Its Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, so Tim & I have the day off (not that I have a “day on” until classes start up again on the 3oth, but whatevs). Its been far too relaxing of a day, its now 5:40 and Tim is currently formulating a plan for the day. This doesn’t bode well, especially since he is trying to formulate a plan while watching a movie — not wise move.

Anyway, I know, yes, you’re all DYING to see more cat pictures. I can almost feel the anticipation from y’all, even though most of you are so far away. Well, ok, if you insist!

The kitties are doing very well, although I gave them both baths, which they were distinctly not happy about:

Now today he’s all sore (he went yesterday), but still managed to move around to four different workouts on exercisetv.

Not much else to report, to be honest, and its back to work tomorrow. Hope everyone is doing well!

I leave you with this link, perfect for when you are bored and broccoli is in season:

Angels We Have Heard on High

- Laura

Yes, so I’m willing to admit that revolution might have been too strong a word. As U2 once sang, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day” or, for that matter, on the 8th of January. Unfortunately, I didn’t to exercise on the 9th, 10th, and 11th and Tim & I accidentally bought some brownies and then I accidentally baked a cherry pie (which I promise tastes way better than exercise), and well, the revolution isn’t going so well.

Its partly my fault, actually, as on Wednesday I made the very bad decision of meeting with both my advisor and my quasi-advisor while I was swimming in tourette’s-riddled revolutionary fervor. This resulted in me making commitments that I cannot afford to make. Let me walk you through it. They say building a narrative of a traumatic event is a good way to prevent PTSD:

Me – Hey advisor, here’s my research proposal to turn into The Official Committee. (tourette’s in 3 – 2 – 1 – ) Its not that good. (pause as I try to recover) Oh don’t worry, I’ve got another informal one that goes into much more detail, but I didn’t think it’d be appropriate for the committee.

Advisor – Great! Why don’t you send it to me! And how about the institutional review board proposal? How’s that coming?

Me – (Well, advisor, frankly I haven’t started it.) That? Its almost done! I’ll send you a copy before I leave today. (Am now having internal wrestling match to get control back from the optimist/damn liar who has taken over my brain.)

Advisor – Awesome. Why don’t we meet again this time next week to go over your <first experiment>. Do you think you’ll have it ready by then?

Me – (No no no!) Yes, for sure.

Walk out of her office. Pause in hallway to catch breathe and fight off sense of impending doom. Skip to 40 minutes later and meeting with other quasi-advisor. Optimist with tourette’s still clearly in charge and situation is about to get worse:

Other-Quasi-Advisor – Hey, how’s the website coming?

Me - Hehe, great! (if you count “not having started” as “great”) The design should be all ready by Friday! (its Wednesday)

OQA - Maybe we can talk about it with everyone at the lab meeting on Monday.

Me - Sounds good! When would be a good time to talk to you about <my previous experiment>?

OQA - Hey, why don’t you present that at the lab meeting on Monday too! I’m sure everyone would be interested in the data. Is that too short of notice?

Me - (Yes, its too short of notice. Yes, its too short of notice. Yes, its… ) No, definitely not.

OQA - I look forward to hearing about it. Maybe limit it to 30 minutes. (by “limit” I am supposing him to mean “significantly extend”)

Let’s recap briefly. One week to:

1. Write a detailed research proposal.
2. Prepare and submit a new institutional review board proposal.
3. Design and create an experiment.
4. Design and code a website.
5. Prepare my 30 minute talk complete with graphs, statistics, and visuals
6. Do all the other stuff I already had to do.

I believe some aspects of the new lifestyle are going to have to wait. I’ll let you know what happens.

As part of my constant struggle to wake up at a reasonable hour, I leave you with this (even more sadistic than the last one I posted):

Snooze and Lose

-Laura

Okay okay, so it’s been awhile since I posted to this blog. So long in fact that you’re thinking “You have a blog? I’d already forgotten.” Yes, yes, very funny. And thanks a lot Simon for posting to your blog so many times in the last 9 weeks that I can’t even convince the blog-naive relatives that the delay was the result of internationally-controlled blog posting restrictions meant to curb the rampant growth of the internet. I’m sorry, folks. At least we’re starting the new year right!

Because you see, 2008 is the beginning of my and Tim’s “new lifestyle”. Most people make New Year’s resolutions. Well a simple “resolution” is not enough for us. Why have a resolution when you can have a revolution? Hmm? HMM? (I know, I know, I’m nauseatingly clever.) So that’s what we’re doing folks. Tim & I are going to revolutionize the way we approach pretty much everything. In addition to regularly posting to this blog, our new lifestyle includes regular exercise, healthy eating, keeping the house tidy, getting stuff done, etc etc. For me, it also includes focusing on my research. Unfortunately towards the end of 2007, I had pretty much perfected only one of the two principles of graduate school success that new students often have trouble coming to terms with:

1) Do not focus on your classes.

