Liana's · Journal

So what have I been up to recently? Sometimes life is awesome, and sometimes fair to middling.

Nick moved to Baltimore; he's all professorial now. He's got his own lab at the Carnegie Institution at Johns Hopkins. He has a fun new apartment in a converted old Catholic school, and I visited for 2 weeks around Thanksgiving to help warm it.

In August I stumbled into the best thing to happen to me in years: a Burning Man art project called Syzygryd. Remember those things I used to love doing? Building large strange objects and putting them in improbable locations and working under pressure with amazing people? Yeah, all that, but with a big budget. Burning Man this year was an entirely different experience than usual for me, focused on work not play, in a way that fit me very well. My only small regret is that I haven't stayed in touch with my new community as well as I'd meant to.

I am ashamed to realize that my last post here was my big "aha" moment about my science, because that was 9 months ago, a very long gestational period for a project... But by coincidence, I just ordered the first pieces of it today. I'm looking forward to getting my hands wet.

I still really like Irish step dance. I want to get better faster. I'll be happier when I'm getting as much exercise as I did earlier in the year - it felt great.

Other stuff, I'm trying to put behind me. Onwards!

It only just occurred to me that I work at a university that resembles nothing so much as a country club, and that I can use its facilities for free.

First, there's apparently a decent climbing wall (top rope and boulder) open afternoons and evenings. Free for Stanford people; $5 for guests. I want to find people around Stanford to toprope with. It would be awesome to have a regular climbing partner again, since it's the only thing that gets me going every week, but I could also just go occasionally with random friends.

Second, I've been looking for a nice wood floor where I can practice Irish dance once or twice a week. I wonder if there's anything on campus that would work for that, maybe even a room with mirrors. I feel self-conscious if there are people doing other things in the same room, but I could probably get over that. (There's a Stanford undergrad from another CRN dance school -- I ran into her at the competition. She's in Germany for the quarter, but in the spring, I bet she'd dance with me.)

Third, and most trivially, I bet somewhere at Stanford there is a locker room with a nice reliable scale. At the moment, I weigh myself once a month or so by walking into Mission Cliffs and asking nicely to use their bathroom! I could just buy a cheap scale, but I dislike unreliable measurements (not because it matters -- it's just another litle OCD thing) and I don't really want to weigh myself often.

Oddly, this has nothing to do with New Year's resolutions per se. Fitness fits the "harder, better, faster, stronger" theme but it's not quite what I meant.

I have my first (and probably only) Irish step dance competition at the end of the month. I've been practicing a ton (but not enough), sitting out ceili dances on Mondays and instead just doing my steps in the corner. I don't care much about how I do as long as I don't fall on my face, but I'm still surprisingly stressed - the other night I dreamed that I'd forgotten my dance shoes and had to compete alongside the champion level dancers, for instance.

One thing I haven't figured out is what to wear. I'm new to our class/ensemble and so I've got a hand-me-down costume for our 8-person ceili dance. It's at least two sizes too big, though, so I really don't want to wear it in the solo competitions. Since we're adults, and since our dance organization doesn't stress costumes as much as some, I don't need anything fancy (and I don't need to wear one of those ridiculous curly wigs). A few of us are trying to buy matching inexpensive dresses but I'm running out of time or ideas.

Here are the constraints: Black, can conceal a sports bra, knee length or a bit shorter, full-ish skirt (a generous a-line skirt would be fine). Must come in XS (0-2). Adult dancers often wear long-sleeve, knee-length velvet dresses, though I think I'd rather not have long sleeves. (Here's an example.) Short prom "little black dresses" would work if the top weren't too revealing. I'm actually considering wearing my high school prom dress, but it's got a halter neck so I'd need a new bra, and it's too big.

I've checked Vicky's Secret, JC Penney, and a few dance stores online, and the Jessica McClintock outlet and Nordstrom Rack in person. I'm going to look at Target tomorrow, I think... Any obvious places I'm not thinking of? Cheap is good.

Yesterday, Charlie and I and two others from our dance class went to watch a feis (dance competition) in Oakland. We only saw the champion level dancers, and they were amazing. But damn are the solo dresses scary looking! Way too many neon colors and sequins. Wow. People pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for them...

I am on Long Island. It's sort of awesome, as usual; I'm at an RNA conference at Cold Spring Harbor.

But on Saturday, the conference ends and I schlep my stuff into the city for an extra day and night of fun. Only one problem - the fun. I haven't had any time to think or get maps or anything. In general I'm fine with exploring a city on my own; there are plenty of museums and such, and that doesn't take much planning. But I'll be sad if I'm in NYC on a Saturday night and I don't find some interesting thing to do in the evening. That's the part of solo travel that can be a downer. I'm not quite asking livejournal for someone to adopt me for the evening (at least not quite yet) but hey, if I'm forgetting someone who's in NYC...

Also, I wish I had an iphone. No need to plan anything if I have the internet in my pocket!

I spent the past few days canoeing down the Green River in Utah, a phenomenal river flowing calmly through deep canyons into Canyonlands National Park. The trip had many highlights, but I want to share this one before I forget.

