Coming soon...more posts.
Right now if I posted it would be all about my crazy life and conference paper. But once that is out of the door, I'll prove to everyone that I am, in fact, still alive.

Misc Musings

I was going to write a lengthy post about my struggles with headaches, but I spent yesterday afternoon with friends who have a five day old daughter and something about being around a child that young makes me not want to talk about my problems. Hopefully I'll have a photo soon of me with little Sophia.

So instead, I'll give you a post written a week ago about a cycling trip from April.

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I’m trying to post more regularly on my blog, which I’ve been neglecting lately. I want to return to the original theme of this blog, which was travel. Hearing a Welshman speak this morning, I was reminiscing back to my trip in June 2007 (chronicled in the archives here), when I went to Wales and went part way up Snowdonia. That got me thinking about other adventurish travel I’ve done lately and so I’m writing now about a bike trip I went on in May 2008.

Hikers on Snowdon

I was in England for a week for the King’s Singers 40^th anniversary concerts and I’d flown over with frequent flyer miles. I spent several days in London, then went up to Cambridge. I had a few extra days and I decided that I wanted to visit Oxford. Knowing, however, that I’m not a huge fan of anything “touristy,” I wanted to do something more off beat. The year before, I’d rented a bicycle at the Youth Hostel in York and spent an hour winding up and back part of the National Cycling Route. Somehow, when I lived in York I only rode my bike on the roads and sidewalks. To Sainsbury’s and back. To the train station. On miscellaneous errands. The discovery of the National cycling paths was amazing to me. So between that and reading in my guidebook about the Cotswolds, I decided to go on a cycling trip (one day) around the Cotswolds.

Cycling Path north of York

I started off in Moreton-in-Marsh. Why? you ask. I’m sure this sounds ridiculous, but one of the composers we frequently sing here at Plymouth is Ian Kellam. At the end of each of his compositions is the location the piece was composed in. His hometown is Moreton-in-Marsh, so I felt I had to start there.

My guidebook (Let’s Go Britain & Ireland 2004) was slightly out of date, but I was hoping that the cycle rental they mentioned was still in business. The shop was a toy shop on the high street (main street, to you Yanks ;)). I had to wait my turn, but I was the only renter at the time. They spent a long time with me helping me plan my route and drawing it on a laminated map with dry erase markers. (See route here: GMap Pedometer)Then I went to the back and they fitted me with a bike. They loaded the basket with a raincoat, a bike pump, and bungee corded the map on top.

The Toy Shop in Moreton-in-Marsh

They said that the shop closed at 5. But if I came back later, I should just come in the back and ring the bell. And the bike wasn’t fitted with lights, so if it got dark and I still wasn’t back, I could call them and they’d come pick me up. I could also call if I got lost or something broke.

One thing that hadn’t really occurred to me was that the Cotswolds is a hilly area. Very hilly. I started out and less than half a mile from the bike shop I realized that this was WAY out of my league. The hill was probably the smallest possible thing that could be classified as a hill. The lines on the topographical map were quite far apart, as opposed to many of the other hills on the map. But I made it to the first small village and as I kept biking down the road, past sheep and horses and gorgeous vistas, I realized that I was not going to die/pass out/fall off a cliff. I had decided that I could make it and gosh darn it, I would.

Batsford Church

Pheasants?

Hiking with Sheep

The Cotswolds is (are?) full of small towns. Town might be too fancy a word. Village? Smattering of houses? I went through, probably, a dozen villages, of which only one had multiple shops.

Small village of Ebrington

With bike and gear in the metropolis of Chipping Campdon

One village had a fete happening and men were wondering down to the town centre in top hats and women in fancy dress and ribboned and flowered hats. Bells were pealing.

Heading to a fete in Draycott

I had to walk up several steep hills, but, as I coasted back into Moreton-in-Marsh, I was pleased. The shop was almost dismayed that I was back so early. They checked, double checked, and triple checked that I was really done. I was ready to be back on the train though. (Or, er… I would have been if I could understand train timetables.) I went to a small tea shop for tea and scones, bought some postcards, and then waited at the train station for about an hour until the train came to carry me back to Oxford. I was bruised and marked with grease stains on my legs and hands. They took a few days to come off, but were well documented in my self portraits.

This reminds me. I really should buy myself a bicycle soon. As in, before the snow starts falling…

Promised post - Church Music & other asides

I was going to post this earlier and edit it in the meantime, but I forgot... so here is the unedited copy written on Sunday (10/12) after church while eating lunch and reflecting. No judgment, evangelism, or uncomfort intended. Instead, I hoped that this might help people understand more about me and how I, personally work, which is unique, or so I think.

