A Song in the Trees

I had a pretty busy week!

Saturday before last, Z and I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore because he needed a new computer desk that wasn't a cheap folding table collapsing in on itself. After we helped a couple with a baby get their new desk onto a cart and after Z accidentally smashed his finger as we moved a random marble countertop sitting on a desk, we picked one out! ...and it was about four inches too long to fit into his tiny car.

Go inside and ask them for the phone numbers for movers, I suggested. When I was buying furniture for my apartment when I first moved, they had a whole list of them on the wall. Z comes back out with a single business card. They can't help; the people they suggest can't help; the other people I google don't pick up the phone. We contemplate taking the desk apart, but get stuck on the first screw as it won't unscrew more than a quarter turn, and anyway we aren't sure that it isn't glued together. Z has no bungee cords or anything else that can help. He puts out a call for help on his Discord and nobody responds. R answers his phone, but his dad's car is too small. Finally, I go, doesn't D still live here? because Z took me to catsit for him once. It turns out that D is free and has a car that isn't tiny, so he was finally able to save the day for us. Z bought him and his girlfriend ramen from our favorite place as thanks, and we had dinner together on the roof of their building.

Z's cat now loves sitting in the big drawer. All's well that ends well.

On Sunday, the university's website finally got back up, but only if you were using their VPN. Z got his working, so I was able to schedule a COVID test. Didn't get mine working for a few days after. It doesn't quit when you close it, so I am uninstalling it now :| More importantly, I did my taxes; after I finished, I went, that doesn't look right, and called my dad for help. He pointed out the very important detail that I hadn't included my fellowship income from the spring (because the university didn't put in on my W2 for reasons I don't understand). So that all got sorted. I still need to call the IRS about my last stimulus check because I never received it; maybe now's a better time....

My package from Russia finally left St. Petersburg after 45 days of sitting in the post office, and was supposed to arrive on Monday but got delayed until Tuesday. My Zhenya cosmonaut t-shirt!! The print looks good, and while I was worried about ordering an extra-small because I... am not an extra-small, the extremely loose fit on the website's measurements was correct. I wore it when I saw R, since he is also a Zhenya stan :D

On Wednesday, I got my first ever COVID test (sorry to the person who had to walk me through it!) and picked up my fancy dancy graduation regalia. And I received a request for an interview! The job is temporary (one year), but it looks really interesting and pays well!

R had also asked me to do a photoshoot for him - this time as the model, not as the shaky hands behind the camera. I was a little nervous because my make-up skills are very basic and limited to 'cosplaying a few days of the year' and R's dress-up clothes tend towards the low-cut, but it all worked out and he had multiple extra shirts and slips and stuff already set out just in case. His photos are amazing, so I'm excited to see the results - especially for what he called the 'Midsommar' outfit and what I called the 'hippy in a cult' outfit (it was all white and very loose and gave me a 70s vibe), which was not made for my shoulders but was otherwise very fun to pose in.

Friday was our hooding ceremony. I lugged my ceremonial regalia up the hill and got dressed when I got to the top. I am not a fan of the robe color, but I am glad that they included a pocket and a pocket access slit, and the hats are very cool and fancy. Because of social distancing, they made us hood ourselves. This did not make much sense to me because first we handed our hats to our advisors, and then afterward they had each pair of us take our masks off for a moment to take photos together, and I'm pretty sure most of us are vaccinated anyway, but oh, well. I liked the ceremony! It was inside, we were air-conditioned, it was cool to hear everyone's thesis topic, and I got to see my advisor and talk with him and his other graduating student, who is doing cool work!

Commencement itself was on Saturday. They provided a lot of free water, which is good, because it is already quite warm here, and wearing a very thick polyester robe on top of normal clothes made for a lot of sweating before I'd even gotten checked in. Thankfully, a thunderstorm started to roll in but never entirely materialized, so we had a good breeze for a while. Some of the speeches were nice! Though there were lots of sarcastic murmurs around me when one of the guest speakers urged us to donate when we were rich one day - alumni donations have been plummeting for years for a reason, dude.

