damn what a night!

so first of all, my roommate is at the hosptial now, as i type at...3 am...yeah, i know, what the hell am i doing up!?! she's getting rid of her two crappy cyst filled kidney's and getting a nice healhty "new" one...her fortunte and kidney being the result of the misfortunte of some parents making the decision of ending life support for a child (a young adult i assume as a too young of a kindey would not work)...or at least this is what they know of the donor...an amazing, tragic and yet hope-filled process.

here's hoping that for my dear friend, that all goes well...the long surgery commences at 7 am and thus will start the long process of healing from the removal of two very bad kidneys and the insertion of one good one...along with lots of drugs, immuno-supressors and all what not...oy!

in other news...i am freaking about school...i am actually freaking so bad that i really think i do not want to be in school AT ALL...like the idea of going tomorrow makes me ill...

i am HATING this semester.

none of my classes are what i expected...ok, no,..stats is what i expected and i hate it...but i expect that.

i have a group project that i got to be the "leader" of...its tied to my intership, i have a group member who is not happy with where we are, what we are doing....in part, i did drop the ball...we are behind on data aquisition, i had thought i'd have that in place before the eemester started...but..well...when your family is still reeling from death and tragedy and your mom is so depressed that you are starting to worry that she is not going to be able to function...its hard to do things like gather data...i know..its still an excuse...but...

so, i got this wonderful passive agressive email from her...it was to the whole group but it was really to me...a very "i am going to take my toys and go play by myelf" passive-agressive rant about how she feels like she is the only one concerend about these things and no one else cares...so if that is how we are going to be, she's gonna just do it all herself and such...*sigh*

my other GIS class is a mess too...i have to write a tutorial for an entry level GIS person on a simple GIS application with parcel data...while none of this may mean anything to you all, suffice it to say that first of all...I AM AN ENTRY LEVEL GIS PERSON!!! if that and if i could write a tutoral for such things, why would i be in school and not, well, writing tutorials and making lots of money!?!

the expectations of both of my classes and the lack of direction is infuriating...i am paing over 10K for this program and as a consumer of a product i am not happy.

which leads me back to the question i posed to myself last semester...if i am not happy, why the hell am i doing this!?!

*BIG SIGH*

ok...on that note, i am going to go sleep for a while...

so, the spring semester is officially in full swing. labs are meeting this week and i am ALREADY overwhelmed by the copious amounts of work already on the docket. so much for a less stressful return to school. *sigh*

this semester consists of three classes:
GEOG 360 quantitative methods in geographical analysis
GEOG 578 GIS applications
URPL 969 applied GIS workshop: land use inventory and analysis

the first one can really just be refered to as....stats...ugh! i HATE stats...can i emphasize that again...HATE! but, the good news (yes i can say there is good news even in reference towards evil stats...me the constant positive thinker that i am) is that THIS time the professor is not crazy...this is a good place to start! AND even better, she is organized and "on-top-of-things"...which is exactly how i like my stats professors to be...not all flighty and forgetting things like course schedules and what not...which was last semester and why i dropped it last semester. so, stats, take 2, is seeming to be better, i might actually learn something this time! whoa!

GEOG 578 has potential for being cool and also potential for sucking majorly. its not been good thus far due to the lack of a professor (his father died, he's in china and will be back next week, poor guy) and a very sweet chinese TA who does not speak english well...its been a rocky start. HOWEVER, this is a class based on group projects geared towards solving problems in the "real world" via GIS...in other words, hand's on applications of this stuff...the super cool thing is that the prof pretty much said last sememster he wanted my internship...the CWD/soils comparision thing (that will hopefully end up as a published article) to be one of the projects...so i get to play project manager AND get help on my internship! rock on!! i presented it today and i think i am going to have to turn people away from my group...we can only have about 5 per group and i already have like 3 people that want to work on it! yay! i NEVER have the cool idea/project!! this is exciting!

urban planning....this is an intmidating class for me. i have no background in urban planning. but the class seems like a really cool opportunity for more of that oh so very important hands-on experience...the class is looking to use GIS applications to assess the impacts of coastal development along the milwaukee shoreline. we are going to go down there and do a survey and then present the restults to milwaukee goverment officals. in addition to this we are going to be looking at other aspects of using GIS in relationshion to coastal management issues. so all in all it will be a a very good experience i think, if not a wee bit intimidating.

