Busyness Girl

Publicity, Parties, and Progress

2009-07-02T13:02:00.006-04:00

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 ...

Strange Week

2009-06-07T21:53:00.004-04:00

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.

Bike to Work Day in Muskegon

2009-05-15T18:00:00.002-04:00

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

My life as a cat

2009-05-06T06:05:00.002-04:00

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

Inspiration for Rough Dissertation Days

2009-05-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

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

All for a piece of chicken

2009-05-05T06:00:00.002-04:00

The New Dog Toy

2009-05-04T06:00:00.000-04:00

10-minute Breaks

2009-05-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

For the majority of the time I've been working on my dissertation, I've had my computer set to lock me out every 50 minutes so that I have to take a break.

I noticed that Halley had some good break strategies, so I decided to try hers on sunny days.

My 10-minutes as a dog:

Sometimes it backfires.

Halley loves Christine

2009-05-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

Christine, my assistant (shown below), brings the "empties" to the house with her. With three young children at home, that happens pretty often.

Christine is now Halley's favorite human. Note how Halley's toes are all spread out. That is a sign of intense concentration.

Re-entering Society after Life as a Hermit

2009-05-01T01:00:00.000-04:00

I've been sitting in my office at home working from dawn to dusk on my dissertation for approximately 7 weeks with no travel or distraction. I wish I could report that my literature review is done, but after 220 hours, 215 collected papers, and over 20,000 words written ... it's not. I've simultaneously loved what I'm learning and cursed why I ever wanted to get a Ph.D. in the first place - sometimes in the same day (or even the same hour).

Friends on twitter have kept me sane during long days at home alone and picked me back up late at night after dissertation breakdowns. My advisor has (very awesomely) met with me for an hour every weekend to remind me to stay focused, give me pep talks, and help get me out of the mire of confusion that is my lit review. Joel has spent some late nights, after he is exhausted after working late himself, to help me make sense of some jigsaw puzzle of ideas or writing. I am starting to understand why every dissertation has an "Acknowledgements and Dedication" page right after the title page, and I wonder if I will be the first Ph.D. candidate to officially thank my social network on mine (assuming I get there, that is).

I look forward to the two days a week when Christine comes in to the office. Even if we both sit silently working, it's nice to have the company. I love it when friends (Leah, Rose, Dan, ...) video chat with me on the Internet so I feel like I am not such a hermit (even though I am). I value it greatly when an old friend (Jesse) will listen to me ramble on about issues in math ed on a Saturday night until my phone threatens to spontaneously combust. I love Sally for just knowing that I just can't be trusted to drive with so much on my mind.

I rarely leave the house (except to greet the UPS guy or to walk to the end of the driveway to get the mail). I work out on an exercise bike in the basement (while using my laptop to check and respond to email). I don't think I've had to buy one tank of gas in six weeks.

Usually, I can't tell you what day of the week it is and yesterday, I accidentally signed a check with the year 1999 instead of 2009 (if that's any indication of my level of sanity). I eat the exact same breakfast and lunch every day because it's too hard to think about little things like recipes, cooking, and grocery-shopping (an interesting and unexpected side benefit of this practice is that I've actually lost a few pounds). Today, I got out of bed, fed the dogs, and sat down at my computer at 7:30am. I finally thought to have breakfast at 2:30pm.

Some days, even after taking a shower, I get back into my pajamas for the rest of the day. If it's going to be a really hard day, I wear my pajamas with my "magic dissertation boots" ... (self-portrait)

But today I leave my dissertation for a week and temporarily re-enter society. Do you think society will take me back?

Not dead

2009-03-25T23:52:00.001-04:00

Just so you know, I'm not dead. I'm just hard at work.

Spring in West Michigan

2009-04-30T19:46:00.002-04:00

Sweltering in Serbia

2007-07-15T16:15:00.000-04:00

We took a train from Budapest to Novi Sad today. The temperature in the train reached around 40 degrees Celsius and we had to sit at the border for approximately 45 minutes while passports were checked. We did make some interesting discoveries.

1) If your feet smell, and it is bothering your fellow passengers, do not use Handi-wipes to clean them as it will only make your feet smell like a dirty toilet (thanks to Max for helping us learn this handy tip).

2) Always check your train for a dining car. There was one air conditioned dining car at the very back of the train.

3) If you have a jar of completely liquid peanut butter, make an indentation in your bread and pour in the peanut butter (no need for a knife - thanks Emma for this excellent insight).

