Britt's Blog

I am supposed to wash my sheets in hot water weekly on account of I am allergic to dust mites. (We will not discuss the actual frequency with which the sheets are washed.)

Usually Susan just runs away when the sheets-changing process begins, but not today.

I’ve been listening a lot to Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep, an album of children’s poetry (as in, poetry written for, not by, children) beautifully set to music.

Also, I may be falling in love with Joseph Leyendecker.

In the spirit of celebrating random connections, I give you, The Equestrienne:

Read.

Listen.

Look.

Okay, this was done a while ago, but I wasn’t happy with the pictures I took, but i’m too lazy to take new ones, so here they are.

Here you can see our new bench, and the very attractive pillows we used as the inspiration for our color palette.

And here you have the best feature in our whole house, the awesome woodwork by the staircase. The new paint is much brighter than the gray that was previously on the back wall. And I think the cool color of the paint really makes the warm color of the woodwork pop.

So, the net result is that the woodwork stands out more and the foyer is a lot brighter, in a kinda chilled out aquatic way. Worth the effort, for sure.

I finally feel like it’s summer, having gotten over the run-over-by-a-truck feeling that follows the semester.

J and I are finally tackling our front hall, where we had some water damage that necessitated the replastering of a section of the front wall, which has been naked since, like, last summer.

We have chosen a color scheme and we may, one day soon, actually be able to paint. But with the all the stuff you have to do before you paint, I’m wondering if we ever actually will.

Today, we’re finishing up stripping off the wallpaper.

This is an activity which seems to tap strongly into certain not-always-positive personality traits of mine, namely the compulsion to work systematically through tedious, detail-oriented tasks. This can, under certain circumstances, be a good thing, of course. I think pretty much any scientist, or even every academic, has to have this tendency to some degree—otherwise you don’t end up with a PhD thesis, and you quit graduate school and do something stimulating and fulfilling with your life.

But the same tendency can also cause me to spend two hours hour grinding through a sudoku, despite the fact that I really don’t like doing sudokus. (No offense to people who like sudoku. For me they’re a noxious cocktail of un-put-down-ability and uninteresting math that doesn’t lead to the solving of a physics problem.)

See also my unhealthy relationship with my Christmas tree.

Luckily, J is around so that I don’t forget to eat. I think at this point we are going to have to set a timer, and after it goes off, declare the walls Clean Enough. Otherwise I’m going to spend the rest of the week scratching at sub-millimeter-sized gobbets of wallpaper paste. Last night J had to physically take the scraper out of my hand while I protested, “But there is still stuff on the wall.”

Wish us luck. Next: patching and priming.

I now know what I want done with my remains.

I want to be made into a box of pencils. Distribute these pencils to my colleagues.

Derive away, ladies and gentlemen. Derive away.

Also, feel free to give them to your students to use when taking the Physics GRE.

If you are not listening to RadioLab, why the heck not?

A recent episode The New Normal, encapsulates all that is awesome about RadioLab. Here we have some very sciencey animal behavior stuff, plus genetics of artificial selection, and then a very touching human interest story about a transgendered movie theater owner who becomes mayor of a conservative Colorado town, and to top it off a rumination on how we became human.

Awesome.

This morning there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. I went out to run, and when I turned around and saw my shoeprints, I realized that I had left an interesting trail.

Actually, my feet were just about as cold as you might assume. I think I need to get the kind that actually cover the tops of your feet, or I’m gonna give myself frostbite.

I disapprove of apologizing-for-not-posting posts, so suffice it to say that I remember that I owe you an entry on yeast, and let’s pretend I didn’t start off this way. :)

Today was the inauguration of Beloit College’s new president, Scott Bierman—an Ithaca, NY native, incidentally. Any day when I get to dress up in my Cornell-red PhD robes and my poofy hat is a good day. It’s very silly, but I admit that like a little of the pomp, and a skosh of the circumstance.

I also get warm fuzzies from being part of a college with such a long history. Beloit College was established in 1846, before Wisconsin was even a state. (Cornell University? Meh, it’s okay… for one of your younger institutions.) Various speeches features lots of shout-outs to Andrew Chapin, Beloit’s first president, and Beloit’s crazy early days, when classes numbered around a dozen, and the faculty consisted of two professors. Hard to imagine how they conceived of a “liberal arts education,” vs. how we think of it today.

It was a very nice ceremony, quite in keeping with the air of anticipation on campus fostered by the new administration. And, the BSFFA kiddies and me were pleased by our new president’s allusions Terry Pratchett in his literate, history-conscious, warm, funny, and touching speech. (Now you wish you’d been there, don’t you?)

If that wasn’t enough, there was also an inauguration day 2.5-mile Fun Walk/Run starting at 7 AM. I managed a 12-minute pace in my Vibram 5-Fingers. (Yes, I changed shoes before the inauguration.)

Three lessons we have learned from the movie Taken:

1. Do not mess with Ninja Liam Neeson.
2. Do not give information to Ninja Liam Neeson.
3. Actually, you pretty much want to avoid the vicinity of Ninja Liam Neeson.

Bonus Lesson: There is always a bridge. Or a fjord.

Here endeth the lesson.

(Via.)

_{For sticklers: No, this is not the actual TORNADO! event card. Some liberties were taken.}