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There are days that I love life and there are days that I LOVE life. Ignoring the past 30 minutes, this is one of the latter. (The past 30 minutes involved my wireless card causing three consecutive blue screens of death…so I have no internet for the afternoon.)

Image by smenzel

I know that many of you are not religious or are atheists, but most of you who know me know that I am religious, although I sometimes hide it behind choir (i.e. I’m at church because of choir) which is, at times, true. And I am most certainly not an evangelical or a conservative. I’m very quiet about my faith and I’m very liberal and inclusive. I think that my only religious t-shirt is a “Hellfire and Dalmatians” shirt.

I should start from the beginning though. Last night I was going to write a ranting post about how much I hated my work and research and the like. This was expressed well through my file naming “E:/Fall 2008/Research/I hate the world/make_it_work.py” I’m working on Wikipedia research and we have a huge amount of data to go through. Yesterday I discovered a problem which meant that we might have to rerun our program that takes 8-9 days, because the data we’re getting is incorrect. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that we were trying to get the paper done by November 3^rd and were pushing it as it was. Now, assuming that this error does actually exist (and it’s the same magnitude of difference that I expect), there’s no possible way to get the paper out in time, because it would require a minimum of a week to get the data and that’s pushing it.

So yesterday afternoon I was wrestling with data and trying desperately to make things work that weren’t currently working. Ben was amazing and calmed me down and helped me write the code that would fix what we thought the initial problem was. He also made corn casserole which ended up spilling butter onto the bottom of the oven resulting in the smoke alarm going off, billows of smoke coming from the oven and me laughing for the first time all day. (No one was hurt or items damaged, so I was allowed to laugh.) Then we watched an episode of Psych, so I went to bed feeling better already.

But today was a special day at church. Our choir director, Philip Brunelle, was celebrating his 40^th anniversary as choir director/organist here. First, that’s impressive even if it’s a part time/volunteer thing. But staying in the same job for forty years is amazing, and he’s kept up or exceeded the caliber of music as years have gone by (or so he alludes to).

Image of Philip and Carolyn Brunelle from Richard Sparks

Today was an all out celebration. He was, of course, at the organ, and we sang some fun pieces (Rorem, Stainer, and Brittan). All the prayers, responses, readings, etc were about music and I hope to get a copy of the pastoral prayer to post because it was truly gorgeous. Philip is also good about dropping out on the organ for a verse, or the alleluias at the end of a verse, etc and letting the congregation sing, a cappella. The only other place that I’ve seen this work is at Mennonite churches. Usually without the organ, the congregation drops and you can barely hear them. This morning, though, they had to bring in extra chairs, so the congregation was full and full-throated. We got to sing multiple verses a cappella and it was glorious.

In addition, the former senior minister at Plymouth, Vivian Jones, had flown over from Wales for this celebration. He split the sermon with the current senior minister, Jim Gertmenian, and both were excellent tributes to Philip and to music. I have to work a bit to understand Vivian, as I’m not used to listening to the rolling accents of the Welsh, but Vivian was hilarious and reminisced about working here (starting from before I was born…). Jim is generally more straight laced in his sermons and so I wasn’t surprised that his part of the sermon was less personal reminiscence and more lessons. (Again, I’ll try to get copies of these.) But Jim spoke of the origin of earth in the Big Bang, the Genesis story “Let there be light,” and the fact that music must be part of the origin of life as we know it. He spoke of being “almost unable to forgive” the writers of the Gospels for not including any descriptions or stories of Jesus as a musician.

Perhaps this is because of my personal strangeness, but immediately as Jim was preaching, I realized I agreed completely. My image of life is, while not focused on music, strangely partnered with music. I spend multiple hours a day listening to my ipod and I sing incessantly, when appropriate. I am strangely private about my musical life. I never want solos or to be singled out and I hate playing/singing for people. Some of you will be surprised to know that I can play (in order of competence more to less): piano, trombone, flute, clarinet, fiddle, recorder, trumpet, tuba, and drums. Five of these are due to taking an instrumental education class in college, for fun, others are out of personal interest. Last year I bought myself a digital piano. I love that I can play it with headphones and I tend to end up on the piano bench at times when I can’t face sitting at a computer or I’m frustrated with everything (although not yesterday). I play Hannon studies, the first half of Bach’s Prelude 21, a piece by Telemann, or anything that my piano will play so I only have to play one hand. I have to concentrate hard enough on these pieces that I forget everything else. Piano also requires much more hand, eye, brain coordination than most of my everyday activities. And yet most of my friends have never heard me play. I don’t think I’m much good, but I like playing for myself.

