jinian

the world needs more good things

2013-04-19T06:24:09Z

Finished my to-do list at work despite difficulty, dire hold music, and disappointment.

Burrito day and curry udon.

Smelled a just-opening lilac in the rain.

Saw Wim's awesome new place.

Wrote back to possible postdoc person and asked people to send recommendation letters to her.

Made Spoonflower fabric for committee gifts, because TWO WEEKS TO DEFENSE DAY.

Axolotls are cute.
( picture )

comments

FHL day 2

2013-03-21T23:57:48Z

It sure is weathery up here. The most amazing wind yesterday, especially on the ferry -- the strongest I've ever felt around here, like I was going to be blown off the boat. The only thing that compared to it was the wind at the observatories at Mauna Kea. Then sunny and nice enough to eat lunch outside today, suddenly a flurry of graupel and rain half an hour ago, and now cloudy with sunbreaks.

( Big pictures of yesterday's fauna )

The seals were funny. As long as I was poking around the beach, they kept popping up and looking at me every few minutes. I found a piece of cobalt beach glass, but it wasn't done yet (not sharp-edged but not smooth either) and I had to be careful not to scare them off when I threw it back into the water. I started to feel like they wanted to come out onto the beach and couldn't do it when I was there, so I went to sit on a rock, but they never reappeared. Guess they were just curious about what I was up to.

My talk went okay this morning. I felt like I stumbled a lot, but I don't think I missed saying anything I wanted to. I'm headachey and my shoulders hurt a bunch now, though. Good thing we have the afternoon off for loafing purposes.

comments

conference at Friday Harbor!

2013-03-21T06:50:11Z

My 12-minute talk for tomorrow morning is still clocking in at 13 minutes. Probably I will talk too fast rather than rambling too much and it'll all come out fine.

I saw a deer in shaggy winter coat, seals (!), and the orangest whelks (!!). The salmonberries are blooming.

comments

more spring flowers

2013-03-14T23:35:27Z

comments

today's pictures

2013-03-14T03:58:18Z

Startled daruma graffito!

And the Clematis armandii outside Hall Hall are in full bloom now.

comments

smells of spring

2013-02-05T07:32:40Z

Yes, it's spring here starting at Candlemas, the beginning of spring. I am sorry for all of you whom the wheel of the year fails in this way.

Witch hazel: subtle and spreading, musty-beautiful in the morning changing to fruity notes at night.

Sarcococca: the perfect designer perfume (with no white musk whatsoever), almost too floral and too strong but blissful.

Viburnum: politely soft and sweet.

Clematis armandii: almost ready -- like roses and apples and vanilla; somewhere I have a stationery design that I drew with these flowers and lyrics from "The Flowers of Guatemala".

Daphne odora: not yet -- the campus ones have been sad for the last few years, but the smell is glorious and pervades the Medicinal Herb Garden bus stops when they're doing well.

comments

weekend

2013-02-05T00:30:05Z

Friday:
- revision was IN
- afternoon was OFF
- Bellevue Art Museum with m-pig (paper teahouse, bamboo basketry, Nikki McClure, bizarre fiber arts; unfortunate photo-taking nitwits)
- cheesecake
- acupuncture
- La Cocina dinner

Saturday:
- napping
- working in the garden
- making tasty food

Sunday:
- brunch with Wim's dad and stepmom; giving of the adorable snow monkey magnet in trade for Inuyama HDR dahlia print
- tromping over Cougar Mountain (Anti-Aircraft trailhead, Shangri-La Trail, West Tibbetts Creek, Bear Ridge to Fantastic Erratic -- a huge fern-clad boulder -- and back, Tibbetts Marsh; then to the "million-dollar view" of Lake Sammamish)
- Central Library, including my first time parking there
- more tasty food

Today has had many fine features too:
- paid rent
- ordinary pleasures of walking in to school
- found theses online and in the library to review
- Mt. Rainier visible from campus
- undergrads discussing the personal lives of the fountain's ducks with some vehemence

(Annoying things from today include a committee member trying to make it my fault she didn't tell me about her sabbatical -- oh no she didn't -- and certain journal publishers failing to provide dissertation reuse policies on their web sites, wtf, everyone in the world does this, just post your permission like a good journal.)

comments

mostly positive

2013-02-01T18:45:29Z

+++++ Paper revision was submitted, and looks really good; experiments came together at the last minute, and the text is clear and logical.

+++ Tulips and other bulbs are coming up! Need to get out in my garden.

- After prompt initial responses to defense-scheduling email, my committee has become lackadaisical about scheduling more precisely.

+ PI continues to acknowledge my intention to leave, and has expressed willingness to help in small but important ways.

+ Saw a hummingbird this morning while walking to school.

