whirlwind

The last six or so months have felt like a total whirlwind. In one semester, I collected my dissertation data, analyzed my dissertation data, wrote up the results for my dissertation data, worked on a completely different project during half of each week, presented at three different conferences, applied for and got a post-doc position, graduated, drove to LA twice, said goodbye to all of my friends in Arizona, and drove (with my Dad and Laika) to Madison, Wisconsin to start my new job. *Whew* No wonder I'm so tired.
Mostly because of the move, I have decided to try this whole blogging thing again, since I will have lots of new adventures in this totally new place (and area of the country!). Yesterday I braved my first real tornado warning. It was actually kind of scary, even though my colleagues assured me that they never have tornadoes actually touch down here. We'll see.
My Dad and I took lots of pictures during the 3.5 day road trip to get here. Hopefully I will have another post soon with those pictures and a more detailed log of our journey. In a nutshell, we saw lots and lots of corn, Laika was an incredibly good dog during the trip, and we totally lucked out with weather and avoided any kinds of auto problems. Good job us!
In other news, I have been in Madison for a week and I still don't have my stuff - the movers will hopefully get it here sometime next week - so I've been kind of camping in my new house. When everything gets here and I unpack I will take pictures of the place for you all to see.

Books I'm currently reading (in my temporarily adequate free time): House of Leaves (by Mark Danielewski), Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (by David Lipsy, about David Foster Wallace), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (by Stieg Larsson), and the Stuff of Thought (by Steven Pinker).