it's a charlie brown christmas

here are the results from my decorating spurt. this is about all the christmas i'm going to have up here. apparently i had much more room to decorate last year. the tree doesn't look so bad in person. of course, it's starting to get a little old and wasn't exactly the best little tree out there (it rotates...), but it works. if only i had an ugly garland to drape down my banister...

just kidding, just kidding

so yeah, still haven't figured out how to do the snazzy features on blogger i once did. just click the title :-P

Christmas, Christmas time is near...

i've spent the morning being ultra-unproductive. after unpacking from my much needed trip home, i imported a bunch of xmas music for my ipod. i need some new holiday-centered tunes, so i added about six songs from the music store (that site is making a f-ing fortune off of me...) including THE CHIPMUNKS CHRISTMAS SONG :-). when i get back from office hours later today, i'm planning to decorate my apartment (oh, and you'll see pics :-)).

bring it Christmas: i'm ready! :-)

yay for buffer zones

made it home in one piece. it's really late and i'm super exhausted from driving (no traffic though!) so i'm ending this one without too many gory details. let's just say it was good to see family, better to see a good friend, and best to be asleep right now.

update to follow.

night!

GUESS WHO'S GOING HOME!!!!

i'm a little excited, if you couldn't tell...

it's a little lame - i'll admit...

i've been a lame-ass the last couple days. working really hard until my brain turns to pudding and then watching tv or a movie. i have to say that i was disappointed that TBS didn't do their usual friday night friends bonanza. i was really looking forward to watching it last night. :-P whatever. instead i watched mona lisa smile. not nearly as good as some crazy antic between those crazy friends in new york.

so i have a lot of crap due this coming week. and by this week, i mean monday because i'm leaving tuesday. to prepare, i bs-ed two papers, finished my stats hw (i typed it this time! it looks all swanky!), and i need to work on my presentation for monday. i'm also critiquing a paper that - i promise you - reads like your worse GRE nightmare. oh yes. GRE NIGHTMARE. it's horrible. i guess it's not really suitable for the GRE's because the sentence structure is so terrible that even the evil minds behind that exam wouldn't be so cruel. i somehow need to decode and figure out somethign nice to say. "dear friend, you should hold off on that idea about coming to grad school. it's not personal. but you can't write your way home. try getting your point across. it's helpful. signed, your friend."

sleep deprivation makes me crazy...

so i went on a little caffiene ride. on wednesday, i couldn't stay awake for anything, so after my quick nap, i decided i needed to punch it up a notch and drank a cup of coffee. after drinking that cup of coffee (which was yummy), i stupidly decided to have another. it helped me stay up through lost, and get some work done. but yeah, sleep wasn't so fun that night. and of course i had to get up at 5:45am to TA so by the time i got to the good sleep, my f-ing alarm went off. so what do you do when you need to stay awake throughout the day? oh, you get starbucks as soon as you can (9:30am) because their coffee is 97% rocket full, 7% sugar, and 9% coffee flavor (i know that doesn't add up - it's for illustration purposes only...). that finally kicked in...when i had to attend stats at 3pm. i wanted to go running i was so hyped up. and then i crashed when i got home.

i'd like to send out an apologies to you-know-who-you -are. i get a little crazy and slightly, um, let's say paranoid because it's probably nicer than a lot of other words you can use.

i'm now convinced that Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto while drinking a primitive version of a Starbucks latte and having no sleep. makes complete sense to me...

"elect rat romney 2008"

i participated in my first union rally. gov. romney won't sign our contracts (it wouldn't look so hot for him as a member of the republican party - which leads me to question how in the world MA got a conservative governor...) and this leaves us with few options. we've already agreed with the administration at umass that the contracts are fair therefore renegotiation is not an option (contrary romney's suggestion).

so what are we to do? dress a humble grad student as a rat (impersonating romney fairly well...) to give a mock speech and then march to the mullins center to deliver our petition to president wilson. it ended with cake.

props to the sociology dept. we made up the majority of individuals at the rally. even people who i'd never met before were there. it's because we study depressing things like employment and wage inquality.

so yeah. collectively bargaining is good times.

filthy rich at the top?

damn doberstein and roselle. i hope some of this trickles down to the grad students.

(yeah, i was procrastinating again...)

notes and more notes

okay. i'm procrastinating from long "to do" list, but i need a break. i have writer's block.

1. this weekend was "wicked" fun (i mean that as a MA wicked, not that we were flying around on broomsticks or completely misbehaving). we went to funky monkey. they had a rock band on the first floor and a hip hop dj in the basement. the dj actually sucked. he played a lot of hispanic reggae (which apparently exists?). i could have done a better job. anyway, i had a good time overall, but something was missing :-(

2. i had a really bad hangover on sunday. hangovers suck when you're driving through the hellhole they call new jersey and the spoiled brat area called connecticut. i had a lexus suv up my ass for about 30 mins on I84. thanks.

