Looking back on 2021

While reviewing my expectations for 2021 from January, I noticed that the things I speculated on generally turned out a little better. But there were some big things I didn't see coming.

Covid-19

 I look forward to the year that this won't get its own category. This is not the year. 2022 won't be either. 

I don't think we'll get the vaccine until the second half of 2021 at the earliest.

Based on how slowly the vaccine rollout is starting, I'll be surprised if we get it before September. If we do, it will be thanks to effective organization of our local government. 

Jon and I were both fully vaccinated by mid-May, so I was overly pessimistic about the vaccine rollout for adults. I was also wrong about the local government role in the speediness. Once we got our shots, I was feeling optimistic that kids 5+ would be able to get theirs by late summer or early fall, so I was a little discouraged that it took so much longer than for adults and teens. Adele was vaccinated shortly after she became eligible in November as an 8 year old, and Jon and I got boosted at the same time. 

All things considered, I think it's unlikely for either us or The Neighbors to pick up the covid.

None of us got covid. 

I am definitely concerned about our parents staying safe. I really hope that they are all able to be vaccinated soon. It will be a relief once they've all had two doses.

Thankfully, all of our parents are fully vaccinated on a timeline appropriate to their age. They're boosted now too.

For the entire pandemic, largely because of the people I follow on Twitter, I feel like I've been pretty consistently at least a week ahead of the latest concern wave or covid trend, and sometimes it's a lot more than that. Twitter has consistently given me the best window into what's coming around the bend on this nightmarish covid road. Like delta—how could you not expect that to be a disaster in the US if you followed what happened elsewhere in the world? I found out about rapid over-the-counter covid tests in June and we've been using them for months when they were barely part of public awareness. I started using a KN95 mask (rewearing them several times) in indoor public spaces months ago. On December 17, I saw the vertical line trends for covid cases in London and Norway driven by omicron and we stopped spending time unmasked indoors with even vaccinated friends unless we all rapid tested negative first. My highest priority was keeping us covid-free until Christmas so that Adele didn't miss another family gathering (she had the flu real bad in 2019 and would have been devastated to miss it again). Just like those other places, our area has also had a vertical line of new cases. Rapid tests aren't perfect, but used right before gathering, they are better than no information at all. We have enough disposable income that we can afford rapid tests, at least when we can find them. 

My point isn't at all about personal responsibility. That only gets us so far. I only share the above because it's so frustrating to me that these messages and warnings either never made it to the people in power or they never thought it important enough to share widely.  

For months now, we should have been at minimum:

• Making better masks (non-counterfeit KN94s, KN95s, and N95s) more widely available (e.g. subsidizing the cost, distributing them at schools and indoor events), running campaigns about how to wear them appropriately and reuse them safely, and requiring them in certain circumstances (e.g. airplanes).
• Making rapid tests widely available, more clearly communicating their value/strength relative to PCR testing, and requiring them in certain circumstances (as above). Furthermore, we should be making it easier for new kinds of rapid tests to be approved which would help with cost and availability. If you're interested in learning more about how we should be expanding our use of rapid tests, follow Dr. Michael Mina on Twitter. 
• Aggressively supporting vaccination in other parts of the world (e.g. by sharing the vaccine "secrets" so they can be easily and quickly manufactured in other countries that have more limited vaccine access), further incentivizing and/or mandating vaccination in certain circumstances, and investing in the long, tedious effort of reaching and convincing those who are not yet vaccinated (especially pregnant women). 

Masks, tests, and vaccinations make everyone safer. We aren't safe until we're all protected, and there's far too many people left at risk (especially anyone ineligible for vaccination like kids under 5!). Framing this as largely about individual choice about vaccination is irresponsible, incomplete, and short-sighted.

Of course, there are some other big things that we should change too:

• Universal healthcare not tied to your job. Just make it simple. 
• Paid sick leave for all workers (including for vaccine side effects). 
• Subsidize childcare. Appropriately compensate and protect childcare workers and educators for the valuable work they do. 

