It's fall, which means I'm yet again applying for graduate fellowships. I'm doing three this year: the National Science Foundation one, the National Defense Science and Engineering Grant, and the NASA Graduate Student Research Program. The NSF deadline is Friday, whereas the other two are much later, so I'm working on my application now.

I applied for the NSF and NDSEG fellowships both times that I applied to graduate school, so at first I put off working on them because I had these hyper-negative connotations of endless applications, the horror of writing personal statements, and overall remembering my state of mind when I was writing so many applications. Endless self-scrutiny, endless analysis, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. But in the end, it's $9k extra per year for me if I get one, and it's more money for my group because my advisor no longer pays my stipend out of her grant. And for additional motivation, my friend Jen who was a first-year with me was also applying for one, and made me go order a transcript today, and wanted to get together to exchange essays and work on them. So here I am, doing it again.

I have my application materials from last year, so the first thing I did on my essays was to reread my old essays and see what I can reuse. The research history one, there's obviously a lot I can reuse, since I just have to add on the things I've done in the last two years, like that invited talk at SLAC and all the stuff in my nanoscience group here. But my personal statement... man, reading it was bizarre. When I wrote it two years ago, it wasn't even clear if I'd go to graduate school, since getting rejected twice would really be a sign that I had to do something else. So my personal statement was almost a plea: I've got these amazing credentials, and I didn't give up when a lot of people would have and just kept improving myself, can you please let me do what I want now? I applied the first time from a mentality of strength and competence, the second time from perseverance. But now, that whole arc of hope, shame, vindication... it's over. I'm in graduate school, I'm doing what I wanted, and that's it. The narrative arc of my last personal statement has been completely resolved. So what am I doing now? Where am I going with my career?

I ended up rewriting things, though still explaining what happened with graduate school admissions and how I eventually got in, but this time talking more about where I'm going with my research now, the wide opportunities that are open to me, and also a lot about my teaching experiences and the importance of bringing more people in general, women and minorities in particular, into science. I really underestimated last time how much the NSF wants you to talk about this; as a woman I feel weird playing the gender card, but the NSF wants to know exactly how you'll deal with that. So I talked about it more, and hopefully that'll go over well. I need to edit this essay and the research experience one more, and then I need to write a research proposal. I realize now that I underestimated how technical they want that to be when I previously applied, so I'll have to put some more depth into it. It should be interesting to do, though, and thinking about large-scale future projects is really pretty exciting.

I still hate writing these kinds of essays about myself, though.

Returning to weekends with Ben is easy, comfortable, delightful. We went to the Italian Market to get stuff for cold vegetable soups on Saturday, then took a picnic of blue cheese, bread, and wine to Fitler Square where we played cribbage and read things, he the New Yorker, me Flow. We had a lot of moving kind of things to do around the house, to move our computer stuff back into the office, and to move things back into the office closet that are taking up the space Ben's clothes are supposed to be in. Sunday was a day around the house, partly because it rained nonstop all day, and partly because there were things around the house to do. We made Cold Avocado Soup, which was very tasty though it needed more lemon or lime juice. Time with Ben is bliss: silly comments, eating lime wedges with cayenne, pinching, constant physical affection. Talking about the future.

We bought plane tickets for the holidays already, to get them cheaper and to make it easy for us to visit all of our parents. This means a tour of four households, which is a little long and silly, but it'll be nice to spend winter break together for the first time. After Ojai, I'll head up to Berkeley for a couple of days, since the extra cost isn't too bad. I asked Joao if that was an okay time to come, and he mentioned that he and Gersende might be moving back to Europe early next year, though they'll definitely not have moved yet in January. But already a lot of BFCers are leaving Berkeley, since most of them were postdocs, and Ron will be traveling, and lots of the people who made the last part of my time in Berkeley so great will be gone. It's sad to watch that happen to a place you've left, and it makes me a little nervous because that's how I came to be less emotionally tied to Los Alamos. Though, of course, the emotional ties that remain between me and New Mexico are permanent. I was happy this weekend, at Trader Joe's, to taste New Mexico Pinon Coffee, really enjoy it, and see the NM flag on the label.

