Birds, trains, and happenstances...

It sounds like a bird is nesting somewhere above my ceiling. Either that or it could be some type of rodent. I choose to think it's a bird. On the other hand, that could be the source of that occasional skunk smell we've been noticing... :)

Yesterday I was going home from school and I sent my roommate a text message asking "when are you coming home?" Shortly thereafter, I got on the train. It was extremely crowded, but I actually found a place to sit, and sat. Sometime later I noticed she had replied to my message saying "now." I wrote back: "yay! I am still on the train..." As the train approached my stop, it became more and more empty, and suddenly I heard my name being called (rather loudly) from the front part of the train. I looked up, and it was my roommate!!! We had totally been sitting there texting each other when we were literally within earshot. What a crazy random happenstance! It made my whole day.

Never doubt (reprise)

In the strictest sense, stars really aren't "fire." Trust me, I'm an astronomer.

Also, the sun doesn't move, the Earth moves around the sun, so it only looks like the sun is moving.

As a wise man once said, many of the "truths" we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view...

But, I'm still in love. Moreso than I could have ever imagined.

Never doubt...

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

--Hamlet

I can't belive...

... that I've "backpacked Europe"!
... that I've actually seen Stonehenge up close and personal!
... that "Tian" gives me the time of day!
... that my university actually gives me money!
... that I'm going to be an aunt soon!
... it's not butter!
... I live here!
... how crappy the green line is!
... how lucky I am even though I don't deserve it.
... how hard this Space Physics homework is!

Writing applications...

it is any wonder the word deadlines contains the word dead...?

"Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile."

--Elizabeth Browning

and the winner is...

Today will forever go down in history as the day I won a Red Sox T-shirt! yay!!!

A day in the life of JM

7:13 am: cell phone alarm goes off; hit snooze
7:14 am: drift off wondering just how big of a natural disaster it would take for classes to be canceled
7:22 am: alarm goes off again; turn it off
7:23 am: decide it's too cold to get out of bed, pick up my laptop instead to reply to all the emails I've gotten during the night... accidentally lean on my phone with my elbow and somehow manage to call my brother. it's 5:23 am for him. oops.
7:29 am: decide that neither Special Offers from Zions Bank, Overstock.com, Kayak Buzz Daily Alert, nor CNN Breaking News necessitate a reply
7:30 am: check MSN to see if various friends are online. Say hi. practice Danish.
7:47 am: get out of bed, say hi to roommates, eat breakfast
7:55 am: fail to convince myself I don't need a shower. take shower.
8:05 am: get ready to go, practice making faces in the mirror
8:25 am: realize all my roommates are gone already. skip around the house singing Broadway songs in various fake accents. pause for a dramatic rendition of "The Raven"
8:30 am: make lunch, pack backpack
8:40 am: leave to catch train
8:44 am: arrive at train stop just soon enough to see train leaving before I can reach it. wait for next train.
9:20 am: arrive at school
9:22 am: search the web to find out who played Mr. Magorium
9:23 am: email professor "It was Dustin Hoffman! I can't believe we couldn't remember that!"
9:30 am: class
11:00 am: 'nother class
12:00 pm: return to office (starving!), eat lunch, wish I had packed more lunch
12:05 pm: do RP homework frantically to get it done by class at 2:30
2:29 pm: finish scribbling some unintelligible answers, staple homework, run to class
2:30 pm: class
2:32 pm: get last homework assignment back (graded)
2:33 pm: crack up laughing due to professor's witty responses to my equally witty (and occasionally snide) commentary in homework
2:33:30 pm: stop laughing upon realization that laughter is not a normal response to looking at graded homework, and my classmates are now looking at me funny and shifting their chairs away from me
2:34 pm: remember a new danish word I learned, "hen", which my book claims "has no equivalent in modern English, but indicates movement away from the speaker"... wish English had an equivalent. decide to make one.
3:00 pm: nap
3:20 pm: realize class is not the best place for a nap... try to look interested. write to-do list in my notebook so it looks like I'm taking notes.
4:00 pm: back to office. wish I had brought more cookies. start working on homework.
4:17 pm: friend asks what I'm doing on Google Talk
4:18 pm: watch a youtube video
4:27 pm: exclaim "hence! English does have an equivalent!!!"
4:45 pm: start to get ready to teach lab
4:50 pm: set up lab
5:00 pm: teach lab
6:30 pm: kick remaining student out of lab, return to office
.
.
.