2) Focus on your research.

I am now a master of (1), but unfortunately neglected (2) in favor of playing video games. This is not good. The new lifestyle combination of “focus on research” and the very strong element of “must get stuff done” will hopefully address (2) before it is too late.

Anyway. Since I last posted, Serena (a good friend of mine from college) came to visit and much merry was made. Luckily we ended the festivities just in time to avoid pickling our livers. Then Barbara & Malcolm came to visit (Tim’s mother and stepfather) and a more sober but no less merry time was had.

We also went to Tim’s work’s Christmas party, where I accidentally sloshed some martini on the managing director/CEO/whatever of his company. I’m not sure if this made him think better of Tim (I really don’t see how it could, but I remain optimistic). He did, however, tell the following joke that was actually kind of funny, if mildly insulting:

Q: How many Harvard students does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One– to hold the light bulb still and wait for the world to revolve around them.

Whatever. My hair looked better than his.

Finally, the sky dumped about a million feet of snow just in time for Christmas. This is a picture of the courtyard of my building:

Here you see the street after the big snowy mess. Notice how buried some of the cars are:

Here is Caz showing off his big paws (he’s polydactyl – meaning he has a genetic defect where he has extra toes on his front feet):

As you can probably tell from the second photograph, they are very docile and very affectionate cats. They’ll follow you around all day trying to get attention and the mere suggestion of a lap to curl up in is enough to get them purring. They are also very close:

Finally, they have loads of energy (as they are only 8 months old). Here is Lucy performing what I like to call the 360 degree back flip super pounce. Its not her best example of this dangerous but highly effective maneuver, but you can still see how she executes it with gusto. (And yes I posted it to YouTube purely in order to get it on this blog, as WordPress refuses to let me upload it as an avi file and I decided uploading it was easier than finding a way around WordPress restrictions or converting it to an animated gif or something. Having said all of this, I’m not sure it will work as I’ve never done this before and there’s a lag between when I upload the video and YouTube “processes” things.)

Well, it’s Halloween, and although we bought an entire bag of chocolate not a single child came by (maybe because we are on the 3rd floor of a building with a locked front door?). I’m going to have to find a small child to force the candy on tomorrow, otherwise both my and Tim’s waistlines are going to suffer.

I wish I had some photos to share with you on this lovely Halloween evening, but neither Tim nor I dressed up this year. Maybe next year, eh? In the meantime, here’s some guy whose costume is just inspiring:

He’s a YouTube video! Isn’t that great!

We did get a scrabble set though, which means I can start arranging a speed scrabble night and yes, the idea of a speed scrabble night is VERY exciting. For those of you who have not been acquainted, speed scrabble is like scrabble except FUN. The rules are totally different, although those that can’t spell are still probably not gonna like it. Now that I’m in a country without pubs (In the U.S. we have bars and a bar is very different to a pub. Things called pubs here are just bars that serve guinness and have a token british/irish person wandering around some place.), I’m having to find other ways to entertain myself. A classmate of mine invited Tim & I over for dinner a few weeks ago, and a good time was had by all, which made me think “I’ll organize a Scrabble night.” When I was in college (uni) and living in student cooperatives, I have very fond memories of playing speed scrabble with my housemates in the evenings. Plus, its either that or knitting, and then I’m out of ideas.

In other news, the Boston Red Sox have won the World Series. This is apparently a really big deal. Since I am no more amused by baseball than I am at watching grass grow (look! a weed!), this does not have the significance to me that perhaps it should. For those of you who are American, you well understand that this is a fairly Big Deal, especially in this area of the country where baseball is the dominant sport. For those of you who are British, its like the baseball World Cup. Except it happens every year. And we’re the only country that competes in it. So I suppose its more like the FA Cup, except way more important. Like if there was an FA cup to determine who would finish at the top of the premiership — and at games they served peanuts and cracker jack (cracker jack is caramel-coated popcorn that, for some reason, is typically associated with baseball). So anyway, blah blah blah, its really great, and there have been celebrations and “rallies” everywhere. Now, on a purely academic level, I object to this. I know you’ll probably say I’m being nit-picky, but isn’t a rally supposed to be precede something big rather than follow it? Surely that’s the difference between rallying and celebrating? Sports fans have no respect for proper word usage.

I regret there’s not much more I can say!  May your days be merry and may your evenings involve chocolate, etc.

