brain munch

i've had a subscription to food & wine magazine for a while (some groupon deal or other) and sometimes i try to make stuff from it. some of the ingredients and tools the recipes call for are just ridiculous, like planks of some exotic sounding wood cut to a specific size to grill with (i don't remember how exactly). sometimes the recipes sound manageable, like this almond cake with lemon and creme fraiche glaze. the previous week i had made another kind of almond cake using a recipe found on an almond flour packet, so i wanted to see if this one was any better.

so i got all the ingredients and spent an hour or so prepping and mixing and making a mess. i followed the recipe exactly, except for one thing. i only had an 8 inch springform pan, not an 11 inch. i went forward anyway, hoping that extra baking time would help. i ended up baking it 20 minutes longer than the 25 minutes it asks for.

this is how it came out:



i assume the top cracked like that because the outside was fully cooked and the inside not so much. i marched ahead! i made this yummy lemony glaze and pour it on top of the already gooey cake:



then let it sit. i mixed up the creme fraiche glaze for the top and spread it on top (this part wasn't attractive enough to photograph, because by this point the top of the cake fell through and it just looked lumpy).

but hey, even though it didn't cook evenly all the way through it was still pretty delicious. served with vanilla ice cream and berries:



what i'd do differently next time... use the correct sized pan or cook in batches, and also i didn't grind the almonds enough so the cake was a bit more crunchy than it probably should have been. i should also note the recipe called for instant polenta but i had a hard time figuring out if the polenta i bought was instant, so that could have contributed to the crunchiness too.

now how did it compare to the much more simple almond cake recipe on the packet of almond flour? it was just as yummy, but it was much more difficult to make and needed more ingredients!

ah well! adventures in cooking stuff that require lots of ridiculous steps.


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on my lj 8 years ago: hoo hah!
on my lj 9 years ago: goin under the knife

work and home my motivation to do anything gets lost.

i guess the same can be said of the reverse trip.

haha



some projects i am not working on at the moment:
- stuff to enhance my future career prospects
---- putting examples of my code on github
---- taking a professional looking headshot to put on linkedin
- editing and uploading photos
- planning future travel

some projects i am working on at the moment:
- updating livejournal
- laying in bed like a sack of dough


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on my lj 5 years ago: pogue
on my lj 6 years ago: dream
on my lj 8 years ago: stebbins
on my lj 9 years ago: early
on my lj 10 years ago: eep

i woke up this morning and found out that my 2nd paper from graduate school has been accepted for publication in the journal Cognition and Emotion (although if you don't have university access i don't think you can go to their site...?).

so hooray! 3 years of hard work. the paper is called "Anxiety modulates the effects of emotion and attention on early vision". i know you'll want to search for it immediately on pubmed but you'll have to be patient as publishing takes time. there there. have a cookie instead.

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on my lj 6 years ago: humdrum
on my lj 8 years ago: rolling with it
on my lj 9 years ago: once again

the waffles that marisa made in san diego were an inspiration. i wanted to make waffles too! and now i can say i'm the proud new owner of a waffle iron! thanks to my officemate sophie.

step 1: make the batter. i used this recipe from smitten kitchen: rich buttermilk waffles. since i never have buttermilk, i used saco cultured buttermilk powder mixed with water.



step 2: pour into waffle iron (not too much).



step 3: make it look pretty for a picture.



step 4: eat (not pictured).

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on my lj 4 years ago: back
on my lj 8 years ago: the allure of the moving landscape

i just wanted to post something on february 29th.

plus, several people i know were born on this date. it's worth noticing.

and, well. things and events have occurred in my life since the last time i posted. things that occur on weekends mostly. last weekend b and i went to san diego to visit nana, marisa and emily. the weekend before that b's parents and my parents converged in san francisco and we all hung out together and that went pretty well. the weekend before that b and i went on a little hike/walk in tilden park with mike, and went to pyramid brewery later. the weekend before that we got sandwiches at ike's and played frisbee in the panhandle park and ate pie at chili pie. the weekend before that i played mahjongg at tina's and heard she is engaged(!) and went to sanjay's 30th birthday party, and we went on a walk through the dogpatch and ate vietnamese sliders from a food truck. things happen :). sometimes they are worth mentioning.