on top of all of this i am working (or trying to at least) 20 hrs/week at the primate center library on the most ridiculous project EVER! i can't believe this got grant money! but hey, i get paid because of it, so i am not going to really knock it, something about beggers and being choosey...so, basically the primate center and UW library system has digitized like 3000 pictures of....well...primates...and they want them to be accessible and searchable for the public. so a database needs to be created in order to search for said monkey pictures....this is my job...fill in key words and terms for searching. this will also be done for a collection of, ahem, monkey art...paintings of primates...audubon-style. again, needs to be searchable, and i get to make it so...yea!

so busy, busy 15 weeks ahead of me!!

so, that is school...in other news...my personal life has been, well, in a word, crazy...active to say the least and downright confusing more often than not. i am happy to say that, yes, while most of you know that i have indeed met someone new, let me just state it here for the record of things, i really am very excited about this...its been a long time since i haven't felt crazy in my interactions with some girl or had giant red flags (coupled with the nausiating feeling of "oh dear the committee will not approve"). its been good to reflect on past relationships and see those red flags for what they are, to be able to recognize them, as i am tired of running into them blindly and paying the consequences later with heart ache over finding myself wiht a person for whom i am just not a good match with. for once i am excited but not feeling crazy, out of control and i am excited to just let this play out and not force anything. yeah, i know, talking everyday might seem like rushing it, but its been a fabulously easy dialogue, rich and warm and really just fun. i spent so long with people who didnt seem to know how to just talk with me...uncomfortable silences grew in between the fights. its nice to just laugh again.

yes, i am back in WI, after 3 weeks in PA. 3 overwhelming, long, emotional weeks. *sigh*

ok, no it was not all that bad. i saw friends, had a date with a really cool girl who i will probably never see again, but that is ok, as it was a nice night in philly with good music and even better conversation. and most importantly, i did have some really good, postive bonding time with my mom, and most importantly, i saw her come back to life. she smiled, laughed, talked non-stop and in between the the sadness that has been lining her face for over the past year, i saw glimmers of the happy-go-lucky woman that she has always been. this was good. this was very very good.

of course, now the worry is, how will she be now that i am back to being 900 miles away. this is a constant source of worry and guilt for me. she is asking with more frequency and with more expectation in her voice of when i am going to "be done with school" (oy! as if i will ever "be done") and come back.

i still maintain that she should move here. but this is me being selfish and wanting it all to just fall into neat little pieces that fit me and what i want. of course, i also know first hand, life rarely, if ever, is that neat and clean. puzzle pieces falling together into each.

well...maybe sometimes it does.

i hope.

i still do. for all of it.

so, now break is over. school starts this week and i am sitting here again asking the same questions about if this is the right path for me. this program, these classes, these goals...what the hell are my goals.

for now this seems to be working. maybe i need to sit back and see of these are those mysterious puzzle pieces that can and just might slide into place. i have watched them do so for friends...at least from the outside it seems like that is how it goes...i am not sure. maybe on the inside we are all just guessing, never really sure.

i have a week of sitting on my ass to contemplate all of this...well, that and sitting on my ass watching CNN (i have been out of touch with the world, there's been a lot going on i needed to catch up!), and being a complete internet junkie. of course, i was consumed with guilt over my week of bumdom, but really, i know i needed it. serious decompression time before jumping into the stress and mania that is school.

the next 48 hours of my life will officially suck.

tonight i must again perform the time-honored, ancient procrastinating student ritual of pulling a paper out of my ass. given the fact that its nearly 10 pm, this time this activity will be particularly painful. the fact that its for the professor who is MY AGE and on whom i have a wee bit of crush just adds to my angst. the good news that the paper is on a subject that i am extremely familiar with, the chesapeake bay watershed, in which i spent most of my residing in and have a great personal/academic interest of mine...so, in theory, i should be able to pull this one out of my ass with relative ease.

unfortunately, i am doing so right on the heels of completing one of the most challenging projects of my academic career...but again, the brighter side of this...the map is done!! thank all the gods!

after some how making this paper materialize, i then need to study for my last exam, cartography, which i am now taking thursday now...apparently a few other people had also begged for a different exam time and so, thursday it is! while i am not totally sure i will be ready for it thursday, i am too the point that really i just want to be done. and thursday with less time to prepare is still infinitely better than friday at FIVE in the evening! i will now be able to sleep friday morning with out worries over getting up to study, i can run errands, clean and pack, before hitting the road for destinations south and east, namely chicago and lancaster.