Unlike my much larger undergrad, they actually handed out everyone's degrees and had us walk across the stage as the president tipped their hat at us. Afterward, my advisor surprised me by grabbing me for a hug :)

We were urged to stay through the whole ceremony, but 1/3 of the grads left immediately and the rest of us got thanked for staying. We were originally told the ceremony would be 2.5 to 3 hours, but at some point after it had been three, I checked the list and realized we weren't even halfway through the undergrads. More Ph.Ds and Masters grads had left, as had plenty of undergrads who had received their degrees. The sun was coming out again. I'd already read 20k of fanfic on my cracked phone screen because I'd run out of things to think about. The two people in front of me decided to leave. I ditched with them.

On the way out, we got free cookies! As we talked, I also found out that one of the two I'd left with was another nb person who was excited to be able to use the gender-neutral Dr title :) The ceremony ended up being well over four hours in the end. They didn't even give me an actual diploma lol, I guess since they'd already mailed mine to me - the folder I was handed just had a 'congratulations!' note inside. But it was nice to go for the first part. And now school is over for me, for real, for ever. It's sure been a ride.

After I dropped off my regalia, Z took me to pick up Greek food to celebrate (we saw a bald eagle on the way back!). Later, I watched gymnastics, although the coverage was absurdly terrible even by NBC standards. Like, showing 4 routines in the first 35 minutes, staring at an exhausted Simone pretending the camera isn't there as her ankle gets taped for at least five minutes straight, multiple reminders that Morgan was born in China!!! terrible. Anyway, that aside, it was nice to see Simone doing her vault and Morgan's new floor - much better than the one she had for five seconds last year.

As of Wednesday, I am fully vaccinated! T-11 days to full immunity! I got lucky with the side effects in that I pretty much had none; my arm didn't even hurt as much as with the first shot. (I did have a headache the morning after, but it was the same headache I'd had before I got shot #2.) The poor man waiting out the fifteen minutes in the row in front of me almost fainted, but they were super prepared - there were five medical people on him immediately to make sure he was okay. It seemed like they treat a vaccine fainting reaction similarly to when you nearly faint when donating blood. He was okay pretty quickly, thankfully.

Z, unfortunately, while being statistically less likely to get side effects, got hit by them hard that night and the day after :( Fever and body aches and everything. He is now doing much better and is currently being more affected by getting used to his new glasses - he got his prescription updated after a decade and his eyes changed a lot.

I am counting down the days until I feel safe to go skating again. Till then, I took out my roller skates again when the weather was co-operative. I've been increasingly frustrated with how quickly they started to hurt my feet... so I went fuck it and modded them myself. I have not been desperate enough to take a craft knife to the sides yet, but it turns out that you can just use a hair dryer to soften them. I made something to help expand them where they need expanding, but it was hard to get it in and the inside doesn't really heat up, at least with the hair dryer I have, so I, uh, just wore my thickest socks and laced it on my foot. While they still need more work, my right foot is no longer in spiking pain after less than fifteen minutes and I can practice mohawks and three-turns for longer, so. Progress!

A mysterious package arrived on my doorstep earlier this week. I was confused because the only package I'm waiting on is from Russia (it has been in St. Petersburg for a month! At least they finally processed it through the shipment office two weeks ago) and this was from a US book store. Turns out my mom bought me a new book as a surprise 🥰 She saw the subject - daily life in the Edo period through actual documents of the time - and knew I would love it. Can't wait to read it!

My mom also encouraged me to sign up for in-person commencement when I was hesitating - they only let me know last-second that I was even eligible to sign up as a December graduate, and the safety protocols sounded a bit obnoxious. But oh well, it's one event. I do wish they weren't so disorganized, though. They asked us to fill out this form and then it was that form instead, the hooding ceremony is on Saturday whoops no it's on Friday morning hope you don't mind lol.

