Whoo! One mass email, and I get 50 people visiting in the last 24 hours! That's pretty neat, to see my little site tracker thing going all crazy like that--It's on the bottom of the writing in the left-side column, and was something like 150 yesterday morning. Hope everyone is enjoying the pictures.
Hmm... feeling some pressure to write, now. I write just about every day, but when I know it's just Jeremy and a family member or two that check more than once a week, I feel free to be as boring as it's possible to be, so I talk about the dinner I ate the night before, the weather, the wierd bump on my wrist that won't go away. You know, the kind of stuff you tell your honey and parents about that makes them go "uh-huh... yup..... mm-kay........ oh, okay...."
But now I have people who insist on entertainment! Well, actually, I think everyone knows me or Jeremy or our parents, so y'all are probably pretty forgiving. And nobody's actually asked for entertainment, much less insisted upon it. But in the meantime, an entry has been created, so whoopidy doo dah.
Not sure exactly when we'll be where this weekend, or next week, for that matter, so I'm not sure about when I'm going to update next. We're house/cat sitting for a friend of mine that lives about a half-hour away starting tomorrow, so we'll be here, there, and everywhere for the next while. Will keep you posted. Come back soon.
The wedding page is now totally done. Expect to recieve an email saying as much, if you haven't already. If that's why you're here, then howdy, welcome, etc., etc.
Jeremy and I put the air conditioner in last night. So nice to not feel like hot pudding. We draped ourselves over the vent and watched a very strange Frank Sinatra Movie. I kind of picture that some old school film producer thinking "Hmm... muscular, sweaty Frank Sinatra + violence = edgy date movie everyone enjoys!" How strange it must have been to be around in the mid-60's, when the Beatles were just starting to get all trippy, but WWII movies starring crooners were still getting made. I'd talked a couple of days ago about how hip my parents are, and how I forget that other people have parents that AREN'T way way cooler than them. I have a better image of this now. In 1965, while my dad was still pretty new on the guitar, probably memorizing the chords for the songs on Help! and Rubber Soul, other people's parents were watching Blue Eyes escape from the evil, evil Germans and their terrible, terrible, 10-frames-per-second, claymation special-effects airplanes. It just gives some perspective, is all. I mean, yeesh, I wasn't even born for another 15 years. I only have cultural clues like these to go on.
I should really go get some reading done, and check if I can actually do my synthesis today (waiting for my chemicals to get here). Feel free to poke around. There's lots of entertainment to be had, especially if you know me, so you have the context for a lot of the jokes in here.
Three pages of wedding pictures are done, and the outline of what the final online album is going to look like is there. Some of the pages are blank though. A lot of the pictures were already up, but some of them are new. Going to end up with 7 pages all together, in the end: I've written out what's going to go where, but I don't have the time right now to do it all. Little by little. I also have some pictures from Jeremy's graduation that I'm going to put up in the regular photo album.
We're going to be housesitting for my friend Rebecca and her 3 cats next week. They live about a half hour away from campus, so she drove us down there last night, to show us where everything was and introduce us to the cats and the husband. I think it'll be a nice little break from the tiny apartment. I'll still be going into work and everything, and since our apartment is so close to work, that'll probably be our home base during the day, and we'll just go out there in the evening. Something different.
"It is flat out an unhealthy social situation when the gender imbalance gets that bad."
This article, which I found through this guy is pretty interesting, I felt the need to share it. Isn't it strange that for hundreds of years men (specifically, rich men) have been the vast majority of the well-educated population, and now that in the last 5 or 10 years women have been in the majority, people are calling it a "crisis"? Granted, everyone deserves an equal shot at education, but it's been my experience that not everyone DOES get an equal shot at education. People of color are still underrepresented. People in the working class are just as underrepresented. Women have been underrepresented for a long time before this. There have been people working to balance out these differences, and have been succeeding in getting a closer-to-representative mix of college students for the last 30 years or so. How have they been doing that? Encouragement.
Growing up as a poor, white, smart, female kid, I was told that I could do anything I wanted to. I could be a scientist, I could be a nun, I could teach, I could be a postal worker, I could be a rock star. Not all of these things are "typical" or "non-typical" female jobs, but they were all the things I can remember imagining myself being in childhood. I don't think that boys get messages that are much different than that. The difference is that all of these messages were qualified with "if you do well in school". We (girls and young women in the 80's/90's) WERE taught that we'd have to fight our way into many jobs, and would have to be better than the best in order to make it. Does anybody remember the movie "Baby Boom"?
