a new semester

so the first week of the new semester has ended. although it really seems like it's been two weeks since I was back at work the week before (and getting up at 5:30am no less for it. ugh). I am taking three classes again this semester: discourse analysis (which should be time consuming but really interesting and useful), collaboration and argumentation in science ed (which should be interesting and hopefully lead to a dissertation topic), and multiple regression (yay more stats!). I only have classes two days a week which is kind of nice, and that opens up the rest of the week for getting lots of work done and going to various schools in the area to collect data for our project.
this week I also finally submitted a paper to be included in a encyclopedia-type book for classroom teachers. and I'm first author! so exciting!

the reason I was getting up so early last week was because we were running our project at a school 40 minutes away from me and I had to get there at like 7am. we were working in a 9th grade physical science class and almost all of the students were minority students and on free or reduced lunch. the five days I was there were a real eye-opening experience to the day-to-day issues that teachers face at these kinds of schools. it is really important to get the kids to respect you, otherwise it's impossible to have any discipline in the class and get any work done. we had to battle with it the whole time we were there (for example, one of the periods had some kids in it that had been in jail already and just didn't see the point in listening to us). plus, most of the kids weren't too excited about learning about thermodynamics so that didn't help. the good news is that by the end, many of them found the program interesting and liked being able to use the computers to have discussions with the other students. and some of them actually learned something. woo hoo! but it also made me think a lot about how to motivate these kids. I mean, seriously, I don't blame them for not wanting to pay attention in class or learn about thermal conductivity. it is so removed from what they think is important in their lives at this point and many of the problems they perceive in society probably stem from institutions such as schools that don't necessarily treat them well.

in other news, Legos are awesome.

goodbye 2007

I know I haven't posted in a while. it's because I've been busy being a grad student. I'm even working during winter break. how fun. the end of the semester was crazy. in November and December we submitted a couple proposals for grants and conferences and finished most of the data analysis. plus, I had finals to deal with for three classes, plus an extra book chapter I volunteered to write. (plus soccer and all of the usual stuff.)

so now I'm saying goodbye to 2007 and hello 2008. it's going to be another crazy semester, but it's all going well. I have a few conferences to look forward to this year. one in New York City, another in Edmonton, Canada, and possibly some others in Baltimore and maybe even the Netherlands (here's hoping). plus, a couple papers will be submitted for publication as we're almost done with the current grant. the new project starts next week, so that should be exciting as well.

with the new year I hope to read more books (like the eight I got for Christmas to start with), take more pictures, and do more cooking at home. also, I want to do some more hiking, like maybe every weekend, and try to organize an overnight trip down in the Grand Canyon.

hope you all have a wonderful new year! Cheers!

Halloween 2007

so we all celebrated Halloween last weekend, on Friday, with a big party at Steve and Keely's house. there were lots of good costumes and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves (maybe a few people a little too much). all I can say is that I had an awesome time and I can't believe we all stayed up that late.

I dressed as a member of team Zissou from the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (a great movie by Wes Anderson). I knitted the red cap and added all the trim to some clothes I got at Goodwill. I even embroidered a little Zissou patch for the shirt. it turned out great!


I posted some pictures from the party here:

Halloween 2007

Saturday, Gregg was in town because his brother is insane and ran a 100-mile race. yes, I did type that correctly. it took him about 29 hours. that is crazy. (and people think I'm crazy for wanting to do the half marathon again in January. seriously.) Gregg and I hung out and had a good time. but it was a continuation of a week of not enough sleep. I need more sleep!

