<2339>

My paper was successfully completed, and now I'm jazzed to study the behavioral and social barriers to circumcision as a policy intervention.

Happy hour was chill as usual. My sister called to tell me to watch the UNM game on the deuce so I could see the pumpkin she carved with a wolf. So I got home, became furious at Papa John's webpage and the general lack of food in my life at nearly 8pm, finally just called, and saw the pumpkin wooo. I got my pizza (yum), and should have just watched Six feet Under instead of the game because it turned out to be the typical UNM yay we're winning! boo we choked crap I have tried to block out of my mind.

Now Six Feet, and bed. I have to work on more lit review tomorrow for this infernal paper... Rajiv wants me to go through the papers with an eye to this theory he's bumping around, which means actually reading the papers more closely rather than just skimming them for results. Booo.

<2356>

I'm writing this paper for tomorrow (due at 5! need to really be done by 12:30), and it's actually sort of fun. Well, it would be if it were done, but anyway. I liked writing the last paper, because I got to try out writing some really exquisite bullshit about the relationship between free market capitalism, individualism, and the need for reward and punishment to follow directly from "good" and "bad" behaviors (hence, no condoms for you, sinner). This paper is fun because I got to read up on the history of HIV/AIDS with a particular eye to the definition of the disease and the medicalization of related behaviors and things. It's also about the meanings of things to people, so with respect to the just-released findings about male circumcision reducing the risk of HIV transmission rather dramatically, I wrote in my paper, "With these latest findings, circumcision may become a standard medical practice worldwide, and the implications for how that alters the meaning of men's genitalia, either circumcised or uncircumcised, will be an interesting research question from a symbolic interactionist perspective, especially given level of meaning already associated with sex organs in most cultures."

I mean, really, does it mean that penis is dirty in its unaltered state? It probably won't take on that meaning, because that's too much like how women are made to feel about their bodies. But its funny to ponder.

I'm at that stage where I'm wondering whether to a) go to bed now, get up early enouigh to be sure I finish the paper on time or b) try to crank out more, get up later.

<1455>

So tired, I'm gonna die. Have to finish this paper for my advisor (and I hope that's the last I have to see of it), and then I have to write another paper for Friday.

Oh yeah, and readings for my class tomorrow. Booooo.

<2232>

Ugh, I've been so effing unbelievably swamped. Friday I did manage to go to happy hour and then poker with the HSR folks. Good times, and I introduced comedy by declaring that "Ahm street, bitch," while wielding a wine bottle opener. I managed to stay up all night, and I've learned when to fold, having pondered probability a little more. Of course, now I need to learn to play the psychology of bluffing a lot better, because if I ever start betting, people start folding because they know I must have something.

I managed to be somewhat productive this weekend, but not nearly as much as needed. Last night some of the cohort went to the SPCA and then we had dinner, and we were all loopy as fuck. I got home and my advisor had emailed to say to call him. He had to cancel our meeting (after numerous reschedulings the day before), but he wanted to know what was up, and it turns out I got to pawn the analysis off onto him because I don't know how to make SPSS do anything. Woot! So, now I just need to get this introduction and some methods and a table done and it's totally managable if I could just *do* it. I had to get this problem set done tonight, though, and it took 10x longer than it should have, as always. I also have a paper for Peg's class due Friday. Stress!

The term ends tomorrow, how is it I have so much work after that!

<2300>

I ditched class yesterday, once I woke up tired and remembered that 1) stats was a review day, which I always get nothing from; and 2) I was planning to leave Soc early anyway to go to DC. So I bummed. Then I went to DC, 1/2 hour later than desired due to the fucking 4:30 shuttle never arriving. There was a serious mob of riled up people, I tell ya. This is what I get for being a good citizen and using all public transit instead of partly driving.

Anyhoo, I got there, chilled with Dave and Court for a while. Then I migrated to the back where, to my surprise, there were actually people I knew there! Even folks I like! Oh, if I didn't explain, thes folks being DC area alums from my high school. Yes, my high school has enough alums not in ABQ to have several decent size chapters around the country, and now I think 3 on the east coast. Anyhoo, it was cool to see folks.

I chatted with peeps so long I missed the 8:30 train, so I wandered about, then parked at Uno's to watch baseball until the 10:30 train. This guy sat down, a class of '52 grad from BU, retired professor, and African American, so we talked about gentrification and race in Boston and DC. He was awesome.

Chatted with my sister on the train until my phone died. She was entertained by me being at an alumni thingy.