4) When eating completely melted chocalate bars (well, licking them out of the wrapper) make sure to have a Handi-wipe for the inevitable - chocolate on your nose and chin.

The train ride was from 1:30-7:30pm. We are now in Novi Sad and the Exit Festival is in town for one more night (tonight). This is a southern European "Woodstock" with approximately 500,000 people and 25 stages of music.

I am at an Internet cafe with no USB ports. I am surrounded by children, teenagers, and young men who are playing Internet games like World of Warcraft.

Can you tell it's hot in Serbia?

2007-07-16T07:32:00.001-04:00

I am sitting inside the Internet Cafe (I found another one, not surrounded by teenagers playing MMORPGs). This was my new vocabulary for the day yesterday (Max plays World of Warcraft). Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG, take a look at the Psychology section of this Wikipedia article... very interesting). Consider yourself educated. Jenny and Chris should probably read up on this, as they have 3 boys and will probably not be able to escape this when the boys get a little older.

It is extremely hot here. Again, I'm sure Karen will look up just how hot it is in Novi Sad today. Trust me, it's hot. You can tell the temperature drops about 10 degrees celsius in the shade. I'll ask you, would you go down this slide in the park? (photo taken at noon)

So, I'm enjoying the indoor Internet Cafe (in a basement... where it's cool) at the heat of the day. I plan to re-emerge when it cools off a bit.

Last night I took some night pictures of Novi Sad. Here is the church in the central square. It is not a cathedral, but everybody calls it the Cathedral. The second picture shows the steeple of the church in daylight. It is very beautiful tiling.

Walking through the Danube Park today, there were lots of bodies sleeping in the grass. Now, in most places, the people sleeping in parks tend to be either a) homeless, b) hungover homeless, or 3) nappers, but since last night was the last night of the Exit Festival, I am pretty sure these are all music festival revelers that are not ready to face the day (and the hot train ride home) yet. The music ended this morning at 7am. Because of the festival yesterday, very little is open today. Everyone is taking a holiday.

More scenic views of the park.

Magical Sarejevo

2007-07-19T15:30:00.000-04:00

I have survived the 8 hour bus ride and I am now in Sarejevo at a well-lit Internet cafe with 10 computers (sorry Chris, it is not interesting enough to photograph). It was another hot day today. We are told that yesterday it was up to 43 degrees Celsius. Tonight it has cooled off considerably and there is a nice breeze in the city - it is quite tolerable.

On our walk from the bus stop to the Pension where we are staying, we did see many buildings still showing the damage of guns and shells. However, the older part of the city has recovered pretty nicely and it is really beautiful. The 1984 Winter Olympics were held here and you can see why because the mountains are beautiful and the houses are built up the hills (it is kind of reminiscent of some of the towns in the west or San Fransisco actually).

We had a nice dinner at an old restaurant on the river and then did a walking tour of the town. It is (thankfully) a pretty easy-to-navigate city as it is laid out on the river. The cyrillic lettering in Serbia was driving me CRAZY as all the maps are printed using latin lettering and all the street names are done in cyrillic lettering. Trust me when I say that I do not have enough brain space left to memorize another alphabet.

There was lots of cool shopping (jewelry, coffee sets, etc) so my bank account might get a beating in the next couple days. I have only made two non-food purchases in the last 4 days (2 movie tickets and one old-fashioned fan). We hear hopes that it might rain tomorrow, so we will look forward to that possibility. Here is Jo peeking in the store window at the beautiful jewelry.

Five items you can turn into a fan

2007-07-18T15:15:00.000-04:00

1) A city map
2) A menu
3) An Intrepid Trip Notes Paper
4) A flyer someone hands you on the street
5) In desperation, just about anything

So we have been in Belgrade for one and a half days now. You may recall Belgrade as a site of NATO bombings not so long ago in the Kosovo War. I am in an internet cafe called the KGB. There are (again) about a zillion computers for playing games (Warcraft, half-life, etc) and five stations for internet users. There is also loud pounding music and funky lights.

Yesterday we had a "short" 5-hour walking tour of Belgrade. It was only supposed to be 2 hours (with one hour indoors) but it turned out to be a little longer. In order to convince myself to set foot in the sun, I decided to use reverse psychology. So for several hours I hummed Christmas carols, made comments like "gosh, I should have brought my winter jacket" etc. I did survive the tour, and it was nice to see Belgrade, but it sure was HOT and no amount of reverse psychology cured that!

