I'm glad weeks don't end on Thursdays.

We're leaving again for Key Largo on Sunday (at 5am!) to tear down an old experiment. 9 people in 2 vehicles and in a 2-bedroom apartment. I need some serious prayer for sanity and good relationships with people because that is not an all-encompassing definition of "environment where I do not thrive", but it is certainly close. I'll also be more tired than most of them because - hooray!! - my advisor's letting me finish up some work there that I started last year, so I can work on wrapping that up and publishing it and it should end up being a thesis chapter. I'm very much looking forward to finishing something for once with my research.

It's been a long week, and I'm exhausted (I think I've been in the lab past 11pm at least 3-4 out of the last 14 days? And lots of things going wrong), but I should be ready to go on this trip, and it's Friday, which means I need to find things to rejoice about.

1) I made a sweet penetrometer yesterday with the help of a friend in mechanical engineering. I can't find any pictures online, but it's basically a tool to measure leaf "toughness" (not a physicist's "toughness"...it's a combination of a few forces...if done better could measure real forces), made of two plates bolted together with a leaf sandwiched in the middle. There's a small hole going through the middle of the two plates over which the leaf is centered. You take a cup with a needle glued perpindicular to the bottom (cup faces up, needle faces down), put it in the hole resting on the leaf, then fill it with water, sand, (in my case, lead shot) until the needle pierces through the leaf. So it's a relative measure of "how hard is it to pierce the leaf. Using this for my research. Made it out of thick plexiglas plates I ordered, and a friend helped me drill it out. It's about the most professional-looking penetrometer I've seen (though I've admittedly seen few simple ones like this), and the see through plexiglas looks awesome with a leaf/seaweed in it and at angles things look all distorted and it's just great.

2) Women's Bible study started again. Though I won't get to go as much as I'd like, I'm very excited to have community and study again where I feel safe and fed.

3) I'm super thankful for labmates who offer to help me even though my head's spinning so fast I can't think and probably am not pleasant to be around, there's no reason for them to help me, and I'm not even around for the helping (I had to go to Bible study and someone offered to pack for the trip for me and watched one of my chemical things I had going on, and then someone who was going to Home Depot found things I needed but didn't even know exactly what I was looking for). It's very calming and a good foundation for good relationships on a stressful trip (reminds me that I can't be judgmental & tired & grouchy all the time because it's never warranted).

4) This week was stressful because I didn't know if I'd even have the permit necessary to do my work in Florida; finally found out this afternoon that it'll likely come in early next week. This is very good news.

5) My old roommate is back in town for a brief visit. Huzzah!! I'm really enjoying hanging out with her.

Not-quite-Friday-5

I haven't posted on here in a looong, looong, time. I don't know that anyone will even read this now - If someone posts anew on the internet, and no one's around to see it, does it even exist? But I'm going to pretend, for a few weeks at least.

The last year+ has been insane. Lots of travel & lots of work, mixed with passing my qualifying exams and some good but tough spiritual refining, though more in the midst of the latter (and therefore feeling backsliding) than seeing its end product.

But that's not the point of this post. Talking to a dear friend earlier this week reminded me that my perspective (& relationship with the God who's more in control & loving than I think) will likely improve if I start focusing on "what's going good" instead of what's going poorly. She also does this Friday Fave Five thing (http://www.jaeyde.blogspot.com/) and I'm thinking maybe it'd be a good thing to start as well, so I HAVE to look for good things throughout the week. Though I may not stick to Fridays, 'cause, well...I don't want to today.

So the good things from this week:

1. The most AMAZING honeydew melon I've ever eaten. Oh. my. goodness. Honeydew's usually the kinda bland, overly sweet, unsettling-'cause-it's-green melon that's only used in fruit salads and Bath & Body Works products. But this week the grocery store had King of the West Honeydews on sale, and I'd even put off eating it for a few days because I wasn't super excited, but I had some tonight and it was deeeeeelicious. Best melon I've ever eaten, the first time in quite a while that I've really really really enjoyed what I was eating (probably first time since papaya + lime in Fiji). So good, I wish I could post some on here that you could taste.

2. I got to hang out with friends a bit this week; lunch with a friend from church, and then today taking a semi-boring research ethics course with friends from the department (mandatory course). It was nice with the friend from church to find she's struggling in some of the same ways with connecting at our church, and just talk in a meaningful way with someone here in Atlanta. Meaningful conversation seems hard to come by, though occassional phone calls with college/camp friends helps that a lot. And then hanging out with friends today (& tomorrow) during class helped with a bit of the loneliness I've been dealing with lately post-Fiji.