--- As of today, tree pollen is definitely a problem, presenting me with a choice of curtailing the outdoor activity that helps my health and mood so much vs. struggling with antihistamines, steroids, probably acupuncture, and itchiness despite it all.

++ Taking the afternoon off to hang with marzipan_pig.

++ Colleague got a job interview in Canada, where she wants to be!

comments

grad retreat

2013-01-27T21:24:47Z

My last grad retreat! I was pretty overpeopled for a lot of it, but I just chilled in my room as needed. Some of my favorite people skipped out at the last minute, but I managed to connect with other people and found that I really like some of the new kids. I think that's what's supposed to happen.

Friday night I hung out with people, ate potluck food, and had a good time in the hot tub playing Categories with bagged wine, before going off to hide.

Saturday I helped make breakfast (bacon, in an unreliable griddle with what may have been the wrong power supply), napped, then took a six-mile hike to the top of Wallace Falls, which was beautiful and misty as well as very wet. Only three of us went all the way to the top, so I felt pretty great about having made it, even though I had to get the super-hardy people to slow down a bit. Mostly it's that I was congested due to cold-aftermath; I was pretty happy with my fitness level. Later there was communal pizza-baking, and I made myself a non-tomato one and ate basically the entire thing, so that was awesome. We were going to play Ticket to Ride, but it somehow turned into The Resistance, a logic/intrigue game in which you can be a spy or a true resistance member -- being resistance is way more fun, or possibly it's less fun to play with scientists since we do logic for a living. Emotional manipulation worked a lot better on some people than others.

This morning I finally got to share some of the loaves of French bread I'd brought for the potluck, since there hadn't been room to put them out before but lots of people wanted minimal breakfast before checkout. And I made myself marginally useful by taking out some trash, too. Mostly I felt like I'd contributed enough to previous retreats to coast this time. We stopped at Sultan Bakery on the way home, where I got: a maple bar with bacon on top. It's kind of like the fried butter, I just needed to say I had purchased this absurd thing. I do expect to enjoy it, though.

comments

okay, we need some good things

2012-12-06T01:14:20Z

Cool robot-based experiment failed. :( Here are good things.

Old comic characters and the end of Hostess

Wasabi inari onigiri, OMG. Incredibly delicious treat from the convenience store. Bright green shreds of wasabi, sesame seeds, rice, all wrapped in inarizushi wrapper, which is kind of a fried tofu skin soaked in sweet marinade. Loved it!

Here's a picture of the reindeer garland I posted about before.

Bi poly Lisa Simpson -- I haven't looked into canonicality here, but do I really care? [Edit: From a Christmas special, it seems.]

Avengers nativity scene and other fandoms by the same artist

Big winds today, dramatic with leaves rattling everywhere.

New kind of mokusei blooming in the last week or so; though it's too cold to smell it for blocks it's nice by the post office. Hollylike points on the leaves, white flowers.

comments

thankful

2012-11-22T12:43:10Z

Sunset tonight, clear and chill and soothing with a first-quarter moon.

Pinafored little girls stompling in the ground cover on campus.

The lovely gloves I got in Kyoto last weekend: dark brown leather with lime-green topstitching, lined with lime-green knit, matching my adorable new umbrella.

My two packages from people, especially as I now have my heating pad. (Not thankful for damned customary holiday cramps; maybe this is early enough I'll be okay for Xmas.)

Ebook companies that pay attention to my billing address rather than my IP address.

All you great people that I know.

Getting to live in Japan for three months, damn, how cool is that.

Chocolate cake for my roommate's birthday.

A map of words for pillbugs.

Science!

Beautiful things to make, admire, have, and give.

comments

twilight tonight

2012-10-27T13:19:03Z

Looking for somewhere to watch darkness fall, I wandered through the garden by the library, which was surprisingly occupied. Actors in the amphitheater, people with toddlers, a group practicing tinikling, a couple walking three Pomeranians.

At last I arrived at the reflecting pools, and found dozens of small bats dancing over them. I watched as delighted as the stray cat, though I didn't have her purity of intent; she took no notes as far as I could tell, though I suspect no mosquitoes bothered her either.

Sounds like little flute-notes, from bats or insects or birds, gave way to crickets like peeps, like mews, like bells. The clacking of bamboo poles echoed all through the park.

comments

Higashiyama Zoo (Sunday)

2012-10-23T07:50:22Z

Oh, hey, I kinda disappeared, sorry. I did not get eaten by the zoo animals at this time. I did see bikers on Big Wheels (motor-tricycles anyway), and I did go the wrong way:

I still don't know how it happened, but I went behind that tennis center and got nowhere and turned, and then there was a whole lot of nothing. There was a guy walking down the other side of the street at one point who looked like a fifty-year-old from a rock band, and he had a dog who was clearly some mutt, not a canonical Japanese dog (usually a little Shiba Inu, sometimes dachshunds, always tidy). I liked them both immediately.