I think the overall message about careers, education, etc. to all children growing up around the time I did was that women could prove that they could do it all, but men were given the opportunity to do it all without having previously proven it. Sure, the men my age that I know are aware that education helps you get further in life, no matter what your ultimate goals are, and no matter whether we're talking about formal academic education or practical on-the-job education (I have very successful friends and family with plenty of either one or the other or both). I just think that the men of my generation are more likely to expect good things to simply come to them, as they've been brought up to believe. White people, middle- and upper-class people, have been told this too.
So, now. We have a class of 1000 freshmen at some private, liberal arts school. According to the article, incoming freshmen gender breakdown is roughly 50/50. Halfway through the second semester, things are getting pretty tough. Most of the students have the pure academic ability to complete four years of school, but some students are on the borderline. Let's even say that, at this time, half of the students on the borderline are male, half are female. I think that the female students are more likely to push through and get as far as they can--perhaps even changing to an "easier" major--because they've been told over and over again that to get even the lowest job, they're going to have to be overqualified for it. The men that are struggling read the classified ads, and having been brought up with the entitlement that they have, think that their one year of college will get them just as far if not farther than a woman with a four year degree. Their major's too difficult, they leave for greener pastures at the end of the year. In many cases, they WILL get farther than the college educated women. The women graduate, and now they have more diplomas. There ya go.
As far as the argument presented in the article that "Now women can't find men with enough education," phooey. Were men worrying about this 40 years ago when they were marrying less educated women? MY husband has less education than me. While he's considering going into graduate education eventually, he might not. Chances are, with the kind of degree I'll be leaving with, I'll be making a big load of money once they release me into the work force. J doesn't mind this at all. If he decides to stay with the bachelor's, or gets teaching certification and teaches high school (just one of many of his current ideas), I could easily be making twice as much as him in 6 or 7 years. If he starts to care? Well, it's really his problem. Do I care? I've been blessed enough to be coming of age at the time I am, and while I'm still in the vast minority in my department (about 10-15% women), I've been given every opportunity to succeed. And if I'm doing what I want, and J's doing what he wants, and I get paid twice as much for working just as hard but in a different field, then why should there be a problem?
Ok, through grumbling. Tomorrow I'll start talking about what I ate for dinner and wedding pictures again.
Ahh... bliss is near.
We bought an air conditioner yesterday.
So, yeah, after 4 days of 90-degree temperatures, and humidity, and living in a house that could double as a toaster for really big pieces of bread, we're perfectly willing to spend the extra 25$/month for the next two months. The air conditioner ended up being pretty inexpensive, because we got a gift certificate at Best Buy from my Aunt Jane and Uncle Phil for a wedding gift (we worship the ground you walk on right now).
Until we can go and get the official o.k. from the landlords, though, we're still stuck with just the fans. Our current (somewhat complicated) cooling system of fans, windows, miniblinds, and water does seem to keep the room cooler than the outside during the day. At night, though, the house is practically glowing, and all the cool air in the world won't help. Not that the outside air has been all that cool to begin with. But it's supposed to rain tonight and cool things down a few degrees for the rest of the week, thank goodness. I can deal with 80's. I can't deal with 90's.
Remind me of this in the dead of winter when I swear I'm going to switch schools and go to the University of Arizona.
Wedding Pics Update: Not done yet, but working on it.
It's my little sister's birthday!
Yeah, yeah, I've been a lazy bum. But guess what? We got the professional pictures back today! They look so awesome. I'm scanning them in as we speak. The wedding page will be pretty close to done by next weekend. Keep holding tight.
Ahh, I just finished scanning them, and that there were 34 all together. Not all of them were wedding pics, but most of them were. So in the end the online wedding album will be between 40 and 50 pictures. If you want copies of these pictures (when you see them), or one you remember having been taken, or something like that, let me know. We have the order form from the photographer, and we have plenty of time to get more pictures.
Again, a long, emotional entry that explorer felt like just taking away. Anyone else have this problem where Explorer will just close, for no reason whatsoever, and no warning, and no anything, just closes all the windows?
