lightpinksheep

04:53 pm: went birthday present shopping for my six-year-old niece. really trying to stay away from girly things because as the only girl in a family with six kids, i think all she gets is girly stuff. and not just girly stuff but like Disney princess stuff. i am sure that at a certain point it's nearly impossible to avoid those things, but anyway.

we went to toys r us and it was pretty depressing. like the girls toys are crap. it's like all dolls. and not only that, but it's all like really heavily branded, like Barbie, Hannah Montana, etc. i know there is cooler stuff online but that stuff tends to be more expensive and you have to pay for shipping, etc.

even the stuff we were considering was girl versions of things, like girl Legos, girl Playdoh sets. On one hand, I'm glad they have girl Legos, girl Tinker Toys, girl Lincoln Logs because I do think the colors are nicer. I kind of like them better and I think she would too. Yet at the same time it's very silly. Like the Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, and Playdoh Fun Factory are exactly the same as the old versions (which I guess are now the boy versions) except with different colors. (the "girl" Lego set had like horses or dogs, which i thought was cute. and it had girl figurines which i think is probably a good thing).

anyway, we ended up not getting anything. on the way home, i was thinking that part of the problem is that with this age, they're old enough that they're gender-socialized--so there's a good chance they want girly stuff. yet they're young enough that you feel like you should still try to--i don't know--not give in to the ridiculous segregation i guess.

anyway, we came up with an idea--rubber stamps and glitter glue. i remember playing with these things when i was young. i guess they are girly but they are things you can do at least, versatile toys i think. at least something cool that you can do something with. something a boy might be jealous of even.

09:38 pm: adidas ad featuring a guy named akira
it is awesome.
http://www.adgabber.com/video/video/show?id=546804%3AVideo%3A137354

10:49 pm: movies
i saw choke and it was quite enjoyable. there was like a lot of stuff in it where you could tell they wanted to get certain things from the book in there but it was totally fun and stuff. i didn't really want to see it at first but some friends were visiting and wanted to go. and it ended up being better than the preview that was like "this is a movie about strip clubs."

i also want to see blindness and kind of want to see eagle eye too. idk, i am in the mood for some drama-rrific movies. ooh and i also want to see nick and nora's infinite playlist because it looks sooooo cute.

05:50 pm: Back in Michigan and trying to be self-sufficient and productive
I got in at 9:30 am EST after flying out of Honolulu at 5 pm HST. I got only a couple hours of sleep on the plane--despite having the smallest, least-offensive smelling seatmates ever (a woman about my size and a 12-year-old)! Got home and slept from 11 am-1 pm. Then got up to get work done. My draft of my job application letter is due at noon tomorrow; I think I got a decent enough version finished. Oh yeah had to do that today because I have TA training from 9-12 tomorrow. So... hopefully I can wake up at 7 okay. This was very strategic: get just enough sleep today so that I can still sleep easy at 11 pm EST tonight. Supposedly breakfast and lunch (and coffee) for TA training will be catered though. Yippee!

I changed out the glass on our doors to screens. We were supposed to do this in May but never got around to it. Usually I make Kea do it but it was not too hard. Just screws and stuff.

The trunk of my car is stuck shut. It doesn't pop open and I've only got the valet key right now. But I swear the key used to go in vertical and now the opening is horizontal. So that's not a good sign.

I made some cowboy caviar (black beans, corn, green onion, cilantro, tomato, balsamic vinegar). I think that's going to be dinner. Oh yeah I went to the grocery store.

I swiffered the floors.

I need to unpack and work on my syllabus.

I need a haircut, I need to go to Costco, I need new tires.

10:27 am: holiday weekend
it's been so long since i posted i forgot i had this page.

anyway, this has been the busiest weekend ever. luckily it has been a fun busy.

thursday after work, went to bar 35 with kea, lianne, KS and T for $3 drinks until 8. had lychee sodas (one too sweet, the next not sweet enough. darn inconsistent bartenders!) and framboise. then to aloha tower for the fireworks, gawking, and reminiscing. we used to hang out their in high school that's why, when the whole shopping/restaurant area was first being developed and things were kind of slow. but thursday night it was super crowded and we were kind of weirded out. went to anna miller's for dinner but by then we were so tired. and then our food took forever.