I didn't think I would ever see this in Japan:

But there was wildlife!

( Grasshoppers and butterflies, anyhow. )

I walked over a very large hill on that unmaintained sidewalk and wound up in Kitaotsubo, which I had not heard of before. Oops. To do: get a map of the entire city, not just part of it. I turned left and walked some more, and got to Uedayama, which I had also not heard of. There was an option to go left again, back over the mountain, but I went forward some more in my dead-reckoning way, and triumphed -- eventually I hit a T-junction, but with the chance to walk through a forested bit, and after that I saw a parking sign for Higashiyama something and started hearing loudspeaker announcements.

Lots of people with kids were around, always a good sign of a zoo, and I even got valuable information from one of the kids. He went up to a shrub and picked some inconspicuous flowers, then smelled them as he carried them off. I sniffed carefully and found that they were the source of the mysterious, wonderful tropical-fruit smell that I keep detecting in random places around the city. Once I knew what the bush looked like, I found out they're usually white, but these were orange:

Now I just have to figure out what their name is.

When I arrived I was very puzzled that I didn't have to pay -- this happened several times during the day, and later I found out that everything was free due to the Nagoya City Festival. Score. I walked into this:

It is, unfortunately, an old-school zoo. None of the animals really had enough space to be happy, and some of them were clearly messed up and pacing freakily. The babies, the birds, and the herps were all just fine, though. There was a lot to enjoy.

( Cut for many smallish photos )

comments

Sunday morning linkage

2012-10-21T03:07:54Z

Having hung my laundry out on the balcony on a little round clippy thing like a good resident of Japan, I am off to the zoo and botanic gardens. First, some images to share.

I would date with this person: Oregon Trail cosplay

New baby capybara OMG

I have my quibbles, but human ponies with different body types are pretty great, especially Pinkie Pie.

Food paintings/dioramas must be seen to be believed

comments

science blog post made

2012-10-12T12:18:53Z

Look at these fucking hawkmoths! My mind was blown. I wished for a much better photography setup; this was pretty much the only identifiable photo out of a bunch, and it's not nearly as clear as I'd like. So cool though!

comments

some herbs from Lolly Willowes that I had to look up

2012-07-14T02:22:07Z

Mugwort - I know this is a thing from Chinese medicine, where I think they burn it (yes, and look at all the foods too), but what is it? Oh, Artemisia vulgaris, the plant to which I am so very allergic that as soon as mine in the herb garden bloomed I sneezed for half an hour straight, and my dad went vengefully to yank it out and fling it down the gully. All right then.

Sweet gale - The next thing to bayberry, Myrica gale.

Water purslane - There are North American plants called this, but Laura would have found Lythrum portula. The dreaded purple loosestrife is in the same genus; Lythrum isn't closely related to regular-type purslane, which is in the Portulacaceae. I assume it's called that due to being edible, though I don't see any reference to its being slimy, so how can it be purslane?

Succory - Chicory! How did that happen? The OED says: "Alteration of cicoree, sichorie, sycory, old forms of chicory n., q.v., after Middle Low German suckerîe, Middle Dutch sûkerîe (Dutch suikerei, older Flemish suykerey, succory)," versus "< French cichorée (now chicorée) endive, chicory (= Italian cicórea) < Latin cichorium, cichorēum, < Greek κίχορα, κιχόρεια (neuter plural)."

Tailors' needles - I judge this is probably a type of Bidens. Although the only plant I can find with that exact common name is Scandix pecten-veneris, as an umbellifer it seems very unlikely to smell of honey. Bidens species are often called [adjective] needles for their long, burrlike seeds, and do smell of honey in some cases. (American gardeners can imagine Coreopsis; the two genera are intimately involved.)

comments

ten days meme (day 2)

2012-06-16T16:47:16Z

Day Two: Nine things about yourself.

1. When I got my first period I was ten. I knew perfectly well what was going on, but I had no idea how to tell my mom. She'd already had a hysterectomy, so there were no supplies in the house. My solution? Ignore it! Luckily I didn't bleed that much. I think I worked myself up to mentioning it three days in, and pretended to have been oblivious.

2. I am bisexual but for obvious statistical reasons have had an easier time meeting men who like me back than anyone else.

3. Someday I hope to be a grumpy professor emerita who asks beady-eyed questions in seminars. (This might also be fun at Wiscon. I can start attending the pseudoscience panels and give them hell!)

4. And then goes home to her blueberry farm and crafts and pets and family.

5. My mobile phone is a little Nokia brick (6010) so very old that I have started getting retro-hipster cred for it.

6. When my bus came the other day, I was too busy photographing a wasp (carrying a paralyzed fly!!!1!) to get on it, and waited for the next one.

