Little By Little

We turned a major corner this weekend on the bathroom remodel. Actually, Kevin did all the work while I did homework. I did help put the tub back in place, but that didn't take very long. Without saying too much more now, I'll provide here a photo collage with commentary of what went down:

Getting ready to move the tub. Moving the tub. Looking at the where the tub was.

Anyway, as I alluded to, we (I use the universal we here) lifted the tub out, and then replaced all the rotting subfloor that was underneath it. Our friend Jason came over to help, which was a huge plus.

There are some things I didn't want to know about my house. But I found them out when we moved the tub and undid the plumbing. And then I cleaned 65 years worth of disgusting from inside our pipes.

Here is the floor at the drain end of the tub. You can see where it is all rotted out, not to mention weird insulation that was placed underneath the tub. Pretty crumbly, and dusty and well, just overall gross.

Removing old floor and prepping for new floor

Here's where we put the tub while working on the floor -- and... New Floor! (well, sub-floor, but so important!

Running Funk Gets a Lift

We had to stop and take a running selfie

I've been in a little bit of a running funk lately, like I've lost my mojo for it. It could be the week after week of the same schedule, and feeling a little like I've plateaued. I am still forcing myself to run, however, because I realized today that the goal is drawing nearer a lot faster than I expected. I keep thinking I have two months left until the 1/2 marathon, but nope, it's just about a month away. Yikes! I know I'll be fine (I think??) but sometimes my central governor gets the best of me. (If you haven't heard of the central governor, take a listen to this RadioLab podcast, start it around 11:30 minutes). This morning, however, I went for a run with my friend Heather. She is a bonafide runner, someone who has been running for a long time, has done marathons, and said to a group of us once, "If I don't go running, bad things happen" which is code for running adds the sanity and balance into life. There are days when I am running and I feel awesome. Lately, I haven't been feeling awesome. Today, however, I felt awesome. It could have been that Heather and I were gabbing away, still maintaining a steady pace. Or that we stumbled upon an actual race that was happening and took some of their water. Or the scenery helped us make it just past 7 miles. Whatever it was, I was very happy to feel really good again about running, and having Heather as a friend to share this with me this morning was the icing on top of the cake. (Mmmmm cake).

A $200+ Book

Last fall, my supervisor for my assistantship and I worked together on writing a chapter for a book. It was an incredibly interesting process for me, having never written with someone else on an academic level. I've written a lot of grants with people, and I totally have that down, but writing a book chapter?? Especially on a subject matter I know nothing about? Jim and I started by talking and talking and talking. I'm not completely sure if he intuited that I am an auditory learner, or if he just prefers talking through ideas, but whatever the case, it worked for me. I remember many times meeting with him over coffee to talk about how we were going to tackle this. And then I had to start writing. After only knowing him a couple of months I had to send him an email saying that I wrote a lot but basically I think it's crap and I've been overthinking the entire thing. He responded with a "you're doing great" and "you're not the only one to over-think these things." Who knew academia could also be kind and forgiving? When Jim added in his sections, I then took it back and started copy editing. And as I read it I remember thinking, "these words sound familiar..." which means that a lot of what I wrote didn't completely get deleted! He kept it in, which was very exciting for me. (Unlike what I would do sometimes with grants, delete and rewrite). I learned a lot about international higher education through this process, and I'm very excited to share that the book has been published. And it's really expensive. Must be a Euro thing. Here's the website for the publisher and the book details so you can see what exactly we did.

Brown Rice

Brown rice. I eat it now.

