car.  We check our desks at school.  Nothing.  So we decide that we must have left it at school and someone took it, it's not like anyone ever locks our office.  We become very paranoid about leaving our computers in the office. 

Fast forward to two months later, I'm in Chicago and emptying out my purse so that I don't have to carry so much stuff around and I find the camera.  Keep in mind that I have emptied this purse three or four times since PAX.  I have flipped it upside down with the pockets unzipped to get crumbs out.  But yet, the camera is there.  There was much rejoicing.  We do not understand how this has happened, but we're just happy that we have our camera back and our PAX pictures.  Which we will post on the blog very soon.

Now that it is summer I have also been reading a bit more, rereading some of my old favorites (Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies, and the Sorcery and Cecelia Trilogy by Pat Wrede and Caroline Stevermer), and finding new books to enjoy (The Elemental Masters books by Mercedes Lackey and a couple books by Joanna Bourne).  I've also enjoyed the Kindle app for my iPod Touch.  It has made reading and buying books while traveling very convenient. 

I've started playing Kingdom Hearts again, and I've finally gotten off the island and into the story.  It's becoming more fun.  Dan and I started playing Mario Galaxy, which I think we are going to do for an hour or so before we go to bed. 

Whirlwind Ohio

First, congratulations to Ally on being a college grad (and having been accepted to grad school with an assistantship)!

Second, Corinne and my break-neck speed visit to Ohio is coming to close. It's been good getting to see family and friends, and sorry to the many we couldn't see. After a couple of days in Grove City, a couple in Seven Hills, and now off to Chicago. But, oh wait, of course it is not that easy. My dad and I checked my car, and although the brake drums did not want to come off, the breaks are fine...except for the leak we found in one of my brake lines, in addition to the two placed in the engine block where the threads for the spark plugs appear to be cross-threaded. All of this means before heading to Chicago I need to get my brake line fixed, and if they can re-tap the engine block, great, if not, just the brake line. Then, Chicago! Woot.

OK, this has been a rather boring post, but I'm posting, so that's something :P

~Dan

The Second Tagliarina

OK, so we've had this blog for almost a year now (I think), and this is actually the first time that have posted on it. So, hi. Yeah, I kind of really suck at this whole blogging thing, but I'm going to try to work on that and let any of you who are crazy enough to actually care what is going on in my life have some way of knowing. I told Corinne back in January that I was going to start posting on this thing, and it looks like I finally have, and only 4 months later.

Corinne and I are currently on our whirlwind tour of Ohio before heading off to Chicago for Law and Society, where I am attending the grad workshop, presenting a paper, chairing a panel, and generally planning on enjoying Chicago. Plus, you know, I should probably try that whole networking thing seeing as I'll be on the job market in a year or two.

Speaking of Law and Society, I'm still working on the paper that I will be presenting, so I need to hurry up and get that done. Yesterday was a nightmare for working. I could not focus, figure out what I wanted to say, how to say it, or overcome the feeling that I had completely lost my mind and forgotten how to write. Not good when you are facing a deadline and dealing with material directly related to your dissertation. Fortunately I got some good advice, I read a bunch of old Penny Arcade comics, and got some sleep. Today was much better. I got about 4-5 single-spaced pages written, and I think most of it is of pretty good quality, which is a huge plus. Writing academic papers really is a funny (not haha funny, but still funny) thing. Sometimes the ideas flow and I can get a lot of work done fairly quickly (i.e., today). Other times I stare at the screen unable to form a coherent thought and wonder if I will be able to finish (i.e, yesterday). Consistency sure would be nice, but I've yet to figure out how to obtain that.

This post has officially become way too long and too rambling...and probably not too interesting at all. In the future I'll try to have more of a point and be more entertaining. We'll see.

Bad at this whole blogging thing...

I am just terrible about remembering to post. Dan had to remind me 3 times to write up the yogurt story.

So right now Dan is currently in Philadelphia presenting at the APSA Teaching and Learning conference. Yay him!! I've been getting over various illnesses and am attempting to actually be productive. It's been half successful. I really need to get it into gear though because I have a conference at the end of the month and I'm not nearly where I need to be on this paper. Argh!