school + fun = not enough sleep

the end

weekend exploits

ok, an update finally. I've been meaning to update more frequently, but I've been busy! and here's what I've been doing:

last weekend was awesome. I got some work done, but mostly I decided that I needed (and deserved) to have some fun. Friday night centered around two monthly events here in Phoenix. first we (me, Katie, amazon Natalie, Bruce, and Mike P - Angel and Brian met up with us later) went to Adults Night Out at the AZ Science Center. they had some free snacks, a cash bar, and the museum was free! it was lots of fun playing with the ferrofluids and fog machine and other cool things they had there. afterwards, we drove over to the First Friday Art Walk and perused some galleries. then, we headed to a cool bar and had a nice local beer and went home.
Saturday morning Katie and I woke up relatively early (for a Saturday), had a nice brunch and did some thrift store shopping. I found everything I needed for my Halloween costume so that was exciting. Katie also bought an awesome gold belt, among some other things. then we made a nice lunch, had some chocolate cake and watched tv. Sunday, we biked over to the Oktoberfest at the Tempe town beach park and volunteered for a few hours, selling beer to a few cute guys in lederhosen and lots of old drunk guys (to generalize). we got some free bratwurst, a t-shirt, and a beer, so it was totally worth it. plus it was a beautiful day (low 80s!). at the end of the weekend, I was pretty exhausted, but it was tons of fun.

this weekend was much more low-key. I needed to catch up on some sleep and get some reading done. check and check. but I did go to a concert last night, which was awesome. it was a Jazz in AZ 30th anniversary celebration concert and it was great. first there was a nice quartet with James Moody as a special guest. they did a lot of standard-type jazz. the headliners were the reason we went: Medeski, Martin, and Wood. we saw them a year or so ago, but I think they were even better this time. they are truly geniuses and I was amazed at the set they played. there are no words that fully express how good it was. lots of variety and unusual sounds, as usual. it was great.

school is going well. we finished working on a report for our grant, so I feel good that is done (and that we had interesting things to say). we started looking at the third country in our data set and that has proved interesting.

I posted some more pictures on flickr from my SLR that I got developed a few weeks ago. they are from things over the summer.

and the new Radiohead album is here! it's great and I'm so glad we didn't have to wait until next year for it. (and yes, I did pay for it. I wanted them to know that I appreciate their work.)

lots o' school and stuff

so I survived another week of this semester from no-sleep hell. well, ok, yes, I have been sleeping a little bit. but not nearly as much as I need to. normally the weekend is a good time to catch up on it, but I've been busy most weekends. which is good. I like being busy and hanging out with people and having fun. but sometimes I just want to push pause and take a little break.
anyway, school is going well. I like my classes. I like them even though I have about 200-300 pages of reading to do for them every week. the reading is interesting. and I like reading. so there. and my adviser is still great and my research is still really interesting. I made lots of data tables this week. it was great!
last weekend, Jeremy came to visit. his sister was getting married here, so we hung out with his family, went to the wedding, ate some in-n-out, drank lots of beer and wine, and took a lot of naps. lots of fun.



things I'm looking forward to: more reading. a couple concerts that I bought tickets for today: Medeski, Martin, & Wood (Oct 13) and the Polyphonic Spree and Rooney (Nov 3). yay! and maybe Rilo Kiley in a couple weeks. we'll see. also, the weather is cooling down: I actually opened my bedroom window this week. hooray!

school has started again

so, my fourth year of grad school has begun. you would think I've gotten smarter over all this time, but apparently I have not. this is because I've decided it would be hilarious if I took four classes this semester. I only have to take three, but apparently I hate free time. I guess it's not too late to drop one of them, but then I will have to take it in the spring and for some reason that sounds like a bad idea. so here's what's on my plate: seminar (required and possibly boring, not sure yet), cognition in science learning (should be interesting, lots of reading), science education research (reading the current handbook, craploads of reading - the book is 1300 pages), and multiple regression stats (possibly not a lot of work, maybe not too hard). on top of that, I am doing 20 hours of research each week and sort-of TA-ing a class (but I'm mostly doing stuff with the class website so it's not too bad).

the research I'm working on is still really interesting and we are getting some unexpected results, so that's great.

I also got a new (old) bike. it kicks ass. wayy better than the old bike (which is also cursed).

