Date:	2009-02-07 18:19
Subject:	rate your life
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.2
Mind:	6.7
Body:	6.1
Spirit:	6.4
Friends/Family:	6.6
Love:	7.3
Finance:	8.2
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide




create your personalized map of europe
or check out our Barcelona travel guide


Hmm. I need more red.

Date:	2007-07-10 14:42
Subject:	world's shortest personailty test
Security:	Public
Mood:	stressed
Music:	Tori Amos's "Happy Phantom"

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

Date:	2007-06-23 23:24
Subject:	The Layers, Stanley Kunitz
Security:	Public
Mood:	pensive
Music:	none

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

--Stanley Kunitz




A challenge and an affirmation. Sometimes it is hard to feel that my will remains "intact to go/ wherever I need to go" or that "some principle of being/abides" to link me to who I remember once having been. Yet I liked that me, and I hope that some of her remains for me to cling to and to cherish.


I am not done with my changes.

On Monday, before I retreated to a friend's cabin for solitude and writing time, Mr Jumperlass (Jumperlad) and I had a disagreement mostly brought on by my being tired, sleep-deprived, and stressed. We'd meandered through casual conversation, to a phone call from my mom, and we ended up debating the question of "stuff"--how much is enough, how much is too much, and whether it's wrong to go out and buy things.

Even I wouldn't make the blanket statement that it's wrong to go out and buy things. But....despite my knee-jerk objection to that assertion, I find it's surprisingly close to how I feel. How can it be right to go buy a 26" flatscreen HDTV (we haven't) when there are people who are hungry...in the world, in our country, in our state, in our town? How can it be right to go buy another pair of jeans when I have two pair that fit and half a dozen other pairs of not-too-dressy trousers? How many pairs of shoes do I really need?

JD (my new label for JumperlaD) was right, though, in pointing out that some of my objections aren't moral but rather just about my feeling that the _stuff_ we already have isn't well enough organized, so that the house is cluttered and feels uncomfortable to me. True. True. As long as we have empty bookshelves (oh my, we really don't!), I don't mind so much if we go out and buy books. But DVDs that end up scattered around the den....or computer games that litter the desk and computer hutch....or shoes beyond what our little shoe rack can accommodate.....these things drive me mad regardless of the moral question of material acquistions.

There is, though, a part of me that hates possessions, possessions that rule our lives. I can no longer pack up and move in a week if I want to. I'm not as free, in that sense, as I was before buying a house or marrying or getting a futon and a TV and a filing cabinet. My belongings no longer fit in the back of my 11-year-old Civic. Is the stuff mine, or do I serve it?

How do you know when mammon has become your god?

I hate money. Having it or needing it. Having less than my friends. Having more than my friends. Having to decline someone's invitation because I can't afford it. Realizing that I might've embarrassed someone by giving a gift (Christmas, birthday, dinner out, dinner in, whatever) that they feel they can't reciprocate and should. Realizing that someone else has done the same to me. (To me, not for me. The unconscious choice of preposition is telling, I think.) Worrying over saving for retirement or illness. Worrying over what to give away and what to keep and what to save. Ugh. Keeping a budget. Reading the proposed school budget and deciding how to vote on it....how much of an increase in taxes is reasonable? How much is gouging? What is my responsibility to the school district--vote "aye" on any proposed budget, as property value assessments rise and so do the tax rates?--or should I be a thinking consumer, as I am when I buy groceries and clothes and Mother's Day gifts? I have to live within my means......so isn't it reasonable to expect the school district to do the same? But how do I know I'm not just being cheap and contrary when I want to vote against the proposed budget?

I hate money.

I miss being a scholarship student at college, having my room and board paid for and knowing that I had a few hundred dollars to stretch through each semester, and no more.....with most of my friends in the same situation. The financial and professional distances can be more damaging than geographical distance to an otherwise-solid friendship. There are two people I still think of as friends, living in Ohio. They are dear to me. But I almost never contact them--partly (largely?) because they finished their degrees (MD for one, PhD for the other) a few years ago, and I am still a student. Still an apprentice. Still not a professional, making a professional salary. There are other friends for whom I make the effort to overcome this barrier, but....I hate the barrier, hate that it introduces the potential for such a rift, hate that it makes a topic we must approach carefully or avoid entirely.

And on the other side, that fact that I worked for a bit before coming back to grad school sets me apart from some of the other grad students in my workgroup. I have a house, even if it is only 750 square feet of living space. I have a car, even if I don't have a parking permit and so frequently get to campus on the bus.



Although it's now been almost thirteen years since I started listening to them, sometimes Indigo Girls still seem to frame the questions I struggle with. I don't want money to make me mean....mean as in cruel, mean as in selfish, or mean as in tightfisted and cheap and ungenerous.

So money made you mean/and that's not how it's supposed to be./.../How much do we really need?/.../the question that says everything..../You could keep it all or give it away/but where did it come from in the first place?/Robbing Peter to pay me, and I'll just be/giving it back to Peter to feel free..../Take the long road to charity..../Robbing Peter to pay Paul./Robbing Peter to pay me.

Date:	2007-06-20 01:22
Subject:	it's only life, after all
Security:	Public
Mood:	anxious
Music:	Shawn Mullins' Lullabye

Trying to write, trying to write. Misery and gloom as I remain afraid of my dissertation.

But perhaps I'm making too big a deal of this. It's not meant to be the best work I ever do. It's just my passage from apprentice to journeyman status in the scientific community.

Maybe if I make it a little less important to myself, it'll be a bit easier to approach and deal with.

I've been up a little over an hour and have done little but check my email and burble around online.

I did at least make an appointment with a landscaper so I can get the insurance quote needed by the end of next week. Since the school district's salt truck plowed into our bushes and trees at the front of the road this winter, the end of our driveway has been a mess. This should be the final estimate needed for our insurance claim to be processed, so that we can finally have it cleaned up and fixed up. Even landscapers, though, won't be able to put in the two 10'-15' spruces that were wiped out. We'll just have to accept 4'-6' trees in their place. It's hardly a fair exchange, but we'll accept what's possible.

Well. I think I'll head downstairs to the elliptical for half an hour before I head in to campus. I want to generate some data points for a contour plot for chapter 2 of my dissertation before I meet up with my parents pastor and his wife and son, who is considering applying to my university this autumn. So. Lunch and a brief tour, I suppose....then back to work.

Er, that is...she earns one.

I'm busily working away on my dissertation....er, finding new and innovative (or old and shopworn) ways to fritter away my hours....so, what do I do?  Take the quiz below to find out what Austen heroine I am. 

Take the Quiz here!