snippets
It's been a while since I posted. What's been up?
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My boyfriend from California (B.) and his household (H.) were out here for a bit. I had a marvelous time with them and got to introduce some of my favorite people from outside Massachusetts to some of my favorite people from inside Massachusetts while they were in town. It was great. And then B. got to stay a few extra days after the rest of H. had to head back, and it was all just really nice. *huge smile*
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I played a little bit of Rock Band 2. I still feel more confident at the guitar than anything else by a long shot. I enjoyed all the Rush, though! (fennel downloaded Moving Pictures.) And "Skullcrusher Mountain" is fun to sing (though boring on guitar). Now if only they'd get some Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, Girlyman, TMBG, Beatles, Paul Simon, Toad The Wet Sprocket, XTC, U2, Tori Amos, Dar Williams, Indigo Girls ... okay, I guess that would be pretty Lauren-specific, and a bunch of those would probably need keyboard to be interesting. Still, I mostly have more fun with songs that I actually like than songs that are complicated.
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I went to lab retreat in New Hampshire. It was my last retreat with the lab, in all likelihood, as I should graduate before the next one. I didn't feel like going on any death-scrambles hikes up treacherous snowy mountains, so I pretty much just stayed at the cabin. The cabin is this huge, multi-story place equipped to hold a lot of people (also, incidentally, incredibly 70's funkalicious) -- but this year our lab finally stopped fitting. There were a ton of new people there that I didn't know, making a ton of noise, and I spent a lot of the retreat just feeling kind of overwhelmed by both people and noise, and therefore grumpy. I also ended up sleeping in the jacuzzi because people were still taking up the common space and playing loud music late (on instruments, not on the radio) at night. Good parts of retreat: pretty foliage, Skyping with my old roommate/labmate, A. (as we try to do every week), good conversations with a few people on the retreat while most folks were off hiking, playing RoboRally.
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Do you Skype someone, or do you Skype with someone? I'm trying to figure out if the verb should work more like "call" or "IM". Both sound okay to me. [Update: wait, I guess you can say both "I IMed her" and "I IMed with her". Right? Hmm.]
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All my high school seems to have joined Facebook all at once, and I've been having a lot of fun conversations catching up with people that I'd kind of forgotten existed (in some cases), or that I'd just forgotten how much I liked. It's a little scary, though, to feel like I'll never be able to escape from my past if, at some point, I want to.
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I have way too many books on my "to read" pile -- or really, my "to read" shelves (many shelves). So I have a new policy that I have to read two of those books for each new book I buy. Perhaps I should up it to a 3:1 ratio; we'll see. There are two books I really want to buy! But right now I'm stalled because I got distracted reading a bunch of contessagrrl's books. Those don't count toward getting rid of my own pile.
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contessagrrl and I are watching Twin Peaks. I've seen it before -- a few times, but not for quite a while. Man, do I love that show. contessagrrl also showed me an episode of Survivor, which I decided I was capable of getting sucked into (it doesn't take much for me), but never wanted to to see again.
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B. and I watched Choke. We both quite liked it. I want to read it now. Not allowed until I get more books off my pile! Unless contessagrrl buys it and I borrow it from her... hmm, nice loophole.
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Still feeling pretty good about thesis work... yay! I've collected together and done meta-analyses of all the many pilot studies I've run, and I'm currently in the process of preparing to re-run all the most useful conditions in the lab to get the official data for my papers and thesis.
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I think that's about it. About all that I'm going to mention here, anyway. The international espionage will remain a secret.
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My boyfriend from California (B.) and his household (H.) were out here for a bit. I had a marvelous time with them and got to introduce some of my favorite people from outside Massachusetts to some of my favorite people from inside Massachusetts while they were in town. It was great. And then B. got to stay a few extra days after the rest of H. had to head back, and it was all just really nice. *huge smile*
------
I played a little bit of Rock Band 2. I still feel more confident at the guitar than anything else by a long shot. I enjoyed all the Rush, though! (fennel downloaded Moving Pictures.) And "Skullcrusher Mountain" is fun to sing (though boring on guitar). Now if only they'd get some Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, Girlyman, TMBG, Beatles, Paul Simon, Toad The Wet Sprocket, XTC, U2, Tori Amos, Dar Williams, Indigo Girls ... okay, I guess that would be pretty Lauren-specific, and a bunch of those would probably need keyboard to be interesting. Still, I mostly have more fun with songs that I actually like than songs that are complicated.
------
I went to lab retreat in New Hampshire. It was my last retreat with the lab, in all likelihood, as I should graduate before the next one. I didn't feel like going on any death-scrambles hikes up treacherous snowy mountains, so I pretty much just stayed at the cabin. The cabin is this huge, multi-story place equipped to hold a lot of people (also, incidentally, incredibly 70's funkalicious) -- but this year our lab finally stopped fitting. There were a ton of new people there that I didn't know, making a ton of noise, and I spent a lot of the retreat just feeling kind of overwhelmed by both people and noise, and therefore grumpy. I also ended up sleeping in the jacuzzi because people were still taking up the common space and playing loud music late (on instruments, not on the radio) at night. Good parts of retreat: pretty foliage, Skyping with my old roommate/labmate, A. (as we try to do every week), good conversations with a few people on the retreat while most folks were off hiking, playing RoboRally.
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Do you Skype someone, or do you Skype with someone? I'm trying to figure out if the verb should work more like "call" or "IM". Both sound okay to me. [Update: wait, I guess you can say both "I IMed her" and "I IMed with her". Right? Hmm.]
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All my high school seems to have joined Facebook all at once, and I've been having a lot of fun conversations catching up with people that I'd kind of forgotten existed (in some cases), or that I'd just forgotten how much I liked. It's a little scary, though, to feel like I'll never be able to escape from my past if, at some point, I want to.
------
I have way too many books on my "to read" pile -- or really, my "to read" shelves (many shelves). So I have a new policy that I have to read two of those books for each new book I buy. Perhaps I should up it to a 3:1 ratio; we'll see. There are two books I really want to buy! But right now I'm stalled because I got distracted reading a bunch of contessagrrl's books. Those don't count toward getting rid of my own pile.
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contessagrrl and I are watching Twin Peaks. I've seen it before -- a few times, but not for quite a while. Man, do I love that show. contessagrrl also showed me an episode of Survivor, which I decided I was capable of getting sucked into (it doesn't take much for me), but never wanted to to see again.
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B. and I watched Choke. We both quite liked it. I want to read it now. Not allowed until I get more books off my pile! Unless contessagrrl buys it and I borrow it from her... hmm, nice loophole.
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Still feeling pretty good about thesis work... yay! I've collected together and done meta-analyses of all the many pilot studies I've run, and I'm currently in the process of preparing to re-run all the most useful conditions in the lab to get the official data for my papers and thesis.
------
I think that's about it. About all that I'm going to mention here, anyway. The international espionage will remain a secret.