Sleepless in Seattle

I've been having some serious insomnia problems recently. It doesn't help that with no structure to my life and no commitments, I could easily stay in bed until 5pm. (I haven't! Yet.) Going to bed and waking up at reasonable hours is an exercise in discipline, which is a trait I'm not entirely sure I possess.

A lack of structure in my life generally makes my mental health take a turn for the worse (see: summer 2014). The first few days here in Seattle were very rough. We were sleeping on the floor, with no furniture, and nowhere to store our belongings strewn across the carpet. Most of our kitchen things were still being shipped by UPS. We were buying the necessities one trip to Target at a time. We had no internet. We had to carry everything up four flights of stairs to our apartment. We had to assemble all of the IKEA furniture. We had to go out and buy a mattress, then wait for it to be delivered. We needed sheets, aluminum foil, a shower curtain, bar stools, milk, pillows, a trash can with trash bags, etc etc etc.

Moving into our apartment in Urbana didn't seem so bad. We knew the area, my parents came down to help, the place was furnished so we had somewhere to sit when we were tired that wasn't the floor. But here, we knew no one and had very little. The apartment sort of built itself into a home in a very piecemeal fashion, and the process was painful and lonely. Yes, I say lonely! Even having Bryce with me! I can't explain it. Something about being across the country from everything you knew. Something about being in a place that is entirely foreign to you.

We've been here for almost three weeks now. Things are getting more familiar. I like the coffee shop just down the street. (The barista complimented me on my Janeway sweatshirt.) We've biked and walked to campus, and explored a little bit of the University District. We've been to Northgate, Fremont, and on Tuesday we decided to go downtown for happy hour sushi. We've tried local Thai, Pho, Indian/Pakistani, and even vegan pizza restaurants. (The cheese left something to be desired, but their fake chicken and the crust were both delicious.)

Money is also somewhat of a stressor, as we won't be paid until Oct 10th. But we have enough in savings to get by, as long as we don't eat out too often (which is so, SO HARD when you're surrounded by this many awesome-looking restaurants of all genres!! seriously I can't emphasize enough how hard it is, we could literally go to a different restaurant every night for weeks and still have new places to go; what I wouldn't give to be a millionaire with the metabolism of an Olympic athlete).

The weather is beautiful. The hottest day since we've been here was yesterday, and the high was 78! Ha! It has also only rained two or three days. The rest of the time, it's beautifully sunny. It seems like the sun is brighter here. Like, consistently-hurt-your-eyes kind of bright. I might be imagining it.

Our couch finally came yesterday! A cheap futon with a metal frame, from Walmart. We had been sitting in folding camping chairs to watch TV. This is much better. We've gone through almost four seasons of Fringe in just the time we've been here.

Only 11 days left until shit starts happening! Until then, we'll keep exploring. We have plans to go to the San Juan Islands next week!

My Skin Wants Me Dead

Soooo I have eczema. I had it when I was little, and then it went dormant until I was 20. I had a brief break from it throughout last summer, fall, and winter, and now it has emerged in a glorious flare-up to end all flare-ups.

To make matters worse, my family and I just spent 10 days in Disney World. My family takes Disney World very seriously. We are up at 6am, at the parks by 7:30, and first in line for the rope drop. Then we positively ravage the park, hitting every ride we possibly can (some of them multiple times), and depart just before dinner. Every day. We spent 10 hours at the Magic Kingdom.

For those of you unfamiliar with eczema, its mortal enemy is the sun. Despite spraying myself with a thick layer of sunscreen (that stung my eczema patches like CRAZY, EUGH), my skin decided it was offended at just the very notion of being exposed to sunlight for extended periods of time, and broke out in large evil rashes with bumps and scales and all other manner of despicable skin texture you could imagine. By the time I was on the airplane home, the dry air being pumped into the cabin made it feel like my arms and neck and eyelids were positively on fire.

So I am now in a state of permanent stickiness as I slather myself in steroid ointments I dug up (specifically, Clobetasol, for anyone interested) and copious amounts of Aquaphor. I've had to be careful not to touch my elbows to the couch cushions. They leave a sticky spot.

Sun exposure will continue to be a problem over the next month. Bryce and I are spending a week at his uncle's house on the Gulf coast in Galveston, TX, where we will spend a lot of our time on the beach. Same for our next vacation shortly after, where we go to Cape Cod and spend a lot of our time on the beach (or in Boston).

To that end, I have bought baby sunscreen. For my poor, baby skin.

We'll see how it goes. I'll be sure to post an update.

As a final note, my mother suggested going gluten-free. Super-skeptic that I am, I immediately balked at the thought. But perhaps I will try it, as scientifically as I can. Of course, it will be a single-subject, qualitative study. Not exactly journal-ready. But perhaps we'll try, once all of these vacations are over.

