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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 40
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
A Notice of Withdrawal from Public Life
Tuesday. 9.15.09 10:22 pm
Well, the semester has begun and as usual I'm in way over my head. I've decided that my only recourse is to withdraw completely from public life.

I have taken my former list for this semester:

Take Mathematical Methods for Engineers and Physicists
Take Glacial Dynamics
Read about radar
Secretly take Music Theory
Javanese Gamelan
Go to the gym
Flamenco Dancing
Learn Kiswahili or Turkish
Cake Decorating
Contra Dancing
Lion Dancing
Hip-hop dance
Greek dancing
Church
Grad/Med Christian Fellowship
Theological meeting group
Backrub Club
Finish 3 papers
Prepare for Antarctica
RIYR
Hang out with friends
Graduate Student Council
Pleasure reading
Nutang
Sleep

and I have narrowed it down to this:

Audit Mathematical Methods for Engineers and Physicists
Audit Glacial Dynamics
Read about radar only when I can't stand to read about anything else
Javanese gamelan
Go to the gym
Theological meeting group only once a month
Backrub Club x3 (only enough so I don't get thrown out)
Finish 2 papers
Prepare for Antarctica
Nutang
Sleep

I'm still not sure I can fit all that in before I leave for Antarctica. Note how I left "sleep" in there, aren't I optimistic? And Nutang... well, it seems like the time I spend on here goes up the busier I am, so that one gets to stay.

But at least today I got PQ'd!! (I am Physically Qualified for deployment to Antarctica according to their teams of physicians!)

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

Blinded by Science
Sunday. 9.13.09 9:57 am
I think I'm in danger of becoming my professors.

Last night I came home early from a cocktail party because I was tired and I find people who have been drinking tiresome. But on the way home I had to stop myself from driving to work and working on my research project. This morning I woke up and lay in bed, thinking about extra loops I could add to my code to increase its efficiency and checks I could make to see where I'm having numerical overflows and why. I walk into the bathroom and I'm thinking about ground-penetrating radar, the shapes of ash particles, where I can get some seives with different sizes of holes so that I can get an idea of grain size versus distance from the volcano out in Antarctica. I want to go search for some papers to read about Mt. Erebus, Mars, radar, thermal infrared. I want to buy a time-lapse device for my camera so I can monitor the winds from our field site. I feel like a detective, with pictures and statements pinned on a bulletin board. I feel like I am on the verge of putting the whole puzzle together at last and solving the mystery.

I have a lengthy daydream where I get up in front of the people in my field and inform them that anytime they need me to simulate a volcanic eruption for them, they can just let me know and I'll do it. They'll find that so convenient. I imagine them coming up to me afterwards with their favorite volcanoes. We'll become friends and collaborators. I'm a little frustrated that I've scheduled a bunch of social activities for today which will delay my efforts to work until Monday.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME!?!?!?

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WHITEOUT
Saturday. 9.12.09 11:06 pm
Some of the Antarctica people got together today to go to REI to buy some supplies. I didn't buy much, because Target is much cheaper than REI, but I took a look around at everything to make sure that it wasn't leagues better than what I was about to go buy at Target.

Then to get ourselves in the mood we went to the movies and saw Whiteout, the new movie about a mad killer at the South Pole. It was actually pretty awesome, especially because they had amazing shots of Antarctica and the whole thing took place just as winter was setting in, so the entire movie the sun was just below the horizon in the "day", like a ghostly twilight. They had cool shots of the aurora australis, too! Oh how I wish I could see that! The whole thing was set at South Pole Station and they included all these little details about life at the Pole that really happen, like the parties people have and the gear that they have to wear and the people who go streaking outside and the Happy Camper School where they try to scare the bejeezus out of all the n00bs while teaching them how to survive in emergency situations. Mark #3 and I both really want to try and go to South Pole Station for New Year's because apparently they have a big party and then they go out and move the South Pole, because every year it moves about 30 feet because of the shifting ice so they go and put it back at the geographical pole. The South Pole! Think of it!