If a pandemic hasn't made clear the value of these things, what will? Our system of healthcare and work is so deeply broken. 

Ok, long covid rant/reflection over.

School

I don't think Adele will return to school in her building until the next school year. However, there's a possibility that they'll start a hybrid schedule in the spring. I'm not optimistic though. 

I do hope they can return in person in August/September.  

School resumed on a hybrid schedule with 2 days/week in person in the spring, with full time in person since the fall. No one in our pod had to isolate due to classroom exposure. The kids and staff are all masked and it sounds like everyone is pretty compliant. The school also often ate lunch outside, has good ventilation, and did some random testing (not nearly enough IMO, but apparently it did catch one case).

Thankfully we've got our shared arrangement with The Neighbors. [...] I'm not optimistic about summer camps being a viable option so we'll probably maintain the arrangement with The Neighbors for the next 8 months. 

Adele did attend a few weeks of day camp while The Neighbors went to see family for a month. I intentionally scheduled her camps for the beginning of the summer because I saw how the delta variant was spreading in India and southeast Asia and surmised that as summer went on the cases would grow rather than continue to decline even with many people being vaccinated. Later in the summer we shared childcare again with The Neighbors. This school year we take turns carpooling to school with them and sharing after school supervision (i.e. play time).

Career

I hope that by the end of the year, I will have at least a couple of new colleagues because we've been able to grow the team.

NOPE. :::laugh/sob:::

However, that involves convincing my boss that it's a good idea (his idea) to grow the team. I've been trying unsuccessfully for almost 3 years, so this might be a fool's errand. 

I did manage to convince him, so now we're on to the other hurdles. Sigh.

I also hope my salary will at least be restored to its pre-pandemic cut level. 

Yes, thankfully.

If I travel for work, I'd be surprised if it happens before September. 

I did not travel for work.

Jon's work might have more changes this year [...] I think he'll work from home for all of 2021.

No major changes, except he got a big raise which was a wonderful surprise. For the last few months he's gone into the office just 1 or 2 days a week so he's still working mostly from home.

I kept tracking my hours again this year which totaled 2007. I have about 10 annual holidays so 2007 hours divided across 50 weeks is 40.1 hours/week. I did take some vacation time (didn't tally how much) here and there. I'm working hard but making sure that I set boundaries, and tracking hours really does help me with that.

I still love my job. Some of this year was a roller coaster, but more ups than downs. I'm beginning to see some fruits of a long campaign to get us thinking on a longer timescale. 

Home

We've worked one biiiiig project this year:

We want to renovate the basement. For real. We've been talking about it for years. I think we can do it this year. 

The basement is almost done! We hoped it would have both started and finished earlier, but I'm told this is par for the course. 

We probably also have to find a separate shop space for Jon's tools. 

Shop space hasn't come together yet unfortunately.

We took out a personal loan for the basement project but are now (I hope) are very close to refinancing to lower our mortgage interest rate and pay off that loan with a cash out refinance. 

Volunteering

I am a little sad to end a 9 year commitment [...], but mostly I will feel relieved to be finished.

I wrote about this at length here. I intentionally haven't picked up any new commitments and I feel great about that.

Family

2021 was a far better year for seeing family!

I hope to see my parents again by the end of summer, hopefully after they are fully vaccinated. 

We saw my parents four times this year which is way better than the zero times in 2020! 

Adele would love to go fishing with Jon's dad 

This didn't happen but I hope it will next year.

Hopefully we'll be able to host Thanksgiving this year for Jon's family! 

Yes! We were thrilled about this, especially Adele. Jon has a big family. Part of our motivation for trying to get the basement done this year was so that we'd have much more usable space for this gathering for almost 20 people. The basement wasn't finished in time, but it was finished enough that we ate down there at a big long table. Everyone did a rapid test earlier in the day before coming over and we did the same again at Christmas. Getting tests for everyone was a bit of a scramble, but we managed.

Friends

Vaccines made this a better year for friends!