friday, kea and I went to see Wall-E with his nephews (while their mom went shopping. haha. that's how we get free movies). i enjoyed the movie even though i was super tired. i was worried about the kids getting bored though. i really think that movie is kind of more for adults. i didn't really get a chance to ask them what they thought though and they didn't complain, so, you know. it was a cool movie though. very interesting... i think their marketing was genius... movie was gorgeous. looks different like... i don't know... in the beginning it shows sort of like this skyline and it just looks like a serious movie i guess... then i managed to pick up some shampoo and other stuff i needed while we waited for a table at California Pizza Kitchen. i like that place but kea is meh about it so i only got to go cuz kea's sister and the kids were going. highlight was when kea tried his sister's pear gorgonzola and loved it. haha... i know he never would've ordered such a weird sounding pizza before that. but anyway, now we can order that next time.

friday night i went to moiliili bon dance with trisha, a law professor that i'm reading for my diss, and a law student. it was like a weird bon dance/networking thing. haha. anyway, i wanted to go and also felt like i needed too but of course i suck at talking you know. it's like embarrassing to me... it's sort of like meeting a celebrity where you don't know what to say except like you're great. haha... so anyway, i tried not to do that. but she was cool and i guess now i can email her and be like, "remember we went to bon dance together?" haha...

saturday we had to get up at 7:30 to get to a 9 am wedding ceremony. it was cool hanging out with my friends all day. and i actually enjoyed the ceremony and reception. i was sort of surprised because i expected it to be sort of hard-core religious like to the extent that i would feel uncomfortable. there was praying, but i feel like that's sort of standard and i've become pretty comfortable with my azeem style (yes, from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) you-all-can-pray-and-i-will-just-stand/sit-here-respectfully. the pastor-dude that did the ceremony was a great story teller and i feel his advice to the couple wasn't cheesy. i only flinched when he talked about the circle of the ring being an "ancient" symbol representing God's love. Couldn't help but think about ancient appropriation.

at the reception, there was a lot of talk about god but it was kind of interesting to me. me and kea were talking about how it seemed to be a way that hetero guys could talk about loving each other. and people could compliment each other in a way that you could accept the compliment without looking conceited (like "You're very faithful to God" actually means "You live your life well"). seems like that would appeal to Japanese. haha. yeah i was also amused when the bride was talking to her parents but she's so Japanese (like me) cuz she never says "I love you." Instead she says, thanks for your support through the years, thanks for your love. haha. the other really interesting thing was that the bride hinted at having trouble in her past, like she didn't think she deserved to be in a good relationship because of the way she lived her life or something like that. i'm afraid the narrative would be something about being saved, which doesn't appeal to me, but i really like this sort of troubled past as like a human element i guess. this is my friend's now wife that i have never met so you know of course i was/am apprehensive about what she's like. and this is something that makes me hopeful i guess that she is a mellow, interesting person.

so anyway, then saturday night we went to a BBQ at our old boss's place. all the guys from our college job. 'twas great.

and now i need to grade. although only half my class turned in their papers. haha... and i would enjoy just hanging out at borders waikele after that but we'll see.

09:41 am: better
spending the weekend in kamuela was awesome. i don't know, i think i had trouble adjusting to honolulu, like driving in traffic, searching for parking, and that sort of thing. the place i am housesitting kind of stresses me out too. like i like having somewhere that is our own to stay but i hate living out of suitcases. plus it is in town so there is the constant hunt for parking. and it's hot. okay that's pretty much the whole island except places with AC. oh also the bathroom is tiny. i've already knocked my elbow and toe on things. it's amazing. and we didn't have any groceries. i think we're going to eat dinners out until we get sick of it cuz there's so many places we want to eat. and we are only staying in town for about another week so after that we'll be eating at my mom's mostly. which is also good, but we miss our restaurants too.

anyway, kamuela was awesome because kea's mom's house has way more space. haha. the bathroom has a huge counter for all our crap. not like the housesitting place where half my bathroom things are on the kitchen counter--which is right outside the bathroom. lol. but yeah, i think living out of a suitcase at kea's mom's house is different. cuz it's like vacation. also i can feel like i don't have to do any work there. cuz we're supposed to be spending time with kea's family, which is a different kind of work but very important.

oh also kea's mom is an amazing cook. one night we had luau stew and pecan pie. another night she made lamb, shrimp (for me, cuz i don't like lamb), and banana cream pie. and for her grandson's grad party she made a roast, korean chicken, caesar salad, stuffed mushrooms, strawberry cheesecake, and carrot cake. and kea's dad brought poke, spinach rolls, and this salad thing with tomatoes, those little shrimps, tofu, some kind of green (like warabi or some kind of fern/shoot thing). sooo good. oh yeah we had poke the first night too. i think i like shoyu poke better than the one with inamono or however you spell it.

anyway i gotta get serious about work now. i got stuff due to my advisor on friday. oh shit, more stuff i'm pissed about. my parents' computer wouldn't read my jump drive for some reason. idk, it worked last year. anyway so i printed at kinko's. it cost $100 for idk maybe like 150 pages. it is a fat stack of paper of higher quality than i need. but i was convinced i needed to take all that shit to the big island. well whatever.

oh but we also got $4 of airport love. flying to the big island, i decided i really needed ice cream. we bought it at this store before we went through security--a frozfruit and a drumstick and it was $4 total. inside, they were selling them for $4 each! *sigh* the airports of the world will pay me back $4 at a time.

