Word of the day: Brocade

If your bros approve of your girl...

she's been brocade. Bro-okayed? brokayed?

Nice, E.

just some stuff

Yesterday I got new license plates for my car for the state in which I currently reside, replacing the ones I got when I purchased the car nine years ago this month. So I guess I really live here now. :)

I also got a new driver's license for this state. Actually, I didn't get it - it will be mailed to me in the next 7-10 business days, but I did get a piece of paper that I can show to a cop in place of an actual license if I get pulled over. All of which means that when I tried to check out a computer from the library on campus today and they asked for 2 forms of photo ID, I only had one. Dang.

That particular transition - to a DL from a new state - would have been hard for me, nostalgic packrat that I am (I was REALLY sad to give up my first DL from the state in which I grew up), except for the fact that my current license was from the state in which I only lived for 11 months. I found out when I moved there, having just driven across the entire country, that my license had expired SIX MONTHS PREVIOUSLY. So then getting a new license was a source of considerable panic instead of nostalgia. So it wasn't too hard to give that one up, although it was a bit odd to see the guy just staple right through it.

Today I got back a paper that my group and I handed in on Monday. Never mind that it was probably 6 weeks late, and that last week the prof said he really wanted it THAT WEEK. OK, well it was only kind of that late - the deadline was really squishy. But it was late. But the point is that as I parted from a classmate on Monday so that I could go hammer on the paper to turn it in, she commiserated with me about what a hard grader this prof is, so I was kind of despairing about getting a good grade, since I didn't think my part of the paper was that good, and since it was so late.

Internets - we got an A+. :) :) The prof wrote: "This is a terrific piece of work - well worth waiting for." Nice! :)

And at Institute tonight I talked to one of my friends, and it looks like she's graduating next summer (instead of December), so we might be roommates next year! That would be so great!

Just wanted to share. :)

Yes, I asked him to define it.

So I was headed east across campus for a group meeting, and in passing, said hi to a guy from one of my classes. On the way west an hour and a half later, here he was again, also going the opposite direction again! :) So we stopped and chatted for a minute, and he complimented me on my sunglasses. I get that a lot. ;)

He said, in reference to the glasses, "I almost didn't recognize you when I saw you earlier."

To which I responded, mostly joking, "Oh, because I looked so cool that it couldn't possibly be me?!"

And he said, "No, no, it's just that they cover half of your face, so I couldn't tell it was you. I was like, 'who's the hot coastie?'"

(We're just going to pretend that he wasn't saying that the only reason I looked hot was because you couldn't see half my face... ;) hee hee)

The funny thing is that I JUST learned about the word "coastie" last week! So of course, since I'm a big language nerd, I asked him to define it. :) It refers to girls (or girls and guys?) from the east coast, mostly Jersey and New York, and part of the meaning, and the one that he referenced when he described it to me, is dressing chic. :) He said my glasses are definitely NOT in the style of the state where we live.

Which is true. I got them at the Minnesota State Fair. The same place where you can get unlimited milk refills. If that's not chic, I don't know what is.

Life lesson

Event: I got 100% on my second stats midterm.

Life lesson: Jeremy is harder to convince of my stats knowledge than the TA who graded my test.

Good quotes from today

"It's not a lack of cookbooks that makes one a poor cook." - one who prefers to remain anonymous

"Have you ever been to Hawaii?" - one of my profs

"Hang loose!" - same prof. (Turns out that's why he asked me the above question. And it's a good thing that I realized that that was why, because I was about to get really bitter about it.)

"You are in a good position - lots of people are trying to give you money!" - same prof, after he offered me a PAship for next year. And told me that he respects and admires my "intellectual assertiveness" and "intellectual excitement." :) :)

Hee hee

Mwahahahahahaha!

A Big Moment

It was during my stats class. The prof was talking about variance, and how we figure out how much variance is explained or accounted for by various factors, blah blah blah. And then he mentioned overlap (not the technical word) of explanations of variance. And then -

I got it.

And I raised my hand and said (hee hee!), "So if you want to explore just the questions that interest you, choose your own contrasts and deal with the overlap. But if you want to explain all the variance, choose an orthogonal set of contrasts and deal with the complex contrasts."

And the prof smiled and gave me a big thumbs up and went on with the lecture.

And I sat back in my seat with a huge satisfied grin on my face because - FINALLY! - something about some of the choices we might make about what statistical procedures to use when made sense to me.

Awesome. And by "awesome" I mean, "Mwahahahahahahahaaa!" :) :)

Done and done.

Abstract: Check.