I am currently in LA and going to Carpinteria beach (up near Santa Barbara) tomorrow for the weekend to see my extended family. I will be laying on the beach doing as little as possible until Monday. :) ooh, I also saw Wicked last night with Marla. it was great! (but totally different than the book.)

pictures from the weekend trip to Ridgecrest to see James are posted here along with some older pictures from a camping/rock climbing trip we took like two years ago.

physics and stuff

so I spent all last week in Greensboro, North Carolina for the AAPT summer meeting/conference (that's the American Association of Physics Teachers). all in all it was a good week. very tiring (as always), but there were lots of interesting talks and posters and people and coffee breaks to keep the brain switched on. whomever's bright idea it was to schedule things from 8am to 10:30pm should be hit with something heavy.

we got off to a bad start on Sunday when my second flight (out of Dallas) got delayed about three and a half hours because of some rain storms. I should point out that we spent the better part of that three and a half hours cooped up on the plane on the runway. ugh. anyway, we finally got there and checked into the dorms at UNC-G which were actually pretty craptastic. having the bathroom down the hall was not such a big deal, but the mattresses were ridiculous awful (which made the six hours of precious sleep time we did have not as productive as they could have been). also, there was some dumb thing where you couldn't access the wireless internet in your rooms, but had to go downstairs. dumb.

one thing that made everything better on monday was the plenary by Neil deGrasse Tyson. because he's so awesome. he talked for almost two hours (instead of the one he was schedule for) because he was so awesome and no one wanted him to leave. seriously.

things progressed well the rest of the week. I got to hang out with Brian and all of the wonderful people I only see once a year at this thing. I presented a poster on the research I did for my masters thesis and everyone seemed to like it and think it was interesting. especially one professor in particular and his opinion means a lot. so that's cool.

I also got some free magnets. which is always nice. they make a cool noise when you toss them at each other. and on the way back home (as if to make up for the delay on the way there) I was able to catch two earlier flights back so I got back home at 6pm instead of 10pm. sweet. I was also able to read an entire non-school book this week (entirely on the planes and in the airports): Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. it was amazing. that's all I'm going to say about it.

in other news, we have two weeks until the semester starts. I got one of my "textbooks" in the mail today (it's the new handbook of research on science education) and it's huge. seriously. I will be reading nonstop all semester.

surfing and stuff

ok, finally an update! here's what's been going on with me for the past few weeks:

-Katie's birthday. it was tons of fun (link to pictures proving that we had lots of fun). we started at her house and then walked over to Casey Moore's, had some drinks, walked back, and passed out. a good time was had by all, especially Katie. :)

-4th o' July. a last minute barbecue was organized at Robert's apartment (which was perfect - the pool was in the shade so we could actually be outside during the day). we cooked lots of good food, watched part the Project Runway marathon, and played with Kobe, Robert's dog. later we journeyed over to the physics building and climbed up on the roof to get a good view of the fireworks at Tempe Town Lake. (here are some more pictures of that.)

-school! I've been getting lots of work done lately so that's great. I have a conference in North Carolina in a few weeks, so I wrote a paper for that (it's amazing how hard it is to turn a 50+ page paper into a 4 page paper) and still need to get a poster together. should be good.

-San Diego. last weekend, Katie, Hwi, Katie's friend E-Chiao, and me took a little road trip to sunny San Diego. we basically wanted to escape the heat of Phoenix (it's been around 115 lately) and Katie really wanted to go surfing. so we did. :) I took them to La Jolla Shores and we spent most of Saturday there taking turns with the two boards we rented. the weather was absolutely perfect (80 and sunny), and the ocean sort-of cooperated (there was a pretty strong rip current which kind of sucked). afterwards we had awesome burgers at Jeff's Burgers and then headed back to Hillcrest where we were staying with Chad, a friend of E-Chiao's. Chad was awesome. Saturday night we went to an art walk type thing, had some yummy pizza, and then went to a swing dance event in Balboa Park. all in all, it was a great day. the next morning we slept in a bit, went to the nearby farmer's market for some yummy food, then had a great brunch at the Cafe on Park. then it was a long trip back for us. but it was a great weekend. here are some pictures (click on the one below to see the whole album):

San Diego July 2007

-harry potter and the deathly hallows. I'm so so excited. I cannot wait for Friday night. however, I am getting paranoid about finding out spoilers before then (or anytime before I finish the book later in the weekend). my plan as of now is to basically go into seclusion once I get the book; i.e., no computer, phone, etc. but apparently the book got leaked on the internet today. so that sucks. I just hope I don't have to hide myself before Friday.

