Streamin'

Believe it or not, I am not only typing, but actually publishing, this from a vehicle speeding down I-80 in Iowa! I feel like I'm living in the future, and it's amazing. (Who was it who said that sufficiently advanced technology always feels like magic--?)

David and I are nearly two weeks into our roadtrip, and will be arriving back in Mpls Thursday evening. We'll spend the weekend there, attending my neighbor's wedding, picking up the rest of my summer luggage, cheering friends who are running the inaugural Mpls Marathon, and will then head back west. I'll be spending the summer in Walla Walla, attempting to write the third chapter of my dissertation (not that chapters one and two are written yet; the whole project is theoretical, on multiple levels). Oh, but hey, good news in the dissertation department: I was awarded the fellowship I mentioned a few posts ago! That has given me some encouragement about the whole mess, so I'm very thankful for that.

The past weeks have been the pleasantest of blurs, filled with friends, family, food, wildlife, hydrothermal landscapes, and even, at the beginning, a surprisingly excellent academic conference. We've uploaded around 2200 photos, not all of which to which I will subject you, though I do hope to post a representative sampling.

I haven't checked in on the Internet very frequently on the trip; although accessing it in the car is pretty awesome (when we're on stretches of road that offer cell coverage) it also seems to add to the disorientation of long-distance travel and hasn't been particularly alluring compared to the company and scenery. Also, it's kind of giving me a headache. So I'm going to stop here, but will try to fill in the gaps before too long--and to see what some of you Internet Friends have been up to!

Firsts

A few firsts for today, in order of occurrence:

• Running to and around both lakes and back with A, during which we averaged a spectacular* 8:30 pace over 9.43 miles!
• Noticing that Band-Aid now embosses their boxes with braille
  
• Watching Doubt at the Riverview (pretty good, very well-acted, and definitely thought- and conversation-provoking)
• Carrying half a dozen local organic eggs (safely) home from the co-op on my bike, three in each jacket pocket

Not a first: being so exhausted after a morning long run that I vaguely hurt all over and sort of want to cry, not from pain or emotion, but from tiredness.

I still have six finals to grade. Back to it.

*This is relative, of course, but for me that pace is definitely spectacular.

Curls

People with straight hair love to tell we curly girls how lucky we are. One of my favorite comments, from a former boss, was, "Boys like curly hair, because it's wild and sexy!"

Be that as it may (and I feel it rarely is, at least for me...), the curly-haired generally carry a lot of baggage. My adviser's hair is even more tightly curled, and less ruly, than mine, and after a dinner at her house a few weeks ago, a group of us, all women, found ourselves in her kitchen, talking about hair. My adviser and I know that growing up with curly hair is character forming. The straight-haired girls protested that they always wished they had curly hair, and that we couldn't really have struggled with such beautiful hair, etc.--but my adviser and I exchanged, in a single glance, a shared awareness that comes only from growing up curly, with its attendant torments.

I have made peace with my hair, and now generally like it quite a lot (though whether the fact that I don't really have Bad Hair Days anymore may be due less to any awesomeness on my hair's part than to general lack of caring on mine). I have gone very short and grown it out again, and refuse to be forced into keeping my hair in a certain length or style that I think works because I'm terrified to try anything else. I like experimenting!

However, having left many, many salons over the years in tears, or even, with better cuts, still having to fix them myself at home, I am still generally wary of getting my hair cut professionally. Since Ohio, I've been trimming--and occasionally really whacking away at it--fairly consistently, though I do still see the pros when I can afford it or when my hair really needs it.

I've been growing out last October's very short cut, and had done some trimming on the back several weeks ago, but things were generally getting quite strange and I wasn't sure how best to fix them, so I sought professional help and inspiration.