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on my lj 4 years ago: hot and cold
on my lj 8 years ago: uh huh uh huh uh huh

back in november i somewhat obsessively documented every piece of clothing i own. i just learned today from the apartment therapy blog there is now a website service for freaks like me. it's called stylitics.

it is described as being similar to mint.com, except for your closet, with one aim possibly being to help you to optimize your clothing. admittedly, it has more of a fashion-bent than i will ever have, but the overall idea appeals to me.

if i wasn't already tracking every other aspect of my life obsessively...

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on my lj 1 year ago: review of puerto rico
on my lj 7 years ago: happy valentines
on my lj 8 years ago: friday the 13th

this is about domestic home-makery stuff.

4 things that have made a big difference for me in terms of cooking (all of which i have gotten as gifts for birthday/christmas this year):

1) double-sided griddle, with a flat surface for making pancakes, and a grill surface to make nice stripes on meats, and a place for fat or juices to collect. for years i just used a big frying pan for both things. this made cooking pancakes take FOREVER (as i could only fit 1 or 2 irregularly shaped pancakes on it at a time), and the meats just sat in a bunch of oil and didn't get those nice stripes on them. trust me, that counts for a lot :).

2) a set of different-sized mixing bowls. before, i had 3 bowls all roughly the same size, and being used for things they shouldn't be used for. one was a big salad bowl whose main purpose was supposed to serve salads in but i would often use it for things like cookie dough; a second was an ugly plastic bowl that was flimsy and is best used for things like mixing hair bleach or other things that could possibly damage your nice bowls, but instead i was using for things like making pancake batter; and a nice ceramic serving bowl, which is supposed to be used for serving, not mixing. aaanyway, so i got a nice set of mixing bowls from my dear sister and it's so great! there's small bowls for beating eggs, medium bowls for mixing a medium amount of stuff, and big bowls for mixing large amounts of stuff, and/or serving stuff. it's a simple concept really, but it makes me happy.

3) slow cooker. lately i have been making one big pot of something every week or two, eating some of it immediately, packaging some for lunches for the week, and freezing the other half in small tupperwares for eating sporadically throughout the month. this has saved me TIME and MONEY. not all the recipes i've tried have been winners, but the majority of them have been very tasty and easy to make. when i'm away from home 10-12 hours a day, and the alternative is to start making dinner at 9pm to eat at 10pm, this is huge.

4) food processor. ok so i haven't used this as much as i probably should, but i've lived without a food processor my whole adult life so i guess i've gotten into patterns where i don't use one period. but! i did make a bunch of mini pumpkin pies about a month ago and making the pie crust dough was so much easier with a food processor. it felt a bit silly to dirty a whole appliance for a process that takes like 3 minutes (when doing it manually might take 15) but overall i think even including cleaning time it still saves time and effort. i need to start expanding my repertoire to recipes i've avoided in the past due to not having one of these.

okay so here is a recipe my mom sent me that i made recently and it was so good. and healthy. i'm not sure where it is from, but probably from a magazine like martha stewart's living. oh, also i halved the recipe since i was the only one who was going to eat it over several days. as it is written, it serves 6. and also, i didn't have yogurt so i improvised with some Amy's Goddess salad dressing.