We watched Une Femme Est Une Femme this weekend, at the end of my summer glut of foreign films, and I really liked it. I especially liked the note the movie ends on, though I assure you I don't intend to make a habit of closing out entries with French movie quotes.

E: Angela, tu es infâme!
A: Moi, je ne suis pas infâme. Je suis UNE femme.

glasses, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

The rest of my time in LA was really nice. I had a great time at the beach on Friday, because it was uncrowded, clean, and beautiful. Saturday morning, Ben went up to Ojai to see his family and pick up a rental car, and I went with Laura, Steph (Erin's UCLA friend, not my Steph), and Chih to take Aislin and Erin to get manicures. It was my first manicure, and I am shocked at the amount of cuticle skin they remove. Not to mention how weird it feels to pay someone to fuss over your hands. Anyhow, then we went to Agoura Hills for the out-of-town-guests' dinner, which was really nice. We had a bachelorette party for Erin afterwards which was really fun, a nice combination of wacky fun and just chatting. I'm embarrassed to note that I won the weird game we played called something like 'Who is the biggest pervert', but glad that Chih was just one space behind me.

On Sunday, Ben and I went up to Ojai to spend the day with his family, and then were very nearly late to the actual wedding because of traffic. Erin and Josh's wedding was really lovely, and very fun! It led me to the conclusion that Jewish weddings are great, because everyone seems to be having so much fun. Also, the amount of dancing was higher than I'd previously seen at weddings, and that made me quite happy. And Ben looks extremely cute in a kippah.

Overall, the weekend was great, seeing friends and family was great, but I am really happy not to be flying cross-country again for a while. What's even better, though, is that tonight at 11:30 I get to go pick up Ben from the airport. :)

It's been interesting, living apart from Ben after living together for nine months. ( reflections on compromise )

So as of right now, it's been five weeks since I saw Ben, and I'll be seeing him and lots of friends in Seattle this weekend. Then only four weeks until he moves back here. I'm happy and fine and enjoying myself without him, but it's so nice to talk to him on the phone or on WoW, and I'm really excited to see him. I've been going to dinner, doing laundry, running by the Schuylkill, packing, reading papers, and thinking about how wonderful it will be to hold him.

Skipping beats, flashing jeeps
I am struggling
Daydreaming, been sitting, the corner cafe
And I'm left in bits, recovered tectonic, trembling
You get me everytime

Why'd you have to be so cute
It's impossible to ignore you
Must you make me laugh so much
It's bad enough we get along so well
Say goodnight and go

It's beautiful today, blue sky and warm but not hot, and soon I'm going to the train station to pick up Steph. This last week in particular has made me realize that I am really coming to love Philly.

Some of it is getting out more, seeing the fun neighborhoods and things to do, the culmination of slowly trying to get to know the city over the last year. It's also partly the weather... I was really dreading living here for the summer, because when we moved here permanently last August it was just miserable, in terms of both temperature and humidity, and I dreaded three months a year like that. But even though I know I still have July and August to get to, I was surprised to find that June hasn't been that bad. In New Mexico, I always found June to be the worst month, where it was straight hot and no breaks. But July and August there are monsoon season, with thunderstorms every afternoon, which is actually pretty fun. Here June isn't like that; sometimes there are really hot and humid days, like the day I left for LA when it was 95 and very humid. But mostly it's been tolerable, with sometimes weeks of mid-70s and cold at night! I can take the occasional hot day, which is all we've gotten so far. Of course, I'm inside all day on weekdays, in a heavily air-conditioned building. But I do have a twenty minute walk to and from work each day. Anyhow, it's a relief to know that I only have to deal with two months of yucky summer.

Another thing that has certainly contributed is our house, which I love, and our garden, which I am coming to love. Now, our initial plans ended up gang agley, probably because the seeds weren't watered enough while we were both gone for a week. So most of the exciting and wonderful things we planted don't seem to have sprouted, though we do have peas, tomatoes, cilantro, and parsley at the very least. But some things are growing, and I'm thinking of getting cheap tiny pots and starting some seedlings in those for the herbs we really wanted that didn't come up. I mean, we still have loads of seeds. The rest of our yard is a profusion of weeds, beautiful thriving ones. And in fact, I spent a lot of time weeding the patch where stuff is planted, which is sort of enjoyable. It's sort of like my backyard is offended that we put seeds in it, and killed off our seeds and replaced them with morning glories in a massive attempt to give us the finger. 'You think I need help to grow things?!'