Vegas, baby, Vegas!

last weekend I drove to Las Vegas and met Marla (one of my roommates from college) there, along with a couple of her friends (Clare and Monica). we stayed at the Luxor, which was pretty nice. Saturday night, we headed out to the Wynn. unfortunately, it took *one hour* to get there because there was so much traffic. in fact Las Vegas Blvd was more like a parking lot than a street. it sucked. but, we finally got there and it was so nice, we forgot about the drive. Clare and Monica wanted to go to the club Tryst, so we left them in the line for that and headed down to Parasol Down, which is a fancy little bar there. we had to wait a while to get seated on the patio, but it was worth it. the bar overlooks this lake and they have a "show" every 15 minutes. they're usually a little weird/absurd which was totally amusing, but the best one is when this giant frog comes up and sings a song. Marla had hoped we could hear it do Low Rider, but we got What a Wonderful World instead, which was still pretty great. after that, Marla and I walked over to the Venetian to check that out. I should mention that the last time I was in Vegas was sometime in high school. so it's been a while and much has changed since then. the Venetian was really cool, but as it was 2am a lot of things were closed.
Sunday we slept in and then hung out at the pool for a while. it was nice to be outside in the sun during the day with it not being ridiculously hot (like, today, for example when it hit 111 degrees. ick). later in the afternoon Marla and I went exploring to the Paris hotel and the Bellagio. both were very impressive, especially the famed water show at the latter. that night, the two of us had tickets for the Cirque du Soleil show, LOVE, which features music from the Beatles. Marla and I both love the Beatles and Marla is also a huge Cirque fan. I would say we both had pretty high expectations for the show, but it was even more amazing than I could have hoped for. I don't even know how to describe it, except to say that it amazing. you really have to see it.
after the show, Marla and I got some yummy gelato at the Venetian (good, but not as good as the gelato I had in Venice, of course) and met up with Clare and Monica where they were hanging out at Caesar's Palace. they had initially gone to Pure, but apparently it sucked, so they left early (like 1:30am). so they were stationed at some random lounge area (the Seahorse lounge, I believe), near some poker tables. they were most of the way through a pitcher of cocktails (just to mention how crap this lounge was is that they couldn't get individual drinks, only a pitcher) when Marla and I showed up. Marla and I were tired and planning on leaving soon, but we got into an interesting conversation about our random celebrity sightings and how they mostly sucked. I related the time Jonathan Taylor Thomas came to our high school dance and seeing Luke Perry in his car on my way to soccer practice once (this happens occasionally in LA). Monica, who was more celebrity-inclined than the rest of us, had tried many times to go to places in LA where there were supposed to be celebrities, but she never saw any there. anyway, shortly after this conversation, the bartender came over to our table and informed us that someone at the bar just announced that they were going to buy everyone there a drink. since we were planning on leaving soon (it was around 3am by this time and I had to drive us back to the hotel), Marla and I declined, but Clare and Monica got a drink. about five minutes later, Marla and Clare both looked over at the bar and remarked that there was a guy there that looked really familiar. kind of like...well, no, it couldn't be him. so we all looked over and sure enough, it was Vince Vaughn. he was there with a little posse of some friends. he was actually pretty tall and looked good. we purposely left him alone, but I think Clare managed to get a blurry picture. he stayed for almost an hour, until some skanky drunk girls showed up and made a big deal. one of the security guards came over, and his bodyguard escorted him somewhere else. as he left, he walked by our table and smiled at us. it was exciting.
after that, we stayed around talking, no longer tired, and met some more interesting people who were still awake. and made friends with one of the security guards who told us they were shooting a movie out in front of the hotel. it's some comic book thing, called Iron Man. they mostly had a bunch of extras around. we saw one actress, but none of us could remember who she was. eventually we got back to the hotel and collapsed. Monday was spent sleeping in, at the pool again, and then a long drive back for me. I'm still trying to catch up on the sleep. but it was a great trip. :)

