nous sommes arrivées

Hey sciencey types. What is going on in this picture?



It intermittently appeared for a long time during our flight from Addis Ababa to Kigali this morning. I've never seen anything like it before.

So we're here! Hi! Flight to Ethiopia was long. Ethiopia was full of thunder and lightning and rain. Rwanda is hot although I mainly stared blankly at things and then slept all afternoon.

Tomorrow: drinking coffee on the balcony; finishing my final paper; drinking coffee on the balcony; finishing my other final paper; drinking beer on the balcony.

later gators.

Getting bored is not allowed. Sometimes I comb my hair with a fork.

Just kidding. Everyone knows I never comb my hair, period.

Lindsay and I leave for Africa in a week. LESS than a week! SIX DAYS!

This means that very soon I'll be all totally on top of updating this thing. Because I'll have so many exciting stories to tell you. Stories about sitting on the balcony drinking beer, and stories about eating very small delicious bananas, and probably some stories about my parents' ridiculous dog. Then if you guys are good, I'll throw in some stuff about Rwanda. Maybe.

Anyway so right, we leave Monday night next week. I'm excited cause we have an overnight in Addis Ababa and it's more than twelve hours so we have to get visas and the only reason I ever do ANYTHING is to get extra fancy stamps in my passport.

Meanwhile, and by "meanwhile" I mean "starting a week ago", I have so many things to do before I leave that I barely have time to sit in my room and cry about it. So don't hold your breath for any more posts between now and . . . I'm gonna go with Wednesday the 7th.

For your entertainment while you pine away for me, here's a picture of my favorite friend Rory, wearing lots of ultraviolet marker and not holding very still in the blacklight. It's Science!

18 years ago

Science!

Okay guys I have good news and bad news for you.

The good news is, the sea monkeys hatched! I can totally see them swimming frantically in little spirals through the magnification part of their little plastic jail. They are UBER scientific. I haven't named them yet because I can't quite figure out how many there are but that is bound to be a fun party activity.

Lindsay gave me sea monkeys for doing a good job on my Oral Comprehensive Exam last week. Sea monkeys and two cases of beer. Lindsay's my main squeeze.

Okay, but, the bad news, well, it's bad. Sit down and take a deep breath.

The beakers and ultraviolet markers I had on order might not make it to the party.

Don't cry! They MIGHT make it! We have to talk to some UPS people. Because the box is in DC, somewhere, it just isn't scheduled to be delivered to my house until Monday. Monday! Monday is too late. Anyway I haven't given up. I'll do some problem solving tomorrow when there are hearing people around to fob off the phone calling onto.

In other science-related news, we are starting to have big piles of science laying around all the time. Microscopes and goggles and lab suits and aprons and glow in the dark floam and whatnot. I heard a rumor today that one party guest may be bringing a real live geiger counter. He'll be the guest of honor!

Also I bought diet coke and mentos and borax and baking soda and cornstarch. All staple necessities. We're so ready.

Anyway, everyone should keep their chin up for the sake of the sea monkeys who will probably DIE if anyone is upset about any of the other stuff. They have fragile egos, those little guys, or so I hear.

***

completely unrelated to science: I'm going to Rwanda in May. Lindsay and I'll be gone the 5th-29th. Let us know if you need anything from there.

kisses,
Cecily

5 weeks out

to the semester's end seems like very not enough.

Tomorrow morning (Friday) is my big scary Oral Comprehensive Exam. I halfway expect my nice supportive friendly professors to suddenly have sharp teeth and big eyebrows and general Viola Swamp demeanors.

Assuming they don't (well, even if they do, really), then I will be drinking beer with Lindsay (and you if you would like to come) in the afternoon. And possibly the evening. Maybe even the nighttime!

Then: Back to work, you lazy girl!

I have to finish getting my act together for my impending-with-the-speed-of-doom trip to Rwanda. May 5, we leave. Ask me if I'm ready. No wait, don't ask me that. Ask me anything else! If it's about Phonology or Optimality Theory or Generative Syntax or Narrative Discourse Analysis, I will be all practiced up for answering you so go right ahead.

Plus, you know. Homework. Homework abounds.