7. Copyediting is both automatic and fun for me. Sometimes I screw up anyway, but typos almost always jangle my nerves and I notice. There's a P.C. Hodgell book that I have never finished because the error-alarm going off all the time is just too distracting.

8. My house now has two walls that are falling apart. I never had a satisfactory explanation for the first one, which was like that when we moved in, but the second is clearly due to the messed up gutters letting water into the wall. Wim is unhappy about this, but I'm kind of fascinated.

9. I love gardening and study plant molecular biology but am tragically allergic to several common types of airborne pollen and to contact with grass.

Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever)
Day Seven: Four turn-offs.
Day Eight: Three turn-ons.
Day Nine: Two images that describe your life right now, and why.
Day Ten: One confession.

comments

survey meme

2012-06-04T19:07:13Z

( from lots of people )

comments

the umbrella, friend to misanthropy

2012-04-26T05:16:59Z

I quit taking the topiramate last night due to ongoing catastrophic bellyache, but I still feel approximately as unpleasant today. (Also things went wrong all day, very annoying.) After the first couple days of taking it, the noticeably stoned and lovey feelings went away, along with basically all the side effects apart from the digestive. I expected a headache today, which didn't arrive as such, but hadn't quite considered that an episode of thinking the worst of everyone might be in store. Some annoying stuff did happen, but I also overreacted to not finding all my CDs where they belonged in the confocal room, and was luckily saved from sending pissy email to everyone by running into the person who'd been using them to adjust the height of some samples. I'd been convinced that someone had made off with them. I was not saved from spending over half an hour feeling weepy and copying them all to the hard drive so I could protect my belongings better, instead of, you know, working.

So, hating all or at least most, I walked home today in what turned out to be about as heavy a rain as we normally get in Seattle. How nice an umbrella is for avoiding interactions with your fellow trail users, especially when the wind is from the front. Those cyclists were obviously thinking bad things about me, but I could just block them away with the umbrella and never even see most of their faces. Walkers were harder to obscure completely, but no one could be too surprised if I happened to be looking elsewhere for the brief time their face was visible. Hurrah for umbrellas. Hopefully by the time the rain is over my bad mood will be too.

(And the rain did result in an injured worm for Hex. Even misanthropes appreciate an adorable hunting axolotl.)

comments

(from yesterday) just finished

2012-03-11T15:48:43Z

Sad to be done, glad to be done. Monticello this afternoon. But, as it happened, I had the naturally-shortest lab last, and with all our experience and missing people from our group who'd already left it went really quickly.

So I went out! It's clear and a little chilly today, but perfectly fine for someone who'd dressed for the freezing-cold lecture hall. I was curious about the campus cemetery I noticed on my walk in yesterday, so I went to check it out. It's a beautiful old place, not overly manicured, so I got to see lots of interesting plants: magnolia trees larger than I've ever seen, random bunches of chives, all the exact same weeds (European introductions, of course), slightly different violets, a lovely five-needle pine with such thin, soft needles that they even felt good on my face.

And monuments. ( Photos )

comments

birthday garden

2012-02-19T01:04:34Z

I realize I post basically the same flowers every spring, but SPRING is basically the same every spring, yet it's still wonderful.

(Columbine leaf)

comments

Japan trip report 27 Sep

2011-12-14T07:11:19Z

I will eventually post all of these, and hopefully someone will read them.

( 17 photos and a writeup )

comments

Japan trip report 25 Sep

2011-10-24T06:31:51Z

( Lots of photos and notes from Arashiyama area )

comments

Japan trip report 24 Sep

2011-10-24T05:56:13Z

( 8 small photos and notes from Nagoya )

comments

wheeee

2011-09-20T12:00:05Z

OMG my talk was STILL TOO SHORT. Sheesh. What else can I put in there?! I had lots of trouble understanding the questions too -- partly these folks are just smarter than me and partly there's a language/accent barrier.

But I met lots of people (including one of our collaborators who was really rather attractive) and encouraged them to come visit our lab. And then we went to dinner at a Japanese mushroom restaurant where everything was delicious, and drank camu-camu wine and a couple of sakes and mushroom-infused shochu, and the decor was State Fair Mushroom Collection all the way. In addition to the lovely cuisine, they brought a giant basket of uncooked mushrooms to the table for show and tell. (My camera was out of battery, but I should be getting some phone pics by email later.) Everyone is so nice.

The weather is vastly preferable today, cool and damp being much more my speed than hot and damp. The typhoon is causing flooding in Nagoya, where I need to go tomorrow, so that should be interesting. The shinkansen tracks are okay, though, and that's the leg closest to the floods. Disconcertingly, the AC in my room here sounds like a windstorm but isn't. I kept checking out the window last night only to see completely still trees.

comments