I am a vampire

Bryce and I opened a joint checking account with Chase! The banker was very nice and very funny. When we said we were moving to Seattle, he said something about the lack of sunlight there.

"Well, I'm a vampire," I deadpanned. "So it fits."

He looked at my super-pale arms and shook his head. "You know what? I would not be surprised at all."

Our debit cards for the joint account will come in the mail soon. It will be nice not to constantly be keeping track of who pays for what, and for how much. We're also considering getting a credit card to rack up mileage, attaching it to the joint account. Such adult. Very maturity.

I also went for a run with Amanda down at the park. It was a beautiful day. The sun is warm, but the wind is cool, and there were plenty of people at the park rollerblading, walking their dogs, and biking. I've been using the Nike+ app; it tracks you by GPS and keeps track of a bunch of data like splits, average pace, and the amount of miles you have on a certain pair of shoes. Love it. If any of you are on Nike+, hit me up!! I want friends on the app!

Graduation weekend was a blast. So many family members--we filled up a 14-person table at Buca di Beppo's. There was literally not a single meal I ate that weekend that wasn't a restaurant meal. I must have put on 10 pounds in those three days alone. We're still eating the leftovers, and it's Thursday!! So much for eating healthy over the summer.

I liked graduating. I'm not really sad one bit. I'm sad to be leaving the people I love so much, but not to be leaving undergrad. I was done. I checked out several months ago. It felt really good to be recognized for the grand accomplishment of obtaining a degree in physics. Really, really good. 10/10, would highly recommend. I love being done, and I love that I have a great career in grad school to look forward to, and I love that Bryce and I get to take the summer off in between. How fantastic is that?

Speaking of, I put our vacations into a monthly calendar and holy moly. We will be extrEEEmely busy for the next month and a half. And it's going to be fantastic.

First, the memorial day parade this weekend. Then, camping for three days at Kickapoo. Then Harry's graduation, then DISNEY WORLD. I am so ready.

Too Much Freedom

I've been struggling recently with my final essay projects. I have one for journalism, one for LAS, and one for French--and they all are "prompt-less." Take a subject we've discussed, use works we've read, write about something that's personally important to you while still being relevant to the course material. I'm about to explode.

They probably think they're doing us a favor by giving us this freedom to write about what we want to write about. The problem is, if I wrote about what I wanted to write about, it would be a blog post, not a formal essay. And especially not one in French.

My French essay went horribly. I switched topics three times, and still ended up with a thesis and essay that absolutely sucked AND I only got 2.5 pages out of it instead of the required 5. It's quite possible I will fail that class. But I'm struggling to care. My GPA is so locked-in that it would take quite a disaster for me to drop below a 3.5, and not officially acquiring a French minor isn't that big of a deal to me. No one cares about your minors anyway; they're kind of more for you than for your resume. And I definitely got a lot out of my French minor, regardless of whether or not it ends up on my transcript.

Happy Mother's Day to all!

Fellowship of the...Dog

I have a fellowship. A fellowship, that will allow me to live comfortably and do the research I want, as soon as I please. Bryce elbowed me today and joked that I would be the breadwinner in our relationship. I giggled.

What a wonderful thing! And this on the heels of our visit to Minnesota, where we found it to be better than we expected, but also pretty much exactly what we expected. Nice school. Nice place, despite the lattitude. But very urban. And it didn't have the hippie feel of Seattle, which we both really liked. And, for sure, the nature opportunities were not nearly as good.

There were more theoretical condensed matter physicists there, this is true. But there were enough at Seattle, plus the professors at UW who were doing experimental work that interested me. I actually just sent an email to one of them asking if she'd be the subject of my profile piece for science journalism class. I hope she says yes. I'd like to learn more about her research and see if it's something I'd like to do.

Of course, this fellowship frees me from teaching, which means I get to explore research a lot more. That'll be pretty cool. And that'll give me more time to resolve my experimental/theoretical doubts fairly quickly.

In the mean time, I'm still skipping several classes on the regular. Mostly stat and chem. Chem is just so easy--once you know the rules. So you have to learn the rules, practice the application, then: done. Easy. So I have an exam tomorrow, but I've been going over the practice problems and looking up concepts I don't recognize, and learning how to do the problems. Done! Easy!

Also, the arrival of this fellowship has come at a horrible time for my motivation. So now I've been accepted to graduate schools, have an awesome fellowship to accompany me, and yet still have to solve stupid precipitation problems??? Go to an 8am lab where the hardest part is measuring various volumes of liquids??? Euuuggghhhhh. Fuck that, y'all. I'll sleep in.

This fellowship will also give me a lot more time and money to devote to a dog...or a horse. Don't tell my mother.