We'd made camp up on a high bank away from the mosquitoes, and as we set up our kitchen area and had some wine and cheese and crackers, someone looked up and said, "A golden eagle!" I assumed at first it was a turkey vulture; we'd seen a few that afternoon. But it was definitely an eagle, soaring high on thermals. We got out the binoculars and took a closer look.

The eagle circled around to the cliff in back of our campsite. Then another bird appeared in the air above it and shot downward, sleek and small compared to the eagle. It was a peregrine falcon, and it must have had a nest on our cliff. It rose up above the eagle and then divebombed it again and again, turning and punching as it passed the eagle. The eagle spun out of its way and fought back, but eventually it decided the other side of the canyon was more hospitable and left the peregrine to its nest.

Peregrines are my favorite birds, but I'd never seen one in the wild before, only nesting on skyscrapers. I don't think I'd seen a golden eagle before, either. The combination was phenomenal.

Dear internets,

I have some questions about dishwasher installation. Have you installed one? We have a 20" space in the alcove off our kitchen that is just begging for a dishwasher. It is next to our washing machine, so there is pre-existing plumbing. I am certain I can make this work. (My favorite contractor is off on a backpacking trip that I missed due to poor planning, and I'm impatient, but probably the best answer is to wait til he's back...)

The options are an 18" portable dishwasher or an 18" "under-counter" dishwasher (we'd add a counter surface to the top, or something).

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And after this, I'll maybe fix our shower plumbing. That would be nice.

I used to eat a lot of ice cream. I'm not sure how this fits in with my claim that I don't like sweet, fatty food, but whatever. In fact, I think in college (a time of total failure to live a reasonable life) I subsisted on ice cream, because I never remembered to buy food and there was a 24-hr gas station convenience store next door to my dorm. My nutrition improved once the 24-hour Stah Mahket opened in back of the building. But I digress.

In particular, I used to eat a lot of Breyer's mint chip ice cream. I loved its texture and its simple natural flavors. It's lighter than most ice cream because its main ingredient is milk, not cream, so I could eat a lot and not feel full.

And then, two years ago, they changed it. They added a stabilizing gum to the ingredients. Its texture changed. I was very sad.

But last week, I heard that the Whole Foods store brand ice cream was just like the old Breyer's! And it's true! Yesterday I was in a grouchy mood so I thought I'd pick some up on my way home and try it. Nick knew I was having a hard week. When I called him to say I was on my way to the store for ice cream, he revealed that he, too, thought I could use some ice cream and he had already walked to Whole Foods to get me some!

So I can recommend Whole Foods 365+ mint chip ice cream as a replacement for Breyer's. (It does have stabilizing gum, but it seems not to affect the texture as much.) And I know at least two other people who felt as strongly as I did about Breyer's, so I hope this brightens your day.

Sunday was the big concert on the Mall for the Obama inauguration. Pete Seeger (89 years old - when did that happen??) sang This Land is Your Land, the original version with the more controversial verses added back in.

Here's a great video of it.

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office I saw my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

A great big wall there tried to stop me
A great big sign there said Private Property
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Watching it made my day. Singing it probably made Pete Seeger's decade, from the look on his face.

I'm in the solstice mood. I missed a solstice party last night because I wasn't feeling great earlier in the evening and Nick was at work, but later, C and I made it to Gaskell's and I got to dance quite a bit.

And this morning, I got a tree. We went to the tree lot on Bryant again this year. Last year, I got a reject tree (I called it krummholz but it was actually quite nice) for wicked cheap. But I walked into the lot today and there were only perfectly shaped trees, each $52. I asked the guy if they had any rejects this year.

"You don't need to get a reject tree to get a good deal," he said.

I figured he was trying to sell me a fancy expensive tree. I looked skeptical.

"How much you want to pay?"

"Well, last year, I paid $20."

"Ok. Pick a tree."

So I chose a perfect tree my height, hand over a twenty, and left happy. I'm glad I've learned to bargain. It's close enough to Christmas that who knows, maybe they're selling the remaining trees for $20 to everyone. But I bet if I'd gone up to the cash register with $52 in hand, they'd have taken it without comment.

Now it's time to clean and get ready for guests. I'd love to spend the day hanging ornaments, a fire in the nonexistent fireplace and a strong eggnog in hand, and then play a few games of Scrabble. Maybe this evening!

I now have:

Enough table space for our holiday guests. Craigslist provided a square table exactly the height and width of the current table, with legs that screw off. More work than a folding table, but we can store it, legs off, with the folding chairs, and it'll make it feel more like a single long table. This also means we can have dinner parties, one of our goals for the year.

Four inflated tires on my car. I discovered a flat yesterday, but it wasn't totally deflated. Today I drove very slowly to Larkins Brothers tires a few blocks from here, and they patched the tire for $15 in 15 minutes or so. Not bad! As usual, Yelp doesn't lie.

A date for Gaskell's, but as usual, nothing great to wear. I will improvise.

A cold. But that's ok. I'm past the contagious stage, anyway, I think.