Reasons that it's been so long...

I have only spent one weekend out of thirteen, it's going to be fourteen this weekend, at home. Even the one weekend I was home, I was cleaning and making an anniversary dinner for my boyfriend and I that Saturday. Sunday we had his brother's over for the Texans football game. And if it weren't for the fact that I have to write everything down in my planner (I jokingly call it my brain!), I would hardly remember what I did.

Since I've been so horrible about posting this month, I'll just recap what's been going on:
The first weekend of October was spent just as I said, a nice, romantic dinner for my boyfriend and I. I made what is known as Engagement Chicken. I had threatened him with it a few months ago, mostly joking, but after hearing the recipe, he wanted to try it. I made a vinaigrette dressing for salads, garlic butter for our garlic bread, ginger and garlic green beans, some cabernet sauvignon sauteed mushrooms (all of the recipes are from this wonderful cookbook). And for dessert, I followed this sweet cream recipe, because I'm a total nerd and it sounded like a great compliment to some fruit. I used the medieval recipe and it was yummy! It's a lot of cream just for two people, but if you used it for a mixed berry dessert at a party, it would be more than enough. So I spent four hours cleaning to spend three hours cooking and get half of my dishes dirty all over again. Dinner was a success, though! Sunday we had a great time hanging out with his brothers and unfortunately, we watched the Texans get stomped.

This was the week that we started reading a book about Rigoberta Menchu in one of my classes. I have to say that we're about to be on week four of her, because we read two different books then compare them, and I'm thoroughly sick of this woman. She lied about her experiences, then she got mad about people making stereotypes based on what she said was "the story of all poor Guatemalans" years later because she started changing her mind about how she wanted to be represented. She contradicts herself at every turn. Yes, I know that memory is not perfect. Again, were it not for the fact that I wrote these things down in my "brain", I wouldn't have remembered the order they occurred. But to blatantly lie about your life to garner attention and international sympathy for your cause is just wrong. Why she did it makes sense to me - she wanted people (read: Americans and Europeans) that were in a position to do something to help to know so they would help - but does that make lying about your life (and then taking it out on others) right or wrong?

I went with one of my classmates to her daughter's school's international festival. It was really cool to see some of the dances, traditional dress and sample the food! The food was so great! I left full!

The following weekend, I cleaned and we went out to dinner with my boyfriend's brothers and their ladies. We had an overly talkative waiter. I've waited tables myself, and there are times when it's fun to interact with your customers and there are times when you're just being annoying. This guy was annoying. After he brought our food out, he left only to take care of a few closing duties then came right back and dominated the "conversation." I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no reason in the world that I need to know that you met your baby's momma by selling her weed. And that you just quit smoking weed, too. I didn't think my entree was that good, combined with the overly friendly waiter made for a not so stellar experience.

But the haunted house we went to made up for our less than amazing dining experience. To give a little plug for them - it's $20 to get into two haunted houses and there is a free haunted house, the chainsaw maze. They did an excellent job, so go check it out if you're in the area!

Sunday was much more school-oriented. I worked on a midterm that day and spent time with family.

Last week I made cookies for the class that we're reading the Rigoberta Menchu books in. My grandmother passed away a few months ago, so I finally got to the point where I could handle making molasses cookies. This was a recipe that I grew up on and always associate with her. The first time I made it, I cried quite hard. I made a second batch a few days later for class and that was a tear-free event. She always told me not to eat the dough (yummy!) because it has raw egg it in. And that half the dough needed to be baked. She would have been proud that I actually proceeded to actually bake the dough! They turned out great and they were a hit! I went in with 30+ cookies and left with three. I also decided to do something different for my chapter presentation.

Because I'm obviously super thrilled about another week of Rigoberta, I decided to take a somewhat satirical twist on the chapter summaries that we have to make and created diary entries for my chapters. I threw in a few pictures, too. Hopefully it will be a nice change of pace than just the usual chapter summary that we've been reading. I had to edit out some of the sarcasm that I used when I wrote them.

Another positive occurrence - I've finally narrowed down my thesis topic enough that I can start writing my proposal! I've been gathering sources for that so I can start writing an abstract for that this weekend. I've also been working on an annotated bibliography that's actually due for class in a few weeks. The semester is half way over! 

Gah!

I haven't posted here as much as I have hoped to. It's mostly due to personal stuff. The plan is to write something more substantial next week.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone! I'm going out to dinner, then to a haunted house tonight.

New Software

It seems this semester I got into the groove of school more easily than I have in the past. I know what is expected, have become mostly desensitized to the workload and have been hopped up on caffeine for the past six weeks (partially because I've had so many things going on in my personal life, as well as my school life). Time management has been a critical skill to have. Thankfully, after this weekend (family outings!) and next weekend (celebrating my boyfriend and I's anniversary!) I will have one weekend where I don't have anything going on for the first time in almost three months. Hooray!