its been perhaps the most difficult semester in my life. and while i am less than thrilled with the notion of facing the family drama when i get to PA, i am oh so very glad that this chapter of my life is coming to a close...i think with a resounding *THUD*

i am currently in the geography computer lab...i have been staring at this map of europe for um...many, many hours, and honestly i think it looks pretty freaking good, BUT this OCD thing that kicks in is saying "NOOOO...there's more" i can't seem to make it stop...other voices in my head...GREAT! just what i need!

i think i am going to have nightmares about labling maps now...its much like factory piece work or other really tedious, repetitive jobs...you go home, go to bed (hmmmm...this would imply that i actually get sleep...novel idea!) and then the next thing you know you are doing your job in your dreams...which is VERY disturbing, especially when you wake up having to go back the next day and do it again...luckily i get to hand this in tomorrow and hopefully NEVER lable refernce map AGAIN! (as i have no plans to be an actual professional cartographer, this should be a relatively easy goal to pursue)

i am kinda scared to print it...why? well, here's the thing, colors and appearance onscreen many times will not really represent colors on paper..screen resolution vs. printer resolution and then there is the whole thing about the difference between RGB (red green blue) color, which is what you see on your screen and is produced by emmitted light and CMYK (cyan magenta yellow and black--i dont know why they use a K) for printer inks...colors come out differnt and some colors on a computer screen can not be reproduced on paper...ANYWAYS the point is, it looks very pretty actually on screen...nice shawdowing, good colors, you can actually see everything, its all crisp and clear...i am kinda at that point now that if i print it out and it looks like shit, i might cry...which will just piss me off!

ok, well...here goes anything...time to see what i got (and yes, if i had been smart, i would have printed it off a few days ago to make sure my colors and layout were ok, but well...)

i missed two days of work...i feel rather shitty about this, but i was feeling really shitty about moving in general, so in the end i will get over it...for some reason it bothered me more to miss work on because i was too ill feeling than for run away for a weekend of definately NOT being sick in chicago...i think its just the idea of being ill and running out of steam at such a crucial (and there for the most obvious time for said running out of steam to happend) time of the semester...MIDTERMS

thus far, i have managed to do rather well on a cartography exam but failing miserably at pulling together the ( very evil cartography lab )

i also need to pull together a critical review of an article still for my dumb land cover change class w/the too young prof who doesnt know what the hell she is doing...i getting further irritated w/this class in that we have thus far handed in a number of items and have yet to get a grade, the irritating bit is that she is so vauge, and i have no idea how strict she will be in the grading processes, which would be helpful in the writing of this assigment...

oh, and i have a test next week that i am really nervous about...at some point in the last two weeks i have realized that my intro to GIS class has a lot of calculus and computer programming in it...neither of which i have taken...these were not listed as prereqs, but i am starting to feel a wee bit over my head...of course it might just be the cold meds too, WHICH by the way are also making my heart feel like its pounding out of my chest, and i really do not like THAT at all, i think i need to stop taking it but then there is the copious amounts of snot with which to contend...

ok, so this has really just been a giant pity-party posting for me, but seeing as i am at work feeling a little woozy, i am just going to go with it and chalk it up to the need to bitch...i wish i could say i felt better...but...well...in a few days hopefully i will!

oh! thanks again to chilimuffin for the garlic soup!! it is helping the throat out, so at least i do not think i sound like i am peppermint patty on the phones!

oh when one is crazy and tries to work like 40 hours a week and go to school full time and still have a social life once in a while...THATS how!

the midterm to-do list is scary...but today i have managed to check off "take cartography exam", and will hopefully also check off "do critical review" (of stupid article for stupid class is acutally the rest of that particular entry).

the bad thing with the not getting any sleep thing is that those days where it seems not to pay to bother getting out of bed are even worse as you really never actually made it to bed in order to stay there...ok, i did sleep, but clearly, not enough.

this morning i got stuck in traffic, couldnt find a parking space, there was a vehicle blocking the exit to helen c white parking ramp so had to sit and wait, was late for class, nearly sprained my ankle AGAIN via dashing to class (which is the exact same way i tore all my ligaments in that ankle 3 years ago...hmmmm....somethings just do not change!), worked for TWO hours on a lab for cartography (this class is going to kill me!) and did the classic, forgot to hit save, which of course meant that ArcGIS (the very prone to random shutting down issues program for mapping) decided to stop working and i lost ALL of it!! yea!!

