Eye-Twitch, Familiarity

I found this graphic online, and it is one of the graphics
we made at my organization in Seattle. 

The last core class I am taking for my program is focused on policy in higher education. I attend this class every Wednesday evening, and last night was my second class. My professor was very candid about the nature of the course, emphasizing that this was a class that served a couple of other purposes apart from focusing on policy. Those are, being a kind of "capstone" for all of our core classes, and also preparing us for our comp exams in January. With that said, it means that interwoven into the course are these two other things that take time away from our focus on policy. For me, this is kind of a shame given that this is a subject area I finally have some experience and knowledge in. In discussing the readings for the class last week with some of my cohort-mates, many of them expressed disdain for the reading. I also witnessed a lot of sink-eye. I, on the other hand, while some of it was a bit drab, experienced an eye-twitch because I had some flashbacks to what it is like to work in the policy arena and how much of a house of cards it is. Years of research, finally an opportunity to start pushing it through, and someone sneezes because they don't like how that will message to their base and poof! Sorry, try another policy tack and maybe in another 5 years something can happen. Or just give up entirely. Needless to say, I am looking forward to this class. It falls somewhat within a language I understand, and speaks to the movement of policy and legislation, and how wacky ideas about policy solutions can not just be good ideas, but can sometimes come to fruition.

Feed the Birds

One of the wonders of living where I did in Seattle was the bird activity that Kevin and I had on our balcony. While we lived there, a pair of crows decided to build a nest in the fir tree directly in front of our apartment building. All of us in the building collectively decided that in order to keep from getting dive-bombed by crows while they attempted to lay and raise their young was to make friends with these two crows, aka, feed them. So we did. Kevin and I may have gone a little over-board. We created a little tray for them to feed from, and also learned that crows have an appetite for cashews. Needless to say, we became close friends with these crows (and their offspring) and they grew to know us. I could walk outside on the balcony and they would wait for me along the rail, cawing gently at me to "give me your cashews" and I would oblige.

Here in Lansing, we are attempting the same fate, although not so much with crows but with the local birds. I will add here that I don't much care for house sparrows. I find them completely annoying and gluttonous. I can't stand them. And they bully away the sweet little chickadees. Anyway, we put up a bird feeder. And after a few days of me commenting "maybe the birds in Michigan just aren't the sharpest tools in the shed" they finally started coming. And not just any birds, but Downy Woodpeckers, Eastern Nuthatches, Black-capped Chickadees, Cardinals, American Goldfinches, and even the occasional Red-bellied Woodpecker. Here is a digi-scope I took of a downy and a chickadee munching away (it's all about the suet!). Now the only challenge we have is a wily squirrel, able to leap across vast distances from the tree trunk to the feeder and gobble all the seed. Seriously, we have tried several squirrel-be-gone tricks and she is a smart one. In the end, we may have to move the feeder to another spot and post in on a pole from the lawn. With slick plastic surrounding it.

Seriously, Instagram. Just Don't.

I became an Instagram user about a year ago. It was shortly after I decided to break up with Facebook. Well, break up with Facebook like you break up with an old college flame: you keep seeing one another even though you're not "officially" dating anymore. So I don't post to FB but I peruse still every once in a while. Then I forget I'm on Facebook and someone sends me a message and I feel like a jerk because I never respond. But it's only because I'm rarely there! Instagram, however, is so much better for me. It is mostly images, and so much less long diatribes and commentary about current issues or people. Maybe I'm shallow, but I like my social media kind of like my People Magazine. I go to it to distract myself, not feel like I'm reading the opinion piece then the comments section of the NYT (or more realistically, Huffpost).

Recently, however, during my Instagram thumb swipes, I've slowly been experiencing tiny passion-heart cuts because a lot of my peeps on Instagram who still live in the Northwest have all, for some reason, been camping in the NW and posting the most amazing pictures. My heart is bursting for all that NW rainforest beauty and then breaking! I'll have to visit the Upper Peninsula soon and post my own beautiful landscape Instagrams, because I'm seriously missing the OlyPen landscape right now.

Look how beautiful this place is!!!!