For those of you who had too much candy, I leave you with this:

Excuses To Order

-Laura

For those of you who I haven’t complained to yet, I injured my back last week and hence spent Tuesday through Friday mostly lying down. In order to ensure there was no question in anyone’s mind that I was well and truly floored by my injury, I made sure to do absolutely nothing useful. I didn’t leave the house for three days, and instead watched the following television programs:

Rock of Love (one season)

America’s Next Top Model (three seasons)

I Love New York (partial season)

America’s Most Smartest Model (partial season)

Project Runway (two seasons)

Shot at Love with Tila Tequila (partial season)

As a result of my unhealthy fixation on reality television while recuperating, I returned to the office/school with the even more unhealthy suspicion that my absence was going to cause me to be eliminated from the graduate program.  My paranoia resulted in my having to raise as much sympathy as possible from anyone who would listen, so that the judges (ok, my stats professor) would let me stay till the next round (week? class?). Fortunately, my reality show delusions are beginning to fade as reality asserts itself.

Speaking of reality, look what happened while I was busy watching tv:

Still, the season seems to be holding steady at 80 degrees F / 27 degree C ?!? I can only imagine this makes the squirrels very confused.

Anyway, enough about me, let’s talk about Tim. I think we need to come to terms with the fact that it will probably be awhile before he writes a post about what he does, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you myself. The short version.

Basically, Tim spends his days as something they call an “Operations Manager”, which I gather means he gets to spend the whole day giving advice to people. Tim enjoys this sort of thing very much. He has two people working under him, each of whom manage about a dozen people. Tim has described them to me, and based on this description I scoured the internet to find this picture of two people that I have judged to approximately resemble his “Team Leaders”:

Anyway, so Tim gives advice to these two ladies, who then pass his sage advice on to the workers (let’s call them “Team Members”). The TMs are in charge of listening to other people talk on the phone and occasionally say things like “presenting the CEO of Such-and-such”. They’re like corporate heralds. Apparently corporate types like this sort of thing.

I’m off to bed, but I leave you with this wonderful visual illusion. Don’t believe the left brain, right brain crap though. Its not true. Do try to get her to flip:

Rotating Dancer Illusion

Over and out.

-Laura

Well, Tim managed to not get home until almost 9pm tonight, so we’re going to let him off a bit about not having told y’all about his job yet. We both agree, however, that things are going to get out of hand if he doesn’t start drawing firm boundaries.

As for me, I have managed to get through yet another day feeling tremendously busy without having the faintest inkling what it is I’ve been busy with. Tomorrow I plan on undertaking an experiment where I keep track of every single minute to find out where time is going. And I have so many emails to respond to (I’m sorry, Candace! Call me!)

Speaking of the passage of time, while its been unseasonably warm for October (up until today, anyway), it looks like some of the leaves are finally starting to change. I doubt that autumn is that spectacular in Cambridge (although I’m sure its lovely in more rural areas), it is nice to see some signs of the season:

I’ve decided, literally just now, that tomorrow is the beginning of some big changes. I’ve got four resolutions that I’ve been putting off trying to implement until I had more time. Writing this post has made me realize that that is probably never going to happen (its October!?), and so I should probably start sooner rather than later. Here are my resolutions:

1) Keep on top of work.

2) Save money.

3) Lose weight (Y’all don’t even get how much I gained since I quit smoking. Tim even said yesterday, “Since you quit smoking, some of your clothes don’t fit so well anymore” which has earned him and will continue to earn him much grief, believe you me).

4) Get in shape.

I appreciate that these resolutions are rather vague, and that at any given moment, more than 80% of the US, Canada, Australia and Northern Europe is probably trying to working towards one or more of these things. (I omit non-European areas since I don’t want to overgeneralize, and southern Europeans because I imagine all they do all day is drink wine and eat olives). Anyway. You’ve got to start somewhere and remember that implementation doesn’t start until tomorrow, so there’s no need to work the details out.

I’ll let you know how it goes soon. I’m told that one of the university gym’s is right near my work building. I’ve been trying my best not to confirm this, but fear that it might be time to find out for certain.

I leave you with the only thing that stands in the way of my disliking some people (unrelated to most of this post, but I’ve been thinking about it recently):

Fundamental attribution error

Peace out.

-Laura

Hi everyone. Sorry its been a little while since we’ve posted. Tim has been working some crazy hours and I feel like I’ve been constantly busy (Some of my fellow first years are already losing sleep! We don’t even have any deadlines coming up yet!). I am very proud to say, however, that I’ve successfully (1) picked my first year project and possibly the topic that will extend into my thesis and (2) Set up a collaboration between my advisor and another professor (an unlikely one, but still earns me some brownie points).

