I am getting married in just over a month, which means I have started receiving mail addressed to me with a different last name. And when I am telling people mine and Ben's names for various wedding-related things, people (always women!) exclaim over "my new last name". Except, it isn't.

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Wedding planning progresses, albeit with some bumps along the way. In case you didn't know, a "bump" in wedding plans pretty much always means, "This vendor told me I would have to pay this, but now they are saying it will cost twice as much." The two main assumptions of wedding planners are that since you only intend to get married once, you're willing to be profligate, and since your parents are paying for it, they must have saved lots of money for this day. These are painful when you are trying to be thrifty because you have a little money from your parents, but they thought it was a better idea to pay for college than pay for an extravagant wedding. I have to say, that was solid logic from them.

But while I'm not enjoying the expense, I am excited about lots of aspects of the planning. We'll be getting a catering menu from a Mexican place soon which I'm looking forward to going over, and I'm in the final process of picking a bridesmaid dress with the help of my bridesmaids. I really like the dresses they are choosing from; I would almost want one myself. My mom is making practice cakes and giving them away to my friends in town, and she's also finished with the practice dress (in muslin, which I will fit and then tear apart to be the pattern). All the party aspects are going to be a lot of fun, and I'm also really looking forward to writing the ceremony in collaboration with the wedding party.

Something that has come up a fair amount, though, in my discussions with Ben about different aspects of the wedding, is the idea of being different from standard weddings. We agreed at the beginning that we would do things in a way that made us happy, and try not to feel bound by tradition. But at the same time, we also agreed not to reject anything out of hand because it was 'traditional'. ( Read more... )

This is a very interesting long memo I acquired after going to a women in science lunch thing last week. I very highly recommend reading the whole thing. It is alarming but comprehensive.

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I expected them to all be long gone by now, but yet again when I went running along the Schuylkill River Trail today, I saw a flock of geese. Some of them were drinking from a puddle right by the path, and they are so lovely that close up! Geese are exciting for me to see up close because I never really saw them in the west, either in Berkeley or Los Alamos. I was aware that some birds migrated but I never saw any do it. Or at least, if I saw anything, it was a tiny v in the sky. The wildlife that I miss most from the west is deer. They are so gentle and elegant. I loved seeing them at LBL or in the Berkeley hills late at night, eating people's flower gardens. And in Los Alamos, there was a tennis court my dad and I used to play at (near the Unitarian Church, for those that lived there). Many, many times we'd be playing there around dusk, and five to ten deer would come up out of the canyon and mill around eating. So peaceful.

Earlier today, though, when we were at the Italian Market, we went into a lot of butcher's shops to get various things. At some point while Ben was buying ham, I had to squeeze to the side so that someone could carry a huge bag of frozen chicken wings by me, which was not dropping but fairly flowing liquid out the bottom onto the concrete floor, to be slapped into one of the ice-filled 'chicken parts' bins. This was kind of nauseating for me, and I had a thought I've had before: I should be a vegetarian.

Now, to be clear, I believe pretty solidly that eating meat is morally ok. There is a levels of intelligence/consciousness argument, as well as the immense difficulty of making a vegetarian diet that isn't malnourishing in some way. Protein is really important to keeping alive! I don't have that much meat in my regular diet, but I do have some, and I dislike beans and many other vegetarian protein sources. To be sure, animals intended to be eaten should both live and die humanely. But I know that I would not be able to kill an animal myself, and at some levels I don't think you should eat meat if you couldn't do that. Ben could, and mentions that he would like to go hunting at some point, kill an animal, have a large freezer to store the remains, and slowly eat it. He always says I should come too, and I have to remind him exactly what would happen. Assume that we would be able to find anything to kill at all. I would either have a Deliverance-type moment of being unable to shoot straight, or were we actually to kill something, I would most likely end up cradling it and crying, and weep intermittently for the rest of the trip. My sense of empathy is too strong for an experience like that, even though I am aware that happens for each piece of meat that I eat. But it makes me feel dishonest, for reaping the fruits of an action which I could never actually perform.