12:52 pm: on sunday i flew from atlanta to detroit and my advisor happened to be on the same flight. the flight ended up delayed a couple hours or so because of a fuel spill. i was scheduled to fly from detroit to honolulu on tuesday so i told her that i hoped this meant i would have good airport karma banked. she offered another possibility: that bad things come in threes. i think she was right.

so, i am usually good about getting to the airport early, but this time i thought, "everyone else only goes an hour before. how about i do that too?" the worst part is i was fucking sitting around watching Family Feud or something that morning just killing time. So this would've worked out okay except that for some reason i thought i was on northwest. i guess cuz i had gotten an email informing me about the change to their luggage policy. uh... turns out, my return flight is on northwest. my flight on tuesday was on frontier. totally different terminal. so, i missed my flight.

and ended up being charged $2000 to rebook. i'm still not really sure what happened. i had to pee from the time i got to the airport at 11:30 and didn't get a chance to until i ran to my gate for the rebooked 3:30. so i wasn't feeling very patient. i think maybe a larger airline would've been able to give me something better. i think maybe i should've said fuck it and just went home and tried to find another flight on my own. maybe i should've acted less desperate. i don't know. it was hard because i knew it was my own fault and so i couldn't really blame the airline or anything. and i have never missed a flight before so i don't know what is supposed to happen. i expected to pay maybe a few hundred dollar penalty but this was ridiculous. oh i also just wanted to get home. i didn't want to call my ride again and ask him to come back to detroit to pick me up and i didn't want to go back to my apartment and stay there by myself.

then as word spread, i was told i had 24 hours to contest the charge, but i was really too tired to do that when i got home and besides, lianne told me i was pretty much fucked. anyway, i figure this is what savings are for... i mean yeah they could be for fun things, but they are also for when you fuck up. as kea pointed out, there are more expensive mistakes--like crashing a car. *knock on wood* oh and i've learned that i really do need to go to the airport two hours ahead of time for domestic flights.

oh yeah, and the Frontier employee that helped me (i'm still convinced that there was nothing else he could've done.) pointed out that this happens to other folks all the time; it just usually doesn't end up costing so much.

okay, so i've learned my lessons right? now i'm just trying to stop beating myself up over it.

10:58 pm: i have had a pretty productive day. i have this presentation to give on monday. it is part of the fellowship that gives me a fat sack of money. i did three interviews. yay. um... putting a presentation together is something i can do without "resting" every twenty minutes. i didn't even read any magazines while studying at the bookstore. i think they were all old anyways.

i did, however, visit the old navy next door. i bought two swimsuits! they are one-pieces. i feel like they are cut lower on the thigh than i remember one-pieces being. is this the style? or are they trying to target older people? anyway, one has pink, white, and green stripes in a chevron. slimming, gives illusion of waist. yay. i feel like i should wear white high-top reeboks with it. the other one is black sort of retro, you know like when women were curvy kine retro. i might return it but cuz i think it is too long for my torso. but it was only twenty dollars so i don't know.

going to new orleans on wednesday. yay! it is supposed to thunderstorm and stuff, but it will be 60s-70s so i don't care. too bad i have to make up a million writing center hours on monday and tuesday.

i hope i'm not getting sick. i feel all dehydrated and stuff. maybe it is allergies. can i have spring allergies already?

my hand is really peely. it had dry skin like on the part between the thumb and forefinger. and picked it and now it is like almost the size of a quarter and all rough and stuff. and pink. kea says it's gross and it looks like a burn. i think peeling the dead skin off my hand is yet another manifestation of stress. grad school: it teaches you all the manifestations of stress. at least i am not the only one who does this. i always feel like it's a really gross habit for me to have but then i see other people doing it too. it amuses me.

oh yeah, i was supposed to present at this APA conference at my school on April 12. like i said i would so that they would give me funding to go to a conference in chicago the following week. but i think i forgot to submit my proposal. cuz i didn't hear anything so i was wondering if it was still happening and then i found the schedule online. and it is a pretty small conference so i think they take everyone. oops. but i think they will still give me the money at least. i just feel bad. but not too bad because now i can breathe a little bit between conferences.

okay well tomorrow i am going to make banana pancakes, revise my presentation for the conference, and have lunch at amer's. maybe i will also get to work on my prospectus.