Ingredients
.25 c sliced almonds
1.5 c quinoa, rinsed and drained
2 c spinach leaves
2 c fresh cherries, pitted and halved (this part is a bit of a bitch)
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and cut into .5" dice (about 1.5 c)
15 oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 small red onion, finely diced (about .5 c)
.25 c plain low-fat yogurt
3 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs fresh lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, minced (about 2 tsp)

Do
1) preheat oven (or toaster oven) to 350 deg. spread almonds on baking sheet and toast 7 to 10 minutes, shaking pan occasionally until golden brown. cool.
2) bring 3 cups salted water to boil, stir in quinoa. reduce heat to med-low and simmer for 15 minutes with lid, or until liquid has been absorbed.
3) remove from heat and cool, covered in pot.
4) chop up the spinach
5) toss together quinoa, almonds, spinach, cherries, cucumber, chickpeas and red onion in large serving bowl.
6) whisk together yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic in small bowl. pour over salad and toss to coat. season with salt and pepper. chill for 30 minutes, then serve.

*********
on my lj 7 years ago: damndest
on my lj 8 years ago: dude i feel so stupid, and bootsy henderson
on my lj 9 years ago: only

one thing i'll never get tired of is the view we have from our front door.

on a good day we get blimps, in addition to twin peaks and sutro tower.


i can even see the tower while sitting on my bed.


when the sun sets it literally looks like the hills are on fire.


and sometimes it looks like the african serengeti.


the clouds leave interesting textures in the sky.





i would also like to say that it's been just over 9 years since the columbia shuttle disaster. here is a photo of the crew.


here is a photo of a mural that was on our old street in prospect heights, brooklyn.


i didn't realize until today how closely the mural matches the photo. anyway, still sad.

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on my lj 8 years ago: mcliver failure and synesthesia
on my lj 9 years ago: columbia crew

for christmas bob got me a digital photo frame (after asking me if it sounded like something i would want!). at first i wasn't sure because everything i knew about digital photo frames was kind of cheesy, clunky and not too useful. something you might get your grandparents. but i hadn't looked into them ever. it turns out they make them in larger sizes than i thought, and now they come in frames with matting and they look nice enough to hang on your wall. so we went ahead and got one. apart from the relatively low resolution (800 x 600) and clunky user interface (it is a bit of a pain to copy photos onto it from USB) it actually has a very good use. the thing is i have thousands of digital photos i look at very rarely. some of these photos are really awesome and bring to mind some very happy memories, but most of the time they are just sitting on my hard drive, only looked at when they're new. with a digital photo frame, i can put several GB of photos on it and set up a very slow-moving slideshow, like change the photo once a day or once an hour. i've been testing it out with a test sample of about 20 photos and we have it set up in the kitchen so we can see it during meals, and i have to say that i like it. we haven't found the optimal place for it yet, and one downside is that if you aren't looking at it directly from in front it can be slightly hard to see (much like a laptop screen). but overall i think it was a good purchase and it'll make really good use of all these photos i've been taking over the years. in the past week or so i've been slowly going through my albums. so far i've gone through both my 2008 and 2009 folders, which amounts to about 3000 photos. i'm working on 2010 tonight. i think it'd be nice to have a rotation of maybe 100-200 photos, and change it up every so often, perhaps with the seasons.

now with hobbes gone i've also been going through photos for other reasons. :( photos are for remembering and i want to appreciate the memories that i have more regularly.

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on my lj 6 years ago: meemoon.com
on my lj 7 years ago: do it for science
on my lj 8 years ago: pogue on my legs

last weekend i attended the python bootcamp. even though it was a 3-day event i only made it to the first two days because of a case of food poisoning. i believe it was from their catered lunch because everything else i ate over the last day was eaten with no ill effects by someone else. this was the first time i had food poisoning in the US, and it was worse than experiences i've had in other countries. it put me out for a full day where i only managed to keep down a single cracker, and i was still weak for another couple days after that.

this experience taught me 1) to be wary of how food is stored (although how you can really know that when you are being served i have no idea), and 2) that you really only have to starve yourself for a day to look skinny. got to be in a bikini in 3 days? simple, just don't eat (or i guess you can just barf everything up). i've discovered every celebrity's secret... i just don't plan on using that strategy on purpose. however, i DO hope to have better control over food portion size in general though - now that is a real challenge for me.