Something that occurred to me with the roses I bought last weekend is that they will probably get really big. See, my mom grew many roses in New Mexico, and is an excellent gardener, and almost without exception all of her roses are two or three feet high. So I thought this was the height that mature roses get to, until I saw roses growing around London and Philly in the last few months and saw ones that are six or seven feet high. Gigantic! At first I thought it was some sort of super-rose breed, until I realized that New Mexico is a desert, and the only wild roses you see there are those tiny ground-cover ones, and probably if you grow a plant in the environment it's suited to, it'll get much bigger. Something to look forward to!

Of course, something that's helping me immensely to enjoy Philly more is the lack of problem sets I have now. And while I probably will take one or two more problem set classes, I'll never take more than one at once, so this is a condition I will happily continue in. :)

I had a nice weekend. My flight out to Los Angeles was seven hours delayed, due to some clouds 50,000 feet high which we had to wait to settle down, so I got in at 3:30 AM. I was really excited as I was going to the airport, but I guess cross-country flights are less straightforward and less clear-shot than just hopping down the coast. Plus the time zone really did make a difference, since I wasn't there long enough to adjust. But we had a lot of fun: ate breakfasts at a sunny coffee shop, went to the beach with Erin and Josh and Ben's roommate John, watched Police Story, played Carcassonne, had sushi in Santa Monica, cuddled while watching The Empire Strikes Back.

( ways in which this weekend was different )

And now I'm back, and I'm making progress in my work, and trying to get caught up on my chores. My favorite pair of jeans ripped while I was in LA, so maybe I can mend those... and I want to finish Juneteenth, the other Ralph Ellison book, so that I can start rereading Harry Potter. :) I should also clean up... when I came back yesterday, I noticed that one of our mouse traps had moved onto a vent in the dining room... then noticed the tail protruding from it. A mouse got its leg caught in the trap, tried to go down the vent, and died there. I was concerned that the mouse would be stuck in the vent, and I would have to take drastic measures (or have a professional take them on my behalf) to remove it, but it slid right out. But now things feel unclean.

Our garden grows slowly, in fits and starts, not nearly as fast as our weeds. But we have pea-vines!

berries, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

I didn't realize it, but when I was in Berkeley I think that I really missed autumn.

See, in New Mexico, it's true we don't have lots of deciduous trees that blaze orange and red in the fall. We do have aspen that turn gold on the hillside, though, and we have weather that gets decidedly colder. We have snow by Halloween in good snow years, and tasty winter soups, and cozy sweaters. Berkeley has some of these things, but in lesser quantities, and there are some parts of autumn I just didn't get, like jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treaters. Ben and I got candy and pumpkins today for Halloween, and came away from our grocery trip with (among other things) butternut squash, pears, pumpkin butter, a turkey, cranberries, and other such things. We brought it in from the car, and our street is paved with fallen leaves that fly around in the wind, just like they do in films or dramatic photographs. And then it's so great to feel like you have a cozy home, where you feel comfortable and happy and loved.

And it turns out that if we spend $6 more on groceries at our general supermarket before Thanksgiving, we'll get a free turkey! Sweet!

I think that for Thanksgiving we are going to go up to Ben's uncle's wife's family's house in Connecticut. We each have a lot of extended family in the area that we could go see, but this particular gathering will have Ben's sister Aimee who he really wants to see (she's in college in Massachusetts). I wish the gathering with my friends from home had worked out, but none of us could really afford it this year. I think next year Ben and I will try to host something here, though. Our house is great for guests, as we proved when Joao and Gersende stayed with us.

Also, I think I'll be in Berkeley for New Year's. More on that as it develops.

I have a postcard from Philadelphia, with the city skyline. I got it in November 2001, from Ben, shortly after we started dating. He came here to visit family for Thanksgiving, and sent it to me. Isn't it funny we ended up living here?