... to be continued because I'm sick of writing this now :)

"The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life."

--Sir Hugh Walpole

When to say when

I'm in grad school. The first semester of a PhD program. It feels more like a hazing than a semester, to be honest. Basically we were told when we started to kiss our social lives and hobbies goodbye, at least for this first semester. Between class and studying and teaching and grading (oh the joys of being a TA...) there isn't much time left for oh, say, archery, soccer, hiking, reading--you know, those things my former self used to enjoy. Heck, I barely have time for eating some days. And sleep is a luxury.

Today I was talking to my brother--also a grad student--about it. He said that he has basically decided that he can't be a grad student if he has to trade in his soul to do it. I agree. This doesn't mean that I plan to quit school, but it does mean that I might not be getting all As. I might not be turning in all the homework assignments perfectly finished. I will not be pulling countless all-nighters and living in my office. I will be having a life, doing things that I enjoy, and I will know when to call it quits, close the book, and go home (or go to bed, or go outside, or go feed ducks, whatever the case may be). At least that's the plan. I've realized that when I'm in school I usually let school become the top of my list of priorities, to the exclusion of all else, and thus everything else slides when there is school work to be done or a test to study for. Part of this is because I love what I study, but part of it is probably because I'm an over-achiever and I'm not good at prioritizing. I'm going to work on that. I'm getting too old to put everything off "until I graduate." I put off going to Denmark until I graduated with my bachelor's degree, and though it worked out good in the end (wink), now that I have lived there, I'm a little frustrated that it took me so long to do it.

Now I'm headed home to get some homework done. :P (Hey, I still have to do some work here...)

"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."

--Alexander Smith

Zzzzz...

Today I fell asleep in class. (Sadly enough, this is actually not all that unusual.) My professor was explaining to us how to use a certain website with some applications that apparently he developed--so of course that makes them highly important--so he felt the need to wake me up. In front of the whole class. Good times. People laughed, so I guess it was actually good that I was able to bring a bit of joy to someone's day... :P

"I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal."

--Vita Sackville-West

We Can Do It!

or, "Why I don't like Rosie the Riveter"...

According to Wikipedia (which everyone knows is always correct), the woman depicted in this poster is not actually Rosie the Riveter at all, but she is commonly mistaken to be Rosie. (I actually thought this as well, until today.) For the sake of having an illustration to go with this post, I will do my part to further that misconception. :) I am actually talking about the entire Rosie the Riveter movement, rather than the actual person, anyway, so this poster works fine as a representation of that.

So... Rosie the Riveter is a widely recognized icon from the World War II era. She appeared in many films and posters which were used by the U.S. government to encourage women to go to work in support of the war effort. Prior to this time A woman's place is in the home was the norm, and few women worked. Those that did were employed in the few "female" occupations--teacher, secretary, nurse, etc.

However, following the United States' entry into World War II in 1941, millions of traditionally male jobs were left vacant by those who had gone off to fight. Suddenly, women's labor was urgently needed to help fill shortages created by the expanded wartime economy, especially in the production of military hardware. Because of this, the US government instituted a campaign to encourage women to enter the work force and fill these positions. These women who answered the government's call to work wore hard-hats and overalls and operated heavy machinery--they represented a radical departure from the traditional American feminine ideal of housewife and mother.