anyway, the bootcamp was good and although i had touched on most of the topics before in my own forays this was a more organized presentation. it also gave me lots of material to look back on, and exercises to try more fully at some later point. (yes, put another thing on the to-do list). but seriously, it's definitely something worth learning, and i'm already using it at work to present experiments and process data so i feel like i'm halfway there. i just need to become fluent, as in be able to write something from scratch without using some sort of template. many of the other people at the bootcamp seemed to be experts in other languages, such as C++, and some even seemed to be pretty good at python already so i felt like i was lagging behind, but i know i just need to focus on what i need to learn and just do it.

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on my lj 3 years ago: social anxiety
on my lj 4 years ago: lost in translation

i did it again, going another month without a single post. what's up with that?

december was another busy time.



we went to ngmoco's holiday party at bimbo's 365 club (photo by fizzyphotography.com).


my parents visited, bringing us a christmas tree from truckee and a coffee table that my dad made out of recycled wood (part of it from their old bed!). oh and we got our first tv.


i turned 30. the night after my actual birthday we went to a new bar in the mission called Dear Mom.


lauren visited from new york (and we went to chez panisse and a bunch of other stuff around SF).


marisa and chuk came to town (of which i have no photos sadly).

i went home for christmas.


and got another surprise from my dad - a handbuilt dresser that looks like it came from the mind of salvador dali! he actually got the idea from straightlinedesigns.com.


there was no snow...but i still went snowshoeing with tina.


and now back in SF, home to sunny, 60 degree winter weather and beautiful sunsets.


i hung out with aaron a. post-christmas (also no photos). we hung out in the castro, which was entertaining.

for new year's we tagged along to a house party with emma d., and this week it's been back to work!


speaking of work, this will be the first month where i will actually be collecting data. it's been a long time coming, and i'm looking forward to it. my boss will also be returning from her 5-month sabbatical at oxford, and with that a new era in my post-doc will begin.

i recently joined the ymca in berkeley so i'm hoping to make it a recurring part of my weekly existence. i've already gone to cycling, yoga and core strength classes and i'm planning on going to a pilates one today. the membership this month has already paid off, and i'm feeling pretty good about my health. it feels good to exercise regularly once again and hopefully i keep it up. ;)

i want to continue to push myself to learn new things outside of my comfort zone. there are plenty of things i want to have more knowledge about that will help me not only in my current job but will help me with future employment. i've already started learning python, and in about a week i will be participating in a 3-day python "bootcamp" held at uc berkeley. try as i might, i just can't get away from schoolin'.

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this is my first post ever on january 6th!

our new place has two closets, and we each took one before deciding the final layout of the apartment. one is in the 'bedroom' and one is in the 'living room' (in fact, the two rooms are completely interchangeable save for the furniture we put in each). we eventually figured out it's best for me to have the closet in the bedroom, but i had originally taken the one in the living room. today we did the big switch. not only did i find my friends' apartment keys i had thought were lost (actually i had a feeling i would find them today...) i also did an inventory of every piece of clothing i own. this is in an attempt to figure out what i actually use and how i can get rid of stuff i don't use and get more of stuff i do.

overall i think i have a lot of clothes, but i only wear a fraction of them regularly. for example, jeans and a t-shirt and my fleece (very northern californian). what is most impressive is i donated about 3 trash bags worth of clothes before i left new york, so this isn't even all i had until recently!

the list: *
- 6 coats of varying warmths (light jackets, rain coat, fleeces, heavy wool)
- 3 blazers (1 of which i have never worn)
- 9 sweaters, including hoodie (yes! i only have one now. be proud. i used to have upwards of 6.) and fancier types

- 7 dress shirts (4 button-down and 3 more lady-like)
- 10 casual shirts (4 button-down and 6 more girly)
- 6 long-sleeve t-shirts
- 15 tank tops (got heavy use in NYC summers, and in winters under other shirts)
- 20 t-shirts (13 of which i wear a lot, 7 of which i wear rarely; of this latter group, one t-shirt says "free mustache rides" and another says "osama loves your s.u.v.". i can't bring myself to throw them out.)