And most distractingly of all is my Science Birthday Party which will be on April 12 and which is destined to be the best one yet. That's why I have to keep ordering scientific things from the bathtub; I'm multitasking! Who knows where I can get a helium tank?

I'll take a deep breath one of these days and then maybe I'll have something slightly more coherent to say.

trucky trucky

So, a year ago I bought a truck. Then I painted it.



Then, I was sorry that I had chosen Sharpie Oil-based Paint Markers as my weapon of choice, because they faded to white in no time at all.



However, due to the fact that I am extremely lazy busy, I left it with the boring white lines for a long time.

Then, I bought new weatherproof lightfast markers. Then, Big Bear had an easter party. It was so wonderful. There were little children and challah loaves with colorful eggs baked in and lots of glasses of wine.

So, it being a very heartwarming neighborhood environment, I told all the little children they could help me draw on my truck. Also I told all the drunken adults they could also help me draw on my truck.

Me: I really like this as a neighborhood activity! It's fun!

Lana: Yeah and it's a good activity for when your're drunk, 'cause you're even better at drawing the swirly things!

I'm not completely convinced that she's right about that, but my truck looks really great again.



and everyone had a really great time.

break time is over!

So, I was on Spring Break last week. It was kind of cold and I just spent the whole week in a coffee shop doing my homework, so your standard traditional "SPRING BREAK WOOOO!" activities did not really take place in my world.

Now Spring Break is over, so I am working hard on all the things I am supposed to be accomplishing in the near future.

Or, I will be working hard as soon as I finish taking a bath and reading Wuthering Heights and ordering invisible UV markers and blacklights on the internet.

Cecily! Don't order things on the internet from the bathtub! That's dangerous! And you'll drop your book!

Okay, I wasn't really doing all of those things at the same time. Calm down.

with a capital T that rhymes with D that stands for Dante

I have not had any exciting or entertaining adventures for quite a while, mostly because I've been all bedridden and behind in my scholarly duties for what seems like years.

So, I will beguile you with tales from long ago, when I was young and reckless and had adventures worth beguiling people with. (What's that? You don't like my sentence constructions? Well too bad for you. You're in time out!)

Here is something that happened to me in high school: I got in Trouble. It was the first day of my senior year. Before class had even started I was in In-School Suspension.

The reason I got in trouble was: me and Abe hung a banner over the front entrance of the school, with secret signalling accessory-to-the-crime participation from Melissa and Vanessa and Trisha about whether or not the banner was even and if it was draping in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The banner was made out of sheets, and it had words painted on it.

The words said "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

This was a Hilarious Joke, because do you know what the name of my high school was? I will give you three guesses. (Don't really guess please because that ruins the banter.) Do you give up?

The name of my high school was Hellgate. Hellgate High School.

Isn't that a funny joke?

Well, the Janitor did not think so and he got out his walkie talkie and radioed to the other janitors and the Vice Principal and they all chased us down. Abe went one way and I went another way but there were too many grim old men with walkie talkies for the likes of us and we were captured. And taken into separate rooms and made to write out confessions about what we had done. And our Parents were Called at Home.

The thing was, was that Abe's parents weren't home. (Actually Abe's dad was at City Hall because Abe's dad was the mayor. No fooling.) So the Vice Principal left a message on the machine (this was back in the days of land lines and answering machines) and Abe erased it later when he got home.

(Abe's parents, do you read this website? Did you know this story already? Hi!)

The other thing was, when they called my mom, they also didn't get the reaction they wanted. Because my mom had helped us make the banner. Because she thought it was a Hilarious Joke.

So she yelled at the Vice Principal for wasting his time on such literate and well-intentioned young people as me and Abe, and by the way did he get her letter complaining about the armed security guards? She yelled at him about that too. My mom's a spitfire.

Abe and I were suspended for two days. We had to sit in rooms and be quiet instead of going to classes.

Then we got out of our punishment with a new found Respect for Authority and we have been living on the Right Side of the Law ever since.

The End.


(hey. I noticed that I got a little carried away with the Meaningfully Capitalized Noun Phrases, there, in that story. I think it's from reading Mary Poppins. I'm not really sorry, though. I'm sure you'll get through it somehow.)