The Paper Agenda

Last year as a first year grad student, I did do some things that were extremely intentional. I mean, outside of reading all of my assigned readings and writing everything. No really. I tried out some different study techniques to see how I study and keep track of things best. During my working career, I had a really good method for how to keep track of everything and where each day would begin. Part of this technique did carry over, i.e., post-it notes and certain ways of collating and stacking papers. One thing that I've learned however, is that I need a particular balance of paper and electronics. For example, I learned that having a paper copy of all of my readings works better for me. And that taking notes on my computer really is the best way. I tried taking notes by hand and it was awful. I also tried reading everything on my computer and it wasn't so bad, but I prefer paper. That way I can also read it on the bus.

Another way this balance of paper and electronics plays out is in my calendaring. I usually used my google calendar for everything. The problem is, it only syncs one way, from my computer to my phone, and not the other way around. This just means that when I make an appointment without my computer, I check the calendar on my phone, then pull out a sticky note and write down the appointment so I can add it to my google calendar once I'm back at my laptop. I tried emailing myself but I also have this distaste for seeing unopened emails so that didn't work because I'd open the email in my phone and then forget to enter it into my google calendar. Anyway, all of this to say that I'm going all paper for my calendar and agenda. And I got this awesome agenda! (See below!) I love it! So, wanna have some dinner? Let me just check my date book! How about a study date? Let me take a look at next week! Because it's got full month and week views!!!

Thoughts on Beginning Year Two

School started (officially for me) today. Wednesdays will be the only day I have my own courses to attend, beginning at 8am and ending at 7pm. In between the two classes I go to for myself, I am also convening the Bailey class from 12:30 - 2pm, so there is no rest for me on Wednesday. My third course is an independent study, so, nothing to attend except my own learning, yo!

So yes, class started today. And I am feeling.... accomplished that I completed my first year as a grad student/PhD student. Most folks I know say that if you complete your first year, you're golden! I'm not sure I feel golden, but at least mostly copper.

I'm also feeling... (already) a little squished because my schedule is much tighter than last year. Part of the reason is because I have an assistantship that requires me to be in an office between Monday and Friday, any time between 8am and 6pm. Unlike last year, when I could just do my assistantship work whenever I wanted (10pm! Yeah! 5:30am I'm feeling like doing assistantship work, heck yeah!), now I am limited. This means that I am NOT flexible. I have most hours planned to the minute, and each minute gets me from one scheduled thing to another. My Monday to Friday is packed. Needless to say I am very protective of my time.

And I am also feeling.... relaxed. I have some friends who are in their 5th year, some who have graduated in different disciplines with their PhD and one friend in particular who reminds me, "Emiko, just go through the hoops. If I could go back in time I'd tell myself not to be so stressed out all the time, so I'm telling you this." He's a sociologist so I take his words to heart. (I have a special place in my heart for sociologists. If I could get another degree, it would be in sociology.)

And finally, I am feeling.... more like I know what I'm doing and less like I'm pretending. I don't have to fake it so much because I learned a lot last year and can actually apply it. I can also see the bigger picture (although I've always been a big picture kind of person so maybe this doesn't count) and how each of my classes this semester, as weird and seemingly random as they are, actually fit really well together. They are all in my interest area, see the photo above of my books. And them all being in my interest area and narrowing in and staying focused on an interest area says a lot, especially from a generalist like me.

Running Update - 1/2 Marathon Blues(ish)

I went for my longest run on Sunday. Yep, I'm still running. I'm somewhat surprised by this, but also not really because I've stopped thinking about it and I just do it now. I have become that person that wakes up at 6am and by 6:30 or 6:45 I'm out the door. Kevin is on the bandwagon too. We have a running regimen. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, long run Sundays. So I went for 9 miles. Can you believe it? NINE MILES. The longest I've ever run in my life is 10, and that was when I went out for the cross-country team in high-school that one year because I was kind of bored and wasn't playing soccer. Anyway, nine miles!

We've been running the Lansing River Trail
because we can do an out and back for several
miles. And yes, my pace has slowed down.
I'm working on it.

These long distances mean that I'm serious about running a half-marathon as my previous post on the matter stated I would. And I wanted to go big for this event, which is the Detroit 1/2. The timing isn't perfect. It is on a Sunday that is the Sunday after I get right back into town from a school trip, and Kevin is also out of town right up until that day. But we really wanted to do this, so we started planning. Then things just kind of started to fall apart. Two big issues: It's freakin' expensive! And we'd have to stay the night in Detroit and our travel back home the day before would have been a tricky issue because the Detroit 1/2 goes "international," that is, it goes across the bridge to Windsor, Canada and we'd have to figure out how to get our passports checked in the day before. Anyway, after some conversation, we decided to bail and find another race. It was too complicated.