- 4 pairs of jeans (3 of which i wear regularly)
- 2 pairs of shorts (probably won't get much use in SF)
- 6 pairs of leggings (mostly worn under jeans in cold NYC winters)
- 2 pairs of dress pants, last worn circa 2006 for grad school interviews, and 2010 for post-doc interview

- 20(!) dresses, mostly for the summers in NYC (1 is business-like: i defended my dissertation in it)
- 8 skirts (2 are business-like and never-worn)

- 1 dressing gown
- 1 sarong
- 3 pajama pants
- 2 pajama tops
- 3 "exercise" pants (mostly used as pajamas)
- 2 nightgowns

- 4 pairs of boots (1 cowboy, 1 doc martens, 1 frye, 1 eddie bauer)
- 1 pair of bass flats for work (just bought yesterday!)
- 1 pair of bass (barely-)heels
- 1 pair of converse
- 1 pair of dansko clogs
- 1 pair of greek sandals
- 1 pair of flip flops

* hats, scarves, belts, gloves, socks, tights, swimsuits, underwear and bras remain unclassified because they are currently all jumbled up in a huge plastic bag until i get a dresser.

i realize how OCD this is. but i think it is also educational. i have all these lovely dresses and skirts that i want to wear but i just don't know what to wear with them. i can't just wear a stinky old t-shirt with a skirt, but i don't have many other shirts that would match, for example. also, half the time my closet is so disorganized that i forget what i have, and i end up just going for the easy t-shirt and jeans because i don't want to think about it so much. part of the problem with wearing skirts is i also don't have many shoes now that wouldn't look weird with them - i threw out a few pairs in NY, and i lost one of my favorites (black camper heels) in the move :(.

well i use pretty much all my shoes regularly, and i felt that i was missing more girlish casual shoes so i just got some yesterday at the bass outlet in truckee. i want to get some oxfords for a less-casual option, but haven't found any that i like in a price range i can handle.

i definitely under-utilize my dressier clothing because, as an academic, no one cares what you wear. i am regularly mistaken for an undergraduate so if i want to avoid that i should probably start dressing like a 30 year old (eek).

i know this can't possibly be interesting for someone other than myself, but i am wondering if this amount of clothing is excessive, and what are some good ideas to downsize? what items are practical and attractive that i am missing? what are some items that you wouldn't be able to live without?

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on my lj 9 years ago: nothing in particular.

with new health insurance comes new perks, namely, finally doing something about this blurry, buzzing world i live in.

well, really, i can see just fine with contacts and i can hear well enough (... maybe not).

but i did go see an optometrist who told me i have astigmatism and my vision has gotten slightly worse. today i picked up my new (expnsve!) glasses. they are made by a company called SALT.. yes, the period is included in the name. it makes for a very halting reading of their company website.

here they are. they're called "jaden" in tea leaf green.



i've never had glasses that had their own name. i look forward to looking more like a hipster with these.

today i also saw an ear, nose and throat doctor. i have had many ENTs in my lifetime, but this was the first woman ENT. she was wonderful! young, nice, smart... not like those grumpy, condescending old farts i have been at the mercy of in the past.

i got a hearing test, my first in many years (maybe 5 or 6) and i got a printout of my audiogram.

here it is.



the red line is my right ear, which has pretty good hearing, notwithstanding all the ear surgeries i've had that have resulted in a lot of scarring of my middle ear. specifically, this is the air conduction, or how well i can hear by sounds vibrating my eardrum and ossicles.

