My life has been so quiet lately that the few scheduled things I do have become REALLY IMPORTANT and I look forward to them for days... so today, somehow, suddenly, EVERYTHING I've been looking forward to got wrecked.
1. I've been working on my first piece of real PhD writing for my supervisor, due for our supervision tomorrow. It's been really exciting to actually write again and I've been working hard on it... then I got an email that my supervisor is stranded in the U.S. by the volcanic ash cloud. Supervision canceled. No inspirational talk, no gentle re-direction, no personal attention, no pat on the back for getting shit down while my supervisor has been away for a month. Worst of all - no reason to finish my assignment!
2. My classmate and a professor and I wrote a super interesting conference proposal for a panel about new ways of studying evolution - namely, by studying HOW people study evolution in the 20th century, such as through fossil preparation, genetics research, and fieldwork. Very cool, and we were accepted for a major conference this summer... and then the professor emailed today to say that he can't come. We can't have a panel without him... so we're desperately searching for a sub but he's AWESOME and I'm heartbroken to not get to share the stage with him.
3. Weeks ago I invited a ton of friends to see a play in Cambridge tomorrow, and a bunch of them surprisingly wanted to come so I got tickets and even arranged for us to go to a pre-show lecture about the play... and got an email today that the play is canceled because an actor got sick.
4. I'm supposed to go to Chicago on Saturday for a conference that's important for my research (it's the annual fossil preparators' meeting), and to see my family which I am SUPER excited about after a really crap few months... and a fucking volcano is blocking airplanes from the UK.
WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?!
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
If rowing is an intelligence test, we are all FAILING.
"There have been a number of recent attacks from the swan know as Mr Asbo [which stands for Anti-Social Behavior Order, which is the legal conviction police give kids who spray-paint or are raucously drunk or whatever, generally causing trouble] at the bottom of the Reach and into Plough Reach. There are moves afoot to have him relocated, however in the meantime please ensure that all crews take care that they don't antagonise him, even if it means stopping in good time and manoeuvring round him. All coaches should keep a wary eye open for him and get their crew to react accordingly.
It was noted at the recent Moorings Meeting that there have been a number of occasions when the sewage system at the Travellers' camp [a community that is constantly moving to new places, similar to Gypsies] has overflowed into the small drainage ditches, which eventually connect to the Cam in and around Plough Reach. Although the risks are considered low we are coming up to the time when the flow in the Cam starts to slow and so the water changeover is reduced. I will ask you all to stress to your crews that they clean and cover any open cuts and thoroughly wash their hands after every outing. They must also ensure that water bottles and food are protected if they are in the bottom of the boat, in a plastic bag for example, to prevent the river water contamination."
Email from Cambridge University Combined Boat Club Safety Adviser.
Attacking swans and a river of sewage?! How stupid do you have to be to be a rower?
And all these problems just as it stops being so friggin cold...
Dumbest (and somehow most addictive) sport EVER.
Monday, 5 April 2010
Photo Adventures
I have been suffering from a major case of cabin fever. Maybe it's the lingering winter, or the university's 6-week vacation being WAAAAAAY TOO LONG, or the fact that lots of my friends have gone home or traveling during the break so it's tough for those of us left here to have a social life or even get enough people to go rowing.
So I organized some adventures... and bullied my few remaining friends into going with me. :)
(Click on the photos to make them bigger!)
This is in Wandlebury Country Park, a forest preserve outside Cambridge. We went for an afternoon "wander" and saw nature and footpaths and sunshine. Here we are watching frogs mating in a pond - a popular springtime activity around here, and maybe the reason why we are laughing or looking confused or - in my friend Caroline's case - wiping her nose.
Susannah and I followed up our Wandlebury wander the next weekend with a trip to Ely, a nearby town with a HUGE cathedral. We took a tour and the guide *insisted* on taking this photo of us on the cathedral roof in front of the West Tower. Luckily the photo is zoomed out enough so you can't see my gritted teeth... that roof is TALL. Our guide had also just finished telling us the story of why the North Tower collapsed...
I convinced my workaholic friend Lawrence to leave his biology lab for Easter weekend. For reasons of ££ and time and basic lack of knowledge about this country, we chose to go to Norfolk, the region just east of Cambridge along the North Sea. We sort of randomly picked two towns to visit, based primarily on the criteria of coffee shops (so we could read and Lawrence could feel like he was working) and somewhere to walk along the ocean. This is Norwich, a town with (another) huge cathedral and LOTS of crooked buildings. Seriously! How is this building staying up?!
Norfolk town #2 was Great Yarmouth, or, as we decided about 10 minutes after arriving there, Not-So-Great Yarmouth. It's a strip of coastline lined with sleazy arcade games and fish & chips shops, and NO PEOPLE. It was deserted. (It was also a holiday weekend and REALLY COLD, so maybe it's actually inhabited in the summer?) The arcade music and bright lights kept going all night and all day despite the lack of people, making it all feel like a bad horror movie. It was THE place to go on holiday in the 19th century, so you can see the remnants of beautiful Victorian buildings in this photo, with horrible modern arcade fronts tacked onto the lower floors. Ugh. Lawrence and I stayed one night at our (dirty and alarmingly cheap) Bed & Breakfast, enjoyed the included English breakfast (baked beans and tomatoes and fried eggs! Yum!), and headed back to Cambridge a day earlier than planned. We ate Cadbury eggs on the train and saluted Easter and our good judgment at buying flexible-return train tickets.