I hope by the end of the year we'll be able to have friends over again (not just The Neighbors). 

One Jon and I had 2 shots plus 2 weeks, we started seeing friends indoors again unmasked if they were also vaccinated + 2 weeks. 

I also have a tiny glimmer of hope that we might be able to spend a few days with my good friend and her family at their family cabin this summer (we'd sleep separately in a tent and nearly all our time would be spent outdoors).

Adele and I did go to the cabin and it was lovely! I had my own space but she slept with their kids. We rapid tested before arriving and again midweek because by that time delta was spreading and we had visited a museum the previous week where we were the only people wearing masks. 

I won't be terribly surprised if we have another stretch of time where a friend lives with us again 

We had a friend (the one who almost lived with us in 2020) show up on short notice. We thought she might stay for weeks or months, but it was unfortunately just a few days. 

With the basement still under construction, guest space is more limited so we haven't had anyone stay until just yesterday when our friend who lived here last year came back to visit.

I plan to continue the monthly calls with college friends and grad school friends. 

The college friends one is sporadically attended but I'm still glad for it. The grad school friends one continues to be a great source of joy and friendly advice.

The World

I hesitate to speculate much, but I want to hope that the new administration will be well on the path of undoing what damage can be undone in a year. It's going to be a tough few years ahead.

Well, the January 6th insurrection didn't exactly set 2021 off on the right foot. That was terrifying and infuriating. 

We started this year in a deep hole, and we aren't as far out as I'd hoped. I have no regrets about supporting Biden since life choices in life are rarely about perfect and almost always about better, but I am especially disappointed that we aren't further out of the covid hole. Especially ever since omicron appeared, it's felt like we're at least two steps behind and the political excuses for our lack of preparedness have felt deeply irresponsible. You can't fight a pandemic with hope and vaccines alone, especially when so many people have essentially joined an anti-mask, anti-vax death cult. There's so much more we can still do rather than throw up our hands and say "how could we have predicted this?" But I wrote a lot more about that above.

Monthly goals

I didn't do the best job with these and unhelpfully didn't do a good job keeping track of what I did do. But here's my recollection.

January: Find a contractor for renovating our basement. We can't do much else until we do this.

We made progress in January, but the bids came in way higher than we'd hoped. After trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to get more (and more reasonable) bids and hemming and hawing for a few months about the cost, we decided to go for it with the contractor that had the second-highest bid but inspired confidence. Ultimately we asked ourselves, a year from now, are we doing to be happy we did this, or regret it? Although there have been many, many problematic and/or annoying things along the way and it's not over yet, we don't think we'll regret it. It's a huge improvement. So, I guess this was "done" but not in January.

February: Read about how other people organize memorabilia to come up with a sustainable system that I will start implementing.  

Um, I honestly can't remember if I made any progress on this in February. I just have so many sentimental things (papers especially) that I have a hard time parting with. We purged a lot while packing up the basement, but we'll need to do another round when unpacking from storage too. I did find that watching organization shows motivated me to get rid of more things, but not in February. But a system? Not really done.

September: buy nothing

I hadn't planned this one in advance, but I found myself over the summer doing a lot of online shopping as entertainment. Some of it was related to the basement renovation but none of it particularly necessary. This was just for me personally (not the household), and the goal intentionally wasn't spend nothing. So I could buy myself consumable treats and I got a massage, but the goal was not to buy any new stuff. It felt like a good mental reset.

I think there was a month that I unsubscribed from 30+ things again (maybe in March?) but I can't remember.

2021 overall

2021: better than 2020, I guess? It really took a nose dive in January, had some high points during the covid lows, and is ending the year on another low note.

I know there's probably just a few of you reading this blog, but I still enjoy writing it on these rare occasions. Thanks for being part of my life. 

Life in 2018

I wrote a record-low two posts in 2018 before this one. I still enjoy this medium for self-reflection, though I use it rarely now.

I mentioned just a few things that I expected for 2018:

Make monthly resolutions
I completely failed at this. I think I'll try again in 2019, but with a better plan. I hope!