the blue line is my left ear, with a noise mask in my right ear. it has terrible air conduction. the doctor said there was so much scarring that she isn't even sure if my auditory bones on that side even exist. it is possible for them to just dissolve! pretty gnarly. and gross.

importantly, the blue brackets show my hearing on the left side through bone conduction, meaning sounds that make it to the cochlea through the bones in the skull. i have good hearing that way. my auditory nerves are intact, which i have known for a long time.

what i did not know is that there is a hearing aid that is perfect for people with terrible air conduction but good bone conduction. it is a bone-anchored hearing aid, or Baha. amazingly, and i didn't expect this, my health insurance covers this hearing aid. wow! i could have normal hearing for the first time in decades.

now i am just waiting to get scheduled with an audiologist to get a fitting, and they will let me try out the device (with a headband holding it in place) for a month to see if it improves my life.

i googled the hearing aid, and the most attractive picture i can find of it is here. the article attached to this image has maybe one or two paragraphs on it: "In December, she underwent surgery to embed a bone-anchored hearing aid (Baha), otherwise known as a bionic ear, in her skull. Ask Orton to pull back her hair, and you’ll see a small, titanium knob projecting from behind her right ear. On this knob snaps the Baha, a small box specially colored “Champagne Blond” to match her hair. Unlike conventional hearing aids, which transmit sound through the ear canal, the Baha allows Orton to hear by conducting sound vibrations passing through her skull to her inner ear. The Baha also contains an audio jack that allows her to more or less plug a cellphone or iPod directly into her head."

i've dabbled in becoming a bionic woman. i mean, i have a titanium left ankle, a right eardrum grown from the tissue of my head, why not also a titanium post sticking out of my skull for a bionic ear?

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on my lj 8 years ago: crazy dreams

liza and i went to the issue release party of Lucky Peach #2, The Sweet Spot. not since Readymade or Kitchen Sink have i been so excited about the beginnings of a magazine.

it is helped by the fact that for $12 we got a free issue plus drinks at Heart in the mission, plus desserts and sweets from momofuku's milk bar. besides the chocolate and pumpkiny-carrot-cakey cupcakes, my favorites were the cookies. there was the compost cookie, the cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookie, the corn cookie and the chocolate chocolate cookie.



so far i've tried the compost cookie, which has chocolate and butterscotch chips, crushed pretzels and potato chips, among other ingredients, and the chocolate chocolate cookie. the latter tastes almost exactly like raw brownie dough. so good! milk bar is great at making desserts that taste like things you love but don't necessarily think of as dessert flavors at a fancyish dessert spot (like ice cream that tastes like the milk leftover after eating sugary breakfast cereal, "cereal milk").

the first issue was about ramen, and it was thick and read like a book. i read it cover to cover. and it had no ads (which sadly has to change if they want to keep printing). every article and piece was so interesting, and made me SO HUNGRY. so i'm looking forward to carrying around Lucky Peach #2 and reading it slowly while i take the train to and from work. it's another 3 months till #3 comes out!

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on my lj 3 years ago: boston
on my lj 5 years ago: gosh
on my lj 6 years ago: i was tagged
on my lj 7 years ago: today i
on my lj 9 years ago: sleep

i'm sitting at home at 9:20am waiting for a furniture delivery. we are finally getting a couch. and for the first time in my life, a brand new couch that has never had previous owners!

let me tell you about our old couch.

it was from craigslist. i bought it for $20, and then i paid $40 for a uhaul van rental to bring it home. $60 for a couch. well, loveseat really, it was too short for me to lie down on. $60 for a loveseat isn't bad.

but there were weird stains on it. i febrezed the shit out of that couch. i spent the next 3 years ignoring those stains. i covered the pillows with pillowcases to class it up a bit. threw a blanket over the top...

when we moved 2.5 months ago, we gave the couch away to a bunch of young college boys. they came in and hoisted that thing on their shoulders. it's finally where it belongs.