10:07 am: Spring makes me want to eat burgers and listen to reggae. Even when it is not really warm yet. This is a sane reaction to "spring," not like wearing shorts when it is still 30 degrees out.

08:24 pm: cute baby!!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hS3d7TiLnmo

08:53 pm: By way of: cyberhoosier
Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.

How many songs total: 2314
How many hours or days of music: 6 days
Most recently played: 1234 - Feist
Most played: El Nino - Kimball Collins
Most recently added: It came up blank! How sad!

Sort by song title:
First Song: AA XXX - Peaches
Last Song: 2000 Style - Happy 2b Hardcore

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: Wherever - Ani DiFranco
Longest Song: Come On - The Verve

Sort by album:
First album: Across a Wire - Counting Crows
Last album: 40 Oz. to Freedom - Sublime
First song that comes up on Shuffle: Baby I Love Your Way - Big Mountain

Search the following and state how many songs come up:

Death - 6
Life - 53
Love - 181
Hate – 8
You - 226
Sex – 16

09:19 am: went to an awesome job talk yesterday. things i'm thinking about:

• i need to be less critical. i think there's a part of (grad) school that teaches you that you always need to be critical, but it's also important to speak well of other scholars, talk about how their work enables your work, rather then saying how they have this shortcoming that you are making up for. i wonder if this gets more important on the market, or as you advance, or if only some really fabulous people get that this is important.
• questions can mean that people are engaging with your work. not just judging and testing... probably a little of that, but also seeing you as an equal and just being generally interested in your work and what they can learn from it.
• it's good to talk about teaching in your job talk, as in, how your work influences your teaching, especially if it's in a program/institution where teaching is valued.
• differences between fields (or subfields) are hard to navigate. how much background do you need to give? what do you need to explain and what can go without saying?
• be clear about what your focus is, what you are trying to do, and what you are not trying to do.
• bits of what i'm presenting this year will likely make it into my job talk(s)... augh! scary!
• get to know the program/institution... use terms that show the fit between your work and theirs?

Tags: academia, grad school, job market, job talk, msu

08:30 am: crazy dreams
i dreamt about my day.
i dreamt i made an egg salad sandwich with the last two pieces of bread on our counter. i dreamt that my contact lens had a big tear in it.

i dreamt that i went shopping with one of my friends.
except like she was being weird, like i think maybe she was studying at the bookstore/coffee shop while i went shopping or something. and then when we met up again she showed me this indian dreamcatcher kit that she had bought. it was plastic and really cheesy looking but i was like, well that's good cuz i know she has been looking for some craft project to do. and she was all excited and told me she had called her advisor and told him. and i thought that was weird.

i dreamt about a murderer.
but he was on our side, i guess, so it was sort of okay. and he also only killed really bad people that totally deserved it. but you know, even though he was on our side, he was a murderer so it was like you never know when he might turn against you. anyway, i think he slit people's throats. like in hotel rooms. and then he would like wrap up these presents. i don't really know how it worked--if he left the presents or took them as a souvenir or something. you'd think they'd be bloody but they weren't. sort of messily wrapped though. and we weren't that worried about leaving fingerprints or getting caught or anything. i guess he was a professional. but like i would leave the building and walk around outside and feel weird knowing that i just saw a murder, but i wouldn't be really worried about getting in trouble.

after this one i didn't want to wake up so i went back to sleep and had the shopping dream.

12:28 pm: making good progress on my exam. yay! my cohort gives me great feedback. i think i am lazy and i try to get away with shit, and they're like, um, you need to make this argument. and i'm like *sigh* i was afraid of that. but you know, it is not as hard as i thought it would be. i mean... making this big argument justifying your work... it sounds scary but then you realize the thinking has sort of been going on under the surface for the past few years. like i didn't know that my work actually has a purpose. i thought it was just like cuz i like it but i would have to make up some justification. but it is actually coming pretty easily and feels real... well, we will see what others think, but i think i am feeling pretty good about it... better than i thought i would...

one problem is that i'll get a bunch done and then be like yay and then stop working. haha...

went to a job talk recently. i could tell that the program director was not impressed. i am glad that i will be better prepared than this candidate. she struggled with defining her terms, which is something i also hate to do, but i know my committee--and actually my cohort even--will make me do that. it is hard for me to judge candidates. like i might think they are weak in some area, but stronger in other areas, but maybe i don't know wht areas they should be strong or weak in you know? i guess i like to hear other people's reactions to try to gauge stuff like this. it's funny how like... you have to be able to judge in certain ways... but then you are supposed to in other ways... i dunno... i guess a grad student presenting at a conference gets a lot more leeway than a candidate giving a job talk.