Anyway... I rewarded myself for finishing another job application last night by getting the new Pokemon Snap. The game is too addictive. Some of the pokemon are super cute, and I love seeing them in their nice little fake ecosystems. It's also really fun to throw apples - sorry, fake apples that are totally fluffy and non-harmful - at their heads to make them annoyed xD Research!

I am Dr. Allekha now!

(Okay, I think technically OGE has to approve everything first. But everyone was calling me that already!)

There are some minor changes my committee wants, but my advisor said he was surprised at how good the presentation finally became and how I brought together all the interesting and exciting ideas I've come up with. And I managed to slip past my nerves into talk mode and deliver it and apparently the committee barely needed any time to converse before they let me back in :) :) :D

So some small changes, and then I can get to work on my data and maybe a paper and also getting out of here! I really cannot describe how incredibly happy I am right now.

I bought myself a nice little cake with autumn leaves on top and I am going to go eat it now ♪(^∇^*)

Today, I did a guest lecture for my professor's summer class. I think the first half was a bit listless (my throat hurt from practicing and I was a bit nervous - honestly, I think I might've had a bit too much caffeine, too) but did better in the second half where I was more excited about the topic. If I do it again, I might try to retool the first half to have more of that. The students asked some fun questions, so hopefully they enjoyed it.

I also asked him again about fall funding as I never heard back. It sounds like our email system might've eaten the last email, if he didn't lose it himself. For a tech university, our email system sucks so much. Anyway, it sounds like he has something if I do some work or whatever, which is what he said before, so we're going to talk about it in a couple hours. Fingers crossed! I'm fortunate enough that I can live without getting it, but it would be nice.

Did a fair amount of programming this week and also need to do some code cleanup and a few tests of tweaks later, but I also need to get started on what writing I can do while my code is running. And also see if I can get that other machine to run stuff on.

Also need to finish this fic for RSOB! I am going to try and get it done tonight 'cause I want to post it. Or at least start posting it.

Have been doing some book reading while waiting for code to run (and fic reading and let's play reading - sometimes these things take a while). Unfortunately, my last couple of book choices (one from the library, one picked at random from the stuff I downloaded from Archipelago Books) did not turn out so well. Maybe I'll go through Kimono next as I know I'll like it.

I also watched the Peggy Fleming trophy when I had the chance. On the one hand, the USFS player is terrible and I'm still miffed at how much permissions I had to grant to even get the player operational, and it was also a great demonstration of why virtual competitions are not as easy as 'idk, stream it??'. Also didn't understand the scoring. On the other, I enjoyed most of the skaters. The men especially did well, as did Sonya (never heard of her - I assumed she was an adult skater at first - but I'm in for anyone with interesting choreo, bi-directional spins, and tuck single axels, even if they're doing Hallelujah). I was extra happy to see so many people recognizing my fave Emmanuel for his lovely arms and movement :)

Today I made saffron buns! Never had them before, and when I ordered groceries, I was finally able to get yeast, if only in packets. I wish they tasted sliiightly more of the saffron, but to be fair, I only had whole-wheat flour, which probably overpowers the taste some. They are still good.



Also attended some sessions of an online AI conference, which was heavy on the themes of bias and ethics in AI and diversity in CS. Interesting and important work! Though it did make me wonder if there's a named equivalent of, say, Murphy's Law for tech-related meetings - it takes a minimum of three CS people to get a projector working properly, and the same seems to hold for Zoom.