The Future

I sit on a Peoria Charter shuttle, buckled in neatly and surrounded by napping companions, as the sky outside looks much, much, much too dark for 6pm. My laptop is the brightest thing in the shuttle. The driver never looks away from the road, the GPS screen to his right showing us to be a blue triangle moving slowly up Route 57. 70mph, of course, is not slow. But it feels like it.

Tomorrow morning I will be flying to Austin, Texas, for my first graduate school visit. I'm very excited. And nervous. And skeptical. And excited.

It hits me at certain moments how potentially important this visit is. Not that UT Austin is extremely high on my list--and Bryce hasn't yet been accepted there--but just that where I choose to go to graduate school will be a place I will stay for 6 years. It should feel like home. And 6 years is a lot of time for things to go very wrong. These visits, my only glimpses into what a place feels like rather than looks like, will probably be a central factor in my decision. After all, what good is going to a good school if you're absolutely miserable there?

Speaking of good schools, I got accepted to Cornell for graduate school this past week. (!!) My first choice, and a very prestigious place to get accepted. (Stanford rejected me today. But screw those guys, right?) I've had a couple of people ask if that's where I'll be going. I always replied, "Bryce hasn't been accepted there yet, so we're waiting to hear back." And everyone seemed pretty okay with that.

You know when you have arguments with people in your head? You imagine defending yourself, or one of your viewpoints, to someone who is patently wrong or accusatory? You stand in the shower imagining yourself on the O'Reilly Show, chewing Bill out on Islamaphobia and immigration issues. You imagine a conversation with one of your friends where you attempt to tell him how much he's changed, and not for the better. Will these dialogues ever happen? Eh. Maybe. (But even if they do, they often end up nothing like you imagined them.)

The argument I've been fighting with imaginary people in my head lately is defending my decision to only go to a graduate school where Bryce has also been accepted. If he does not get into Cornell, I will not go to Cornell. Is it my dream school? Yes. Does it have a good program? Yes. Are there professors I'd like to work with there? Yes. Is the stipend good? Yes.

Is any of this worth being separated from Bryce for years? No.

When I look back and consider exactly how much my priorities have changed in just a few short years... A few years ago I would have killed to go to Cornell. Now, my priorities just aren't oriented that way. Certain things come first (like my happiness). Certain people come first (like Bryce--significantly, directly related to my happiness). Thinking about graduate school in the grand scheme of my life, it's actually a very, very small part. I will have completed a bachelor's degree in physics from one of the top public university physics programs in the country. I've taken courses in journalism and french, been published in magazines, pierced my nose, run a half-marathon and a sprint triathlon, I've studied abroad, I've fallen in love and I've lived in an apartment for the first time. I've ridden more horses than I'd ever seen before coming to college, and I've made friends I never would have expected to know so well. I've developed as a leader and as a student, and am more self-aware about my abilities and potential than I have ever been before.

So: Cornell, or University of Washington?

In the grand scheme of things...the question seems almost silly.
(I'll still hold my breath for his Cornell acceptance. <3)

Midnight

Here I am, blogging from my phone in bed. It's dark, and Bryce is already asleep. (He always falls asleep immediately.) I don't quite feel sleepy yet. The wind comes in sudden bursts and makes the whole house rattle. I like it. Bad weather outside always makes the inside seem so much more cozy. So I am cozy.

But not sleepy. Sigh.

The Superbowl is silly. The web stream kept cutting out, but we weren't really paying attention anyway. Wait, the Patriots scored?? When did that happen? What? Interception? Huh? Anyway.

We did, however, hold to that great American tradition of eating crap while watching football. Domino's pizza is delicious.

Bryce is snoring quietly. It's very cute.

I am waking up very early tomorrow to run. Training for the half marathon sucks. I had forgotten how much it sucked. But still; I'm hoping once I get up to my former capacity, I can work on staying that way instead of falling off. I just have to tolerate these 6am wakeups until April. Just 11 more weeks!

6am wakeup. I should go to sleep. Forgive my pointless ramblings. I may delete this when I wake up.

Easy Habits for the New Year

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU!!
(I hate this phrase)

Feeling guilty about the fact you have no real New Year's Resolutions? 1) Please don't, since that whole thing can be kind of overrated and this is the favorite season of gyms and Jenny Craig exactly because people just sign up and give money and then never go back, so you're really not that far behind everybody else. And 2) here are some super-easy habits that I've picked up that have made my life better, and that are not very hard to stick to!

The trick is this: don't say you're going to cook fresh food for every meal this year because you won't. Don't say you're going to run three times every week because you won't. Don't say you'll go to sleep before 11pm every night because you won't. And then, once you fall off the train, you'll be so disappointed that you failed so early that you will never get back on.

So let's start small, shall we? Little things!