According to the Encyclopedia of American Economic History, the "Rosie the Riveter" movement increased the number of working American women by 57% from 1940 to 1944, to around 20 million. It is also estimated that the proportion of jobs that would be "acceptable" for women was raised by employers from 29 to 85%.

The above illustration depicts a woman wearing a handkerchief on her head in the traditional housewife style, contrasted by her work overalls, muscular arms, and stubbornly set expression on her face. It if often used as an icon for feminist groups, since it is believed by many that Rosie the Riveter opened up the workforce for women. This may or may not be true, I don't know enough about it to say. (There are other people that claim the whole thing was only temporary and that when the war ended most of the women lost their jobs and went back to their traditional roles from before the war.)

However, I will now explain the reasons I would never use this not-Rosie the Riveter poster as a feminist icon. I like her, she's cute, has nice arms, big muscles, and I admire her for still being feminine while working at a "male" job. I must say I can relate to her in that respect--a women in a predominately male-dominated field. However, I DON'T like that the whole campaign of Rosie the Riveter was began by the government to tell women they should be working. It's pretty obvious it wouldn't have happened were it not for the fact that there was no one else available to fill the jobs because they were all off fighting in the war. There was no "anything boys can do girls can do too" attitude, it was more of desperation. There was nothing "liberating" to women about this. It was simply another thing in which they were told what they could and couldn't do. You couldn't work in these man-jobs before, but now you can because we say you can. So do it. To me this is very very different than if a woman had chosen to enter a certain job on her own, and done so against whatever opposition she may have encountered, and succeeded to any degree. She would be much more of a feminist icon to me than Rosie.

Perhaps it is because I don't like being told what to do. I don't like the whole "you can't work!"... "ok, now you can work!"... and now, from feminists, I get the message that I should work. Being a mother/homemaker has reached the point now where it is almost looked down upon in society. I would rather have the option of doing what I feel is best.

Now I want to make sure it's clear that I mean no disrespect in any way to Rosie the Riveter or any of the women that began working though this movement. I admire them greatly for responding to the need of their country and stepping up to a challenge that probably seemed intimidating and scary. It must have taken a lot of guts and a lot of strength (I mean, those jobs were not easy! Riveting is not like knitting...).

I don't consider myself a feminist in the radical sense of the word, but I do get worked up about certain things sometimes. For instance, in class the other day our professor made mention of a historical female mathematician/physicist by the name of Emmy Noether. He asked if any of us had heard of her and a few of us nodded our heads. Pointing at a few of the girls in the class he said "she should be your hero! and yours!" etc. This kind of got on my nerves a little because I see no reason why her gender should automatically make her my hero. Yes, I respect her for all the hard work she did and the things she discovered. Yes I admire her for working extra had to succeed in a male-dominated field where she was often ignored, patronized, or looked down upon. But I don't think she should automatically be my hero just because we both happen to have two X chromsomes. There are other mathematicians and physicists whose work excites me more than hers, there are other areas of math and physics that I enjoy more than the area in which she worked. Yes, I admire her, but she is not my hero.

Now I've gone off on a slight tangent from the original point of this post, but I'll just end it with a variation on an idea I heard expressed by Kip Thorne. I would rather be known as a successful astronomer than as a successful female astronomer.

New old blog

I added some pictures and stuff to the sidebar of my blog, so all you pansies that are just reading the rss feed via Google Reader or something else, stop being lazy and come check it out in living color. ;)

Also, just FYI, I took off a bunch of the old posts because... I felt like it. So that's why I pretty much have no archives anymore. But don't worry, I'll be writing more.

Astronomy Quote of the Day

"3 out of every 2 stars are binaries."

I'm back!

I have returned after a 3-month long hiatus from blogging--not because I was having personal issues with blogging or anything, but simply because I haven't had the time. Life has been SO busy! It continues to be busy, but in the future I shall make the time to post here a little more frequently.

This weekend I will be on a camping trip in New Hampshire. I promise to take lots of pictures and post them upon my return.