So we spent the rest of the day trying to figure out which one of the people in our group would be the serial killer. We thought that probably the new kid would be the first to be killed, and then everyone would suspect J, but the real killer would probably be Mark #3 because he's the one that everyone would least suspect. No one ever suspected that it would be me, of course, but I think I was going to be the heroine of the story so naturally I can't turn out to be guilty. Luckily we'll all be in the Dry Valleys where there are no Whiteouts and there is no need to be carrying around ice picks.

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Young Republicans
Friday. 9.11.09 12:07 am
He's a Brown grad, the founder of the one conservative newspaper at an overwhelmingly liberal school. He's wearing a suit. In the years since graduation he's been writing news stories for a local right-leaning paper in New Hampshire. Over the summer he's been doing a little grant-writing for a conservative think-tank in Rhode Island. He wants me to meet so-and-so, important person this-and-that.

I think about this rich old lady I once waited upon at a fundraiser who said that all the Young Republicans were clones.

I ask him what kind of writing he'd really like to do if he could do anything. I ask him if he's ever considered writing a novel. He has. I'm interested. About what? He's hesitant, then he answers that it would be a sci-fi novel. He's heard about several ways that the planet could be completely destroyed. He's not sure about the scientific basis of it all, but he heard that an errant black hole could wander into the solar system and suck up the Earth. He'd like to write a novel about that scenario, and how everyone would react to the news that they only had a short time before they got sucked into the black hole. He brings up "The Plague" by Camus, which was one of my favorite required readings in high school. Instead of everyone being trapped inside a walled city, it would be like everyone was trapped inside the Earth. He'd write about the chaos that ensued and all the different reactions that people would have.

I'm hooked.

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First Day of School!
Wednesday. 9.9.09 9:14 am
First Day of School!!

... I guess I'll fill in what happened after I get back. It probably won't be much different than usual seeing as I haven't any classes this semester.

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Better Faster Stronger
Monday. 9.7.09 10:11 am
Angle and I went down to the track to go running at 8. Afterwards we threw the pigskin around and finally went to play on the jungle gym. I was telling her how sad I was that I could no longer do the gymnast mount on the bars and as I was telling her I did it easily. WHAT?!? I was somehow under the impression that my strength and agility had retired itself, had been going slowly downhill since I was in high school... turns out that I lost about 12 pounds since the beginning of June and it's a lot easier to pull yourself up onto things if you're 12 pounds lighter.

In light of this discovery, I've decided that at my age I have the ability to be the fastest, strongest, most agile and best looking version of myself that I will ever be. It would certainly be a shame if I squandered this time not being in shape. Then again, my professor has just assured me that no matter what I eat, I will lose 20 pounds in Antarctica from shivering alone. At this point I don't think I have 20 pounds to lose, so I might have to have a bowl of ice cream.

Ice cream, here I come!

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Rabbit-Light
Saturday. 9.5.09 2:35 pm
I spent the morning sleeping in my soft yellow bed while the summer sunlight streamed through the window and the breeze carried the sounds of Americans laughing.

I ate spaghetti and ice cream for brunch. With no responsibilities and no plans, I settled on the futon to read about the adventures of the rabbits of Watership Down for several hours while the whooping and hollering of the boys next door rose and fell like the lapping of lake water on a dock.

What a feeling, to be young and free.

What a feeling, to be unencumbered by responsibilities.

What a feeling, to do nothing because you have nothing to do.

In the depths of dark velvet space, the planet is hurtling 67,000 mph towards winter.

But here in vicinity of my house it is a warm and lazy summer day.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained.

--Wallace Stevens


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Fiesta Fiesta
Thursday. 9.3.09 9:05 am
Tonight is the Fiesta Party, the party where we welcome the new geology grad students to Brown at the end of the school-sponsored orientation.

But this year, it's at MY house.

Yep. That means it's going to be awesome. I mean, both of my parents are awesome at throwing parties. I have throwing parties in my genes. I also have party-jeans. We have a black light. We have hours worth of wild latin music. We have enchiladas out the wazoo. Tiki-torches. Twinkle lights. Streamers. Tablecloths. An inflatable cactus. Life-size mariachi clings for the walls. We're expecting around 50-60 people in my tiny apartment. We invited the neighbors.

It's a good thing my insurance company "enhanced" my renters insurance...

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