Growing up I ate rice almost every day. It was the side dish I could rely on. Say we were having chili for dinner. White rice wasn't just on the side, the chili was spooned on top of it. Or let's say we were having some kind of chicken dish, with vegetables. White rice on the side. Better yet, a roast with potatoes. White rice on the side. There were rare moments that I did not eat rice at dinner. When I went to college my mom gave me a rice cooker. Receiving a rice cooker as a gift from your mother is a shared experience of many of my Asian friends. What I didn't know about rice until I got to college, however, is that it also came in brown. I know! You might be laughing. But really, my only touchpoint for rice was white sticky rice. Bought in 20 or 50 pound bags. I will admit that one time I was spending the night at my friend's house when I was in middle school, and during dinner there was rice. I remember thinking, "Oh! something familiar!" and I kept a lookout for the shoyu (that would be soy sauce). But the shoyu never arrived at the table, and in its place was a pat of butter and salt. I was obviously perplexed. Also, the rice kind of slipped around on itself. Not sticky at all. And it came from a box!!

So, enter my undergrad experience and I'm walking through the cafeteria line and there it is. A big cooked bin of brown rice. And I think, "does it taste different? Looks unnatural." Again, I know! So weird. I have to laugh about this now. These days I have to sneak in my white rice every once in a while because apparently brown rice is better for you (and more natural?). And we pretty much only buy brown rice these days. Even though it takes like, an extra 25 minutes to cook. But every once in a while I can make the case for white rice and oh, I am so happy to gobble it up with just a drop or two of shoyu and some nori.

Group Work (Blech)

I learned something new last week about my core classes. My professor for my policy class shared with my cohort that the syllabus for our class was part of an already established set of instructions, activities, and learning outcomes that she was not a part in creating. That she was not a part of its creation is obvious since she joined the HALE faculty in 2013 (I think it was 2013). What struck me, however, was the detail of how certain lessons needed to be designed. The specific example of this is group work. Apparently there were a certain number of "group work" assignments for my core classes. I pretty much cringe when I see group work on a syllabus. I start to get a little tightening in my chest and I have a hard time breathing when I think about writing as a group. Fortunately, I have been quite lucky the last year to be in a group with some pretty good people. It does make group work somewhat less painful, but still it falls into the category of most hated things. Also fortunately, my professor for my policy class shares this certain distaste for group work. So she's devised a brilliant way to adhere to the group work assignment and still make it somewhat independent work. So, as she went through the syllabus and I saw group work, and then she unpacked the assignment, my breathing became more even, and my fists unclenched. If I'm going to write a crappy paper, I'd rather just know that I was the only one who wrote it. Unfortunately, I am taking a course in a completely different college (Human Resources and Labor Relations) and this course also requires a group work project. We had a meeting today to discuss our project presentation, and the only thing I can say is that I can't wait for it to be over.

PWE

Hi! I'm a 1998 Ford Ranger!

I learned to drive on a small Toyota truck. It was light blue, and was the most stripped down model you could buy with a four speed manual transmission and no overdrive. It only had one rearview mirror on the driver's side. With this truck I learned the art of the clutch, and am surprised that my mom (who did most of my driver's education while holding on tightly to the passenger door and leaning into the center of the car) lived through this experience. I remember one time my dad and I drove to downtown Portland and parked the truck on the street. I don't remember why we were there, but I do remember on the way back to find the truck we couldn't remember what street we had parked it on. That's when my dad jokingly said, "Pee-wee where are you? We lost you!" And I laughed, and then realized why my dad said that once we found the truck: the license plate started with PWE. Thereafter, the little blue truck was Peewee. I will admit here, that I love driving a truck. Maybe it's just the nostalgia I have for having learned to drive on one. I also have nostalgia for Volkswagen Vanagons for a similar reason. I also learned to be a better driver with a Vanagon because there's nothing like driving a barn door with a gear shift that is two and a half feet long to give you a lesson on space. I digress. So yes, I love driving a truck.

Making the second dump-run

As Kevin and I tear out our bathroom (and scheme about the kitchen remodel) we have come to realize that a truck would be a really nice thing to have. Especially considering that we had a pile of rubble sitting under our carport for over two weeks. And we had to buy plywood and sheetrock. So... we got a truck. Bought a truck. And now I have to admit that this is the first American made car I have ever owned. It's an old truck, and it was a fairly cheap truck. But it has so far done the job and it feels really great to be driving a truck around. (And if you're wondering, yes, we still have the Honda. We are a two car family, which I have mixed feelings about but whatever, I live in the Midwest now and I guess that's just how we do it here).