Start my dream job
Yes! It's been more of a roller coaster than I expected, though. More on that below.

New job for Jon
Yes! He ended up changing jobs right after I did, and it's been a complete 180 for him. It's a great company and an incredible fit for his personality and skills. It's a great reminder that if your job sucks and you're depressed about it, there's probably someplace out there where you can shine. I'm so glad he's found that in his new job.

Big family trip
Yes! We had an awesome time traveling with several nieces and nephews for a week over the summer. They are wonderful people.

Big gardening plans
Yes! We put in a rain garden and a lot more native plants. I love puttering in the garden.

Many things about this year were predictable, but they certainly weren't boring. I worked really hard. Probably too hard (Jon would say definitely too hard). For the first half of the year, I was also working on a carryover project from my last job. Seeing that through was a lot of extra work, and it was a relief to have it finished. However, I was pretty crushed by my new boss's response to it. He thought it was so... unimportant. I've learned that it's very difficult when he and I don't see eye to eye, and I had a few particularly stressful incidents with him. I hadn't anticipated this kind of conflict, and there were definitely several times when I regretted leaving my other job when I did because of the stress with my new boss. I spent 4 years working mostly for and with badass women who gave me just enough guidance and independence to flourish. There's a different dynamic with my new job and I have struggled at times to understand how I best fit into the team. I feel it's on the upswing now, but I expect there will be other rough patches. I've contemplated getting a therapist or a coach or both.

I spent part of the year feeling somewhat socially isolated and feeling like I needed more quality social time with friends. We decided to throw a holiday party for the first time since leaving Big City and that was a big success. Although that itself wasn't a time when I got to have lots of the kinds of conversations I was craving, it was helpful for encouraging some new friendships.

My weight has crept up slowly for the last couple of years, and I know I've been less active this year. I need to eat a little less and be more active (the recipe for almost every weight loss plan ever). Sigh.

I didn't travel nearly as much for work in 2018 as I did in 2017 and 2016. I had just 3 work trips, and only one was international. We did a fair number of weekend driving trips to see friends or family, and that one big family trip.

I got a holiday card out this year for the first time since 2014. In years past part of my hang up was having "the photo" for the card. We've never had a professional family portrait, but sometimes Jon takes one that we pose for. I decided last holiday season that this year I should just pick some photos and get something done rather than getting hung up on "the photo". I had the cards made pretty early, but since last sending cards in 2014, it seemed half our list had moved, died, or added new family members, so updating it took quite a while and we didn't get cards out until Christmas Eve. Next year should be easier!

Adele gets more and more awesome. She's in kindergarten this year (Montessori) and her math skills are exploding. She's doing some simple mental addition and subtraction with ease. She's starting to read a little, learned to ride a pedal bike, loves to play and invent games, and tells people she's a scientist.

All in all we've had a good year and cannot possibly complain about our lot in life. The country and world... oof. I'm really hoping for some improvement (modest, realistically) on a number of fronts in 2019 with a change in congress, but I know we're just halfway to 2020 and how much more important that will be for political change in the US.

As usual, I'll post my expectations for 2019 and some goals in January.

Happy New Year!

Looking ahead to 2017

I enjoy my tradition of reflecting each year on my goals and expectations for the year ahead. Usually I focus mostly on goals, but this year I want to devote more space to expectations in general. I am less optimistic about 2017 than I have been...maybe ever. I am deeply concerned about Trump becoming president tomorrow and I honestly expect the world and its people to be in worse shape at the end of 2017 than now. I expect my family (immediate and extended) to weather this year due to our position of privilege (employed, mostly urban, socially connected, highly educated, white), but even still I expect our lives to be diminished. Republicans in congress, Trump, and his political appointees intend to seriously mess with many things that are personally and professionally important to me (e.g. the Endangered Species Act, everything related to climate change being a real and present danger upon which we should act, protected lands), not to mention their intention to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But I'm not about to let these things happen easily, so part of my goals are related to civic activism. For starters, I'm attending a Women's March this weekend.