3. Because I was sitting still in a very chilly classroom today, I got to wear jeans and my purple high-top chucks. Just a little it-made-my-day thing :)

4. Similarly, it's been slightly cooler the last couple of days because the sun's been hiding a little bit more. So nice! Can't wait for good sleeping weather in a month!

5. My parents are awesome. A problem came up last night with roommate logistics (not terrible in and of itself...but the last straw of a pile of small things that have been breaking me down lately)...and my parents fielded a very tearful phone call home, helped me think things through a little and calm down, and offered to help with it however they could. I feel a little stupid being not-totally-independent at my age...but I'm very thankful for how great my parents are. There may be a feasible solution to this problem, too, at least in the short term...we'll see.

That's 5! Maybe tomorrow God will give me a cool bug to play with to round out the week :) (here's hoping!)

oof

The semester's done - I've officially survived my first (academic) year of grad school (not counting the summer yet) - yay! It was a somewhat arduous semester, anyway, so I'm glad it's done. The last couple weeks without classes haven't been much better in terms of busyness - it's a scramble to get everything done before we leave for the field season.

Speaking of which, in about 6 days from now, I'll be leaving for Key Largo for a month to help another grad student on their project. This project involves SCUBA and slugs - score! I'm excited, albeit a little frantic with finishing projets and packing and taking care of paperwork before I go. Please pray for sanity and serenity and that everything will get taken care of. Also please pray for a close relationship with God while I'm away because I likely won't have a chance to go to work. I may be out of contact during this time as well, so if I don't respond to you promptly during that time, that's why.

ouch

People make fun of me because of how cautious I am. Please note, I'm lots better than I used to be, and take more risks now.

However

Given the rate at which I hurt myself now, despite being careful, I can only imagine (and shudder at) how often I'd be injured and how large my ER bill would be if I was less careful. I'm just too accident-prone; I even wrote a poem as a freshman in college about how accident-prone I was.

Usually it's just bruises and bumps of whose origin I haven't got the foggiest (e.g., Africa). Others, I know exactly what happened (e.g., Humphrey and Morpheus). Often, it's walking into a door frame or skinning my knuckles on the cheese grater or smacking my head on a cabinet. Sometimes it's just weird...like the iron imprinted onto my arm, or the scars from a lizard biting me. Yesterday's less-than-intelligent case in point: I sa-MASHED my thumb opening our living room window (it's hard to explain how without a visual of the window; just know it took a pretty hard pinch/hit, enough to put an ice pack on it). I'd probably have broken it had I hit it nearer to the joint. It hurts a lot now (and has already started turning pretty colors, that will likely be a rainbow in a week or so).

Anyway, you can make fun of me for being cautious if you want - but I've got reason.

A week of small happinesses

It's spring break, which means I don't have to teach or hand in homework. I've never been so stoked about spring break before, possibly because I've now gone two years without it. It's wonderful - less work, and more time sleeping. My roommate and I did no work all weekend. So, having less book work/studying (although I need to do lots between now and Monday), this week has permitted small things that have made me happier:

- Going swimming!

- Cooking corned beef and cabbage on Sunday, like a good 1/16 Irish girl. It turned out quite well, and I have enough to feed an army.

- Watching "the gods must be crazy" Sunday night. VERY funny; that actor is a master of slapstick.

- Making corned beef & cabbage spirals Monday night (an invention/adaptation of mine) and...

- making my favoritest Mel - & - Mom sugar cookies (I'd say Heckman family, but she's Shelton-Heckman, and it just gets complicated). They're my favorite cookies ever, and I got to make them again for the first time in ages - using a snail cookie cutter, none the less!

- Wearing my hair in pigtails & a bandana Monday, with a fleece and chacos. It was camp chic, and I felt so much more like myself than I do in most other clothes.

- Biking with a friend from church Tuesday morning, out to Decatur and back. It was nice to go long enough to actually use all my gears, and not have to stop at a light every block. Of course, the time with a friend was wonderful, too.

- Sleeping in, did I mention that?

- This Saturday, I should be headed to Rita's for some free wooder ice!

art intersecting life

Sometimes art captures life better than I can. Here's what I've been dwelling with lately. All are YouTube links because it's just easier and openly accessible.


"Resistor", by Brave Saint Saturn

Of late, this song has been a cautionary tale about where I might end up if I try to do everything myself, a truthful depiction of where I feel like things often are here, but also a reassuring picture of the community around me.


"The Guy That Says Goodbye to You" by Griffin House

A dear friend sent this to me a couple weeks ago, after hearing about some things that happened in February. I'm used to getting this sentiment as reassurance from friends (the standard "he doesn't know what he's missing, you're great", etc. etc. - clearly that never sunk in for me as something I believed). It's something I've struggled with even believing for God's view of me. But somehow...somehow...the chorus of this song finally drove it heart-home. Helped a lot that week.