I posted some pictures up on Picasa. click on the picture for the album:

Vegas!

anthony's graduation!

so, today, I woke up super early and drove 400 miles to surprise my brother, Anthony, for his graduation from college. he thought I was only coming for the party on Saturday, but I figured that I should come for the actual ceremony as well. I knew the day was going to go well because I was listening to NPR in the morning, the Diane Rehm show was talking about the book Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which is my most favorite book. so that was nice. there wasn't too much traffic so I made pretty good time, and got here just minutes before my brother showed up. he was definitely surprised. the graduation itself was fairly boring (of course), but I'm glad I was there. :)

Anthony's Graduation

earlier in the week (and last weekend), I was puppy-sitting Steve and Keely's new puppy Bella and their dog Jasmine. it was a lot of work (that mostly involved cleaning up "accidents" and entertaining the hyper puppy) but Bella is so cute it didn't really matter.

Bella, the puppy

puppy!

I started my new research with my new advisor in the college of education this week. I have another office, this time on the other end of campus, complete with a door and an actual window! (for those keeping count, I officially have three offices right now, but starting in the fall, I am giving two of them up so I just have this one.) the work is really interesting and it's a good project to be working on. also, my new advisor is great. I've been working a lot, he expects a lot, but that's good; I will get a lot out of it.
this weekend I am puppy-sitting! steve and keely got a new puppy yesterday so jasmine would have someone to take care of, so I will be at their house for the next few days making sure little bella is doing well. she's sooo cute. just about all the astronomy people are going to a conference in hawaii so I'm really jealous, but at least I have a puppy to play with instead. :)

end of the semester

so, after taking my final this morning (for the easy stats class I was taking), I am officially done with the semester. I really can't believe I've been here for almost three years. that feels like a long time. and parts of it have dragged on, but some days it feels like I was just at UCSD last week. anyway, the semester being over means that the summer is here, which means it's going to be ridiculously hot again soon. like next weekend. yesterday was probably the last day it will be under 90 degrees until October. yuck.

as for my masters, it was officially when I turned in my thesis to get bound at the bookstore on thursday. they handed me my receipt, and said, this is your temporary diploma. hilarious. I swear, graduating is a form of extortion. I had to pay so much money just to get it. really annoying. but, yay, I finished! my phd program is starting basically now. I am meeting with my advisor on wednesday. it never stops.

passed my master's defense!

yay! so today was my master's thesis defense. and it went swimmingly. a bunch of people showed up and asked some good questions, and it was great. my committee talked for a couple minutes and then it was official. now all I have to do is make a few small changes to my actual thesis and then submit that next week. and then I'll have my M.S. in physics. woo hoo!
the phd stuff will continue in the fall, only in the college of education. it will be a good change and I'm really looking forward to it.

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died yesterday. He was my favorite author and a huge inspiration to me. Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are probably two of the most interesting books I have ever read. His humanist perspective on life and sharp wit made him truly unique and unforgettable. He will be sorely missed.

"Listen: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at the stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes'." (from Slaughterhouse-Five)

As Jon Stewart said about him, "He made my life bearable." I hope that everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

So it goes.

Al Gore LIVE

yesterday I went to see Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth presentation here at ASU. I saw the movie in the theater last summer and was definitely touched by it then. but that was not even close to the same impact that seeing him give the presentation in person was. most of it was the same, but he actually added quite a bit of new slides and data and had taken out some stuff as well. it seemed more focused and his passion about the subject translated much better in the huge auditorium than it had across the movie screen. I'm really glad we had the opportunity to see that. :)

oh, and thesis status: I am submitting it tomorrow (!) for format review (ridiculous) and my defense is scheduled for april 18th. let's hope all the paperwork gets through ok so I don't have to worry about it much longer.

