Tag: life

beautiful inedible fruits

Here are three photos I’ve taken in past years of fruit-bearing trees and shrubs. The continued clinging of these fruits to their branches well into December and even into March suggests to me that no birds found these fruits to be palatable.

One of my ongoing projects came to bear fruit today, again of the inedible kind. But not the photogenic kind, either. I got notification that some funding I applied for, my first research grant application that was all my own, is likely going to come through.

looking up

To follow up on yesterday’s post of spirally gates and grates in Boston, here are some spiral-adorned balconies in Sevilla, Spain. While walking through the streets one evening during my visit there in 2009, I looked up to admire the shadows of the balcony gates.

This particular building had lights shining in several directions, producing a pleasing tangle of spirally shadows.

I also enjoy the contrast of the bright orange walls and the dark metal.

Today was a much better day, by the way, and I did not have to fight the urge to stay curled up in a little ball. Things are definitely looking up when I have gotten a bit more sleep.

curled up

It’s true that I’m a sucker for spirals. They are a frequent motif in my doodles. I love the spirals are also a frequent motif in the gates, grates and railings of some of the older buildings around Boston, especially those at BU. Over the years (because I have been a student for so many, many years) I have found my eyes drawn to many such spiralled details, and have quite a few photos to show for it. Here are a few of them.

This is one of those days when my biggest accomplishment was to keep myself from staying curled up in a ball all day. I need to do a better job getting enough sleep, eating properly, and getting some exercise to help get me through this really stressful time.

shrivelled

These Japanese maple leaves curl up so gracefully as they shrivel.

After another hectic week, and being up too late, I’m feeling rather shrivelled myself today. Also like I want to curl up into myself. (I just don’t think I am doing so with the same grace as these leaves.)

pumpkin carving, take 2

Remember how cute the kids’ pumpkins looked a few days ago? Wouldn’t you know it, time got away from me, and I left the pumpkins sitting there in front of the fireplace. Come Friday, I thought I should bring them out and figure out how to light them up. Unfortunately, the jack-o-lanterns had not fared well. Even though our house is chilly, it is apparently not chilly enough to keep a carved pumpkin from rotting and molding:

Oops.

On the bright side, we still had more uncarved pumpkins. I hadn’t found time to carve mine, nor John his, and there were a couple more smaller pumpkins that we had gotten from my CSA. (I’m sure they would have been great for pie-making…) The kids and I had a bit of time after school on Friday before we were joining friends for trick-or-treating, so we knocked these guys out (and set them out) on Halloween night.

I would also like to note that we didn’t have any tea lights, candles or otherwise. We had to get creative to light these up. Two have LED head lamps, one has a small flashlight, and another a keychain light. Each of the lights was wrapped in a layer of a yellow napkin, and the placed in a plastic sandwich bag before being placed in the slimy insides of the pumpkins.

Upping my game

It’s November again, and I am diving into the daily blogging commitment of NaBloPoMo once more. In fact, I got a head start. I decided to blog daily in September. (Uncharacteristically, I did not declare it). And then I kept on going through October. I haven’t been able to put much time into writing, and, as ever, there are many posts in me that I still hope to write. But I have had fun working my way through my hoard of photos and sharing them according to my whims. This month, I have no particular goals beyond spending a bit of time each day doing something that I enjoy.

I also need to up the pace of my research. Things have been so very hectic with parenting and the new house that I have rarely managed to get in more than my minimum time commitment to my research on a given day. Conference deadlines are coming up, and the time has come for me to get cracking on the last push for my degree. I need to find many more hours each week in order to reach my goals. To that end, I hereby declare that for the month of November, I am upping my daily minimum of time spent on my research to 2 tomatoes. Day in, day out. No time off for good behavior. (Or Thanksgiving.)

Wish me luck!

“

serene New England fall pictures

I am feeling far from serene today, and may even have had a bit of a tantrum today. We are in the process of moving, and even though it is only a local move, it is a flood of new stresses added to our already packed lives. We are dealing with contractors and service providers, and today was one of those days that left me feeling unhinged. There are so many details to track and sort through that it makes it hard for me to think straight, especially when dealing with conflicting priority lists and contractors giving the run-around.

So, to compensate for the lack of serenity that I am feeling, I am posting photos of a relaxing walk in New Hampshire with friends from a few years ago.

Sourpuss

This picture of an adolescent lion cub yawning cracks me up. And given how tired I am right now, and how cranky I realized the tiredness had made me, it seemed to fit the mood.

(Actually, I am generally quite happy tonight, bursts of crankiness aside. My mother has come out for a visit from California, and I am looking forward to her company. I am also very appreciative of the help she is planning to give me with some of the overwhelming home projects that are leading to my cranky tiredness.)

a tomato a day

This year has been a bountiful year for tomatoes where I live, and given my CSA membership and friendship with a successful gardener, I am certainly supplied with an abundance of tomatoes. But this post is not actually about that kind of tomato.

The tomatoes I’m talking about are chunks of time: I’ve been using the Pomodoro technique to get my work done. I’ve mentioned before that I have found this method of working in timed stretches to be helpful to my productivity.

A little more than a year ago, July of 2013 to be specific, I started to meet regularly with another PhD student from my program to commiserate and work on goals together. One goal I set was that I would work at least one tomato, that is a 25-minute stretch of time focused on the task, on my own research.

With all my other obligations for group research as well as parenting and home commitments, my own research had been regularly getting pushed to the back burner. While I’d work in impressive bursts for upcoming deadlines, such as when preparing for conference submissions and presentations, l would regularly go days or even weeks without looking at my own research when the other obligations had their own crunch times. I might make reasonable progress during the week, but a busy weekend or school vacation would come up and push all thoughts of my research out of my head. A family crisis or even a fun time like a family trip would come up, and even longer would go by. When the time would come for me to dig back into my research, it would feel alien to me. I actually had the experience of reading papers I’d written almost as if they had been written by someone else. (I’m happy to say that I did at least find them to be interesting and well-written!)

Since making the commitment to myself to do at least a tomato a day on my own research, I have made much steadier progress. There is much greater continuity, and I feel connected to my projects. Some days I manage to put in more time on my research, but I’m happy to say that I have always managed to get in at least one tomato before bedtime. (I had to give up on getting the tomato in before midnight at some point–there were days when I was travelling when it just wasn’t feasible.) Friends and family have come to know about my daily tomato.

Over the past year, there have been times when I have really wanted to just go to bed, or at least just goof off, at the end of a full and exhausting day, but I have not let myself off the hook. Even when travelling. Even when falling asleep at my laptop. 25 minutes is always an amount of time I can fit in. Even when the work is not my best or most focused, the gains to my sense of continuity have been immeasurable. I can much more easily pick up where I left of the day before.

I am feeling connected to my research every day in a way that I haven’t before.