Life in Philly so far is great. We've more or less finished moving in, although we still have to do more to decorate our house. We haven't touched the garden other than to install some chairs, and we figure we'll do that in the spring. There are a ton of morning glories all over the place back there, which is positively gorgeous. Our kitchen is fantastic and feels home-y, though it's a little low on cabinet space. We haven't managed to get internet at home yet, though, which I'm kind of pissed about. Mainly because we have lots of free time and I can't play World of Warcraft, which is a pretty dumb reason to be pissed when you've just moved in with the love of your life.

We've been exploring the Italian market more... a lot of great cheese shops, olive oil by the gallon, homemade pasta (though Ben has a pasta maker and isn't afraid to use it). And some really exceptional meat shops, better fish prices than I ever managed to find in Berkeley, and this in addition to a great selection of produce. There's a great Vietnamese supermarket nearby that's very similar to Ranch 99, and it seems easy to find the ingredients we want for Mexican. So my initial worries that we wouldn't be able to cook the foods we like for lack of ingredients seem to have been poorly founded. I guess even if you move from a mecca of food and culture, if you're moving to another big city, you're probably okay.

I'm excited for when classes actually start. I want to learn more, meet people, get more involved with things here. I think what I want the most is to get back into research, though, which I won't do until next May. I'm glad I have time here to get things in order, but I want life to start again.

It was incredible.

Ben and I came back on Thursday night, after being awake for 24 hours and taking three planes, two trains, and a bus to get back from Berlin to Philadelphia. We had our two weeks in France, two weeks in Italy, and a week in Germany, and they were so full of experiences and adventure that I have a hard time thinking of a single word to describe everything. I kept a travel journal of daily events, but I think it's too boring and long to put in here. I'll deal with things topically, as I think of them, and I'll post pictures when I'm able.

We aren't quite moved into our house yet, because our stuff, which was being shipped cross-country, was a couple of days delayed. We got the keys to the house (one of which was missing, so we had to watch them drill off the deadbolt and replace it) and set up most of our utilities. But we don't have internet because we have to see if Verizon will be able to do it at our address (Comcast could for four times the price). We spent today oiling our hardwood floors, bug-bombing our basement, and exploring the menu of a nearby Italian-American-Lebanese diner. Anyhow, I can't post pictures until we're set up there with internet, though I have around 800. :)

It was great. It was all great. And it's wonderful to come back to so many exciting things, like moving into my house with Ben and starting classes at Penn in a month. We are busy and happy and changed, if fundamentally the same.

Everything right now is a flurry of things to do: unpack the car, get presents for our hosts, do last-minute laundry, pick out everything we're bringing. We leave from JFK tomorrow evening around 8 pm. I've bought a little Moleskine notebook to use as a travel journal, because it's both more convenient and more visceral than blogging. And who knows when I'd have time to blog. But this is something I want a record of.

Oh, and tomorrow morning we have to go down to Philadelphia to pay the deposit, sign the lease, and get the keys to our house. :D

It was the first place we looked at, Sunday afternoon. It's a rowhouse, near South St. and 22nd, which means it shares walls with other houses on the street, and has a stoop out front and a small backyard. The upstairs is two fair-sized bedrooms and a nice bathroom; the ground floor is a living room, a dining room, and a pretty nice kitchen, with a little door into the small backyard (where we figure we'll have an herb garden, flowers, and maybe a tiny grill). There's a cellar too, which should be great for wine storage, sausage making, and laundry. There's no air conditioning, but Nancy's folks offered us two older air conditioning window units that they don't need anymore. The interior is pretty nice... kind of old, but obviously the walls have been repainted pretty recently and the floor is wood and looks newly refinished. The exterior is a little run-down, but we'll spend more time inside than outside looking at it.

My first thought on walking into it was that I couldn't believe we could afford something like that. It costs barely more than my last apartment in Berkeley, for those of you that saw that. Housing in Center City seems to be priced based on location, though, with the apartment buildings in the more upscale areas and rowhouses and condos in the cheaper places. We couldn't afford any apartments, but we could afford a house. How's that for strange?

We keep hugging each other, saying "our house" and "our flight to Paris tomorrow". It's thrilling, and I'm very happy that all my plans for the month of June worked out so well.