I’m also a moody music person. I get frustrated when my ipod, on shuffle, is playing “all the wrong pieces.” In the same way, I love when my ipod “knows what I want to hear.” Yeah, it sounds crazy, but I’m productive with the right music. (If only the iTunes Genius feature could be run on my 5^th gen ipod on the go.) Last night, on my last bit of patience, I cranked up the volume of The Killers, because I needed angry music to program to. Then I calmed down and switched to Moxy Fruvous. And, given enough time, I might have ended with Kristin Chenoweth.

So because I’m such a musical person, at heart, a church service like this morning’s is exactly what I needed. It didn’t matter that my research was shot, that I had a searing headache, or that my butt was sore from a bike ride yesterday. All that mattered was the notes and the harmonies. And that is yet another reason why I absolutely love my church here.

(You want another reason why I love it? The 70 year old woman in a wheelchair at the back had an Obama ’08 bumper sticker on her wheelchair. How cool is that? More reasons include that one year Jim’s Easter sermon was about how the resurrection didn’t happen and one of his Valentine’s day sermons was about sex. Yes. Not abstinence or anything along those lines. Sex. I need to get a copy of that, cause I can’t find mine.)

So now, as I’m sitting, trying to work, sans internet, and waiting until the Hymn Sing at 4:30 (we’re even singing militant hymns….we never get to sing those), I’m realizing how lucky I am to be here and how much I will miss this community when/if I ever have to leave.

Picture of Plymouth Congregational Church taken by ecv5

I'm BACK

I have been a very negligent blog host lately, and I apologize. I've been sucked into courses, research, and conferences. However, this afternoon I was sitting around with my laptop and no internet connection and so I wrote some blog posts that have been on my mind. I hope that having a seeded group of pieces to start from will help me ease my way back. Unfortunately, you may find them a bit long, but I'll try to break them up a bit.

Here's a picture from my conference at the Keystone Resort in Colorado.

Tomorrow (10/13): A post about the musical wonderfulness that was today :)

When I am fast asleep

At 5am, police cars will lead the first non-construction cars over the I-35W bridge. This is the bridge on Sept 2, 2007 (courtesy of Ben).

At 5 am, I'll still be asleep, but the new bridge will be a welcome change. There are piles of rubble on the shore and the bike path is still closed, but about 14 months after it fell, a new bridge will be in place. 

I feel like I should write more about the collapse, but that will need to be another day.  More information on the bridge opening is at MinnPost. 

The World of Sarah Palin

In the past few weeks not much has changed with me. Well, I guess that's really a lie. I've left Google and started year 4 of my Ph.D. back in Minnesota. I'm neglecting the blog a little and instead have been doing homework, spending time with friends, and doing a bit of travelling. (I'm in Iowa for the weekend.)

But, one change is something that I hadn't seen coming. For the past 10+ years, when people ask me where I'm from in Alaska, I reply with, "A small town about an hour from Anchorage." If the person appears to have in depth knowledge of Alaska, I'll give them the town name, but that's fairly rare. Mainly the person wants to know if I lived in an igloo and whether or not I hung out with bears.

With Sarah Palin as the Republican VP nominee, suddenly everyone has heard of Wasilla Alaska. "Hey. Wait. You're from Alaska, what do you think of Sarah Palin?... You're from WASILLA? REALLY?"

While this blog won't become political, and many of you reading know how I feel about these issues, I thought this would be the perfect time to use my recent pictures from Alaska to introduce you to the metropolis that is Wasilla, Alaska. For those of you who don't know, I lived in Wasilla from 1989-1998 and my trip to Alaska in July was 10 years to the day since we'd left. Much has changed, but some things are still the same.

This is the view of Wasilla as you enter on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. Palmer is now a touristy small town while Wasilla is a big-box suburb type city. A huge number of stores, retaurants and shops have gone in since we left.

All I Saw Cookware (All I Saw is Wasilla backwards with different spacing) This was almost the best place in Wasilla. One year my brother won grand prize in the Candymaking for Under 12 year olds at the Alaska State Fair. He got a $25 gift certificate to All I Saw Cookware and bought an icing bag set.

The above picture is the back side of All I Saw. The other side looks towards Carrs, which was where my mom did a lot of her grocery shopping.

Below is a picture of the new Target. Target is opening in Wasilla and Anchorage in October. Wal-mart's been in town for quite a while now. Where Target stands now, there used to be a mall. Cottonwood Creek mall. We went trick-or-treating there one year. Another year my jazz band played Christmas music there. I don't remember what stores were in the mall other than Walden Books.