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on my lj 1 year ago: another assignment from the science writing workshop
on my lj 5 years ago: panic mode
on my lj 6 years ago: i have a headache
on my lj 7 years ago: my visit to smithville
on my lj 8 years ago: audium

On Potrero Hill, you can relax in brilliant sunshine while watching fog engulf the rest of the city...

Anchor Steam brewing company is practically on my street. unfortunately, the free brewery tours are booked all the way through december!

OJ Simpson grew up here, and potrero hill has the densest concentration of OJ Simpson murals in the nation.

also, the headquarters for Mythbusters the tv show is in potrero hill. interesting!

i didn't post at all in october! i think that is a first for me, going a whole month without a single post. it felt like a pretty busy month.



b and i went camping with joel in mt. tamalpais state park.


i looked at a shit-ton of apartments.

we both started work full time.

i visited with the family in santa cruz for lucy's birthday.


i started participating in stanford's free online engineering courses (machine learning and databases).

i went on the uc berkeley neuroscience retreat at granlibakken.


i got two tiny pumpkins with liza, steve, esther and jp.


we signed a lease on a really awesome apartment in potrero hill.


our friend kevin stayed with us one weekend, where we ate at a couple nice and fancyish restaurants (outerlands in the outer sunset, the house, in north beach, and the blue plate in south mission/bernal heights).

we also went sailing on a giant catamaran in the bay, under the golden gate, with kevin and another of b's friends cassandra, who used to work with him in nyc.


then of course, we moved into that really awesome apartment, where i am sitting now, in a very large and mostly empty room!



we got our mattress specially made at foamorder.com, and we're currently waiting for a bed frame to be delivered. yesterday i went to ikea and got a few big pieces and lots of little things, and tomorrow we're going back for more. we'll probably end up getting stuff from craigslist too. i am seriously straining my bank and credit accounts right now. but, we sold every piece of furniture we owned in ny and we had to start from scratch. my postdoc salary isn't enough!

overall things are going well. we've definitely had some stressful moments with moving twice in two months, but moving is just hard, period. and hopefully now we won't have to move for a long time. a side effect of being busy is that i've barely had time to see any friends who live out here so that's something i am working on correcting.

what else?

i just spent a ton of money on new glasses because i now have vision insurance for the first time in 5 years (yes, even with insurance it's still a lot). hopefully they still look as good as i thought they did at the optometrist. the doc said my eyes are lacking in oxygen because i wear contacts everyday, for far too long. this causes my eyes to be dry, and red, because new blood vessels grow in to try and get more oxygen. so, i am resolving to wear my new expensive glasses more often for the sake of having nice eye whites. i apparently have a mild astigmatism too, which no optometrist has ever told me! it's not something you just get either. new glasses and new contacts should help correct for that.

oh, we have a shared backyard (well, it's more like a rubble pit), but it has a hot tub! we've lived here 5 days and have used it twice. :D when my finances are more in order i'd also like to start a garden and have bbqs. you know, potrero is one of the warmest neighborhoods in SF... but now that it is turning into fall (sept and oct were absolutely beautiful, and today it is cold and rainy) i suppose that will have to wait.

besides furnishing our apartment, there are so many things i've been waiting to buy. a macbook air (ok, some are rreeeeally expensive things), a zoom lens for my olympus, some pretty but practical flats (i got a 25 minute walk to/from the BART every morning and evening!), a nice pair of oxford shoes, hiking boots and socks, other camping-type pants/shorts, a slow cooker and a food processor.

since moving we've become very aware of the amount of stuff we own and we've just about pared everything down to the essentials. except that i didn't really do a good job with my clothes. i still have a lot of clothes that i wear maybe once a year, and even a few items that i haven't worn in multiple years. i feel guilty about it, but also very attached. so, there are no new clothes on my list of things to buy because i just need to make better use of what i have. especially my 20 or so dresses... :)