Anyways, so the biggest problem I've had this semester is dealing with one class: Data Analysis. First, we had to observe 50-75 people on their cell phones. That was easy enough to do around campus. But then I had to deal with Microsoft Access, which I believe to be Satan's high tech incarnation. And to those of you who read the previous statement who think that is a gross exaggeration have clearly never had to deal with that ridiculous program! So I entered my cell phone data, but because the class is divided into qualitative and quantitative sections, and I chose quantitative, I had to input my professor's data (I really have to question my sanity - I'm paying someone to teach me how to do all of this, but I'm also paying to do someone else work for them. There is zero logic to this, except to get to the point where I have grad students as minions, too.) into Access then put it into SPSS. Access began deleting information in my fields. Of course, it would input into SPSS wrong. I must have read my prof's data what feels like ten million times before I got it right (weeks later, I'm still finding mistakes!).

To make matters worse, SPSS is not the easiest program in the world to figure out, especially when you've never used something like that before. And certain mathematical things that this program does are not named the same as the equation. On the bright side, I can officially upload data into SPSS in my sleep since I've done it so many times. I've also run the statistics and histograms so many times I know exactly where to go. The bar charts and stem-and-leaf plots are getting there as well. I just did Chi squared for the first of many times today.

After I got out of class today, armed with a hazelnut iced coffee, I went to conquer more revisions. Prof told us that we could use a little thing in SPSS called transform to merge some data together. I had tried that earlier in the week and it messed up my male and female counts for the data I'm working with. I had the wrong numbers down to transform, but I didn't want to try to fix the data in SPSS to just screw everything up even more, so I go back Access to fix it. Besides that, I had to fix a few other things that I was unaware of (since it's not my data, nor my research interest I had no idea) that needed to be fixed at the Access level then had to import the data for the 2,039,894,854,897,109,328,586,343,785,908,347,198th time into SPSS. Fun was not had by me until two hours later when I finished.

To add to my "List of Things About This  Class I Can Complain About," I despise statistics. I didn't understand it when I took it [probably because 1) I was taking two different statistics classes simultaneously, 2) math is not my forte to begin with] and I sure don't like it three years later. The only good thing that has come from statistics was, oddly (haha) enough, meeting my fantastic boyfriend.

I do realize that I will use this program, or, sweet little baby Jesus help me, one like it for the rest of my life. These are also skills that I will use throughout my career. They're just a wee bit frustrating to learn right now. Practice makes perfect and yada yada yada. It's not easy. But it will be easier the next time I have to do this, and the time after that, and so on until it becomes old hat.

At lease I know I'm not alone in my frustrations. Misery found in SPSS loves classmates for company. And that is quite comforting on pretty much all levels. Undoubtedly, there are a plethora of social science graduate students who are also ready to Office Space their computers due to frustrations caused by Access, SPSS and Daunting Research Questions.

Since I'm caught up on homework for one of my other classes and practically done with my assignment for Data Analysis, I should spend the rest of my time at work reading for my third class to get ahead so I can more fully enjoy my weekend!

The first diffuser experiment

So I finally got all of the stuff in necessary to making my own reed diffusers. Yesterday, I had the chance to play! I surfed the net for a while to try to find a good recipe that included the fourteen or so essential oils that I ordered. That was the toughest part about the whole thing, other than finding the conversion for ounces into cups (I don't have anything that measures in ounces). I doubled the recipe because my little vase was large enough to do so. It's pretty nice!

I was able to smell it when I walked into my house after class, so I guess it's working pretty well! I think there is one oil that is more overpowering than others, so maybe I'll add some of the less powerful oils to try to even it out. Lavender is the very strong scent throughout my house, but when I get close to the vase, it's lemon that is the strongest. Maybe I shouldn't mess with it and see what happens after I flip the reeds over.

This is one of the vases that me and my friend found for me when we redesigned my living room. Here's my bookcase after:

 And before:

My new small bookcase:

And my throw pillows match this other vase:

Bye bye old air fresheners and hello homemade diffuser! 

Ten years ago...

...I was taking a practice TAAS test (Texas high school standardized test) when the unthinkable became reality. Thank you to all of the men and women who were at Ground Zero ten years ago for selflessly giving your time and energy, health and lives. Thank you to all of the men and women in the U.S. military for serving our country past, present and future! 

This is odd

I don't have much homework to do (read 25 pages of data about burials and enter it into Access). And it comes at a great time because I'm dealing with some major congestion in my sinuses so I haven't slept very much in the past few days. Don't really know why it had to kick in now. Oh well. I'm hopped up on all sorts of OTC meds to try to get rid of this junk.