There is a very odd trend of espresso shacks in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley (where Palmer and Wasilla are). Maybe in all of Alaska. These are stand alone little sheds that have a drive-through coffee business. Most of them were closed as we drove by, so we didn't get to check it out. Dad says they existed (although weren't as prolific) before we left.

I went to sixth through eighth grade at Colony Middle School. I have many fond memories of the school, teachers, and classmates. I was part of a fantastic Science Olympiad team which went to Nationals in Michigan in 1998. We had a great band and music program and I was constantly challenged. Strangely enough, I was reminded last week of one of my former substitute teachers. While many subs are forgetable, I remember one sub from middle school who stood out. He was someone who our teacher never left lesson plans for. He taught us about wildlife and survival techniques (i.e. what happens if you get between Mamma Moose and her Calf) and told great stories about his former class trips. Strangely enough, I'm 95% positive that this memorable sub was Sarah Palin's dad, Chuck Heath.

This is the library. I'm pretty sure that if we could've gotten away with it my brother and I would have lived in the library. Wasilla (and Palmer) was a small town, so by a certain time we knew all the librarians. Mom didn't like us tagging along while she did grocery shopping, so she'd leave us in the library for an hour while she shopped. (The librarians were ok with this.) We thought we'd died and gone to heaven. The library had a checkout limit of 40 books per person at a time. My brother would check out 20 Tintin books and 20 Bill Peet books at a time. I checked out cookbooks and novels. Boxcar Children, Bobbsey Twins, a biography of Evita Peron. I loved it all. I remember being shocked when I worked at the library in Kentucky that some parents only let kids check out 5 books at a time! What did those kids do all week?

When we got home we had to write our books in a notebook to keep track of them and ensure we didn't have late returns. We also had a column for whether we'd read the books, so to this day, my mom has a record of my pre-teen reading. This trip we didn't get to go inside the library, but the brown and yellow building was enough :)

It's always strange going back to a place you once knew. It feels like it's the same, but so much has changed. It's like meeting friends from elementary school who you used to spend all day every day with, but you're now 25 and you have an image of them in your mind as 8 year olds. They've grown up, as have you, but it just doesn't feel right. Hopefully I'll get to go up to Alaska again before another 10 years have passed, but for now, these pictures will tide me over.

Still alive

I've been working on a longer post, but what with moving back to MN, starting school, my birthday, parties, and house guests, I haven't had very much of a chance to write. Tune in soon for an Alaska story with a political twist.

Image of Le Palais des congrès de Montréal

Comfort Foods

In a world of burgers and fries, there are a number of ways to be enlightened and uplifted by food. There's fancy restaurants costing hundreds of dollars and requiring reservations months in advance. Sometimes simple is better though and I've been thinking the last few days about some of those foods. (This is probably due to the fact that very soon I will be leaving the wonder that is free gourmet food, cooked for me three times a day and be returning to the real world. In the real world, I don't make 4 types of salad, two types of pizza, a meat, sauteed mushrooms, and two desserts. Perhaps I would if I was a professional chef, but that's not very likely.)

So what do I want to eat when I'm feeling down/lonely/cold/tired/like-winter-will-never-end/hot/like-summer-will-never-end? Well, it depends a lot on the season. Here's a snapshot.

Winter: My ultimate comfort dinner would be a plain fresh (warm) loaf of bread with a bowl of soup. The type of soup isn't very important although broccoli cheddar or squash with pancetta and thyme would be fantastic but I've been thinking this week about broth based soups like a minestrone. These soups must be homemade. If it comes out of a can it doesn't count, although I admit that I don't make my own broth. I realized while thinking about the fact that this is one of my ultimate meals that I very very rarely make soup. In the past three years I can think of only two soups that I've made: the aforementioned squash and a Brazilian black bean stew. Soup isn't generally something I think of as an option for 1 person, but 2 might be more reasonable.

Winter desserts: These range from the simple (boxed brownies) to the complex (cheesecake). There are two things I associate with winter dessert comfort things primarily though. The first is rhubarb. I've learned that in California rhubarb is a foreign plant. The grocery clerks have no idea what it is. In the mid-West people beg you to take some of theirs (the fruit equivalent to zucchini). The easiest preparation is just simmering the rhubarb with some sugar and serving the resulting sauce over vanilla yogurt or ice cream. The other winter dessert that comes to mind is rice pudding. This (if made properly) requires patience, for you start with uncooked rice and slowly cook it in the oven, constantly stirring. (Now I really want rice pudding.)

