Some days i wish my walk to work would take an hour. the sun was so brilliant, and the squirrels so busy, and the cold so gentle but persistent. Also, I used to be of the mind that the beauty of nature ought to speak for itself, and that silence was the best way to appreciate that. But I just put lots of cello concertos on my ipod and the ecstasy ( Read more... )

The thing I love most about winter is feeling more connected to the stars. Some of the bitter cold vacuum of the distant universe touches your face and the Earth (your hemisphere to be precise) is just a bit more exposed. Some part of me aches to be reunited with all that stuff out there, because it's there, and yet so unaccessible and foreign, and ( Read more... )

Funny, I feel like I've been a complete slacker this month in terms of running, but in fact I've run 9 out of 24 days for a total of 42 miles, which is half-decent for any month, but especially January.  Still, I'm gradually getting out of shape because patience and discipline are battling each other and neither is winning ( Read more... )

The problem with freshly washed sheets and blankets is that, holy mother of god, everything is so fluffly and warm and cozy that i don't even want to sleep.. i just want to lie there in the dark and purr and purr and look up at the ceiling at the orange lines of sodium-lamp that break through the slits in my blinds and feel like i'm in the safest ( Read more... )

Well I made a s*load of progress on my presentation today, but now my sleep deprivation is kicking in and it's at that annoying stage where I feel totally wide awake while surfing the internet, but then completely zonk out after five minutes of working on my presentation ( Read more... )

gah. i've been roped into giving journal club tomorrow because the woman who disorganizes it can't imagine giving the speakers, say, a few days warning for when they have to present... so that sucks, but secretly i'm glad to have a day of reading papers. research has been going far too well this week, so something had to get in the way of that... ( Read more... )

Jeeze, I love the economist. I go there in hopes of scraping together some vague sense of what is going on in the world, and instead I get sucked into reading book reviews. Apparently Bernhard Schlink has written another novel, "Homecoming" (reviewed here) which seems like it could be excellent. I read The Reader, which is part love story part ( Read more... )

Oh, so temping......

http://www.slate.com/id/2079113/

In case you were wondering, an absolutely mind-blowing experience is to listen to the song "Scythian Empire" by Andrew Bird, while on a train entering New York City. Holy shit. I almost got out my camera to take a video of the browning fields of grass, rusting metal carcasses, and gleaming river just beyond which, that unmistakable New York skyline ( Read more... )

Read an interesting article about people who have trouble recognizing faces ( Read more... )