As a break from writing, I have slowly been working on my follow-up to my 'watch every single Carmen program in FS', which is 'watch every single Swan Lake program in FS'. On the one hand, my prediction that I would enjoy them overall more than Carmen programs seems to be true; I love the Swan Lake score and nobody's trying (and mostly failing IMO) to be sexy. On the other... some people could really use a dancer to show them how to do swan arms prettily instead of flapping their hands up and down, if they must do the swan arms. And could whoever is putting together the music please think of something other than the same moody, vaguely dramatic cut with the main motif that everybody else is skating to, especially since Black Swan came out? There's lots of beautiful music in the ballet! I've watched thirty of these things and I don't think the section from the dance of the cygnets has been in one of them, and that's one of the best parts! Maybe that specific piece isn't good music for skating to, I don't know, but... really, there's more in there.

Okay, the variety is actually not bad considering they're all sourced from the same ballet and from Black Swan - I think I just got a run of very samey ones. I've already watched Cyberswan and several programs using the folk/foreign princess dances. There's also a Russian one with vocals that I am curious about, but I can't seem to find what the song is called, let alone what it's about.

Well, my first food delivery arrived yesterday, with only a minor hiccup (they got the wrong kind of bread) that didn't matter that much. My free tea samples from the local shop also showed up in the mail. And so then I went out shopping for the rest of my groceries at the local store.

I'd actually had a nightmare the previous night, about how I was forced to go through a maze of stores with impossibly tight shelving, full of people who didn't care much about socially distancing - and at some point I'd lost my mask. It wasn't quite that bad in real life, but there were more people at the store than last time I'd been and I was pretty anxious, especially since there are a few bottlenecks where it's impossible to stay six feet from someone if they don't stop to wait, or where it's hard to tell if someone is coming up behind you.

I also started getting stomach pains on my way there; by the time I got back, they were so bad that I took off my mask, washed my hands while hoping the lightheadedness didn't make me faint, and then went to lie down for an hour in hopes that they'd go away. They kind of did, eventually, at least enough that I could stand to be vertical long enough to put my food away. They were on and off the rest of the evening and to a much lesser extent this morning. I haven't eaten anything unusual, so no idea what caused them. Weird.

Anyway, I had another meeting with my advisor today. He okayed my basic plan, and on one subject of contention, mentioned that he's on my side but that I'm the one who, in the end, has to come up with a justification and put my foot down about it, which is true. Will do my best. (And also funding is pretty fucked after summer, so. Better hurry it up.)

Wednesday reading:
Have read: Textbook about behavioral ecology. It was very interesting and written in an accessible style. Helped me pull together some concepts that I'd encountered separately and put them into one framework.

For more fun reading, I finished reading the scans of Boku Ga Watashi ni Naru Tame Ni, which I've bought in ebook form; it's an essay manga about the author's experience as an MTF woman undergoing SRS in Thailand and what it's like being transgender in Japan, mostly from a procedural standpoint, with a few observations on the nature of gender. The art is cute and the sense of humor is hilarious. There's this one part with a tofu metaphor.... Would've been nice to see a bit more of the author's emotional perspective, but from the author's notes, this wasn't the point of the manga for her, which seems fair.

Also read what's available of Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku. It's about a girl, Hime, who just entered high school alongside her best friend and secret crush, Akira, who is attending school as a girl for the first time. It's partially about Akira's difficulties socially (especially since her parents aren't allowing her to physically transition even as much as growing her hair) and Hime's efforts to defend her, partially about their relationship, which is more fraught than it first appears, and partially about Hime's exploration of identity and her own view of her gender and her social role. The art for this one is also cute and I've enjoyed the various aspects of identity it touches on, and the relationships feel realistic. However, all the side characters, even the other high schoolers, are too capable of spewing wise speeches of advice, which I found tiresome after the fifth or so time, and as of the last few chapters, there's too much love triangle drama going on that I don't find interesting.

Currently reading: An obscure 80s shoujo sports manga (in Japanese - I figured out how to get de-DRM-able Japanese ebooks :D) and Guardian, the cnovel. I'm halfway through the first volume and I... have to say that if I hadn't heard about it from the hype, I would've stopped reading it by now. The story so far is okay but not that interesting, and the translation is supposedly edited but still pretty bad. It's full of comma splices, wrong word choice (anti-social does not mean socially anxious, ffs), incorrectly punctuated dialogue, and tense problems. I know from experience that translation is difficult and these are just fans, but most of the issues are basic English grammar problems. There was also one scene where I had difficulty figuring out what was going on. I'll at least finish the volume, but I'm not sure I'll continue.