This is an interesting site, where you can take association tests devised by a team of Harvard scientists. The tests themselves are interesting, if a little irritating. They tell me that I have no implicit preference for whites vs Native Americans or blacks, but that I have a strong association of women with science (no surprise there; it's easy to sort words when half apply to you and half don't). I got the link from New Scientist, which is running an interesting article on brain function. Tell me if you guys use the site and find anything interesting.

I've noticed something. Since leaving Los Alamos, I've met a fair number of people who skipped grades in elementary/middle/high school, and ended up graduating young, or being younger than all their friends, or going to college at a young age, or all three. And all of these people have told me that they would never, ever, allow their children to skip grades. They cite social problems, academic unrest, and other difficulties from personal experience, and say that it isn't worth it. Mind you, no one I've talked to said it was too intellectually challenging, just that it brings a lot of problems that make life much more difficult.

Now, I feel just the opposite way. ( Read more... )

Four lessons I learned from The Devil Wears Prada:

1. Anytime a woman rebuffs your advances, you should just follow her around and kiss her over and over until she gives in. 'No' just means 'kiss me again, you handsome devil!'

2. Having a successful career as a woman means you are a huge bitch. There is a direct correlation between how successful you are and how bitchy you are.

3. Any progress in your career which makes someone else unhappy is morally wrong. This is regardless of whether you chose to make them unhappy (like stealing an assignment from them) or it was decided by someone else (like a boss). If you are ever given something that someone else wants, you should quit your job.

4. If your boyfriend is unsupportive, sulky, and continually tells you that you are a bad person, you should quit your job to win him back.

I rented the movie having just watched Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer, which is an excellent movie. I had heard that in this one, Meryl Streep is great and everything else is not very good, which was accurate. And man, the moral framework of the movie rubbed me the wrong way every time it came up.

I just had the strangest final of my life. And the way I reacted to it... I really surprised myself. Let me explain.

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Huge props to castallia for finding this article, from the Washington Post, about one of my favorite violinists performing in a subway.

( Pearls before Breakfast )

My knee is noticeably better today than yesterday. The swelling went down, and while I still can't walk comfortably on it, it's a good deal more comfortable than yesterday, and my range of motion is also improved. I am very relieved by this.

I've spent my convalescence thus far playing World of Warcraft, reading Count Zero by William Gibson, finding things to cook next week (Tunisian pepper stew!), and watching a few movies. American History X is the best movie I've seen in a long, long time, and I highly recommend it to you guys.

Now that I can't walk, I think about how good I had it just before I hurt my knee, when I was running and swimming pretty regularly. I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to get back to that, honestly... I'll have to ask the physical therapist and see how I feel. It reminds me, though, of something I've been thinking about a lot, the tendency to not enjoy how great the here and now is, but rather idealize old times and look forward to things on the horizon. I've been thinking about it already because the first year of grad school isn't a lot of fun in some ways. When I went back to visit LBL and people asked how I was doing, when I said the work was hard they all did the same sort of knowing laugh. And although I always knew that this part of graduate school would be hard, and that wasn't why I came, it still depressed me some to be working my ass off on courses I had to do. But at the same time, this is it! This is what I really wanted for a long time! How can I not be enjoying every second of it? It's so important to enjoy the things we have, because if we don't, why bother having them? The aspect of my life which is by far the easiest to enjoy, though, is Ben. It's so fun to live with someone who's a good friend and fun to be around (as I already knew!) and it's been fantastic not having distance any more. Plus the whole 'will we ever be together' thing had put so much strain on our relationship... it feels very easy to just enjoy ourselves now. I need to figure out a way to put that nowness into the other parts of my life as well.