Today I had to go in to school early, which sucked, but it was for our new student group for the department, so someone had to represent for the full 2 hours. There were free muffins and coffee, though, so at least that was okay. I did some work after that, went to seminar, which was a great presentation on photovoice in youth from one of the cool 1st/2nd years. Then I went back to the cafe to work some more, and when I bought a water the guy behind the counter said, "You're like the dean of this place," since I live there now. Hey, I don't have an office, and it's way better than trekking up to the main building or going to the, god forbid, library on the 9th floor.

After trying to make SPSS work and failing, I met up with Roxanne for some Brewer's Art. I love that place. The upper floor has this very chich look, so it's kinda like good old H in it's stuffiness, and yet it's worn down enough to be like fading Gatsby classiness. And cozy, and it has microbrews. Really, if they banned smoking in the whole place, it would be glorious, and I would become the dean of there instead.

Now I need to sleep.

<0119>

Gaaaaaaahhh! Why do dumb people always have to come in and wreck the whole conversation with their stupid bullshit!

Okay, sleep.

<0144>

It would be awesome if I could sleep.

I want to karaoke.

Today I once again accomplished very little. I went to a useful meeting. I read a couple of articles before class. I read one article this evening. Other than that, NYT and Salon. Can I just find some line of work where I could read internet news all day? Then I could spout forth the grand ideas that come as a result of all the information I take in, without having to do the grunt work.

I have such plans to fit in both 4 hours of work and 3 hours of working on that paper tomorrow. Beh, I should forget about the work, this paper needs all the time it can get.

I need to get out of this cycle of being too tired in the morning to exercise, too bleh all day to focus, and too awake at night to sleep (but still too bleh to be productive). Is this what Ritalin does? I was reading about Mayor Bloomberg today, and how he goes out to dinner parties and knocks back several beverages, but has no problem getting up at 5:30 to run on the treadmill and get into work by 7:15. Clearly, this energy comes from some crack that he's not sharing.

I do think I n arrowed down courses for next term. I'll suffer the second half of psychostats (which I think will actually be useful, and entirely tolerable if it's like the first half, which has been often confusing, but fairly resolved by the end), and I'll take an online course on HIV/AIDS that seems to be a nice flexible time committment. I can watch the lectures whenever, and like 40% of the grade is based on bulletin board posting and live chats.

I've also been pondering dissertation lately. I think I'll have something useful enough to turn in a January NRSA, but I am really trying to leave open my options. I would like to do something that really interests me, and I wouldn't be heartbroken if I could do it not in Baltimore. Moving back to Boston would be great, but the cost might not work out... plus I haven't missed the cold exactly. But life would be a lot more interesting, which might actually get me to focus when I have to. Might. Home would be nice too, but there's less of an infrastructure there. It does seem like a bit of a waste not to use all the resources at Hopkins, but I'm not totally sure if I will anyway. I mean, I guess I am. It doesn't always feel that way.

Okay, tomorrow, I'm going to do all those stats. Then I gotta get a lit review written at some point. I can't believe we're actually going to try to get this paper in in two weeks...

<2334>

I'm in a weird place. Life is decent, solid, fairly good. I don't feel as productive as I should be, but that's not the end of the world. Things have been a ton worse. And yet, I just want to check out of my whole situation. I was watching Trading Spaces last night, and they were in Baltimore, and instead of being very excited, my first reaction was, OMG, I live in Baltimore! Manic despair kicked in (aided too much by Three Philosophers, which is another set of concerns, but anyway). I don't even hate Baltimore as much as I did a year ago, I have a car, I have friends. But it's still so not the life I loved. I can't figure out how to get to a really good place again.

And I so did not accomplish anything today. I met with the girls to compare problems sets (the only thing I did accomplish this weekend), and we got italian ice before the place closes for winter. Then I read the NYT like all friggin day. And M called, which was nice.

But other than that, I feel so unmotivated and tired all the time. Well, today I just felt like ass, but that's all my fault. Bleh.

<0148>

So, my advisor didn't think I suck, and he doesn't know anything about multinommial logistic regression, so he probably thought I was awesome for knowing something he didn't. He really should take a gander at the 4th term Biostats class, since he comes from a psych background. Anyhoo, he actually had a flash of brilliance to use this method called discriminant analysis, which sounded really cool. Only problem: I have to learn it, use it, and write the paper intro like, now. He was certain the paper would fit the study section just great (he's very involved with the conference, so I believe him), and he'll fill in the methods section and also make the paper tailored to fit the conference. Good.