Tags: academia, grad school

02:46 pm: I am emic and  micro and that is okay.

09:06 am: Ugh. I was copying and pasting all my xanga entries into a Word file because I want to delete the site cuz they started putting ads and there is this hot Asian women ad on it. But I realized it would take a really long time to copy and paste 4-5 years of posts and also I can't take the comments with me. This makes me sad.

The only way around the ad is to pay and fuck that. You don't get paid for using a gross ad.

I hate xanga.

02:25 pm: thanksgiving weekend
i wore my pajamas all day yesterday.
i have cough syrup with vicodin. it is fun.
i woke up with a headache. i thought it was the vicodin but it was probably from sleeping too long.
kea made banana pancakes for breakfast and a pot roast for dinner.
leftover pancakes are kind of yucky.
ow, cramps. i think they are even worse from all the medication i am on. whatever, i like to make up fake science.
i need to eat some pumpkin stuffs before they are all gone. like pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin bagels, pumpkin cream cheese.
i want to make gingerbread cookies at christmas time.

01:10 pm: ugh. i'm sick. whine whine whine. i am supposed to go to a concert monday night and also the saturday after thanksgiving. i only have to go in tuesday and wednesday but i don't wanna. i have so much shit to do and i do have the lovely thanksgiving weekend to do it all, but i have done absolutely nothing this weekend cuz i feel like shit. that is all.

12:34 pm: my food blog's back if anyone's interested.

halfassfoodie.blogspot.com

10:49 am: cider mill!
(no one on facebook took the bait and asked me about my visit to the cider mill when i mentioned it in my status, so you all will have to hear about it.)

so. finally went to the cider mill after being here and hearing about it for two years. to be fair, you can only go in fall, and you know, first year i was way too overwhelmed for excursions like this and second year, uh... well... someone told me it snowed in october last year so maybe that can be my excuse. also, kea and i are really making an effort to be more sociable. first year, i think i only met people in his program like once. and now there is a couple who lives in our apartment complex, and another couple that is very cool also. so these are the people we went with.

first funny thing: me and kea and katie and aaron show up at ray's house and he comes outside. he sees me and he's like, "carrie [his wife] has that dress." then we go inside and she sees me and she's like, "i have those boots." and ray's like, "don't you have the dress too?" and she's like "yeah, something similar." and then ray looks at andy (aaron's brother) and goes, "I have that jacket." and then we are talking for awhile and i notice katie's socks and i'm like, "oh my god, i have those socks." it was really ridiculous.

sidenote: i was looking very cute on this particular day. it was 60 degree weather which i think provides maximum fashion options. so i was wearing that green dress that i wore all summer with a long-sleeved gray t-shirt underneath and my brown flat boots. i was happy.

second funny thing: ray's like, "there's two cider mills we could go too. one has animals--" and we're all like, "ooh..." and then he goes, "but the other one has better cider," and we're all like. "oh...."

but anyway, we went to both. we drove like five minutes out of town and all of a sudden we were like in the boondocks with like farms and forests and stuff. i had heard that you walk around the orchards when you go to these things, but there were no orchards at these. the one with the better cider was about to close and the line was wrapped around the shop so we basically stood in line and grabbed stuff along the way. the cider was so awesome; it really tasted like they had just smushed apples and put them in the bottle. we also bought pumpkin butter, which i have been wanting to eat on cinnamon raisin bagels but we ran out which is like the saddest thing in the world.

we also bought cinnamon donuts. and i had heard that you eat donuts at the cider mill, but i wasn't that excited. even though i will usually eat them anyway, donuts kind of make me nauseous. these donuts were fucking awesome though. they were still warm. and also they were cake donuts which are my favorite. so we went behind the shop where there were picnic tables next to a river and folks were hanging out and consuming the food they had just bought. there were also crazy bees attacking the cider bottles and also kayakers who were pretending they were cool but they were going with the river so that's the only reason they were going so fast.

then we went to the other cider mill and bought pickles and more donuts because they had pumpkin donuts. holy mother fucking yum. then we hung out with the goats and horses for awhile. there were baby goats that were the cutest things ever. everyone would come out and see them and be like, "aww..." haha... but they bite. and pull your shoelaces.