There's an article in the NYTimes right now about earth scientists (paleontologists, geologists, etc.) who have religious beliefs contrary to their scientific research. There's an example in Los Alamos which everyone knows, about this guy who is an expert on earth mantle dynamics and is a young earth believer, i.e. that the earth/universe was created no more than 10,000 years ago. It seems that scientists don't like creationists like this, who have religious views directly opposite the views espoused by their research, to come to their institutions, but when the creationists have adequate credentials, the institution feels it would be discrimination to refuse. This is especially troubling if the person may be getting credentials in order to later say that they believe creationism, and look, they have a Ph.D. in earth science. I have to say, I agree with the fact that if someone has adequate background, you can't refuse them study or a job based on religious beliefs. (A slightly different question arises if they have published views which aren't supportable from evidence, in scientific sources of any kind.) But you know, the fact that creationists do this just... it just disgusts me. It's so dishonest, and so antithetical to the foundation of science being the pursuit of truth. There may be nothing at all wrong with the science that a person like that does, but they are seriously fucked up in the head if they can follow scientific method and still believe based on faith that what they spend their time working on is wrong. Why would you even do it in the first place?

I don't have a problem with religious people, I have a little bit of a problem with religious people who insist on believing something that science has proven wrong, and I have a big problem with someone who would abuse the honesty and tolerance of the scientific community like that.

Anyways, if you want to read the whole article, I guess I will reproduce it ( here. )

For me personally, I try to stay very in touch with everyone I care about. I call my parents or e-mail them pretty regularly, I call or e-mail friends from New Mexico if I've got their contact info (or read their blogs, those that have them), and I try to call or e-mail my friends from Berkeley now that I'm gone. I'm not perfect about it, and sometimes I forget or get busy or don't manage to get to everyone. It would be awesome if all the people I cared about were bloggers, but mostly they aren't.

The response varies a lot. I think Jeanine is pretty much the most responsive; she e-mails me sometimes or calls, and in undergrad she sent me an e-mail pretty much every week. On the other end of that spectrum are other people who take several calls to get ahold of, don't return messages or respond to e-mail sometimes. Most people are in between... they don't tend to call me first, but they're happy to hear from me and if I have to leave a message, they'll definitely call back and track me down.

I know that sometimes this is frustrating for me, because it makes me feel like I'm the only one making an effort to stay in touch. Most of the time I don't mind, though... it's important to me to do so I don't mind doing it. But it does make me wonder about the sort of mindset required to not stay in touch with the people one cares about. Several of my friends who are impossible to stay in good touch with assure me that they care about me, and we are friends for life, and that they're glad I try. But how do they view things so that their inaction makes sense? I'm a big believer in that everyone's actions make infinite sense from their own point of view, and it's essential to try to understand other people's mindsets. So can anyone offer some insights on how this internally makes sense?

Btw, I don't mean this entry to sound confrontational, just curious.

In an article in the NYTimes about makeup, they give the following statistics:

"In a 2004 poll by the market research group Mintel, 64 percent of American women said they sometimes use foundation, compared with 47 percent of French women; 81 percent of Americans use lipstick compared with 70 percent of French women and 59 percent of Americans use blusher, compared with 43 percent."

81% of American women wear lipstick?! Good God! I think the whole thing is kind of ridiculous. I know some of you women wear small amounts of makeup regularly, in a tasteful way, and that isn't so bad... I dunno, I've never worn any makeup regularly. I've done it on occasion for very nice outings or for performances on dance team and in ballroom (required for the performances), but as a day-to-day thing, it's too much effort. I also like to wash my face some during the day to get rid of dirt and oil, and if I had to reapply makeup... bleah. It isn't like I have particularly great skin either. I prefer the French emphasis mentioned in the article of taking care of your skin and trying to make it look good on its own. It can nearly go without saying that I think it looks a little tacky to wear unnatural-looking makeup.

Of course people try to make themselves look their best, which is why we have so many types of clothes, hair products, etc. I guess I feel that smearing colored products on one's face on a daily basis goes too far. The gender inequality chafes at me too.

