Well I handed my draft to the committee, I gave my departmental colloquium, and now just revisions and edits and studying and a few research tasks until my defense in a week and a bit.

So here is that interesting three unique things meme!

Post 3 things you’ve done in your lifetime that you don’t think anybody else on your friends list has done.
See if anybody else responds with “I’ve done that.” If they have, you need to add another! (2.b., 2.c., etc…)

1) Taught English to schoolkids (and teachers) in Thailand and Laos.

2) Written BASIC code on a Tandy laptop.
2 b) Let's try... Eaten live wiggling larvae. Possibly silkworm.
2 c) Had open chest surgery?

3) Spent 10 days without speaking to the people around me. (Meditation retreat).

(I wanted to put "sewn my own wedding dress" but I know at least one person on my friendslist has also).

Thesis thesis thesis. Thesis thesis? Thesis thesis thesis thesis. Thesis thesis thesis, thesis thesis, thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis.

Thesis.


(current pdf is 58 pages)

Uwe and I just spent an hour playing Carcasonne by candlelight (specifically, by the light of the Massive Candle of Love from our wedding) with all the servers off and everything. It was pretty awesome! He beat my by six points, but I kept not noticing my cloisters had been completed and leaving the little dudes on there, dammmit. We had a total farmer stalemate at the end, too.

And then we went straight back to the computers :)

1) OMG OMG OMG I have like 3 months to my defense OMG OMG OMG OMG. OMG.

2) I've been tracking my food intake on fitday.com, mostly out of curiosity. Also to make sure I have proper nutrition for dissertation writing. Also maybe possibly for procrastination.

My daily calorie intake varies between about 2000 and 2500 kcal, average aobut 2300. I get 36% of those calories from fat, 11% saturated. And 20% from protein - 112g protein a day. I eat 27 g of fiber a day. I don't eat enough zinc! Also I'm a bit shaky on folate and vitamin D.

3) I saw flowers! Snowdrops. It's spring!

4) OMG thesis OMG

1) Cardio in classes is kind of like DDR but with arm movements too. Yay!

2) Someday I will be able to bounce around like an overexcited monkey for 30 minutes without temporarily losing the ability to move my limbs.

5) I like lifting the heaviest dumbbells!

6) I dislike realizing I am a foot taller than everyone else and so proportionally I should be lifting the heaviest dumbbells.

3) I hate "toning".

4) I hate "toning".

5) Seriously, there is no reason to do that many leg lifts and I never need that much lactic acid in my butt ever again.

6) There is also no need for three full minutes of exercise ball crunches.

7) The fact that I can do fewer exercise ball crunches than anyone else in the class may be influencing my opinion.

8) I still hate "toning".

9) But I do like doing a few sets of machine assisted pull-ups after the class!

10)Walking into the weight room, doing pullups, and walking out feels pretty bad-ass.

11) Eating a whey protein bar afterwards, even one which objectively pretty much tastes like cardboard, is like eating the nectar of the gods.

12) I can practically feel my muscles going "nom nom nom nom nom" a few minutes later.

I'm feeling kind of together and productive with my life lately, so I think I'll start blogging again! What can I say, it's a lot more fun to discuss accomplishment than talk about how I spent a whole weekend in an armchair surfing the internet.

( Exercise )

( Language )

So, it looks like by this time next year I'll be living in Berlin. I have a postdoc at the Albert Einstein Institut in Potsdam. Exciting! A bit scary.

Sometime next week y'all should be able to hear me talk at the KITP, should you be so inclined. I gave a talk today in the friday afternoon session.

There are so many nifty research things that I want to do.

I'm in Santa Barbara! At a workshop. It's freaking fantastic. Also, trying to decide where I want to go for a postdoc next year. More excitement. Research is awesome. I'm awesome! Also, I had some beers. And wine. Oh, physicists.

Having declined a four day trip up north to stay in town for various school-type workings, Uwe and I are spending, I think, our first Official Holiday alone as a couple. Which mostly means we are doing every day sorts of hanging out things today, but we just picked up the fixings for dinner.

Uwe is making crock pot chickenpheasant and dumplings with sweet potatoes and maybe lambic, and we also have little black forest cake and some Guinness. His friend Heather mentioned to us some time back at Paddy's that Guinness mixed with raspberry lambic could be quite tasty, and I'm intrigued.

School stuff is stressful right now but my life as a whole is really quite wonderful. I wish everyone a good holiday.

Tired from sorting out embarrassingly last minute details of a postdoc application, I decided to make myself a nice simple lazy meal of ramen this evening. But of course I chopped up some cabbage and spinach to add for vegetables, and then decided to add some chopped garlic and soy sauce and balsamic vinegar and sesame oil and things to supplement and, adding some more, to replace the crappy powdered broth of the 17 cent ramen packs. And of course I dropped an egg into the broth to add some protein, and then I looked at the result and figured it was really deserving of something better than the also-crappy ramen noodles, so I cooked up some soba noodles to add to it instead of the ramen noodles. And so I am having my 'ramen' with no actual ramen contents. Mmmm.

This, Uwe says, is why he is the baker.

Also, my excellent taste in enjoying The Grand Sophy has been confirmed by professionals!