I haven't yet washed and styled this afternoon's cut myself, which means I only know half of it, but I actually can't remember the last time I didn't head home immediately following a haircut to do exactly that. You straight-haired lasses leave the salon looking like goddesses, all shiny and smooth and gorgeous, but we curly-haired girls leave looking like mushrooms, or dandelions, or other socially-undesirable plantlife. The stylist, no matter how sympathetic or "expert," rubs some very expensive product(s) into our hair, perhaps misting it lightly in an effort to reactivate curls that have been toweled, combed, stretched, and otherwise mauled, and often then diffuser-dries it and fluffs it. The result is never pretty, and although the cut may be perfectly decent, even the stylist generally seems rather chagrined (I'm not sure if this is because they don't remember what I looked like coming in--or because they do). Something about salon lighting, or seeing my reflection in the mirror in front of what invariably seems like a more attractive, tanned, and/or made-up stylist, always makes me feel rather unattractive anyway, and having puffy, frothy hair only makes me feel worse.*

Today, however, this new stylist cut my hair dry, then washed it, product-ed it while it was wet and happy, and then put in a fingerwave! And set me under one of those fabulous old-school hood dryers. I actually left the salon styled, and haven't yet washed it out.

I wasn't sure how I felt about it, though; it seemed a little weird, and my shadow walking home, with my narrow shoulders, thin neck, and newly-rounded hair, looked disturbingly like a Dum-Dum . Back at home, though, I started feeling better about the cut, and think I probably like it. The salon experience had the hallmarks of quality: the stylist looked at my hair dry and asked me about what I wanted; she resisted fluffing it into unrecognizability (though I helped in this area as I pointed out the problems to be fixed); she gladly accepted the creative license I granted her, and ran with it; and she washed my hair after cutting it, tidying up loose ends after letting it dry.

The whole finger-wave thing is too high-maintenance for daily wear, but it's a fun alternative, anyway. Inspiration actually struck spontaneously as she was styling; she wanted to showcase my red streak, with which she was mightily impressed.

Here are some more pictures from the lappy:



*Perhaps one of the reasons I kept going back to Jim, despite what were ultimately fairly mediocre haircuts that I had to fix at home, was that the reflection comparison was kinder.

Trippin'

Today, three colleagues in the department found out that they had won fellowships for next school year. This particular fellowship is granted through the University and is designed to fund the final year of dissertation writing. Our department could nominate three people, and for the second year in a row all three were granted fellowships. It was very exciting indeed.

During dissertation workshop, our chair poked his head in the open door, saw the gathered group, and said, before disappearing again down the hallway, "There are two winners in this room!" Without missing a beat, one of the other students called, "And four losers!"

I don't think that student had applied for any fellowships this year, but another of my colleagues and I had, and had both been rejected--though, to our credit, they were far more competitive (the fellowships, not our colleagues...). The fourth "loser" was our adviser, who runs the dissertation workshop out of the goodness of her heart, and has won plenty of prizes for her awesomeness (if not, yet, though she certainly deserves them, for dealing with our frequently tactless chair).

Today's news about these three fellowships means that I'm now the only person waiting to hear back on funding for next year. The committee is supposed to inform the Director of Graduate Studies (in my case, also my adviser) in "early May." I welcome any finger crossing/prayers/pleas to the universe that you care to send my way!

In any case, as a friend pointed out today when I was teetering on the brink of beginning to think dire thoughts about not getting a fellowship, "Even if you don't get it, you'll still have the roadtrip!"

Yes, the roadtrip!

In a week--on Thursday, to be precise--I'm flying to Portland to present at a weekend conference. And then, David and I are driving back to Minneapolis! By way of Seattle, Hermiston, Walla Walla, Boise, Yellowstone, Carhenge, Lincoln, and Davenport! Here is the current plan (click for a larger view, with clever little icons for each stop):
We're getting back to Mpls in time for my neighbor's wedding, and then we're heading back west, where I'm going to spend the summer attempting to write a chapter of my dissertation (and, you know, pursuing weekend adventures, picking blueberries, hot-tubbing, playing games, running a race or two, and any other manner of other exciting summer activities!).

This is the sort of trip/summer that should assuage any pain about not being awarded a fellowship--though I'm really hoping it won't have to.

If we're going to be in your neighborhood and I haven't already arranged to see you, let me know so that we can meet up!

Les Fleurs, Le Thé

Hathor convinced me that I should go ahead and post these pictures, even though I was concerned that they might make my life seem a little bit too awesome:


Awww. Being spoiled feels so good!

Here's another thing I'm loving recently:

See how the steam from my morning Stash Chai Spice is wafting in the breeze from the kitchen window? Like all the other windows in my house, it stayed open all night last night for the first time of the season! Woo, spring, woo!