3. only 7 days until i get to go home. and i just got really great news about going home. i've been smiling since yesterday afternoon. and it wasn't from the happy meal i got to get rid of my hangover (per lauren's chicken nuggets cure hangovers rule).

4. procrastination is fun, but i should probably go play more with my papers and stats hw. hopefully i really do understand stats like i think i do. we don't get to play with stata this time. it's sad, but i'm not going to cry. no worries.

5. i'm still trying to figure out why i can't really do anything exciting with my posts. the only options on my tool bar are spelling and insert pics. :-p rest assured. i will figure this out. it may involved downloading firefox. we shall see.

dude, it's called grad school

seriously... (click title)

2059

so i wasn't planning on blogging today. i procrastinate a lot using this thing, but today i saw an exhibit on campus that has made me cry.

nearly 2000 boots of soldiers who have died in combat were on display on the library lawn. it's so breath-taking to see so many boots lined up in rows. 2000 suddenly seems like an incredible number. seems like too many.

if the exhibit comes to your town, i highly encourage you to go see it.

http://www.afsc.org/eyes/about-the-exhibit.htm

exciting news!

i saw a BLACK squirrel when i was driving to school today (this is a picture in case you doubt their existence). i didn't know such a creature exists. hypothetically speaking, if reincarnation is indeed true, i wish to now return as a BLACK squirrel, but that seems so much cooler than just a regular squirrel.

no, i haven't lost my mind.

guess who's taking a weekend off?

oh, that's right. i, madame grad student workaholic because there is no other alternative to this lifestyle, am going to see my dear friend aileen this weekend. it's totally impractial and ridiculous, but i'm going nonetheless. i actually do need the break and to get away for a bit, so it's good :-). i promise to be good...mostly O:-). no, really, i'll behave. it can't be too crazy because i can't afford it and i don't want to be insanely pissed off because i am behind in work.

in other news, another member of the cohort began to actually discuss how much she was unhappy today. (this sounds so wrong, but) it made me feel like things aren't so bad and i'm not the only one going crazy. we chatted and she felt better. ah, i'm glad we're not faking happy anymore. it's exhausting having to pretend that we're happy all the time, when in fact, we all think this sucks ass and that someone is going to see what we're faking it all.

speaking of sucking ass, i had a student come up and demand to take a make-up. nevermind that the exam was last week and this is the first time she's saying anything (and the last make-up was yesterday) and the fact that she thinks we OWE her a make-up. unfortunately for her, she came up to the most uncaring TAs of the bunch. catherine told her "tough crap - should have told us sooner..." and i wanted to tell her where to go (a little further south than MA...) but the prof was nice enough to let her retake the make-up. oh yes, and during my office hours :-P.

one final note, regressions are going well. we've moved from the "primitive" simple linear to multiple regression. good times! and i'm actually still with them. some of the abbreviations are confusing (TSS, SSM, SSE, MSS, MSM, MSE...:-P) but overall, it's sinking in. plus, my good friend stata is there to do the actual work ;-) when it comes to running the equation. yay for statistical packages! :-)

Saturday, in review

1. It was unseasonably (and disgustingly) warm yesterday for November: 72 was our high. it's throwing my internal thermastat off and it's screwing with the southern contingency of the cohort.

2. i was super trendy, with my mac at an internet cafe yesterday. however, the cafe played not so great music (a totally screwed up combo of obscure indie and BOB DYLAN - oh yes, BOB DYLAN).

3. MA drivers are the worst ever. i hope i don't assimilate. because that would suck. i feel like i should take out more life insurance, just in case.

4. hung out with courtney yesterday (she's the only black woman in the cohort -- this should preface the next comment). her response for me being freaked out in grad school, "GIRL, don't let them crazy white folk bother you." hahahahahaha. i wonder if i'm include in the "crazy white folk" category.

5. i can't concentrate to save my life today. :-P

yesterday was a shit day

in case you're keeping up with my frequent mood swings about grad school, yesterday was a shit day. it started off really well (a prof from UD told me that our chapter is definitely going to be published in a public sociology reader next year), and then subsequently sucked after that. i'll spare you the horribly whiney/boring details about the events. suffice it to say that it was just overwhelming. i haven't started packing my bags for home yet...but it was definitely a consideration when i got back to my apt. i should probably throw away my little stash of boxes in case i have a super bad day...

so i got lectured by my pc-only uncle (he's going for his ms-certs in january...) about my newly acquired piece of technology: "there's a reason [mac] only has 5% of the market." it was good times. :-P

okay, thats all. i'm going to write a CAM reading memo regarding hegemony, the emergence/existence of race relations, and then go play with regressions. and by "play" i mean sit dumbfounded in class while sanjiv talks about regression analysis, and the mathematical background thereof.

i <3 apples...

um, i'm beginning to really like the fruit, but actually talking about my new powerbook g4. it's fabulous, although taking a bit to get used to the apple-way rather than the ms-way. i feel so like an academic.

pictures to follow ;-)