So I need to work work work this weekend. I may bail on work entirely this week, seeing as my boss is in Honduras.

I went to happy hour, and with the tired and the lack of blood, I was really pretty drunk after. The shuttle home was kind of interesting, reminded me of a sleepy raunch bus with it being dark (so dark now at 7!), and me being tipsy. I took a nap from like 9-1, and I think I'm headed back to bed now.

<2301>

I've been so useless lately... I left work at two today, mostly because I really didn't have that much to do since my boss still hasn't read my paper, but also so I could get home and get to work on stuff for tomorrow. Instead I 1) went to the SPCA; 2) read the New York Times; 3) dabbled at the regressions until my head hurt; 4) watched Everybody Hates Chriss and then the last two eps of Six Feet, season 3 that came today. Haven't touched my proposal. I think the plan is to get up at 7 tomorrow and work on it before I leave. I'm such a slacker, I can't get focused on anything right now.

Although Theresa did make a good point when I was telling her of my various projects that I seem to be stuck working on my own on stuff I really should have more help with. I've done like no real regression ever, and now I'm trying to do a three-outcome logistic with about a million potential predictors. And I have no idea what question to even approach on the Honduras stuff. I hate secondary data analysis. So I feel like this huge slacker for not having done these regressions after 2 weeks, but I have sat down with them many times only to become rapidly very confused. So I hope my advisor will be helpful and not think I just suck. This is supposed to be for a paper due in two weeks, but I can't imagine that I can get that done (although it would help if I could do the friggin lit review I need to do for both the paper and my proposal). Also, I looked at the conference call for papers, and I'm really not sure how this paper relates so much to health communication. So I don't even know if it's worth trying to submit anyway.

Beh, I need a vacation.

<0146>

I had a good evening. Just chilling and watching TV, as Tuesdays have tended to be, but the relaxation was much needed, and being around a totally different group of folks helps me put aside the rest of my life a bit.

And I can go to sleep feeling resolved.

<0910>

I work myself into being misunderstood, I suppose. I'm not complaining, I wouldn't have my personality or my life be inscrutable. It's hard to press in the direction I know is right, is all. I will press on. It's a matter of willing it so, willing life to be better and better.

<1245>

I've just felt like throwing up all day. The weather is shitty, my blood is boiling (and I'm trying to put a lid on it, right? Except PV=nRT), and I just want to curl up in bed and never be awake.

<1308>

If I can toot my own horn for the moment, I've gotten a lot better at not escalating, but dissipating. At least for myself. I've had a lot more perspective, realizing that how I feel this very minute about someone isn't a real assessment of that person. If every little thing falls into the category of major Hurt and Disappointment, how do you weed out evil from good but human? And if you can throw respect for good people out the window just to let your pain lash out, you can never make anything better.

<1324>

1) I left the survey I'm working on at home; 2) My boss isn't here, but she's not on the absence list for the day, so maybe she's at lunch. Either way, we can't talk about the paper I wrote. And I do have a variable list and dataset for the new stuff, but I also have no good ideas about what to do with it.

<2230>

You are an asshole and a manipulative liar. Sometimes it's so refreshing just to remember that, to know it.

It's so funny how my life cleared up like a bad case of acne...

It's also nice to remember just how nice life got to be.

<1748>

Monogamy is a bitch.

Will there every be a time so wildly exciting ever again? The events those months just rolled one right into the other. The mania, excitement, the peak of the tale, the way it settled into contentment. The last great autumn I may ever know.

You know, I thought it would be summer that would break my heart. Days out on the deck, playing in the fields and out on the court, wandering on the weekends. But it's the cooling weather, weekends where I stay home and try to do homework, maybe go grocery shopping or to the SPCA, Saturdays where I check the scoreboards. It doesn't really matter, I'm getting too old anyway for the real excitement, but I'd never be too old to have something fun to do on Saturday, a tailgate with people I know, a game to watch, such a continuous part of wherever I've been.

Maybe I need to make more of an effort to make Saturdays worthwhile so I'm not sitting around feeling empty on Sunday.

<1824>

I decided it was high time to just book a flight for Penn weekend. If I end up having work due the next week, I'll just have to make it happen earlier. No sense in waiting until second term to book a flight (plus, I have vouchers, it's like $5).

<2043>

Oh, so I figured out today who the quintessential example of that annoying boy I was talking about yesterday is: David Brooks!