Stats test: Check.

Phone call from my mom asking if I'd been evacuated because of some out-of-control possible terrorist pilot: Check.

Wait - what?!

Dear my-friends-who-are-partying-right-now,

I hope YOUR party is as fun as MINE. I'm writing an abstract to report on a research project that I haven't done yet. Yippee!

AND I'm about to eat a chicken pot pie, hot from the oven. Yowza!

And after THAT, I'm going to work on my stats midterm that's due tomorrow. Woohoo!

Please try to control your envy.

Love,
Me

Word of the day: Cf.

cf.

Main Entry:

cf

Function:

abbreviation

1 calf
2 [Latin confer, imperative of conferre to compare] compare

Meaning #2 is what I was looking for. Thanks, m-w.com.

Wikipedia was also helpful:

"Cf. is an abbreviation for the Latin-derived (but also modern English) word confer, meaning "compare" or "consult", and is hence used to refer to other material or ideas which may provide auxiliary information or arguments. It is mainly used in scholarly or educated contexts, such as in academic (mainly humanities) or legal texts."

I kinda got that that's what it meant, but I was trying to make it stand for "compare" (the 'f' is invisible as well as silent?!) or "cross-reFerence." So I asked my friend C, and she said, "Oh yeah, I just looked that up the other day."

Oh.

Right.

I can look things up.

Word of the day: reify

reify

Main Entry:

re·ify

Pronunciation:

\ˈrā-ə-ˌfī, ˈrē-\

Function:

transitive verb

Inflected Form(s):

re·ified; re·ify·ing

Etymology:

Latin res thing — more at real

Date:

1854

: to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing

(Thanks, m-w.com.)

This is an example of one of those things that stresses you out again and again, but then only takes 2 seconds to resolve. I've seen this word lots of times in the last 8 months, and have read it a number of times in the article I'm currently reading, and it bugged me that I didn't know what it meant. And the energy that I had put into finding the meaning was a FRACTION of the energy that I had previously put into being bugged and stressed out that I didn't know what it meant.

Sigh.

I'd like my dignity back, please.

Do you ever look back on recent events in your life and wonder, "Who is the IDIOT that's been living in my body and interacting with my friends recently?!"

Well, that's the question of the hour around my house right now. Seriously, I'm cringing. Eep.

Here's hoping that the REAL Margaret gets back soon and takes over again. And that her friends won't hold her absence against her.

Aaaaaand it's gone.

Today I just want to be done with school and have a job with a salary and paid vacation time so I can go to Paris.

sigh

It comes and goes...

...but today is a day that I feel like YES, I really could enjoy a profession as a professor and researcher! :) I'm writing a research proposal for one of my classes, and I'm getting all excited about it, and that's a good feeling. I just hope that the excitement lasts long enough for me to get the proposal done by 4pm, which is when it's due. :P

And sure, I could have been working on it all last week, but hey - it was Spring Break and I had places to go and important people to see! And, you know, laundry to do...

What does the universe have against my pants?! ...or maybe it's just me...

On Saturday I went to visit these dear friends, who have not, at latest report, had their baby yet. The main purpose for my visit was to return their 4-inch memory foam mattress topper that I have been sleeping on since August. I no longer need it because (drum roll please!) -

I bought a bed!

And Daniel was confused about why this was such a big deal until he realized that yes, this is actually my first major purchase. So yes, it was a big deal. But that is a different story. :)

So after chatting and chatting and chatting, Crystal invited me to have dinner with them, and we sat down for some yummy potato soup. And oh - it was yummy! And at one point, I picked up the serving bowl full of hot soup to serve myself some more, and it was one of those moments where things move in slow motion and are just etched in your memory...

Crystal said something about how the bowl was really hot, and I made some comment about how I could totally handle it...and then the bowl sliiiipppppppedddddd and thick hot soup was all over the table and my lap!!

The two funniest moments:

Me, frantically trying to do SOMETHING, but kind of frozen in time and space, watching the soup drip and ooze: Oh my gosh you guys!! Oh my gosh Oh my gosh Oh my gosh Oh my gosh Oh my gosh Oh my gosh Oh my gosh


Crystal: Is it burning?
Me: YES!

Oh man, and I think I said, "Oh my gosh" about a million times. And as I sloshed out of my seat and headed for the kitchen sink, trying to hold the crotch of my running pants up so that no more soup would hit the floor, at the same time not allowing it to rest against my skin and burn me, Crystal ran out of the room, and I was thinking, "Ouch - this hurts! and I've offended poor 9-months-pregnant Crystal with my unending stream of 'oh my goshes' and she had to leave the room!"