"I Remember" by Griffin House

I started listening to more of Griffin House's music, and I really really like it. This one just kinda captures how torn I feel between honoring the men who have fought and are fighting and are laying down their lives to protect me, and what Christ would think of war.


"The Mollusk" by Ween

Ok, this is not a song I resonate with. But my officemate showed it to me and, surprise, I liked it a lot. Too bad there aren't more songs about mollusks.

As for how life is...February was rough. I'm glad it's over. And next week is spring break - no homework due!! WUHOO!

many many things

Again, I haven't posted in a while. Such is grad school life, it seems, and it saddens me. But I'm giving up TV for Lent (clearly haven't made good on the last post), so...I should be speaking or writing to you personally soon.

Things with school haven't been very good, this semester, academically at least (socially is fine, which is a change). I had my first exam in 3 years this past Friday (since I've been out of school, and since I had none first semester). I did not study well at all, but hopefully it went ok. I think I still have retained my studying efficiency that I had somehow developed my senior year...i.e., I think God's got my back during exams & studying, because it's not me. I have two more exams this week. I probably should be studying instead of writing, but I feel this is too long overdue. I'm still frustrated because I don't feel like I'm being offered the courses I need to get the education I want - the school discontinued most of the courses they had advertised, and upon which I had accepted a position here, because the special grant funding those courses had run out.

The research project I was working on and which had gone well first semester tanked in January. I was just supposed to run one little experiment - what my previous work had been driving at - and ran into a million little issues, and it just didn't work. Frustrating. Then my other advisor, with whom I'd been planning another project, decided it was going to be too much work to get the fish he'd recommended. So, another project idea got thrown around last week...which we again have none of the materials or test animals for...so who knows. This also feels frustrating because I feel like I'm going to be far behind in my research, as I'm still doing none of my own and, right now, likely won't get another project off the ground this semester.

Teaching, at least, is going fine.

I've joined my church here, which is great...but it's going through a lot of changes because it's growing. I think I've turned into a bit of a commitment-phobe with all of my moving around and not being settled.

This has also played out in discouragement with small groups - I've been here since August, and still haven't found a small group Bible study. And I think the problem is that I'm looking for "small group" and "inductive Bible study." Many small groups just talk, no study...and the ones that do study, I have a hard time with the study.

I know that inductive Bible study isn't "the right way" to study the Bible, but it's what I'm used to, and I do find many merits to it (and faults with other ways of studying). One is that it levels the playing field and is welcoming of seekers, new Christians, and long-term Christians, because no knowledge (except maybe a historical background and Strong's concordance/word meanings) are brought in. Here in Atl, conversation usually devolves into much discussion of theological concepts and traditional church question/lessons. I'll be honest, even though I've known Jesus for 5 years and kindasorta went to church, all of it still makes me feel like an outsider, because I'm not well-versed in it. I don't even really want to imagine what it would be like to a new Christian, to go to one of those studies. And so with truly inductive study, both seekers and new Christians and long-standing ones can engage meaningfully with the Word, regardless of background knowledge.

And, secondly, I don't think Bible study is the place for our theological opinions. I find there to be something far more humble, supplicating, and honest about coming to the text and asking God to speak to us, rather than us coming to the text and telling each other and God what we think it means and how we relate to it. I'm pretty post-modern...but the (pre-modernity? modernity? pre-post-modernity, at any rate) of inductive study, the reliance on what's there instead of what I think...is so refreshing and revealing. I get out of my head and into the Word, out of my own head and into the Godhead, to truly listen and meet with Him. If all we do is sit around and ask "what do we think about this passage and how does it relate to us?", we're essentially studying ourselves, and not the Lord who wrote it.

I don't get this hung-up about studies that aren't directly focused on the Word, although I do have issues with some doctrine that exists based on logic or to fill a purpose, rather than being drawn directly from God. But it matters to me that we study the Word in a way in which we can actually hear from God.

In short, I miss PennIV. I miss Superblock and JamPakt, in all of our brooding self-awareness and oddities. I miss the community, and the closeness, and the ability to share...and the deep listening to God's word. I miss our Monday night Bible-study planning meetings so so very much.

And I miss camp, where I was free to be myself...a condition I'm finding much easier at work than at church, because I'm around the folks at work more, and that duality and sense of repression saddens me. I miss being not-quiet and making dumb jokes and playing with snails and being organized and people understanding and loving that, and having that same reciprocal relationship with everyone else.

I miss lots of people and social and religious concepts/themes/traditions/whathaveyou.

the end for today.