Update: Meaningful Capitalization of Noun Phrases is apparently a Genetically Inherited Trait. My dad, on the President's Recent Visit to Rwanda:

If I recall from planning for The Big Conference last June, there are 580 rooms in Kigali, but that includes some Decidedly Local hotels, which would not be suitable for Travelling Official People. There might be 250 or so that would work. The German President was visiting, and most of the advance team couldn't come until after he and his posse were gone.

For more evidence, see also my sister's comment below. And also her Guest Blog Post from a couple years ago.

idioms, idiolects, idolatry?

My Advanced Topics in Syntactic Theories class only has two students in it: me and much-deserving-of-sympathy C L-G. C L-G is the kind of guy who will go WAY out of his way to follow up on a ridiculous pun. For example, one time we were giggling about a silly joke from the internet. The joke was about inappropriate innuendo and the phrase "nut-dust". A week later, I got a text message. C L-G was coming over to give me something. So what happened? C L-G showed up in the lab with a plastic cup full of peanut dust! Just for me.

So, he's my favorite. This makes it a fun and funny class. There are other reasons that it is a fun and funny class too. And guess what! I will tell you about those reasons!

For one thing, the class is held not in the cozy old Linguistics Department building, but in a fancy new technotastic room which is set up for all kinds of sophisticated technology-assisted learning. In particular, a lot of cameras in the walls record our every comment and then the whole thing gets uploaded to a website so we can rewind and rewatch the lectures. Like for example if we were too busy drawing cartoons on our homework assignment to catch what somebody just said. This means that every time anybody wants to say anything we have to press the button on the remote control which is velcroed to the table nearest our current position. That tells Big Brother which camera to go to. We can tell if we pushed the button hard enough by looking at one of many giant screens all over the room that show the current feed. It's like being the star of a really sedate movie that is all about Noam Chomsky and his Various Theories of Syntax. Five stars! Two thumbs up! The perfect movie for certain occasions.

So, okay. Yesterday we were all talking about Raising versus Control. This is an issue which I will not explain in detail unless I am asked, and we are at a bar, and I get to draw you diagrams on napkins, and you feign enthusiasm long past the point where you are really very sorry you brought it up. But anyway, it's an issue of linguistics and we were learning about it in class yesterday. Particularly we were learning about, how do you know if you're dealing with a Raising situation or a Control situation? It is very hard. You have to do tests on sentences.

One way that SOME people think you should figure it out is to start substituting idioms willy-nilly for whatever boring sentence you're talking about. This is not a way of which I approve. Apparently, some people have intuitions about acceptability that are much stricter than my own. This is why I will never be a syntactician; I am the lone speaker of an idiolect that is so full of annoying jokes that I don't know how I even have any friends.

Also, the result of any discussion that involves idioms and me is inevitably a lot of snickering on my part. You'd think my professors would know better by now and send me out of the room on some trumped-up errand. "Take this blank piece of paper to the Dean's Office! It's important!"

Here's what I wrote on my notes from yesterday:

The cat is out of the bag.
The cat seems to be out of the bag
The cat really wants to be out of the bag
That cat is ASKING to be out of the bag

Bob kicked the bucket
Bob seems to have kicked the bucket
Bob keeps trying to kick the bucket

The cat's out of the bucket.
Bob kicked the cat.
Bob bagged buckets of cats.
Well, the cat's out of the bucket and Bob won't stop kicking it.
Bob kicked the cat out of the bucket.
The cat kicked the bucket and now Bob's out of the bag.

Poor kitty.

I miss Vincent D'Onofrio

I spend way too many hours a day sitting around doing things on a computer, and not nearly enough hours a day watching Law & Order. It's very hard.

Currently I'm working on the presentation about genocide narrative I mentioned before (for GURT, are you going? come see me!).

Also I'm working on a fun project for VL2 that involves making movies. I'm designing elicitation materials and I love bossing people around so this has been a great way for me to spend time. "Okay now blow on the match, but don't blow it out. Okay now blow it out. Okay now put sugar in your tea. Taste it. More sugar!" The best part was the 20 minutes we spent filming attempts to throw crumpled-up paper into the wastebasket from various distances. Mostly because of all the people who walked past and raised their eyebrows at me in a meaningful and not-particularly-approving way. "Cecily NOW what are you doing? And why have you dragged these other people into it?" "It's linguistics, I swear! Okay now throw the blue paper, but miss on purpose, but not by too much."