as my stomach was growling and i realized that i hadn't eaten and would soon be experiencing super crabby mode (in addition to feeling faint) from low blood sugar, i dashed off rather pissly for some food, but first had to move car, forgot my wallet, went back for it, then realized i left my USB drive still in the computer at the lab...VERY VERY VERY BAD!!! my entire life is on that thing!! so, with my heart racing and the lovely inside my head voice saying "so stupid" with every step, i ran back to science hall (this time successful NOT nearly spraining my ankle again) and managed to get my USB drive before the next class started...*phew* after that i some how managed to study and go take an exam with out any incident...this worries me of course now...the test was...easy....too easy!!

but i am too tired to contemplate this for really more than these few seconds...off to read articles on land cover change and land cover use changes and how their effects on water quality....fun! (actually i am interested in these articles...i just don't like the class...this is the young prof who reads the powerpoint slides TO us...still...oh she is just not going to get the most postive evaluation from me...but she is really cute!! ;-> thought at 8 am, that really doesnt even help)

*yawn* ok back to work...

the weekend is here...oh yippy skippy! its friday the 13th, i am curious if there are any weird correlations with that and weird claim calls...chilimuffin?


( what a week!! i had the second of MANY intense cartography labs due this week )

but i did manage to make time to do something i haven't done in uh, like 10 years! go ice skating!! it was soooo much fun! ok, so going at 11 at night, not really the smartest thing in the world (but i have done dumber things, so in the grand scheme of things, not really a big deal....other than the fact that i am soooo tired now!) and it was awesome!! apparently i can still do it! well, kinda...stopping is still kinda optional for me, well stopping on purpose...stopping via falling or slamming into something (hopefully not some one) is pretty much my methods thus far...but i am going to work on that...so, i want to go again! like soon! so, if any of you folks are in madison and want to spend a few hours sliding or falling on some ice, let me know!! hey, i am just embracing the early arrival of winter here!!!

today i had my 8 am class that i picked up to replace the stats with the crazy professor trelawney-like woman...the new class is a survey in land cover/use changes...like looking at deforestation or urbanization...changes on the land and why.

its a survey class, so basically lecture and discussion of articles...this is not the first one i have had and there is always the potential for them being a bit...well, dry. but when you READ the powerpoint slides to the class!! there's just NO helping the boredom factor there...and at 8 am...it is imperative that i have a huge cup o'coffee in hand to make it for that hour and 15 minutes twice a week.

the professor is very young...like MAYBE 35, and while she CLEARLY knows her shit...her teaching skills have yet to be developed...i am making what i think is a very plausible assumption that she's been acadamia her whole career, from BS to MS to the phd....with VERY little TAing...all research assistantships and what not.

i hate power points...ok, no i don't, but i am irritated...i am NOT paying to be READ to! i can do that much on my own!

powerpoints have just been over used...it seems like we need them to explain EVERYTHING!! it has distilled public discourse to bullet points and headings, so that we do not need to learn to speak, to improvise, to think too far or deeply into what it is we are trying to convey...and i think its made us become even lazier as an audiance...if its not spoon fed to us then forget it.

in the end, some things are just not suppose to be presented a la powerpoint presentation...and to that end here are some examples (i am sure some of you have seen at leats some of these) stopping by woods on a snowy evening and i have a dream

so my third class met today for the first time and while the prof is wonderfully sarcastic and snarky (which in the end is the best way for most people to endear themselves to me, not that he actually needs to do so, of course...but well hell! i just like it!), he was most importantly not crazy in that flaky professor trelawney-kinda way that my mad stats prof is! phew! i can only handle about one of those a semester i think!

so, today it was intro to cartography...or map-making (if you want to be less pretentious about it)...i think it will prove to be a very cool class and much less dry and boring as i had feared...its very technical but i think there will be a lot of fun discussion on what kinds of interesting things you can do when mapping data. we discussed today for example this amazing geographer, william bunge, who now has kinda lost it and is reportedly driving a cab in canada someplace, but before this he made his name in revolutionizing political and cultural geography with a bunch of maps he produced based on surveys of detroit in the 70s. for example he asked white, suburban housewives questions regarding where they would and would not drive their cars, and where graffiti was most prominent and what not and developed what he called a map of fear. even more interesting, especially for how simple it was, he took a map of detroit which depicted all of its neighborhoods and simply renamed each neighborhood. what he used for new names were different countries, say france and china...the name that he gave a neighborhood was a country whose life expectancy most closely matched that particular neighborhood in detroit...simply but very graphically showing how one did not need to look beyond our borders to see what was still called then "third world" living conditions...you could walk from sweden or switzerland-esque living conditions to haiti and ethiopia in a matter of a few city blocks.