We've been short-distance before, but always for a limited period of time. I always knew in the back of my mind that after some date, we'd become long-distance again and the long-distance was the indefinite part. So it's very... strange to suddenly have none of that. Realize, I've been in a long-distance relationship for four and a half years. And there was an end! The distance ended and the relationship lasted! We did it!

It's like a second honeymoon, or something of that nature, to finally be free of something that's been holding us back for so long. It's the end of an era, the end of so many things, and the beginning of something totally new. I have to admit that I'm a little scared... long distance isn't good, but it's something we're very good at dealing with. We're going into new water here. But it feels so good to be together, finally, permanently. It's hard not to feel so happy that I just keep smiling, and it makes it so much better to see how happy Ben is too. We're silly and cute and mushy and it's great, it feels so simple and carefree. I feel so carefree.

This is a happy ending and a beautiful beginning and the best of all possible outcomes. Thank you world, friends, Ben, self. It finally worked.

Today I saw Steph get married! Along with Jeanine, this means my two closest high school friends are married now.

The wedding was up at Camp May, in the blazing June heat but also outside in the mountains, under aspen and ponderosas, and was very beautiful. The ceremony was blissfully short, although the pastor (a family friend of Scott's) was subtly sexist in the way that older people are sometimes, probably without even realizing it. But in the ceremony he mentioned that Scott would take vows first, since he's the head of the household, and talked of Steph's ring as a symbol of her subjection to Scott. Argh. Scott isn't like that, though, thank god. But even with that, the ceremony was nice. We all went to Fuller Lodge afterwards and ate tasty New Mexican food, and it was really great seeing all sorts of people. Steph and Scott seemed kind of stressed, but I'm sure they're really happy now and on their way to a Hawai'i honeymoon.

The whole thing was really beautiful and fun, and I'm really happy to see some of my friends happily married (and others happily involved, even). It's always very touching to see everything work out in the end.

Dear Berkeley,

I will miss:

*Cheeseboard
*LBL
*Zachary's
*Gregoire's
*the view from the Campanile
*the view from the end of Building 50
*walking through Stephens Hall
*the BART
*games with Ron, Jonathan, and Modi
*the BFC
*Loups-Garous
*Gelateria Naia
*the CCD lab
*my officemates
*looking up to Natalie
*my moved on school friends
*San Francisco, everything
*the many great hikes
*the Bay, which makes the city beautiful
*all the different cultures
*cheap sushi
*flagrant liberalism
*trees and beautiful suburbs
*all the beautiful campus buildings
*the professors that I liked
*the Gourmet Ghetto
*Monterey Market
*all of my apartments

Berkeley is where I really became my own person. I did some stupid things and you can always see in retrospect ways that you could have used your time better, but when it comes down to it, I've done so many fulfilling things here. I haven't always been happy, but I've been mostly happy, and I've become stronger and more capable than I could have imagined myself five years ago, when I moved here from Los Alamos. In my experiences in Los Alamos I see my home, my soul, my roots, but in my time in Berkeley I see myself becoming who I wanted to be, by my own volition. I built myself and my success here, and I feel a great sense of self-made-ness looking back. Part of my reluctance to move on is that I'm worried I won't love Philadelphia as much as I love it here, or that I won't love Penn as much as I love UCB, or that I won't find as cool friends as I have here, or that I won't succeed as much as I managed to here, despite some missteps. My chief regret in my time here would be that I worried so much about my future and my failures, and from the perspective I have now, that looks like a ridiculous waste of time. I'm proud that I had such a blast here, though, even this last year when I was working off an imagined debt.

Thank you, Berkeley, for never letting me stop having fun. I'll be back.

I'm packing up my desk at LBL, turning in my badge, leaving behind my logbook which is a diary of my work life for the last two years. This is very depressing. I have some nice pictures I took recently, but I can't upload them because they're at home and my internet has already been disconnected. In lieu, here is a list of interesting things on my desk.

