They're also related because both involve big grey things

I don't have much to say, but I was quite amused by Dean Dad's very short play this morning.

Also (and this is only related in the sense that it involves cheering me up), it never occurred to me that I would just never even know if my full-spectrum light box was helping this winter. How do you know if you would have been happier anyway--or if you would have been much, much more miserable without it? I do know that I'm happier when it's actually on; I wish I could carry it with me. Man, do I miss the sun.

And that is the real reason why I will leave Portland, sad as it makes me.

I feel the earth move under my feet...

Yesterday at 6 PM there was a very minor earthquake in Portland. I was in the chemistry building at the time, and heard a bit of a rumble and all the ceiling tiles shook. My first instinct, after realizing that, no, the wind doesn't shake huge buildings like it does my house, was to get the hell out of there, but I decided to see if Brian, who I'd been talking to a minute earlier, was still around or had heard/felt it.

Brian and I were apparently the only people around; we debated whether it had been an earthquake (since the ceiling had shaken, but the floor's shaking was imperceptible) or an explosion in one of the biochemistry labs on the fourth floor. When we went upstairs to investigate, though, nobody was in any of the labs and all the lights were off, so we went over to Community Safety to find out if they had felt it, or if not, if they could please come over and look around. The dispatcher hadn't felt it, so I went on my merry way (I'd been on my way out anyway) and Brian went back to the building, promising to leave if it happened again.

I got home to a chorus of my roommates shouting, "Jenn! We had an earthquake!" They hadn't felt it, though, which was weird because it had only been twenty minutes since it had happened at this point--but the internet was already abuzz. I called the dispatcher and he said, "Google said there was an earthquake!" Oh, internet. You tell us all.

I started to get mildly annoyed that this had happened during my third attempt to get a scan of a certain sample of mine for my thesis. See, this scan would tell me if my results were at all reproducible. The machine is very carefully aligned, so an earthquake woul theoretically throw it off. The last two times I tried to run this scan, something weird happened once and the power went out the second time. I've been waiting for these results since early December, with considerable trepidation--if my pattern were significantly different from the last time I made this stuff it would mean basically all of my science was crap, and I'd have to spend the rest of the year trying to figure out how to make it at all reliable, rather than working on the problem at hand. I had considerable reason to doubt that I was coming up with reliably reproducible results, too, which I won't get into because it's even more boring than this is.

I went back an hour later to check on the pattern anyway, convinced the earthquake would have messed up my scan. It hadn't, however, and my powder pattern was there--and, at least upon first inspection, totally identical to the one for the same sample made earlier this year. Yes! Yes yes yes!

It's the small victories that really count. Especially when you don't know if you are going to win them.

Getting back into the swing of it

I've just finished the first week of my last semester as an undergraduate. It went much more smoothly this time. I'm not sure why it took so many semesters to finally get into the swing of things and recognize patterns and feel basically cavalier about the whole starting-new-classes thing. It's like how it took me until last spring to recognize that I always freak out in the second-to-last week of classes (which is also the week before my big concert), and it always turns out fine. Last spring I was able to say, "Okay, it's the week before my concert, and I'm freaking out. That means it will turn out fine."

For someone who claims she's intelligent based mainly on her ability to recognize patterns, I sure am bad at recognizing them in myself.

Outside of school, well... there hasn't been a lot. I've been tired a lot, going to bed early. I've been neglecting the friends I generally write to. I've been neglecting a lot of the friends I have to go out of my way to see. But it's the second semester of my thesis; it's not like they had no warning whatsoever. I'm not the sort of person who really misses having time to hang out with people when I'm working hard. It's not that I don't adore my friends, because I do. I'm pretty outgoing and all that, too, so I have a large friend base. I just enjoy having time to myself--I blame being an only child--and won't let my social life infringe on that.

My situation is pretty ideal right now. I have housemates I can hang out with--or not, if I'm feeling solitary. But I don't get that depressed feeling I sometimes do when there's no one around. I didn't get it in high school when I spent a lot of time alone, but then I moved into a dorm and I'm afraid I've been spoiled for living alone ever since. Living with four others (sorta five) is perfect. Especially when they're the amazing people I do live with. I am so lucky.

What am I going to do when I have to leave for grad school?

Around the neighborhood

I've been living a little over a mile from campus in my house for a year and three-quarters. For the first eight months or so that I lived here, I was ill a lot (this was before my priorities shifted to health--I'm now one of those boring people who will go to great lengths to avoid getting sick), so I never really walked anywhere, but once that was done I started walking to school and noticing the neighborhood a lot more.

I adore my street between home and school. Portland is so pretty--and living in a city is so different from living in the suburbs. People treat their homes and neighborhoods differently, and I like it. There's a different feel in general.

In the mile between here and school, there are lots of houses (single-family, duplexes, small apartment complexes...), more than ten restaurants, three churches, a 24-hour grocery store, a normal-hours grocery store, a liquor store, a gas station, two auto parts stores, several coffee shops, hair salons, bars, and banks, a movie rental place, two convenience stores, a hardware shop, two furniture stores, a dry cleaner, two realtors, a bike shop, and a lot of other stuff. We have so much we can walk to, and I only wish I could manage to explore it all. I adore familiarity with places, especially complex places like this. I love the affection that grows as you get to know a place.

(Some things we do not have within walking distance: a Wal-Mart, a Starbucks, or a McDonald's. In case you missed it above, we sure do live in Portland. I had never quite realized those last two--although they are building a Starbucks up a few major streets, and that'll be walking distance from campus. But I do feel good about our neighborhood.)

I think the entire point of this commentary was to say that the Catholic church seven blocks from my house is having a "Viva Las Vegas!" fundraiser. Uh, what? I love you Portland. I sort of love you, Catholicism, when you make me giggle instead of frown.