who knew map making could be so damn interesting!?!

tomorrow i have stats...i hope we get a syllabus!

so, i had my frist day of class today, stats and intro to GIS

there is no other way to say it...my stats prof is fucking nuts! insane! funny! very very funny but completely mad...not sure what this will mean for me academically speaking but in terms of pure entertainment value...well, i was amused to say the least.

first of all she walks into class with out the usual first day stack of syllabus...she was going to hand them out and at the last minute realized she had ALL the wrong dates...ok! also, she's thinking that she might have to reword it too as it currently sounds a bit too...well...mean. ok! this is her first time teaching stats for geography as she's in the math dept but she's got an undergrad degree in geography, so it should all be fine...she spent the next hour and 15 minutes randomly talking about growing up in philly, mapping the city out on the board (getting chalk all over her face in the process...not sure how that happened), talked about how most of philly's 1950s pop lived in a very small area to which re refered to a Dickensian hell....but it was nicely surrounded by lots of green space and you could go to the beach in jersey or NYC, which was a 5 hour train ride, and that jersey isnt so bad but its got a lot of densly populated dickensian hells too (aka trenton, jersedy city, oh and atlantic city, the only really bad part of the shore)...occasionally this would be related to stats for geographers by telling us where the geographical center of philly is (apparently its 6th and allegany...ok)

then she went on how stats can lie (as we all know) such as refering to percentages in the news...an example she provided was how we all know that we can't believe stats on teenagers having unprotected sex, especially since we all know that the kids that are being asked lie...ok...at some point we went to looking at average incomes and the usefullness of averages and medians, this led to us hearing about how people think that she talks funny with her philly accent but that she has managed to loose most of it thanks to the stroke she had a few years back...not sure how to respond to this...but that's ok because we had moved on to why the small town of pittsburg, kansas reports a low median income of 18K per family but that its probably too low as there is no reporting of income earned from illegal drug sales...which is a perfect reason of why it shouldn't be illegal so, if its legal there's no profit incentive and really, if little kids are having to go to walmart for their bag of whatever, we wouldnt have a drug crisis in this country!! WHAT!?! i thought this was statistics!!! don't get me wrong, i am all about having a rousing discussion on drug policies in the US, but i am a bit worried about how that will help me in the the advanced stats class next year...hmmmmm...not sure how this will work out!

i think intro to GIS will be a bit more...well, grounded...and for the most part it was, the prof is very organized and what not, though he did feel the need to make the point that it woudl be in our best interests to get our homework done friday before the weekend starts rather than sunday night when its over, so that way we can enjoy our drinking with out stupid GIS homework hanging over our heads....good point! ;->

can't wait for tomorrow to see how my third class will be!!

so, i just went to the new grad student orientation for the geography department...i wasnt going to go, being that i am just a lowly certifcate student, and not really feeling like i am a grad student but low and behold i actually belong to a really cool department now where everyone is happily included!! i got to talk to a former lecturer of mine who is signifcantly younger than me and just finished his phd...he taught environmental concervation one summer, it was really good though odd having a lecturer be younger that much younger than me...i can handle TAs but lecturers? oh well, that is so not the point!

the point is, after talking to this really cool guy and being introduced to a few profs, including the two i really need to talk to, and meeting a bunch of cert students and the certificate coordinator, all in all i can say it is a really cool group of people who are really into a really wide range of things. after spending a long time in different departments that have no community feeling between students and faculty, this seems like a really positive place to be...i sure hope it turns out to be so.
i am really excited to fine out!!

we took a fun tour of science hall, which is just a really weird old building full of its own lore, being the former medical school building there are the requisite tales of students finding shriveld up body bits from cadaver dissections, and other weird things like there use to be a fire man-esque pole running down one of the towers!! apparently some of the old-timer profs use to slid down them!! i wonder if they had races!! needless to say both the body bits and poles are not there, but the building is still pretty cool with all sorts nooks and crannies...i've been in the building before, but never got a tour of it, so it was cool to learn more about it...but i think i might get lost!