Classes are good this semester, but between my masters papers, my research papers for classes, the project with Sarah and Jamie, and a new project that I'm working on with my advisor and another grad student, I have 7 papers that need to be written or rewritten before the end of the semester. It will be another busy semester for me, I just need to get energized again.

Dan is teaching at the Stanford campus, two classes back to back on Thursdays. Which means that I am home all alone on Thursdays, which is sad, although hopefully productive.

I will post some pictures once I get my computer back, I'm on the old one right now because I managed to spill water on my macbook pro. Hey guess what, water's not so good for laptops. It was not totally trashed, luckily, and is getting fixed, so I'm back on the Dell, which is still chugging along, if slowly. At least it works and runs the programs that I need, even if only one at a time. Water goes on a second desk from now on, even if it does have a lid. Extra luckily, I have all my data backed up, so I shouldn't have lost anything.

That's about it at the moment. Maybe I'll be better at keeping this current. Probably not though.

It's just Yogurt...

So today Dan and I went to Target for our 10% off day. We tend to get things like yogurt and morningstar stuff at Target because it has better prices than the grocery store. We have been at Target for like an hour and a half and finally yogurt is the last thing on our list. We pull the cart up to the cooler aisle and there is someone already getting yogurt, so we stand there and wait. This woman opens the door and pulls out a Yoplait yogurt. She looks at the back. She replaces the yogurt. She pulls out an Activia yogurt. She looks at the back. She replaces the yogurt. She pulls out a Yoplait yogurt again. Looks at the back, replaces the yogurt. Then she pulls out an Activia yogurt, lather rinse repeat. She repeated this little ritual no fewer than 3 times. She finally decided on Activia yogurt and grabs a few of those for her basked. But then, oh goodness, she spots the Danactive smoothies. She replaces some of the activia yogurts with the Danactive smoothies. Every action must be taken with at least a minute of silent, motionless consideration throughout this whole process. She then appears to be done, so I swoop in to get our yogurt in about a minute. I get our yogurt and she's back! Appearing irritated at my consulting Dan on flavor preferences, she hurries as soon as I step back, leaving Dan holding the door. She doesn't take the cooler door. Rather, she climbs on the shelves to get another Activia yogurt that is on the back of the top shelf. Dan is still holding the door. We are done grocery shopping but I can't leave my husband hostage to the crazy yogurt lady. After a few minutes she finally decides she's done and we hurry off to get in line. Of course our check out cashier is confused by the fact that we brought our own bags, despite the fact that Target offers 5 cents off for each reusable bag you bring. Oh the people that we run into :)

Halloween!!

So despite a month full of massive allergy attacks, Dan and I were still very excited about Halloween.

We carved pumpkins and went to a halloween party and dressed up. It was all very exciting. Dan and I went as a Death Panel. Our name tags say "Socialist Government Bureaucrats" and I had a clipboard with people's names and Dan had a scythe with which to render our judgments. I made a kitty pumpkin and Dan made a zombie with a sewn up mouth.

We also had candy for trick or treaters but we only had one family come by. Sadness.

It's been a busy month. They found a replacement for me at the Roper Center so I was able to stop working there. I miss the people I work with, but it's nice to have that time to get classwork and research done now. It was a good job, but I'm glad we're in the position where I don't need a second job. Many people are not so lucky.

Dan's class is going well, he's showing them The Dark Knight this week (and part of next week I think) and they're writing their papers on it (applying the theorists they learn about in class, of course). Advising is going well for me; students have started registering for classes, so I have quite a bit of actual work to do now, which is good.

Classes are going well at the moment, although they are quite busy. We're getting into the paper writing stage. Wish us luck!

Recovery and illness

So I was recovering pretty well from having my wisdom teeth out, and then I caught the flu. Ironically, I started feeling symptoms the day I was supposed to get a flu shot, but couldn't because of medicine I was on for my teeth. Now I'm working on recovering from the flu. This mostly involves lots of water and sleeping for most of the day. The cats have gone between being total jerks and biting my feet and not letting me sleep and being adorable snuggle kitties. Typical cats. I'm going to go sleep some more now.