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on my lj 5 years ago: 12:59am
on my lj 8 years ago: 11:21am
on my lj 9 years ago: no titles for these entries either

i still feel like we just arrived here. part of that may be because i have not settled into a routine due to not having regular work hours yet. even though i'm not officially a post-doc until october 3, i have been working about 3 days a week on an old project, and tomorrow will be tackling an IRB (ethics approval) for my upcoming studies in the new lab. but all the other days have been filled with a lot of other stuff, mostly good and nice things. i'm really happy that i've had this time to get to know my surroundings rather than jumping head first into a new work schedule and working full time. time enough for that very soon.

most of the last week i was sick with a cough and cold. i had a fever for about half a day as well, in the midst of various people visiting town. i have eaten lots of tacos and burritos, a bit of dim sum here and there, and some italian and italian-american food, all of which is pretty representative of our current neighborhood. marisa came for a couple days to go to an interesting sounding conference at the intersection of neuroscience and games for health and she gave me the names of several organizations to look up. over the next year i really want to focus in on what i want to do with my career long-term. i need to beef up some skills and make connections, things that are difficult to get started on without some external motivation.

last week i also had training at the brain imaging center at uc berkeley, where in the coming weeks i hope to sit in on more of my lab's scans and get certified to operate it on my own. i will also be getting training in tms. in the meantime i need to wrap up the last project from my dissertation and write my ethics approval application.

however, i still have a couple days of 'freedom'. last friday we explored land's end in the northwestern most corner of san francisco, a seemingly overlooked gem of a park where beach meets cliffs meets fog and delicious smells and mystical hidey places, ruins, mountainous waves, hypnotic sounds... over the weekend we went to truckee where i retrieved my car after a 5 year hiatus and acquired my mother's old cannondale. i got new urban tires, break pads and a tune-up so i'm ready to ride. and tomorrow b and i are getting camping gear in preparation for a camping trip on wednesday with two friends visiting from nyc. it feels pretty nice to be in california so far. let's see how this holds up once i am working 40+ hrs a week!


i bought an expensive 2nd wave gourmet soy latte from blue bottle. it was a delicious treat. my purse and camera were then almost robbed from me as i lazily dozed on the grass in the sun with blue bottle coffee in my tummy. (i was able to get them back!)


view of the golden gate bridge from lands end park

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on my lj 1 year ago: at the ripe old age of 28.75
on my lj 7 years ago: us of a, part 2
on my lj 9 years ago: the action potentials

tomorrow will mark one week that we've been residents of SF. tomorrow we are also getting our UPS shipment of 16 boxes (eek) many of which are huge (eeeek) and i'm a little nervous about where we're going to put all of them in our sublet apartment.

but anyway, we are in a 2 month sublet in a neighborhood kind of between north beach, chinatown and nob hill. it's great cuz it's near downtown and a 15 minute walk to many places such as the embarcadero, many piers such as fisherman's wharf, and fort mason. we have a great view from the roof of coit tower, the bay bridge and the transamerica building. we also get a fair bit of sunshine since we're in a part of SF where the fog regularly clears (at least so far).

this week we have eaten 4 avocados and so far i'm pleased. not one of them had any dark rotten bits in them that were a regular feature of avocados i bought in nyc. the produce is so much fresher and we live near many cheap chinatown produce markets. hooray! we are also near useful shopping centers including a trader joe's. it feels like a luxury to get groceries from there especially since there have been no lines and there just isn't the volume of customers and tiny aisles to fight your way through. double hooray!

we aren't quite settled and probably won't be till we have our own place but it still feels pretty nice. as soon as i start having a regular paycheck from my postdoc i'm going to be on the lookout for bikes, which will help with my long commute (1 hour from door to door if i catch the BART as soon as i arrive at the station, after a 15 min walk). stay tuned.

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on my lj 5 years ago: pixma, and delivery