And I slopped the soup off my pants into the sink and wiped them down, and Daniel said, "Um, how do we even start to clean this up?" as the soup continued to drip from the table onto the plate that I had put on the chair to catch the drips before I realized JUST HOW HOT the soup was that was all over my hands and my gut.

And then dear sweet Crystal came back into the room - NOT mortally offended - with the pair of pre-pregnancy running pants that she had just dug out of a box for me to change into. :) And she said they were too long for her anyway, so I could keep them if I wanted - nice! :)

Oh my gosh. What a mess! We were all cracking up and cleaning up, and then Daniel said, "So, would you like some more soup?!" :)

Fast forward to this morning. Here are the key facts:

1. I've been wearing those pants of Crystal's around my house since Saturday - they are so comfy!
2. Since it's Spring Break, I somehow managed to stay up until 4:30am this morning, even tho I knew I had a 10am meeting with a classmate on campus.
3. I was NOT reading a book until 4:30am, I was surfing the internet and creating a blog for my sister, who just started homeschooling her kids last week. (NoSurf, I gave her your name and number. I hope that's ok. :) )
4. I had been to the library earlier in the evening to get out the 3rd book in a series that I am rereading this week, but the library didn't have the book, and apparently it's impossible for me to leave a library without a book (gasp!), so I checked out an Agatha Christie that, amazingly enough, I haven't read yet, and I really did want to read it!

So now you have to imagine me, at about 9:20 this morning, in those comfy pants, trying to squeeze in a few minutes of Agatha Christie while I ate my knock-off Cheerios. And please don't ask why I felt that the best place to do said multi-tasking was sitting cross-legged on my bedroom carpet, especially since I have a gorgeous kitchen table and chairs. Perhaps it's related to fact #2 above.

At any rate, I'm sure you can imagine the scene - I try to turn a page, with my cereal bowl in hand...the tippage...the spillage...the dread thought of milk in the carpet-age...and my incredibly-slow-on-4-hrs-of-sleep reflexes...watching the milk soak into those pants, and the carpet, and my t-shirt...those pants...that Crystal dug out for me because of my last slippage moment.

Awesome.

At least this time it wasn't burning, eh, Crystal? ;)

Open letter to the guy sitting in his car outside my apartment

Please turn your music down. Surely there is a volume at which you will be able to hear it and I will not.

Thank you.

I'm awesome.

Ok, I'm off to class.

Even though I'm woefully unprepared because I fell asleep this afternoon trying to do the reading for class.

And I wouldn't have fallen asleep this afternoon if I hadn't stayed up much too late last night reading this great book that Barbi lent me.

Reflexology

So I was in my stats lab the other day, and made enough comments that it was obvious to at least one of my classmates that there is something wrong with my voice. As in, it's pretty much totally gone, going on Day 6 of this now = awesome.

I say that apparently it was obvious because after class one of my classmates, with whom I've had a couple of conversations, said to me, rather abruptly, "give me your hands." And then to explain, "I'm a massage therapist."

So I'm thinking, "SWEET! She wants to make my life a little better while I'm so obviously sick by giving me a hand massage!"

Uh, no.

She grabbed a certain part of the meaty part of my hand between my thumb and first finger - and SQUEEZED. And it HURT! Badly! MUCH more than it should have hurt for the amount of pressure she used.

I yelped, "Ouch!" and gave her the look that you give someone when you don't them know very well and they suddenly inflict pain on you. Yeah, you know, that look.

She said, in some approximation of these words, "Just as I suspected, your immune system is totally hosed."

She looked me full in the face and said, "You need to take care of yourself. Sometimes we need someone to tell us that. I hereby give you permission to take care of yourself."

And I gulped and teared up a little bit and admitted (to myself) that I did need that. So I bought oj on the way home from campus that night, and went to bed at 9pm, and I'll offer her my hand again tomorrow, hoping that the sharp pain will be reduced to just a dull ache and that I'll be feeling human enough to remember to thank her.

Jeremy is my hero and saved my 11-page final paper, and hence my life, during finals week.

Details to follow.

Jer - is that enough of a shoutout that you'll get off my back?

Everyone else - Hi! I'm not dead, just in grad school. :)

And wow, turns out that last post isn't actually funny enough to be the only thing posted for almost 2 months. Yeah, um, sorry about that.

Waahahahahahaha!!

Oh man, you guys. Oh MAN this is funny.

Seriously. Go watch it.

Hee hee hee

hee hee

Bwahahahaha!