Some miscellaneous pictures from Belgrade. These are some of the pictures of the fortress that has been taken and retaken more than 80 times over the history of Belgrade by various forces. It is strategically located at the convergence of two rivers (the Danube and another one that I can't remember).

Above is one of the white walls (Bel Grade is known as the "white city" although not any of it is white except the old fortress walls).

Here are some more interesting pictures. Your job could be a "walking billboard" in 40 degrees Celsius heat wearing black clothing (but you do get to chat on your cell phone while you do it).

What do you do when it is this hot? (and the humidity is this high too)... Well, you catch up on your movies. The Cinema is in English with Serbian subtitles. So after a taxi (air conditioned, thank goodnes) I decided to see Ocean's Thirteen. And who should be sitting behind me in the theatre but Max and Karen. After Ocean's 13, we decided it should be a double feature and after a short ice cream break, we went back for Die Hard 4. For all of you who like to watch Jack almost be killed time and time again in 24, you should really get yourself out to see Die Hard. It was very entertaining and there was a lot of "cute" banter between John McClaine and his young cyber-friendly sidekick Matt.

We have a 7.5 hour bus trip to Sarejevo tomorrow, leaving at 6am, so I'd better go for now. I'm not sure how much more of this oven-like heat I can endure, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the bus at least has windows (or even better, air conditioning). It's hard to complain about things like lack of air conditioning when you've seen the kind of conditions that people in these parts have endured under communism, under the Nazis, etc. Every time I think that I am just too uncomfortable to bear it anymore, I remember the photos of the people packed into cattle cars for the 10-day trip to the concentration camps, where many of them were immediately killed in the gas chambers, and then it seems a bit unreasonable to complain about such things.

It's a mirage... no, it's the Sarejevo Water Park

2007-07-20T11:21:00.000-04:00

I have never, never enjoyed a dip in a pool so much as I did today. After a tram ride and a trek through a construction zone (no kidding, see above) we arrived at the mirage in the a hot dusty part of the city. I wish I had taken a photo of the inside of the park (it is outdoors/indoors), as it was very well done and a great place to relax. There were different jets located in different parts of the pool that would turn on and off every 15-20 minutes, so that nobody could hog the jets for too long. It was like getting a massage in cool water. Ahhhh.

Sarajevo - the newer part of the city

2007-07-20T11:31:00.000-04:00

Here are some pictures that I took from the tram on the way back from the water park. Many of the people who live here live in hi-rise apartment houses. You can see the patched up damage from bullets and shells on the outside of the buildings.

What I thought was cool about this one, was all the different colored blankets that are used as curtains to block out the heat. It makes an otherwise drab apartment building look quite colorful.

Below you see the famous Holiday Inn where all the journalists stayed during the conflict in Sarajevo in the early 90s. You can see it does not look nearly as bad as these other apartment buildings that are near it. If, at some point, you saw reporters standing outside a hotel reporting on the conflict, or reporting on the radio from their hotel room, it was likely this one.

During the 92-95 conflict in Sarajevo, there were periods of time when the water, food, and medical supplies were completely cut off. During one of the times when water supplies were cut, the citizens of the city had to walk for kilometers to the local brewery to get their water. The brewery gets its water from a natural spring and so it was one of the only places in the city to obtain the fresh water necessary for survival. Many people were killed carrying liter bottles of water (full or empty) on the trip to or from this water source. We are going to this brewery for dinner tonight.

Miscellaneous Sarajevo

2007-07-21T05:55:00.000-04:00

First we have the new favorite dessert of everyone on our trip - fruit salad with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Yum!

Here is Lauren and I trying out the Bosnian coffee. It is a lot like Turkish coffee, only not quite as strong. Before you get your hopes up Joel, I am not bringing home any coffee as I don't have enough room to carry it. I will, however, be requiring an espresso machine when I arrive home as we tend to have cappucinos for breakfast, lunch and dinner here. Without an espresso machine (or an espresso intraveneous line), I'm afraid I may go through some kind of major caffeine withdrawal.

There is room in my luggage for more earrings - plenty of room for those. And I found a great bookstore with a huge selection of English books (even new Science Fiction), so I'm afraid I broke down and bought three new books. We'll be at a monestary tomorrow in Montenegro, so I will need something to read. My guess is that there will not be Internet access at the monestary, but I've been surprised before.

Here is a view of the market streets.

I also purchased a shell casing that was removed from one of the buildings and then decorated by a local artisan using a tin point and a hammer. It is really cool, but I'm a little worried that I will set off the explosives detector on the airplanes. We'll see. I'll make sure to take a picture of it in case it doesn't make it through the airports.