*logbook
*French conversation daily calendar
*fish mug from Monterey and LBL 50th anniversary mug
*busted Varian vacuum gauge
*"You Da Baddest Girl Who Done Got Into Grad School" certificate
*many varied screws
*sticky of notes from when the Penn grad chair called
*sticky of Basho haikus which I wrote down for some reason
*German Euro coin
*old drafts of my journal article
*IEEE conference program

:( I don't want to go.

I was trying to find parking by Joao and Gersende's place, having sold them my couch and helped move it over there, and I saw a spot on Dwight right next to the Griffiths common room in Unit 2. I remembered hanging out there: watching some movies and playing on the piano with Chih and Jenn, the first good friends I had at Berkeley. And then I remembered that Ben and I first kissed there, an embarrassingly short period of time after we met. Life moves on so fast, doesn't it?

I had dinner with some BFC people, hung out talking at Kurt and Cinthia's, and said goodbye for a couple months to Max and Wenjing, who leave tomorrow. Natalie e-mailed the group to arrange for my goodbye lunch later this week. I have two weeks left at work.

And it's like... I gave a talk today which wrapped up one of my projects, the edge pixel one, and several people told me how good it was. And I've been doing a lot of stuff with my friends here, having a great time. I don't really want to leave my friends, I don't really want to leave my job, I don't really want to leave here, where it's beautiful and there's good food and lots of fun things to do. I know Philadelphia will be great... I know it'll be amazing, because it'll all be new and different and Ben will be there with me, finally with me. But I'll miss this... this is only the second time, really, that I've had to leave someplace I thought of as home.

I'm not really depressed, because there's so much to look forward to. But I have a hard time leaving things behind.

I went to a very nice Ultimate BFC Party last night with many of my friends from work, a huge amount of tasty food, and some fun games and conversation. I was given a very nice picture which will hang in my Philadelphia apartment to remind me of one of the many, many things I'll miss about Berkeley.

I think it's really funny that the new race in world of warcraft made the headlines that I got from the NYTimes this morning. I'll disable my account over the summer, I guess, since I won't have any opportunity to play. But then will I re-enable it in the fall? I don't know if I should. Maybe, though.

I'm getting together with some people tonight to try to work out a real list of cities for Ben and I to visit. We'll almost certainly take trains from Paris to Rome, with lots of fun stops, and then maybe from Rome to Berlin for a few days and then back to Paris to return to the U.S. I think we've definitely ruled out Milan, I'm hearing fun things about Lyon, and I'm still flip-flopping on Nice. Almost certain stops include Paris, Lyon, Geneva, Marseille, Venice, Florence, and Rome.

And I still need to buy a dress for Steph's wedding... blargh. I hate dress-shopping and I rarely wear full-out dresses, which accounts for my owning three, none of which are black. I also don't think this is the time of year when it's easy to find black dresses... does anyone have recommendations of places to shop? God I hate buying clothes. But the wedding should be really cool and touching. I think I also need better black dress shoes, that are more practical.

I'm leaving tomorrow (today) at 4:00 AM for Michigan. I'll be at the Michigan visit weekend until Sunday, when I'll jet over to Penn to spend Monday looking around there. And on Tuesday I'll come back to Berkeley.

I'm really afraid... I have a hard time believing things are going so well. What if I don't like Penn? What if I don't like Philadelphia? What if somehow, things don't work out? I've been hopeful but fundamentally pessimistic for so long that it's hard to get out of, and the moments of clarity I can manage sort of consist of me, slackjawed, whispering "we did it!" and almost crying. Suddenly Berkeley is like a dream, like I'm already gone.

This is very exciting, but I always get a little sad at change. Even exciting, awesome, fabulous change that is the culmination of all my dreams. Heh, that really makes me sound silly. :)

Have a great weekend, guys.

Wow, so Steph and Scott (who have been unofficially engaged for some time) have now picked a date for their wedding. I think they said June 4th (uh-oh, maybe I should check that). It's more than a little weird to have my high school friends marrying like this. But it's cool to have them marrying into nice, very suitable couples who seem probable to be happy together for a long time. It's easy to be very happy for them.

I feel old when I think about it, although earlier today I was reading a talk that our project leader gave in March 2001, and I was thinking, "Geez, I hadn't even graduated from high school then," and feeling very young. It's like a pendulum.