It never fails that I get the decluttering bug between the Fall and Winter semesters. You know, the sudden urge to wander around your house and get rid of the JUNK! I'm afraid that even with an 8-month sabbatical earlier this year, I did not manage to get around to decluttering the house (too busy) but now I just can't stand it anymore.

Here's the busynessgirl-style solution. First, make a list of every place in the house that needs decluttering. Each item on the list can take no more than one hour, so if there are particularly bad spots, you'll have to break them down into "bite-sized" chunks. For example "declutter loft" would take 4-6 hours. This got broken down into:

1. Loft clothes closet
2. Loft linen closet
3. Dresser drawers in loft bedroom
4. Surfaces and shelves in loft bedroom
5. Bathroom closet in loft
6. Desk drawers in loft

Walk through every room of your house until you're sure you've listed EVERYTHING (even the drawers of that incredibly daunting file cabinet, one at a time).

Write each item on the list on a scrap of paper (or print the list and cut each item out separately). Put all the paper scraps in a jar, hat, or box.



Every day Joel and I pull out ONE item and deal with it (no matter how bad it is). We approach the offending location with a garbage bag and a box for Goodwill. So far we've decluttered the couch in Joel's office, a strange little room in our garage, the bathroom closets, and the bedroom closet. It's a great feeling to just deal with the clutter in a manageable and systematic way. It's also really interesting to see what you find! For example, I found all the Christmas presents I bought in India earlier this year that I had forgotten about.

After a truly crazy 2009, I decided to take an end-of-the-year mental reboot. Joel and I traipsed off to Punta Cana (in the Dominican Republic) for five nights. We participated in one excursion while we were there (dune buggy ride, see pic below).


This is my proof that Joel did actually dip his toes in the Ocean.


Otherwise, I spent five days reading for fun (in the sun), while drinking Caribbean cocktails, with one of two views. Just for the record, these are not just feet with some photoshopped views in the background.

View #1: The Beach


View #2: The Pool


I am pleased to report that I accomplished two things on this trip. First, I read the entire Sookie Stackhouse "Southern Vampire" series from start to finish. Second, I achieved Silver Medallion status on Northwest/Delta airlines (which I will get to keep for 2010).

This will come in handy, since I already have trips booked to El Paso TX, Scottsdale AZ, Austin TX, Indianapolis IN, Oklahoma City OK, Boston MA, Houston TX, Chicago IL, Washington DC, Dallas TX, and Sedona AZ.

I just noticed that it's been almost a month since I posted last. Here are some updates.

First, I got quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal! That was pretty cool!

• New Search Engine WolframAlpha Has Mathematicians Hypothesizing (MAA Math in the News, 6/22/09)
• Sum Help: New Search Engine for Mathletes (The Wall Street Journal, 6/16/09)
• Wolfram Alpha, A New Online Computation Engine Shakes Up Math (The Numbers Guy Blog, 6/16/09)
• A Calculating Website Could Ignite New ‘Math Wars’ (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6/12/09)

Second, two of my dear friends from High School came out for a visit. Brian is here for a month and Jesse was here for a little over a week. It's been so much fun to reconnect with them and amazing how quickly we can just pick up where we left off.



Also, we had to celebrate my 35th birthday (they all turned 35 earlier this year), so much fun and many bonfires ensued.



Brian's been helping us make some progress on house projects that have languished for too long and we're grateful that he had the time to come out here. Joel has been working really long hours at work for a while now, and it's hard to make good progress on house projects when both of us are so busy all the time.



Finally, I am pleased to report that I have finally finished the horrid Literature Review (Chapter 2 of my Disseration), at least it is completely drafted and off to my advisor. Jesse was a great help towards the end as he volunteered to read the whole paper from beginning to end to help me figure out what was missing.


From start to now, I've spent 282 hours working on my dissertation. Now on to Chapter 3 ...

In the last week I found out that Halley is dying (bone cancer) and I was on the winning team for a game design contest and met Will Wright (he designed SimCity and Spore, in case you're out of the geek loop). So, sadness on Monday and elation on Thursday.

Joel and some of his colleagues at the bank biked to work today. Joel's round trip time is close to 2.5 hours.

Sorry, I'm not capable of being that lazy.

Some days you need the eloquence of Obama, sometimes you need the light-heartedness of the masked bunny.