And we did visit one of the Mosques this morning - the Gayi Husrebvey Mosque, which had a beautiful dome and half dome.

This is another mosque in the city, one I could capture with the digital camera I have. I really might have to purchase a digital SLR for the next trip - one with an 18-55mm lens to avoid this 2-camera thing.

One funny story from yesterday. All the tram and bus tickets here are purchased and validated on the honor system. But there are roving ticket checkers who will fine you on the spot if you get caught riding public transportation without a validated ticket. On the tram we took yesterday, the validation machine was not working. You put the ticket in, it made an appropriate validation-like noise, but then it did not print the validation on the ticket. So our trip leader collected all the non-validated tickets and took them to another machine to do the appropriate validation. But one group member (Shell, from Norway) did not realize that he needed to give Gorana the ticket. Sure enough, the ticket checkers came and kicked him off the tram (along with some other english-speaking tourists). We think it is kind of a scam, as they seemed relatively unconcerned that the validation machine was not working. Later in the day, Gorana saw some more people having the exact same problem, and again, the ticket checkers did not want to listen to any "stories" about what happened - they just want their money.

American TV watched by Montenegrans

2007-07-25T13:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I went for a boat trip around the Bay of Kotor. I still have not been able to find an Internet with a USB port, so I can't upload any pictures. The morning wasn't bad and the breeze on the boat was quite nice. We swam at the Blue Lagoon (which has electric blue waters) and saw a few of the smaller towns.

However, by the late afternoon the heat was unbearable, the air was still, and the humidity was high. We all had dried saltwater on our skin and were looking incredibly forward to a shower. Unlucky us... when we got back to the hotel, the power in our quarter of the city was out. Yes, that meant not only no air conditioning, but also no water! Argh! There was a little cold water coming out of the faucet in the shower (at about waist level), so I did take my first "squat" shower of cold water. I don't think I've taken a hot shower for more than a week (not that I didn't have the opportunity, I just didn't want to take one. The power did return after dark at about 10pm.

So... back to the blog title. What have I done today? I did venture out from about 8-10am this morning, but it was just sweltering hot. I was driven back to my hotel room, where Lauren and I spent the day alternately reading, taking naps, and watching crappy American TV shows.

Here is a veiw from the window of my hotel room.

I am both utterly horrified about the crap that we are broadcasting to the world (via MTV mostly) and extremely grateful that there was something being broadcast in English (with Serbian subtitles).

Really bad TV shows that we were forced to watch today:
1) Sweet Sixteen (an MTV show where people spend a ridiculous amount of money spoiling their daughters throwing them an elaborate birthday party - in today's show, the birthday present that the daughter received was a BMW S-series car, new - hey dad, maybe a 33rd birthday qualifies too?).
2) Crossing Jordan (hmm... don't know about this one, some kind of cop/forensic science drama, there seems to be an increase at the college in students wanting to major in forensic science lately)
3) CSI (another forensic science drama)
4) The Ghostwhisperer (the premise is that the main character can talk to ghosts and helps them to make a smooth passage into the next world)
5) NEXT (another MTV show in which five "dates" are selected for a member of the opposite sex, and the dater can simply say "next" to end the date - the comments that people make about each other are really mean and ridiculous - I hope people don't think all Americans are really like this)
6) Animal Presinct (a show where the ASPCA rescues pets in distress, stops cat hoarders, etc)

So, based on this, the rest of the world must think that Americans are pet-obsessed, ghost-obsessed people who spoil their children, insult each other as sport, and are involved in a lot of crime with really high-tech forensic departments.

Still a bit hot in Montenegro

2007-07-23T11:28:00.000-04:00

(yes that was sarchasm, it is VERY hot still)
How hot is it? Well, on the mountain across from the monestary there were several forest fires last night burning from (they say) the hot sun shining on glass shards and igniting the really dry timber. Probably it is just as likely to be from cigarette butts being thrown out car windows, but who's to say?

Anyways, Montenegro is temporarily famous as the newest country in the world. I am now in an outdoor Internet cafe in Budva (very expensive at 2 euros for 30 minutes), and I don't have my camera with me right now, so no pictures till later.

We stayed at the Ostrog Monestary last night. It is a beautiful church built into the side of a cliff. This is where the body of St. Basil is and he is said to be responsible for many miracle cures. If you buy a postcard you also get a nice plastic water bottle with holy water from the monestary.