Because I was disappointed by our early return from Lame Yarmouth (and because I can't sit still), I traveled some more on Easter - to visit a little piece of America in Cambridge. There's a WWII cemetery that I've been meaning to visit for 1.5 years now and it seemed like an appropriate place for a bit of Easter reflection. (Mostly I wanted to go for a walk and needed a destination that would be open on Easter...) A 3-mile gorgeous walk through local farmland and little towns brought me to this array of white gravestones, nearly 4000, for American soldiers killed in England in the 1940s. Most of them were here training for D-Day and were killed in practice missions. The cemetery is just beautiful, on top of the only hill for miles around, with a wonderful view of Cambridgeshire (and Ely Cathedral in the distance!). This photo is especially poignant, showing the rows of crosses facing an American flag, with a Jewish star gravestone with a coin on top. It's a Jewish tradition to leave coins or rocks on graves so that the person's memory will survive as long as the coin or rock (i.e., forever). And the coin is, of course, pence. What young person would ever predict that he or she would be buried in a cemetery in England, with a foreign coin to commemorate their grave?
Why is it that flat green fields and white puffy clouds are SO BEAUTIFUL? Illinois prairie and Cambridgeshire fens might be the loveliest landscapes in the world... not that I'm biased or anything.
So I organized some adventures... and bullied my few remaining friends into going with me. :)
(Click on the photos to make them bigger!)
This is in Wandlebury Country Park, a forest preserve outside Cambridge. We went for an afternoon "wander" and saw nature and footpaths and sunshine. Here we are watching frogs mating in a pond - a popular springtime activity around here, and maybe the reason why we are laughing or looking confused or - in my friend Caroline's case - wiping her nose.
Susannah and I followed up our Wandlebury wander the next weekend with a trip to Ely, a nearby town with a HUGE cathedral. We took a tour and the guide *insisted* on taking this photo of us on the cathedral roof in front of the West Tower. Luckily the photo is zoomed out enough so you can't see my gritted teeth... that roof is TALL. Our guide had also just finished telling us the story of why the North Tower collapsed...
I convinced my workaholic friend Lawrence to leave his biology lab for Easter weekend. For reasons of ££ and time and basic lack of knowledge about this country, we chose to go to Norfolk, the region just east of Cambridge along the North Sea. We sort of randomly picked two towns to visit, based primarily on the criteria of coffee shops (so we could read and Lawrence could feel like he was working) and somewhere to walk along the ocean. This is Norwich, a town with (another) huge cathedral and LOTS of crooked buildings. Seriously! How is this building staying up?!
Norfolk town #2 was Great Yarmouth, or, as we decided about 10 minutes after arriving there, Not-So-Great Yarmouth. It's a strip of coastline lined with sleazy arcade games and fish & chips shops, and NO PEOPLE. It was deserted. (It was also a holiday weekend and REALLY COLD, so maybe it's actually inhabited in the summer?) The arcade music and bright lights kept going all night and all day despite the lack of people, making it all feel like a bad horror movie. It was THE place to go on holiday in the 19th century, so you can see the remnants of beautiful Victorian buildings in this photo, with horrible modern arcade fronts tacked onto the lower floors. Ugh. Lawrence and I stayed one night at our (dirty and alarmingly cheap) Bed & Breakfast, enjoyed the included English breakfast (baked beans and tomatoes and fried eggs! Yum!), and headed back to Cambridge a day earlier than planned. We ate Cadbury eggs on the train and saluted Easter and our good judgment at buying flexible-return train tickets.
Because I was disappointed by our early return from Lame Yarmouth (and because I can't sit still), I traveled some more on Easter - to visit a little piece of America in Cambridge. There's a WWII cemetery that I've been meaning to visit for 1.5 years now and it seemed like an appropriate place for a bit of Easter reflection. (Mostly I wanted to go for a walk and needed a destination that would be open on Easter...) A 3-mile gorgeous walk through local farmland and little towns brought me to this array of white gravestones, nearly 4000, for American soldiers killed in England in the 1940s. Most of them were here training for D-Day and were killed in practice missions. The cemetery is just beautiful, on top of the only hill for miles around, with a wonderful view of Cambridgeshire (and Ely Cathedral in the distance!). This photo is especially poignant, showing the rows of crosses facing an American flag, with a Jewish star gravestone with a coin on top. It's a Jewish tradition to leave coins or rocks on graves so that the person's memory will survive as long as the coin or rock (i.e., forever). And the coin is, of course, pence. What young person would ever predict that he or she would be buried in a cemetery in England, with a foreign coin to commemorate their grave?
Why is it that flat green fields and white puffy clouds are SO BEAUTIFUL? Illinois prairie and Cambridgeshire fens might be the loveliest landscapes in the world... not that I'm biased or anything.
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