Anyways, tonight in class we were trying to make room for everyone. One of my classmates was sitting in between the two tables that are in the room (there's sixteen of us that have to fit around the table) and said that he didn't want to scoot over too much because he liked his spot. I don't know if it's because of all the medicine I'm on right now or I'm just that witty, but I asked him if he chose to sat there because he enjoys the liminality of the tables. Anthropology joke! For the non-anthropologist readers, the definition of liminality from dictionary.com is "the transitional period or phase of a rite of passage, during which the participant lacks social status or rank, remains anonymous, shows obedience and humility, and follows prescribed forms of conduct, dress, etc." Maybe I've been studying anthropology too much lately.

Crafty

I'm in the same boat as most college students - I'm in a state of perpetual brokeness. I know, I know, "brokeness" is not a word, but the point is, I'm almost always short on cash. After I pay for the essentials (rent, food, cell phone and interest on my already existing loans), I don't have much moolah left over by the end of pay day. It sometimes becomes very sad to see my bank account go up, and then way, way down again in a matter of hours.

So in order to save some money I'm going to try to find more furniture at second hand stores instead of buying it new. I was just looking around some websites looking for accents (specifically for small vases) and ended up looking at some of the clearance items for funzies. Wow. Maybe I'm really cheap, but I'm not going to pay hundreds of dollars for some of their things, as cute as they may be (like this). I should be able to find the things that I want at resale shops for much cheaper. Even if I want to make something look more worn or repaint or varnish something so that it fits with the colors that I have, it would still end up being significantly less expensive to do that. So that's what I'll be doing next weekend with a friend. We're going to redesign my living room for his architectural portfolio, so we will be browsing Goodwill and other places next weekend. I'll take some before and afters of the living room.

Another way I can save money is making my own reed diffuser oils instead of buying air fresheners refills and batteries for them all the time. Hence the need for some cute little vases. And it ties in with alternative medicine (my thesis topic), so I'm getting a double whammy of saving money and learning something knew that will probably be of use to me in my career. At the very least, I'll have some fun creating new scents for my apartment. Finding some cute little vases is also a fun way to accessorize my apartment!

The initial cost of the essential oils involved is a bit pricey, but from the research I've done on different recipes for the oil themselves, I should be able to use them over and over again since it shouldn't take too much of any of them to get my apartment smelling just the way I want. And I can start making my own perfume with them, too. It's gonna be a while before I go through my existing small collection of body sprays/perfumes, thanks to Bath and Body Works sales! It would also make a more personalized gift for friends and family. I'm really excited to try this out!

I already knit moderately well, so this is just another way to be creative and do something fun. By moderately well, I mean that I have mastered the knit stitch and can generally knit in a straight line. My first attempt at knitting ended up looking more like one side of a kid's Christmas stocking that would go over a fireplace than an actual scarf. So, over the years I have made some major improvements. I might become brave and make an attempt at the purl stitch. It is really hard to think about knitting when it's 90 + degrees outside, as it is currently. We've hit a record number of 100 + degree days this summer. That's a record I could have lived without breaking, ugh!

Here's some of the scarfs I've made.

Me wearing one of my scarfs last fall.

It's about time I got some new yarn so I can knit while I'm watching TV. That is one way of relaxing for me. Besides that, I don't like just sitting and doing nothing (watching TV often feels like doing nothing) during the semester. It keeps me from slacking off too much if I keep my down-time to a minimum. Once some of my shows come back on for the fall season I'll turn on the TV more. Usually I'll have my nose in the monitor or in a book. I prefer reading over watching TV, so it is really mostly used by my boyfriend. And when he's watching something it's usually on National Geographic, Science, History or Discovery channel. Except for watching The Price is Right or cartoons or what we've recorded on the DVR.

Anyone else out there have some arts and crafts or DIY hobbies that you want to share? I'd love to hear about them!

Another School Year Begins

So, here we are again. A new school year means new goals, projects, and changing thesis topics. Oh, and deadlines, too. Freshmen scurrying around campus with big, lost puppy dog eyes. That's how the new graduate students feel. Last year I was one of them. This time around I know the insanity that I've signed myself up for and paid for.  I can't believe I pay people to stress me out!

In the first week of school I've already read the introductions of two books, and two articles. I have half an article and three more chapters to read as well as a chapter outline to complete. Oh, and I have to collect some data; fifty to seventy-five people on their cell phones tallied by sex and other factors. I've only got about forty to sixty-five more to go! And I'm blogging instead of working on reading. Here we go again, lol!

Actually, I wanted to start this blog to chronicle my time in grad school. Soon enough I'll be done. Sometimes there's so much junk that goes along with the grad school package (IRB paperwork, comps, and research, anyone?) that it doesn't seem like it, but time really does fly! But then I'll be right back into school to start a different masters program. And then a Ph.D. (Sometimes it really doesn't feel like it will end! Where's my career?! Will I ever not be broke?)

The spring semester of this year was a dozy for me, so I figured that this would be a good way to rant and rave about about some of my struggles. Or just to share some of my thoughts on my homework, put up something funny, ya know, whatever I feel like. So, on that note...Bad Project!