Personal/Familial
Help Jon get a new, full-time job with benefits
Applying for jobs sucks. I remember. It was super discouraging. I am doing what I can do support Jon in his career-change job search. This is the most important thing that needs to happen this year and it will make all of the financial goals below much easier!

Get Adele a passport and renew mine
This is among the more paranoid goals that I've ever had, but I want us to be able to leave the country if necessary. My passport expires next year and I have a lull in international travel for the next couple of months, so I need to take this opportunity to renew it. We already filed the paperwork for Adele. Jon's is good for about 5 more years. It would also be great if we could go visit my family in Canada sometime soon.

Clear my inbox every month

I granted myself email amnesty at the beginning of the year and I think I need to do it on a regular basis. I need to let go of more things that I'd like to do but just can't find the time. I can hardly find the time to do the other important things I want to need to do. I need more ruthless prioritization.

Celebrate my blogiversary (10 years!)

I've been blogging for almost a decade! WHAT. My blogging frequency has radically changed over the last few years, but I still enjoy the focus and outlet this platform offers. I want to do something special to celebrate...maybe get this printed as a book!

Read four books

Let's see if I can meet this modest goal this year!

Financial
Pay off our car
We are one small payment away from this! So. close.

Pay off all of Jon's course/credit card debt
We've been making steady progress, but we need to step it up to pay them off before our 0% interest period expires. This is the #1 priority when Jon gets a new job. We should be able to do this.

Shorten the repayment term on my student loans
Once we're sure we have the credit card debt paid for, then we can shorten the repayment term for my student loans to pay it down aggressively (Navient sucks, so apparently that's the best way to automatically increase your monthly payment). Oddly, our car loan has a lower interest rate so ideally, we would have been paying less on that loan and more on the student loan, but the terms aren't flexible like that, so we're waiting to be able to pay down the student loans.

Activism
Carbon offsets
In the face of Republican governance that does not believe in climate change, I think this is more important than ever. The easiest way to do this is probably by estimating our emissions and spreading it out over monthly payments.

Switch to electricity from renewable sources
The Republican love affair with fossil fuels makes me concerned about renewable energy, so I want to commit us to buying our electricity from renewable sources. This will take a big of research, which is the biggest hurdle.

Organizations we'll newly support with monthly contributions:
-wikipedia (we have given to them in the past, but lapsed)
-Pro-Publica (nonprofit investigative journalism)
-An organization that very efficiently transfers donations to extremely poor people (I believe that wealth inequality is a huge problem)
-Southern Poverty Law Center

Looking at these all, they are pretty boring. If this year is boring, I'll be satisfied. This year is not about being wildly aspirational—it's about modest changes to try and protect us (in the immediate and broader sense) in uncertain times. There's a chance that I will change jobs this year, but I suspect not. There's a small chance that we could end the year debt-free, but I suspect not.

Let's do this, 2017. More than ever before, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world and stand up for what is just. All of us. Every day.

Photos from Washington, DC! Part 3

Photos, finally! Did I mention that I'm really busy? Here are the photos from the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. After Obama's inauguration we worked our way through the crowd and into the museum to warm up our frozen feet.

This is the main hall of the museum with the entrance from the Mall off on the right. Everyone had to come through metal detectors and have their bags searched. I tried to capture how many people were in the museum- it was so crowded!

The people on the right were all lined up to get food from the cafe. The cafe isn't even close to being in this photo. Cool dinos, huh?

There were people sleeping all over the museum. Seriously. Everywhere. Maybe these were some of the people who got there at 4 am or maybe they didn't sleep at all.

Some primates in front of the other primates.

These adorable twin boys were learning about spiders in the insect zoo. Perhaps they should consider renaming it the arthropod zoo considering how many non-insects where there? Or the insects & allies zoo?


It just so happens that Tuesdays are free admission days for the butterfly house at the museum, so we really warmed up in the hot, humid butterfly haven. That's a closeup of a butterfly wing (above).