EDIT: Now that I've alienated my female lj friends, most of whom use makeup, let me add that this is more my personal feelings. I've always had an aversion to makeup, and am sort of figuring out why in the discussions in the comments. But don't think that I am disappointed in you personally for wearing makeup. :P

Wow, maybe now that I don't have anything to say about graduate school, my writing will be interesting again. :)

My job is kind of boring now. I haven't been in the lab in nearly a month, partly because of my knee injury and my east coast trip, and also partly because Max desperately needs data, and is having lots of apparatus problems (which are my problems too), and leaves in less than a month. I'll have one more month after that, so right now it's all about planning my data-taking and hoping that I'll be able to get something done before I leave. I'll also have a student in May, a high school senior who's supposedly going to do an autofocusing script and hopefully won't just be a time drain. The time drain part is why I have a student instead of someone more important.

Based on some recent patterns I've noticed, does anyone have any suggestions as to reasons why, in a heterosexual relationship, it's frequently the woman who organizes social events, travel plans, etc. and not the man? If you say "women are naturally more organized" without justification, I may have to find you and hit you.

"The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves." -William Penn

( a lengthy explanation of my thoughts on jealousy )

I heard from UW after lunch, at work, on a Friday. My first response was shock; I told my nearby officemates, still kind of not believing that it had happened. Sherri went to buy me a congratulatory candy bar, and as we went down to the snacks office, I started getting more and more excited, jumping and saying over and over again that I did it, I got in. We told about everyone we ran into. We saw Joao on the way back, in the hallway, and I told him and I think we did some sort of jumpy dance right outside the machine shop. I went back into my office and called my dad, who was ecstatic. I sat down and it started to sink in... so I went into the bathroom and cried, these huge wracking sobs, but the happiest of my entire life.

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I think I see my navel piercing kind of as the black hair of my senior year of college. You see, my senior year of high school, I dyed my hair black with some friends of mine, because it was something I wanted to try, and something I didn't think I'd have the balls to do (if you'll excuse the expression). I also did it, I think, because I was kind of unhappy with the way things were, and I wanted a change. It was shortly after breaking up with my first boyfriend, and I think somewhere in my brain, I was hoping he'd see me as attractive if I did something kind of drastic. So I dyed my hair black, permanently by accident, and then waited for about a year for it to grow out enough that I could cut all the black off. The black hair looked fine, and the two-tone hair I had while it grew out was kinda cool... but it was also silly, I think. I was happy to see it go because I'd reaffirmed my love of my natural hair color.

My belly button piercing was done for some of the same reasons... something I'd always wanted to do, and something that took balls, for me at least, because I was very afraid of the actual piercing process. And something to do at a time when I was really anxious about my life as it stood; I was still waiting for graduate decisions, having no idea what would come next. I think that now, while I don't really regret it, I see that I was fine without it. I'll definitely keep it for a few years, but I can see myself getting sick of it, or getting pregnant and removing it, and never putting it back. I do like the way it looks, though. :) What surprised me most about it, though, was that most people reacted negatively to it. I expected mostly neutral reactions and a few negative or positive, but most of what I heard was things like, "why did you do that?" or "ouch". Only a few people told me anything positive, and I don't think I really got a neutral response at all. It did help me realize that I didn't really care what people thought of it, because I really like the way it looks. And I had the chance to teach Ben that not all belly button piercings are infected all the time.

Overall, I'm happy I did it. It looks cool and it was a neat experience. Plus I'm pretty much done with piercing, I think. I changed the jewelry for the first time today, from the pink jewel they put in when they pierced it to a medium-dark blue jewel. And let me tell you, when people say a navel piercing is hot, they aren't picturing you in the women's restroom with a pair of needle-nose pliers, trying to torque your way through five months of slowly accumulated belly button cruft.

Sorry, I know that wasn't sexy. But I'm nothing if not honest.