Grand Canyon

so it's spring break. finally. I was doing work all the way up until when we left on Sunday. so here was the plan: me, Katie, Hwi, Angel, Michael, and Michael's brother who was visiting were going to drive up to Sedona on Sunday, have some lunch, then head over to Michael's boss's cabin near Flagstaff, then on Monday head up to the Grand Canyon for the day. there was also talk of going skiing instead, but the ski place was closed because it's ridiculously warm right now. (today, for instance, it is supposed to be 96 which is TWENTY degrees warmer than average. that is insane.) anyway, no skiing for us. we also talked about going to Meteor Crater, but we ran out of time so we're going to have to go some other day.

so we had lots of fun. some of the highlights were me kicking everyone's ass at ping pong at the cabin, playing rummikub, taking pictures of the stars with my newly restored old school SLR (I'm still waiting to see if those came out), the sweet potato fries in Sedona, 7000 bananas, and hiking along the rim of the Canyon.

I posted pictures in a bunch of places: flickr, picasa, and facebook so you are welcome to check them out at any of those places (the same ones are in all three though). here's a couple of my favorites:









since we've gotten back I've done a whole lot of nothing. it's been great. so far, I have watched the entire first season of Lost (I'm trying to catch up) and started a new book. Oh, I finished Special Topics in Calamity Physics last week. it was really great. one of the most interesting books I've read in a while (it's a novel and has nothing to do with physics, by the way). so you should all check that out.

I'm a statistical rock star!

so, coming to grad school (especially in physics) meant that I would be subjecting myself to hours upon hours of painful studying, reading, thinking, and a general unableness to partake in the normal activities that a typical mid-twenties person would be privy to. (not that I am unhappy about my decision, just the contrary: I love the challenge and I am getting a lot out of everything.) it meant that those good-old days in high school where I would show up to an exam, not having studied (or even remembered there was a test), and not only finish earlier than everyone else, but also get one of the highest scores. (geometry class comes to mind. and of course, physics class.) and I sort of miss that.
well, today I got a bit of the old feeling back when I left my intro to stats midterm super early and then it was amplified when I found out that I got 100% on it. woo hoo! I am smart again! lol. (I also got 100% on my take-home exam we had last week. yay!) but seriously, this class is really easy and I can't believe that I am getting graduate credit for it. and that some people are finding it really difficult. a bit scary, really.

oh, so last weekend I hung out with math nerds at a mathematics education research conference in sunny San Diego. it was really nice. I learned a lot. my half hour talk went really well and I will be really happy when the accompanying paper is finished (this will be next friday). and then it will be spring break!

coffee coffee coffee

so my lovely friends got me a coffee and espresso machine for my birthday. which is perfect timing because the next week is going to be crazy (maybe worse than this week) and I'm going to need lots of caffeine. like tonight. coffee. yay coffee. trying to work on my presentation for the conference. it's going well. especially now that I have my second wind. from the coffee.

I love engineering paper. you know, the greenish-tinted graph paper? oh it's so nice. makes me feel smarter than I am.

happy birthday to me...

...a celebration in two parts

so Friday night I invited a bunch of people out to go roller skating. at a rink. the sort of thing you'd do for a 10 year old's birthday. only, it was "cosmic skating" so we got free glow necklaces. we were basically the oldest ones there (except for a few others like us). it was pretty hilarious. most of us hadn't skated in a decade or more, so some had some issues staying vertical for a while. (also, some people ran over or into a few of the younger skaters. heh.) but by the end, everyone seemed to remember how to skate in a circle so it was great. afterwards, we headed back to my apartment for some drinks and pie.

enjoy the pictures:

my birthday 07

Saturday I basically slept all day because I was exhausted from the long week of school and the roller skating madness.

ditto on Sunday.

yesterday, Monday, was my actual birthday, so I went out to dinner with a few friends at Oregano's (this amazing pizza/Italian place). it was a really nice dinner and a good way to end my birthday. thanks everybody for a great weekend!

oh, and I'm on facebook now. thanks Cogan for the final inspirational push to be on another social site. I think I might get rid of myspace. I hate that thing.

poor polar bears

read today's article from the New York Times on the global warming report issued yesterday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.