At this time of year, nearly all of the butterflies in Northern hemisphere butterfly houses are from the tropics. Butterfly farming can be a significant source of income for subsistence farmers in developing countries. They raise the caterpillars, then the chrysalides (pupae) are shipped to butterfly houses all over the world.
This butterfly landed on my backpack.

Rocks & minerals are so awesome. I think I could've easily been a geologist if just a few things in my life happened differently.This tiger is intimidatingly mounted to pounce on you. This is just one example of the phenomenal taxidermy in the mammal hall.

We stayed at the museum for a couple of hours to wait for the crowd to disperse but the parade was still going on so the area downtown was still busy. All of these unfortunate people were waiting to get on the metro. The line wasn't moving at all. We kept walking and just two blocks down we got in without any wait at all. Our motto of the day was "don't be sheep." It worked out well.

Finally, if you haven't see this amazing photo, you really must go check it out. Click around. Zoom in. Unfortunately, we're behind that camera on the right. Thanks to Kent from Uncommon Ground for the tip.

Photos from Washington, DC! Part 2

Inauguration!

We arrived on the Mall just after 8 am on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. There were already so many people there! We were across the Mall from the American History Museum and Natural History Museum.

This is a Google satellite image of the Mall before inauguration. Based on how many people are in this image, my guess is that it was taken no later than 9 am. We were about 3/4 of the way from the capitol to the Washington Monument.

This was our view of the capitol...

...and this was our view of the monument. It was pretty much people from one end to another. The mall definitely had room for more people in our area. Apparently they closed off sections of the Mall as the morning went on, which explains why it never got completely packed and there was quite a bit of open space off to the sides. These photos that I took were taken around 11 am.

They replayed Sunday's concert on the jumbotrons while we waited for things to start happening on the capitol. It was a good excuse to dance and keep warm! They had some trouble synchronizing the video and audio, and it wasn't just because light and sound travel at different speeds! Sometimes the video was ahead and sometimes it was behind. But that was hardly important.

Bush got some boos, but mostly I think people there were more focused on Obama coming in than Bush going out. As soon as Obama finished the oath of office, the entire crowd went crazy and everyone was hugging and cheering. His inaugural speech had some great lines, but only time will tell which will become as famous as, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country," and "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Photos from the Natural History Museum still to come.

Photos from Washington, DC! Part 1

Photos from Washington, DC, as promised! I'm going to do it in three parts.

On Monday we walked around downtown. We walked down part of the parade route marked here with the blue line.

I think this might have been the official end of the parade route or something. I think Obama might have stood on this exact intersection of tape 24 hours after me. But if not, it's fun to believe he did.


There were lots of mounted police officers around, so I suppose it makes sense that they also had an Equine Ambulance. I've never seen one of these before.


Someone was flying this huge Obama flag near the Washington Monument.


It's the Obama house now!



This is the White House during Bush's last few hours as president. Thankfully that's over.


Inauguration day photos later.

that was totally worth it

Wow, there we SO MANY PEOPLE on the Mall! Sounds like it was me, Jon, and 2 million of our closest friends. Everything went very smoothly for us getting downtown and finding a place to watch even though we didn't have tickets. Now I'm watching the end of the parade on TV. I'm so glad that we decided to come to this historic event.

So, it appears that I left the cable for downloading photos from my camera at home, so I'll post photos from the inauguration on Wednesday or Thursday.

Inauguration/blogging

Jon and I are in Washington, DC until after inauguration. Unfortunately, I've got a lot of work to get done while we're here so I'm mostly holed up where we're staying at until Tuesday's events. I like DC. I almost went to Georgetown and loved visiting. We know several people here, too. I could live here.

I am a little disappointed that I'm not at ScienceOnline 2009. It sounds like Anne-Marie, Alice Pawley, Sciencewoman, and all the rest of you are having a great time. When I checked the registration a few months ago it was already full!