Summer: Comfort foods for summer are simple, in part because there's no energy left to exert for cooking and people generally want to stay out of the kitchen. So food is simple. Two cobs of corn with butter and salt. That is my ideal meal. Add in a BLT and I'm completely sold. The tomatoes should be perfectly ripe and dripping down your hands, the cheap white bread, though toasted, melting as it succumbs to the juice of the tomato.

Summer desserts: Again, simplicity is everything. Strawberries that have been sitting out at the farmers market for 2 hours so that they're warm and juicy. Raspberries with the perfect touch of sweetness. Peaches and nectarines, like tomatoes, dripping all over you and leaving strings in your teeth. Cherries that you eat and then spit the pits around the yard. Watermelon that brings refreshing cool on the hottest of summer days.

The interesting contrast between my summer and winter menus is that I spent my whole life eating the winter menus. We've always had the ingredients for soup and bread and rice pudding available. (Rhubarb we don't grow in Kentucky and it seems silly to buy.) But the summer menus are things I used to dream about. Growing up in Alaska we didn't have sweet corn or tomatoes, cherries, peaches or nectarines. It was always a treat coming down to Ontario and getting sweet corn, even if I did have to have it cut off the cob because of my braces.

This summer I've taken advantage of the wonderful farmer's market that's a short bike ride from my house (I'll blog about it soon) and I've had meals of corn, watermelon, and berries. It's been wonderful. Now, with fall in Minnesota coming, I'll have to break out my cookbooks and reaquaint myself with the world of soups. It's a long winter, but the idea of eating warm buttered bread and hot soup while watching the snow fall makes it seem a lot more like home and a lot less like neverending torment :)

Mish Mash post

This was going to be about comfort foods, but there are two other urgent subjects that I need to comment on first.

1. There are ants in my house. They really need to go away NOW. Icky icky ants. Leave. :(
2. I found a way home from work today (my last biking day) on the bike path. Unfortunately, unlike the bike paths I frequent in Minneapolis, this path is not lit, so it was pretty dark and I almost ran over the invisible pedestrians.
3. ABBA. Wow. I saw Mamma Mia this weekend cause it felt like I needed to see a big screen cheesy musical. Cheese-tastic. Almost painfully cheesy, cause I don't think it was supposed to be that cheesy. But then I was interested in the real ABBA. Luckily for me they have music videos on YouTube from the 70s and 80s. The 70s were an interesting time with interesting clothing. There is something about a dress printed with a cat the size of a human torso that just seems wrong to me. Example to the right ->
4. I'm glad I did not live in the 70s.
   
5. The Pineapple Incident is the best episode EVER of How I Met Your Mother.
   
6. Comfort foods will have to wait til tomorrow.
   

Over and out.

Dear man in the red convertible

Dear Man in the Red Convertible Leaving Taco Bell at 8:20 Tonight

Perhaps it was my fault.
I wasn't wearing a bright yellow reflective jumpsuit
Or perhaps it was because I stayed late at work to watch the convention
Or because I was planning another blog post as I rode home.

Or perhaps it was because I wasn't wearing full body armor
and I didn't stop when the light turned yellow as I was going down the hill at 20 miles per hour 5 minutes earlier.
Or maybe it was because I'm not an aggressive driver and I don't have an airhorn on my bike, just a bell.
Or perhaps it was because I was going 10 miles per hour, not 5 as you think proper
Or because there was another bicyclist outside Taco Bell, locking his bike up.

Perhaps it was because I was in the bike lane,
and I wear a helmet,
I use turn signals,
and I come to a full stop at stop signs, despite it breaking my rhythm.
Or because there are so many bikers in this area that we are all invisible and would be better off driving cars.

Yes, perhaps it was my fault, man in a red convertible, that you almost ran me over tonight as you turned left leaving the Taco Bell drive through.
You obviously were busy, what with the driving, the eating, and the cell phone being used illegally without a handsfree set.
So busy, I guess, that you did not see me.
With my reflective arm band and gloves, my blinking white and red lights, my helmet.
I suppose the street lights didn't help illuminate me either.
You didn't see me.
That is, you didn't see me until you heard me.

I clanged my bell, squealed my brakes (a feat at less than 10 mph on a bike) and flew to a stop 5 feet from your car.
Then you saw me.
And you stopped, briefly, to let me by.
Very kind, given that you were completely blocking my lane by now and had almost run me over.
So I let you by instead and you pulled to the shoulder on the other side of the road and kept talking.
The other bicyclist yelled at you for being on your phone.
And then I biked the rest of the way home, shaken, but not scarred.

Yes, perhaps it was my fault, man in the red convertible.
But on the other hand, I think
Maybe
Just Maybe
It was your fault.