To read: Not sure!

\o/\o/\o/

So there are a few concerns (of course) and I am waiting to hear back from one committee member I need to schedule an additional meeting with

but

I passed!!!!

Feels weird to not have talked to anyone in person since Monday. Might see Z later today, though.

I did got out for a run on Wednesday, despite not liking running. I did it after dealing with some stressful emails (due to a communication mix-up, apparently the day I was told my advisor could do my proposal is a day he can't! yaaaaay) and it was really, really nice to get outside and get some exercise. I think my stamina even improved slightly over the last time I went for run months ago. Skating's not an endurance sport, but I guess it still helped.

Not going outside = not a lot of distractions from work, and I had a meeting with my advisor yesterday so I got a good amount of coding done beforehand. He said my presentation is looking very good :) although he still asked me to add a couple more slides and adjust a few others. Next week, we'll go through the talk itself; I practiced it once earlier and I'm already feeling pretty good about it. Honestly, I just want to get it over with at this point!

Nobody related to the school has been diagnosed, but they are sending students home (absent extenuating circumstances), and online classes for everyone! I wonder if my one seminar will continue online somehow, or if it's just cancelled. And I am now worried about my thesis proposal - I need to ask my advisor about what will happen with it. My mom also has to teach online at her school now, but she's done that for years, so she will be okay; she said that at least she will have more time to work in her lab.

People are not panic buying most things, but I went grocery shopping again today to stockpile peanut butter and milk (can always make it into yogurt if I have too much!), and there was a big dent in the ramen and one brand of canned tomatoes. Only the one brand. I'm not sure why.

Anyway, I made coconut milk lentil soup for Z and I tonight and it was very good. And there's enough left over for breakfast. I might go skating tomorrow and Z and I are thinking of going on a hike or something on Friday or Saturday.

I took a break from my Japanese textbook to learn some words off the packaging for the Japanese sunscreen I bought recently (it came with braille on the outer packaging, which is a pretty cool design feature). One of the words I looked up doesn't appear to actually exist - a typo? - but now I know how to read 'chlorinated bleach' in Japanese.

Good news: My advisor... still has not read my proposal in full, but I sent him an updated version with a couple of changes he told me to make from skimming it, and he now says he's read enough of it to say it's good enough to schedule the actual proposal!!! This whole process feels glacial, but it's moving!

In more fun news: I can cross off one of my New Year's resolutions, because I can now do a very bad catchfoot spiral on my worse side :D Though on Saturday, my coach was more excited that we may have discovered the muscle I need to do back outside edges properly. I think it's the fourth or fifth muscle I've discovered through skating. Just a couple of minutes of practice made it hurt a lot a few hours later, so there's work to do there.

I would also like to thank the mother at the rink today who wasn't on the ice, but still at least tried to get her young kids to stop flopping and zooming across the center very close to where I was practicing because, as she told them, "the man might get upset". Yes, I'd be upset if I accidentally sliced a kid's face up with my skate coming out of a spin, or if they ran into me from a blind spot. I think they were young enough that they really needed more supervision, but hey, I've seen enough parents at public sessions not make any effort to corral their young kids when they're being reckless (or even bring them over to play in the center when multiple people are practicing there) so I appreciated it.

Another skating-related thing: I got bored while waiting for some code to finish running, and I started wondering how many Carmen programs there have been. One thing led to another, my analytical brain took over, and now I've got a folder full of them, a spreadsheet filled out, a Python program taking shape for some stats, and a Premiere project going. The answer (depending on how you count) is at least 93, 84 of which I could find on the internet. Having watched all of them, I think maybe there have been enough Carmen programs.