The view should be really nice, but all the smoke from the forest fires and the haze from the heat are putting a bit of a damper on our holiday. We are all very hot and the bus rides are a bit miserable as the air conditioning just cannot possible keep up with the incredible heat which continues day after day.

Just for the record, if you are from somewhere out of the U.S. and are reading this blog, the beaches in Western Michigan are MUCH nicer and less crowded than the beaches I have seen so far in Montenegro. In fact, I just walked all the way out to one of the beaches just to see the incredible crowd of people, walk on the "sand" which is really pointy small pebbles that hurt your feed, and decided not to go in the water after all. You can all save your money by booking a hotel in West Michigan instead. Plus, Montenegro is being rapidly purchased by Russians, and may not be owned by Montenegrans much longer.

I guess it's fair to say that I may actually look forward to returning home at the end of this week. Of course, I hope not to take the heat wave with me.

More Power outages and a few musings...

2007-07-26T07:50:00.000-04:00

I wrote the last blog post when the power went out again last night at 7pm. This morning when we left the hotel at 7am, the power was still out. I did take Karen's advice and buy myself a lovely pair of earrings to take the edge off the heat (although my earring purchases do not put as large a dent in the checkbook as Karen's might).

Now we are in Croatia. We travelled by bus and after a very long stop at the border to check tickets and passports, we are now in Dubrovnik. I am happy to report that it is only 34 degrees Celsius in the shade (which is an improvement from 40 in the shade and 43-45 in the sun).

I read that over 500 people in Hungary have died in the heatwave (where we were 2 weeks ago). We will stroll around town today and I will have a little time tomorrow morning, then will fly back to Vienna at 4pm on Croatia Airlines.

Since I have been out of touch for a while I wonder if ...
1) Joel ever got that package from Prague that was only supposed to take 1-2 weeks to send and whether the contents of the package survived the trip?
2) Keri and Matt sold their house?
3) Meg has successfully relocated to Kentucky?
4) Sally has kept swimming laps and can now swim circles (or laps) around me?
5) We ever got the building permit extension on the basement?
6) Did Marijka and Brad finish the addition on their house?
7) Has Lily (Sallys cat) stopped getting fatter and fatter? Maybe it had more kittens?
8) Has Karen taken 200 pictures of her cats on her new iPhone?
9) Do Carol and Mat have a new deck?
10) Did my mom ever figure out how to read this blog?

Bay of Kotor Pictures

2007-07-26T09:03:00.000-04:00

Here are some pictures from our boat cruise in Montenegro. First on the itinerary was a dip in the water - way too hot already in the morning while waiting for the bus. Not even Joel would've bothered to test the temperature of the water, he would have just jumped in too.

Some photos of the coastline. The haziness is still from the forest fires, which are also burning on the hills of Budva. Apparently Montenegro was given some fire-fighting planes in the split off of their country, but they have sold the planes to Greece and no longer have any. I guess Italy and Greece also have fires right now, so at least someone is getting good use out of those planes.

Our first port was at Herceg Novi (a small town on the coast, nicknamed the town of a zillion stairs). As the temperature increases, the quality and quantity of my photos decreases, so there are very few pictures of this city.

We are always grateful when there is a fountain with COLD water at the top of the city. How many of us dunked our heads under the water at this point? I won't tell.

... (to be continued)...

Hugging the wall

2007-07-26T13:01:00.001-04:00

Gorona (our Intrepid leader) demonstrates just how easy it is to stand on this little stone outcropping up against the wall. If you can balance on the outcropping, remove your shirt (while balancing) and then put it back on, your wish will be granted (or so the tradition goes).

And then almost everyone else tries it (rather unsuccessfully).

As a matter of fact, the last time we saw Warren last night, he was on his 3rd round of attempting to perform Goranas trick with a crowd of observers.

If you attempt to recreate this trick at home, feel free to comment with a link to your photo.

Walk around the Dubrovnik City Walls

2007-07-26T12:40:00.000-04:00

Okay, that walk around the city walls of Dubrovnik made the last week (trapped in a heatwave) actually worth it. The views were stunning, and although it was still hot, there was a nice breeze and not much humidity in the air.

The Old Town of Dubnrovik is BEAUTIFUL!!! This is another UNESCO World Heritage Site and inside the walls, nothing modern is allowed on the outsides of structures. So, even if there is a McDonalds here, it is not allowed to look like a McDonalds.

I don't know how well you can see it in the picture below, but that's a cafe/sunbathing spot on the rocks outside the city walls. Location, location, location...