she said i think i'll go to boston...
i think i'll start a new life,
i think i'll start it over, where no one knows my name,
i'll get out of california, i'm tired of the weather,
i think i'll get a lover and fly em out to spain...
i think i'll go to boston,
i think that i'm just tired
i think i need a new town, to leave this all behind...
i think i need a sunrise, i'm tired of the sunset,
i hear it's nice in the summer, some snow would be nice...
boston...where no one knows my name...


-- by Augustana

The song would be "Providence" but it had too many syllables

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I just joined an AWESOME site. My sister got me into it.

http://www.deviantart.com

You should go there. The combination of that site and this one have done the impossible... they've caused my surfage of the facebook to decrease drastically. So maybe that's not a step in the right direction, seeing as I'm substituting one kind of surfing for another, but I think it is since I'm substituting stalking for making and appreciating art.

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OOoOoOoOooo it's a picture of Mars!!




A really BIG picture of Mars. Love my job.

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Well, the crack that they put in Campbell's Chicken Soup seems to be working its magic against my sickness, because for the first time all day, I feel like a million bucks.

Or maybe it's rocking with full, floor-shaking bass to my new Evanesence CD.

YOU NEVER CALL MY WHEN YOU'RE SOBER
YOU ONLY WANT IT CAUSE IT'S OVER

hmm... who does that remind me of?

HahAHaha, I was reading SoYouWanna Join the Circus? on soyouwanna.com, and this is what is says:

"Animal Caretaker/Trainer. If you're capable of putting a tutu on a cheetah or teaching an elephant to roll over (but can't get a gig with a circus) look into getting a job in porn. Just kidding. Look into getting a job at the zoo, a variety show, or even at an animal obedience school."

Maybe you're wondering why I was reading this particular How-To? Maybe grad school not quite working out for me anymore?

uh... I was looking for "...learn the basics of CSS" ???

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I'm sick.


I ran into the side of the door.

Twice.

I just pushed crtl+V three times before it worked.

My temperature is 97 degrees, whatever that means.

The day is confusing. I'll just have to sleep this one out.

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I ended up choosing "I'm much too young (to feel this damn old)" for the defining country song of the moment.

Today I had to square off with my advisor. He thinks I've been making interesting progress on my research, but to be quite honest I had nothing that I believe was anywhere close to being worth publishing. I had found a single interesting crater- and while interesting, one crater does not an Lunar and Planetary Science Conference abstract make. With the abstract deadline on Tuesday and the fact that the two of us hadn't had a meeting since October, I couldn't see how we [I] were [was] going to get ourselves [myself] out of this one.

During our meeting I was pressing him for answers. What should I write? What should I focus on? How should I interpret these things in a safe but assertive manner? He evidently didn't want to talk about that. He wanted to know my opinions on global contraction regimes, on how deep I thought the brittle-ductile transition of the Martian lithosphere to be. He wanted to chat, in that soft, low, calm voice of his, about a comprehensive, all encompassing theory of planetary evolution. Well I'm certainly not going to be submitting that by Tuesday! How irrelevant!!
It occurred to me that he was manipulating the conversation. He's a very complex person, and half the challenge in store for me in being his student (or in any relationship, with anyone, really) is just learning to read him. I relaxed a little and indulged him; he had shifted the control of the meeting from mine to his, but in a kindly way, without aggression. He casually brought up several abstracts and papers that he thought I would find interesting. I did find one interesting... it was a paper he'd written in the early 90s about the very technique I was considering for my crater... only instead of about Mars, his was about the Moon... and instead of one crater, his had closer to 30 craters.

At last he smiled, satisfied with our chat.

"Don't be worried, you don't have to have an abstract to go to the conference," he said. "I've been gone all semester. This is your first LPSC. Just go and have a good time."

I went to my office, where there was a large beautiful hardback picture book with all of the most splendid pictures from the Mars rover mission inside that he'd given me to say thanks for TAing the class last semester while he was gone.

And thus the guillotine blade that had been breathing its cool, impersonal breath upon the nape of my neck disappeared into a kind of rainbow mist, and my body still hasn't had time to physically react to its departure.

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It was an afternoon. The rosebush was fighting the wind for her petals outside. They whirled away into the mad sky. The scene was violent but distant. The thick pane of glass dampened the affair into indifference. Afternoon, afternoon. It would not last forever, as it was not Tuesday. The shining black floor reflected the ceiling, and through its slanting modern windows, the world outside. A half-empty bottle of lemonade hung precariously on the floor. It was poised to leap at any moment through the reflected windows and into the distorted, black-tinted sky. Shoes filled the corridor with imperious clackity-clacking. The bench gleamed with holes; they were long, thin holes, emergency hatches to the world of the shining floor, guarded by the escape-minded lemonade bottle like an East Berliner. There was no book to appear to be perusing, no pamphlet to pretend to be assiduously studying, no watch to make a show of nervously consulting. Just a pair of black shoes which do not clack in a clackity manner, but rather a thunk-thuk. And a bench, of course, as well as an afternoon. And half a hall full of people made uncomfortable by the sight of unapologetic idleness. And the silent rosebush, ravaged madly, amusing itself in the background like a muted television.

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Caroline asked me what country song I am and why. I know the answer is probably "Great Big Fire" by Diamond Rio:

Well there'll be fear and there'll be doubt
But they're just things that'll slow you down
Just put ‘em all in a great big pile
And stand back

And burn, baby like a big ol' fire
Build it up with your one desire
And one of these days you just might change their minds
Shine the light, blind ‘em by
A big ol' fire
A big ol' fire


...or perhaps "Born to Fly" by whoever that is that sings that:

I've been telling my dreams to the scarecrow
About the places that I'd like to see
I say, "Friend do you think I'll ever get there?"
Oh, but he just stands there smiling back at me
So I confessed my sins to the preacher
About the love I've been praying to find
Is there a brown-eyed boy in my future, yeah
And he says, "girl, you've got nothing but time."

but today... in this moment... the country song that I am is "Neon Moon" by Brooks and Dunn:

"When the sun goes down
on my side of town
That lonesome feeling
comes through my door
and the whole world turns
...blue...."

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