<2302>

Fast forwarding... I regret that we never really talked about the only truly earthshattering thing to come out all those words. You passed them off with all this "totally random and not important" cushion, it was hard for me to respond too explicitly. And then time passed, and we pretended they didn't exist, and everyone went on like nothing had happened, that revelation hadn't rung out across the wires. It explained so much, its reality was so present... and yet so slippery. It was so easy to slip into the status quo. If I go back and look again, though, that reality is still there, unspoken, undealt with, hidden from daily transactions and social relations.

<1513>

It's been raining like crazy here. I hit a less awful time to go to the Farmer's Market, which was good, because I needed milk anyway.

I got one of those Ethiopian sandwich things again, which the lady gave me for free because it was getting close to the end time, and I also bought some hot lentil sauce from her which I have been compulsively eating all day. It gives the same overall mouth hot pleasantness as chile.

Thanks to the crappy Red Sox, I have no other way to procrastinate today (not that I would anyway, given that this rain also seem to be in New England).

Speaking of terrible weather, I checked Ithaca's weather where the kiddies are, and it's not only raining up there, but it's also cold. And Harvard appears to be losing. Getting shut out, as a matter of fact.

I downloaded Firefox because I finally got fed up with how slowly Safari was running. I should probably get more memory, but the rest of the computer runs fine, it was just that Safari would creak to a halt with more than one tab open. Which is how I read the news, I open up all the articles in different tabs.

<1737>

There's a genre of boy (possibly Harvard boy, I can't say as I can think of examples outside of that) whose discussion style irks the hell out of me. It's like this combination of assertion based on living in a world stripped of inconvenient realities, condescension, faux agreeableness or flailing gestures of personal hurt when weakness in their assertions is confronted, and an overall smug asshole tone.

<1558>

Secondary data analysis bites ass. I can't think of anything interesting to do with this dataset. I don't know if that's because 1) there's nothing interesting to do with this dataset; 2) I don't know enough to be able to think of anything novel and interesting to do with this dataset; 3) I'm not innovative enough to extract the clearly interesting thing to do with this dataset. Poo. I'm stuck here for another hour and a half with no idea where to go with things.

Then I have to go home and write an ass paper!

I emailed my advisor to cancel our meeting tomorrow morning, sicne even if I finish the ass paper tonight, I still won't really have done any of the regressions I wanted to finish. I got an auto-reply saying that he would be out of the office today and tomorrow, which makes me think our meeting was already cancelled by absent-minded default. If that's the case, I woulda been pretty irked tomorrow morning.

I need a nap.

<1354>

I saw this photo of Harriet Miers when she was young, and she was very pretty. It gives me hope that all those pretty girls will end up as big eye-liner overusing uggos someday.

Paper writing boooo.

<1130>

Is it wrong to feel glee at how mad the right is about Harriet Miers?

I came into work today and told my boss that I had a draft done of the paper. Which is true! I read through it one more time, and it's actually rather complete. So I emailed it to her to look over this weekend, and now I have a new dataset to play with! This will make getting hours in easier, because playing with data is time consuming and far less awful than writing.

<1525>

People who think everything is about them are SO ANNOYING.

<1840>

So many commercials offend me while I watch sports -- the way so many of them play on this stereotype of the man who wants to watch sports dealing with the naggy sports-hating wife/girlfriend, the way fans are always portrayed as men -- that I have to point out when one makes me happy. MLB has this commercial with two die-hard Red Sox fans -- WOMEN! -- and they're not any different than any other gaga fan, with the exception of saying the Red Sox are part of their sisterhood, which is just awesome. So, mad props to MLB, and I hope other marketers follow suit and remember that women are watching sports and it doesn't make sense to offend them left and right.

<2138>

Why Macs are amazing #57: for some reason the keyboard stopped working in Finder, which is kinda like Explorer. But when things break in Explorer, the whole computer breaks. When things break in Finder, a mere relaunch is required, with no effect on anything else at all.

<1240>

I wish my bed wasn't the best place in the whole world. The perfect temperature, all snuggly, sleepy goodness. I stayed there 3 hours longer than I was supposed to, wrecking another productive day, to be sure.

<1711>

My old AIM screenname is back! In an attempt to get rid of some annoying boys from OKCupid, I decided to see if I could use it, and it worked! I like the old sn a million times better anyway, so, hooray!

I also deleted my OKCupid account. I don't have time for annoying boys. I barely have time for decent boys.

Watching the Red Sox makes me want to go to Boston next weekend, even though the kids will be off to Cornell much of the weekend. Two years ago that was actually a fun crusty weekend watching a playoff game down by BU, the one where Pedro tossed the old man.