On the bright side, I do get to be in Washington, DC for one of the most historic speeches and events of my lifetime.

2008 in review

Many, many changes happened for us in 2007. 2008 has had its share of ups and downs for us but mostly things seem to be looking up and I met many of my goals for 2008.

Academically, 2008 started with great uncertainty about where I should do my fieldwork. That dilemma was solved when I met Sam, who easily convinced me to work at his field site in Ukenzagapia. I received four small grants and a pre-application approval for a grant in the spring, though I was highly disappointed when I didn't receive the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Without the NSF fellowship, I had to teach this summer which restricted my field season to a small window of 5 weeks. During that time I had my first brief research trip to Ukenzagapia, but wasn't able to collect any data because of permitting issues. All in all though, it was a useful and productive trip.

While I was in Ukenzagapia, I applied for and was offered an interdisciplinary fellowship which I accepted. I went to my first big conference and loved it. This fall, I made some progress on my endless review paper and reapplied for the NSF GRF. I did not, however, meet my goal of submitting my review for publication in 2008. I am making progress in my graduate career; I have a committee and a date for my prelims! I'm still enjoying grad school and I'm satisfied with my progress so far.

Personally, the year started off on a bit of a roller coaster. My parents put down our border collie just shy of her 16th birthday. I didn't blog about it at the time, but it was sad to say goodbye to her. Then in March I had appendicitis, and my grandfather passed away in April. Thankfully, my student health insurance covered my appendicitis 100%. Later in April, Jon and I decided to get married after more than 5 years together! From then on things really looked up for the rest of the year.

In August we moved into a new apartment in our building, even though I really thought we wouldn't be moving this year. The apartment is great and we have no regrets. Based on entries in our guest book, we've had 31 different people sleep at our apartment on ~53 separate nights in the past year so it's totally worth it to us to have a more accommodating place (that's counting guests from our smaller apartment too).

Aside from our tiny 1/3 share of Google stock and my IRA dropping in value, we have not been directly affect by the financial crisis (yet). We are thankful for my fellowship and Jon's steady employment.

With respect to my personal goals for 2008, we did buy birthday gifts for all the little kiddos in our lives and we donated more than ever before to worthwhile causes, with the bulk of it going to Obama. Three cheers for his election! I did not do so well at putting money into my IRA. I only managed a few hundred dollars in spite of my raise with the fellowship! I've got to do better next year. I'll post soon about my goals and expectations for 2009.

My blog readership has grown slowly but steadily over the past year. Sometimes I have blog envy, but honestly this is how I want my blog to be. Thank you to all of my readers, known and unknown, new and old, academic and non.

May you all be the change you wish to see in the world in 2009!

Cheers to a new year, new challenges, and new opportunities.

OBAMA!!!

It's still sinking in. I was totally unprepared when they called it as soon as the California polls closed. I'm so glad it was a decisive victory so I could go to sleep last night knowing that Barack Obama will be my next president.

Now I've got to try to get some work done today.

election eve

Tomorrow I get to cast my vote for Obama! I'm so excited. I might make calls for Obama tomorrow too. We'll see. Jon is taking the day off, on the principle that election day should be a national holiday. I completely agree. Is there a movement for this somewhere? I want to support it. But, I'll probably still be at school for a little while tomorrow.

Last night I finished another round of NSF GRF drafts and then spent an hour composing emails to send them to various people for feedback. I thought I was going to have a meeting with Herb, but he came and left. I thought I was waiting for him, but maybe he was waiting for me. I guess I should've been more proactive. Today I did a bunch of little tasks like writing emails, downloading programs like R and Google Earth, and aerially exploring Nyota (my field site) on the internet. Later this week I'll probably have a bunch of final revisions to do so I'm trying to get my end of the week assignments out of the way tonight and tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I'm really not sure how much work I'll get done. I mean, this is a HUGE election! We're planning to go watch with election results roll in with some friends tomorrow night and hopefully celebrate Obama's victory. It might be a late night.

If you haven't already voted, GO VOTE!