So yay! We found a race in early November and it's basically here in Lansing!! So much easier! And it's all trail running! I've been checking the website and just recently decided to check again to see when they were going to start registration, because it seemed to be getting kind of late. Uh, then I noticed that it was only a 5K. I guess maybe the 1/2 was only last year? I don't really understand, but whatever. So I went back online and found YET ANOTHER race the next day about an hour away.

I really need to do this. I'm not running nine miles, and increasing it by 1/2 a mile every week for nothing. I think I've found the right one, it's a mixture of trails, hills, roads, and park spaces and is an hour and fifteen minute drive. Cross your fingers that it the race is on because I am so getting ready for this.

Everything but the Bathtub

Our bathroom remodel started a week ago. We had a long Sunday, and then at around 2:30pm decided to just go for it. Before I get into the details of what is going on in our reno, let me just talk about our house and this bathroom.

Our house was built in 1956, and was, according to our neighbor, one of the model homes for the neighborhood housing development. As Lansing began to grow in the 1950s, the neighborhoods crept north, and the Groesbeck neighborhood was developed just past the main arterial of Grand River. We live in the southern-centralish part of the neighborhood, and many of the houses around us are of the sprawling-low mid-century ranch variety. Just up the street is another house with our exact floor plan, and another one of our houses is a block and a half away. It's a nice neighborhood, with a little bit of an Edward Scissorhands vibe. Now, bathrooms.

Am I not the most adorable
sink you've ever seen?

I've learned that most of the bathrooms in the houses are one of three colors: green, beige, and blue. Our color is blue. This means everything - EVERYTHING - is blue. And I'm not totally against this. We have two bathrooms, a full and a half. The half bath is still all completely blue. Blue sink, blue toilet, blue wall tile, blue floor tile, everything. And the sink is in perfect condition, and it's adorable. The toilet in the half bath is in medium condition, the wall tile is still mostly working like a champ. Unfortunately the floor tile has seen better days. My dream is to just restore this entire bathroom, although I'm not sure it's in the cards. If we do go for a remodel of the half bath, we will be taking the adorable blue sink and keeping it for ourselves. Because I LOVE it.

The before shot

So back to the main bath remodel. The main bath had been redone around 2001, and I can't say it was redone very well or with much taste. The only original parts of the main bath that were left were the tile (blue) and the tub (yep, still blue). We decided to, obviously, redo the floor, vanity, and toilet, and preserve some of the blue tile while adding a white border. We decided this for a couple of reasons: to save on waste by not just ditching all of that tile, and to save on $. We also planned to keep the tub because the contours of it are quite nice. The plan is to just have it reglazed to white. This might be a more expensive route, but we're very much interested in not producing a ton of waste. Throwing out a bathtub to replace it with some weird plastic tub makes my heart hurt.

Demo begins

Now, I've watched a lot of HGTV and home remodeling shows. You might say I'm somewhat addicted to them. And I should know that any renovation does not go as planned. I guess I wasn't expecting ours to be as big as it turned out to be. First, we had to remove all of the tile. Back in the day, houses like ours used concrete as a backer for tile. This makes it nearly impossible to add any new tiling because it's a challenge to remove tile and going back and adding concrete is just not the way it's done anymore. So we took out all of the blue tile, and ripped out all of the concrete backer where the tile was. Fortunately, we were able to save quite a bit of this blue tile, and their future use has yet to be determined but I'm excited about finding a place for it. This all means we took 3/4 of the walls all the way down to the studs. We had to. Next, the floor. Remove tile, and alas, looks like we also need to replace the sub floor. Remember the 2001 bathroom redo I mentioned above? Well, they were too lazy or something to repair/replace any subfloor that was obviously damaged during that time from water. So now we get to do it. In the end, our bathroom will be super tight, super tidy, and up to date. And while I would have loved to make this bathroom period appropriate, it is kind of fun to design a bathroom in a way that will appeal to all. Generic, yet stylish. I'm just thankful we have a second bathroom, and have rigged a way to use our shower during the reno. Whew!

And.... just our lovely tub is left.