Ass, ass ass.
Today, a story:
For J and I's honeymoon, we were at Cape Cod for a week, and slowly worked our way back here by spending the night in each familiar place along the way: At my house, in Ithaca, at his parents, and a spot halfway between Buffalo and here. So we get to Buffalo, and have a nice dinner, and are just enjoying some post dinner chatting. I can't remember the exact context, but I mentioned how I'd given my dad an Ozzy Osbourne CD for his birthday.
Jeremy's dad asks "Who's Ozzy Osbourne?"
I gaped at him for a moment.
For normal people with normal parents, a question like this wouldn't strike them as strange. But I've gone through life with both my parents consistently being much, much hipper than I. "Who's Neils Bohr?", they might ask. But never "Who's {fill in the blank with just about any musician popular between 1960 and today}?"
It's just kind of hard for me to remember sometimes that most people don't rebel against their parents' lives by becoming an engineer.
That was pretty crummy yesterday. I had written a lot. I get so pissed when that happens. Here, I'll write a shorter version now. Please, God of Internet, please be kind.
Me and J are still having fun playing house. Bought some plants at the farmer's market on Saturday (rosemary, mint, marigolds, some unfamiliar pink stuff), and set up a window planter that had been sitting on my porch all year. The fridge is full of yummy things, we watched a Simpsons marathon last night, and the weather has been staying coolish and non-humid and sunny. In other words, life is good. Hey, I think we deserve it. We've worked hard for 4 years, an enjoyable summer is in the works.
And, I'm not going to bother with the rest of the "what I did on my summer vacation" update, at least not for awhile. I had a good time. I had a terrible cold on the wedding day, but my voice didn't crack too bad. We had a good time at the Cape. Jeremy never wants to drive from Cape Cod to Madison ever again, and I don't blame him. That's all the important stuff, anyhow. Details? They'll come up on the wedding page eventually. We should be getting the professional pictures sometime soon, I want to scan them in and show y'all how pretty we all were.
How's the summer research going? Don't ask. Ask next week, mayhaps I'll have some better news. Nothing tragic, just boring and frustrating.
Does anyone out there know how to do a good literature search?
ARGGaAAAHHH!! Ok, Internet explorer just mysteriously quit on me, with no prior warning or reason. I give up, I'll write something tomorrow.
Ok, I'm starting to start again.
Let me start with a "what did I do for my summer vacation" type essay. Bit by bit, I'm catching you back up.
Week #1:
Got to Ithaca on Wednesday, and had a nice relaxing couple of days where we didn't do too much. J's graduation went just fine, it kept looking like it was going to rain on all of us sitting on the cold wet stadium seats, but it just held off, and a beam of sunlight shone on the graduates just as they were proclaiming them graduated. Perfect timing. Thanks, God.
Many pictures were taken, much food was eaten, many wedding questions were asked.
J's mom worried uneccessarily about my enjoyment of the sun. I understand her fears, although I don't share them--both of her children are such a pale tender color that looking outside on a sunny day is enough to render them crispy and red. And the dermitologist is always having to remove sketchy skin things from them. ------------------------ Ok, time to go play in the lab for a bit. It's my first day officially back, I should really do SOMETHING. I came in yesterday and set up some stuff, but it only took 20 minutes, and it has to do it's thing for the next 4 days, before I can really do anything useful. Time to look up some papers, I guess.
Go click on the wedding page, you greedy jackals. I started putting pictures up. More will come soon.
We had a perfectly good trip, considering we were in a car for 24 hours or so. Groceries have been gotten, bank accounts have been closed and/or merged, noodles were eaten, in-moving has taken place, and, heck, everything's just fine. This'll probably still be a week or two before things here at T's spot are back to normal, but I know you'll bear with me, so long as you get more pictures, pictures, pictures. Every person I've talked to or emailed the last week has wanted them. Yeesh. We've developed a couple of the disposable cameras, others we're taking lots of random pictures so that we CAN develop them, because they're all only half used. Professional pics should be arriving by the end of next week. I'll upload more digital ones (a la grampa) soon, too. There are currently about 20 pictures that I have downloaded to the site, but that doesn't mean you can see them yet. Here's another one, though. So far, it's my favorite:
We did it!
More to come by, say, June 15th?