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.

Certain Sounds

The M/V Klickitat, a ferry I took many times
out of Port Townsend when I lived there.

I haven't been sleeping well. It's not a big deal, I've never really been very good at sleeping. To be specific, I'm really good at falling asleep, but I'm terrible at staying asleep. I'm not sure if there is a name for this type of insomnia. It ebbs and flows, and some months I'll have a long stretch where I don't sleep any night between 1am and 4am. I'm in one of those cycles right now, and as I was lying awake the other night, I heard what sounded like a low, long horn echoing in the distance. I had to remember that it was almost impossible for me to hear such a thing, because I'm landlocked right now, and that sound was something I only heard when I lived in Seattle. The sound of boats humming and grumbling their horns, bellowing to one another at night is something not heard here in Michigan. As I lay awake, I started to think of all of the sounds I don't hear anymore, and used it as my way of counting sheep:
Large vessels on water, ferry boats
The click and hum of electric busses
Apartment neighbors
Western Gulls
Traffic
My crow friends asking me for breakfast
Constant talk about the viaduct

And then I started to think of the sounds I do hear now, that I never really did before I moved to Michigan:
Katydids and cicadas
Constant ceiling fans and rumbling AC units
Cardinals and Blue Jays
Snow plows
Undergrads
Constant talk about how bad the roads are

I love my new sounds. But I still miss you sometimes Seattle.

End of Summer Camping

The masterful coxswain

We finally made it camping this summer during one of our last weekends before school starts. A friend of ours from Seattle was visiting some other good friends of ours in Chicago, and it just so happened that we had already been planning a camping trip the same weekend she would be in the Midwest, so we joined the camping party! I haven't been large group car camping in ages, and it was rather nice to just sit under a tarp, talk, eat food made by the fire, and of course, do lake activities because we went to Pinckney State Park, full of lots of lakes. The group of us rented canoes during one day and it was so wonderful, minus that fact that I forgot that when I get in and out of the water the bug juice washes off my feet leaving me as easy prey to my arch nemesis, The Mosquito. Needless to say I came home with about 23 bites shared between my two feet. But this did not spoil any fun. The state of Michigan is beautiful, and I am so thankful I have been able to get out and enjoy a lot of it this summer. This trip was made especially excellent because it was shared with such good company.

School Begins. Kind of.

In celebration of first days of school,
here is my 4th grade school photo. I'm
pretty much rocking the same hair style today

School is back in session! Well, mostly. The beginning of the semester is today, and although it is a Wednesday, it will be running a Monday schedule. I don't have any of my own classes on Mondays. What I do have on Mondays is the Bailey Scholars Program, of which I am a "co-convener." Joining the Bailey Scholars Program happened somewhat un-planned last spring. I was asking a friend of mine about a research fellowship we was involved in because it was something I might want to look into during my third year. As we were chatting, she mentioned Bailey, and connected me with the program. I wasn't completely sure what it was, but already knew the director and it just kind of turned out with me thinking that being a part of this might be interesting. So, here I am in the Bailey community.

In short, Bailey Scholars are undergraduate students who apply to be part of a student lead learning community. They go through core courses and also complementary courses and when finished, they receive a minor in Connected Learning. Here is more info from the website. I am working with a staff person at Bailey to co-convene these undergraduates, and nudge them. We call it "convening" because the students are the ones responsible for deciding what we will learn, how we will learn it, and how we will assess our learning. You might be thinking, "that sounds crazy!" And yep, I hear it can get pretty messy. But I'm usually pretty comfortable with ambiguity and mess so I'm excited to see how this whole thing unfolds. At the end I may not be comfortable with ambiguity and mess, at least with undergrads, who knows.

So off I go! School has started, and I will be joining 13 undergraduates today as we embark on this co-learning experience for the fall semester. Next Wednesday, my regularly scheduled classes begin...