Plus always the adorable two-year-old is fun. An endearing habit he has: responding to almost everything not patently false with a pause for consideration, then "yes, right."

him (pointing at a car): car!
me: yeah, it's a red car
him: (pause, serious look, smile) yes, right.


It's nice to have this kind of constant positive reinforcement.

tiny felt patriotism

My advisor's three-year-old daughter is all about the presidents. Specifically George Washington, with whom she is on a first-name basis. Also, she dresses up like him and goes to Mount Vernon for a treat.

And makes her mama play "sign the Declaration of Independence", a game in which players must sign as actual signers. Not, for example, Martha Washington, because did Martha Washington sign the actual declaration? No, my friends, she did not. Stop trying to rewrite history.

Anyway I offered to make a tiny felt animal of the child in question's choosing. The child in question requested George Washington, being uninterested in other nonpresidential animals. Although she was also interested in the horse. Whose name she knew and color she specified.

I like a challenge, so I went ahead and made Tiny Felt George Washington and his Tiny Felt Horse (whose name I forget. and the internet is not being helpful).

UPDATE: The horse's name is Nelson.








Then I made a flamingo for Lindsay. Because, no, actually, I do not have anything better to do, and please never ask me that ever again.

p. s. you want to hear a really hilarious joke about George Washington? Well you'll have to wait until you see me in person, because it is the kind of joke that requires face to face interaction. By which I mean, it is the kind of joke that I find so funny to tell, it doesn't even really matter if you think the punchline is funny, because I am laughing so hard by the time I get to it that you can't really understand it anyway.

“The great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees."

This must be a code name for WDC, because I can't think of any other explanations for why I have a fever so much of the time. Damn fever trees. Damn greasy river.

Anyway, I'm still sick. Deliveries of juice, tea, and soup are more than welcome.

"Space and time are the same"

this was a subtitle in a presentation I saw on Saturday. I like it.

I was in Pittsburgh at a conference all weekend, and now I have a fever. It is 100.7 at the moment. I don't like it.

election

For a while last month, Big Bear had a blackboard up, amidst all their menus and specials and Single Origin Coffees Made to Order Press Pot!s, which said:

Cuteness Primary
-Panda
-Polar
-Koala
-Stu*

Lana made people vote before she would let them have coffee, which if you ask me is a good way to increase turnout.

Meanwhile (and this is related, so please be patient with my narrative stylings), last Thanksgiving my mom had a new book and a new fun activity. The book was this:



and the fun activity was belly dancing.

Ha, ha. Just kidding! The fun activity was making tiny felt animals out of raw wool. Like these ones, which were made at my explicit command. I mean, my very politely-phrased request. (I'm not bossy! YOU'RE bossy! Leave me alone.)




Okay, so, clearly this is an adorable way to spend time. You take some fluff and then you stab it a lot with a felting needle. Felting needles look like normal needles, but be careful! They have barbs at the end and if you (for example) stabbed yourself in the thumb it would hurt a lot! And you would probably get blood all over your fleece project.

Now! Back to the cuteness primary and the fight about bears.** Because this all happened back in the days of January when I was spending all my time on the couch eating bon-bons, it occurred to me that I might contribute to the primary by way of making tiny felt mascots for each category. I only stabbed myself once and I didn't get any blood on them.









Verdict: adorable, but dangerous. Much like their real-life counterparts. (Except for Stu, who is not very dangerous unless you are allergic to whisky.)


Oh also, the winner: koala.




*Stu is not a bear, but he (I think) represented the cafe. Also, he is very cute, it is true.

**I am well aware that a koala is not a bear. I made this point several times, at varying volumes, but no one was impressed.

education

My sister and I often have conversations via changing the status messages of our IM programs. Usually they are conversations about linguistics homework (if I start it) or Science (if Jocelyn starts it).

Today:

Jocelyn: you can't see electrons without a machine.
Cecily: I can see electrons
Jocelyn: Then you must have a machine.
Cecily: I can see electrons with my eyes CLOSED!
Jocelyn: Those aren't electrons, those are your EYELIDS.

This made me laugh a lot.