Its just occurred to me that some of you might not know what all the advisor stuff is about. It differs from field to field, but in the sciences (including psychology) your advisor is your graduate school “parent”. You are encouraged to choose an advisor sooner rather than later, and, to be honest, most people enter grad school with an advisor already chosen. Who you choose determines whether or not you get into the program, as someone won’t be admitted unless their background and interests fit well with an advisor who has the money, time, and willingness to support a student. You enter your advisor’s lab, and the resources you have at your disposal are almost completely dependent on the financial state of that lab. Its kind of like a small, independently-owned business that just happens to sit inside of Harvard’s Psychology department. Each lab-business has its own financial resources and its own reputation in the academic community. My advisor, for example, took on two students this year and provided us both with office supplies and new desktop computers in our offices. We get free use of a printer and copy machine, and have funds available to do brain imaging experiments (one imaging experiment can cost several thousand dollars). I know other first-years in my entering class who have to purchase their own computers, pay for copying, and whose research is (relatively) financially restricted. I don’t think a lot of people realize this when they apply to graduate programs. Your advisor also, essentially, can dictate what kind of research you do. A good advisor will point you in the right direction and help you along the way, whereas I’ve heard horror stories of advisors who treat students as personal assistants. Its not a totally a one-way relationship: If I produce good research, my advisor gets some of the credit and it increases the reputation of our lab. A good reputation and publications means more grants and hence more resources to put towards research. My advisor is not very well known and is just starting up her lab, but she does appear to have good grant money and is not the exploiting-her-students type.

Anyway, moving on. I think Tim worked a 12-hour (or 13-hour) day today, so he’s quite thoroughly exhausted. His job has been going well, but he’s finding that managing people is pretty time-consuming. I’ll let him tell it when he gets the time…

We did get a chance to get away this weekend, though. A friend of mine from college (uni) lives in Boston, and she invited us up to the Deerfield Fair with her in New Hampshire. She grew up in a nearby town in New Hampshire and this is a yearly event for her and her family. The New England fairs, as Meredith explained, are a combination of carnival and agricultural exhibition, with traditional fair fare thrown in. I lived in New England for a couple of years when I was a kid, so I remembered the food (in particular) quite vividly. I managed to have 2 1/2 orders of fried dough (I cannot explain the wonderful thing that is fried dough to anyone who hasn’t had it… its like a doughnut, but so so so much better) and one order of steamers, and Tim had an unfortunate hot dog ordering experience resulting from transatlantic miscommunication (He ordered a hot dog at an Italian sausage stand. To him, this meant sausage in a bun. To the sausage vendors, this meant a particular type of sausage that Americans lovingly refer to as the “hot dog”, in a bun.)

I tried to take good pictures, but got really distracted by all things furry, so forgive the fact that there are far too many pictures of farm animals. Here are some highlights:

This is Tim on a tractor. Meredith’s father was encouraging him to buy the cap that went with the tractor, but this ultimately didn’t happen.

Next are some pygmy goats. These were in the petting zoo. I avoided pushing small children out of the way so I could get a closer look, even though they were quite cute.

Next, Meredith and I, looking at a llama. We had the perfect moment for a while there when Meredith and I were smiling at the phone/camera and the llama had its head between our heads, lips pulled back in a llama-esque grin. Unfortunately, making little birdy noises and going “here llama llama” only kept the llama’s attention for so long before he was off to eat out of some five year old’s hand. Damn five year olds.

Finally, or almost finally, here is a picture of Tim standing next to the backside of an ox. These oxen were gi-normous, and hence Tim was used as a size comparison. I was clearly operating the camera/phone:

Some other highlights included: a many-horned ram and a cake meant to resemble a roast turkey:

And that’s pretty much it. Remind me next time I want to talk about this great “electric broom” we’ve got. Its changed the way I think about cleaning.

I leave you with this– a little bit old, but I always think of it after a tough morning:

Alarm Clock that Hides

-Laura

As Laura’s already said, I arrived safely in the US on Monday. I had a surprisingly trouble free time getting here. I was worried about immigration since I’d heard some stories about people with spousal visas being stuck for hours, but it ended up only taking an extra 10-15 minutes to process my paperwork. The immigration officer gave me an I-551 passport stamp which means I can work and I am now officially a permanent resident.

The last three days have flown by. It’s amazing how much stuff there is to do when you move into a new place, especially when you move to a new country. On Tuesday I went for a walk around Cambridge to look for sofas. In the end we decided to buy a futon. That way it can double as a bed when people come to stay.

Yesterday was my first day meeting my new boss, Orlando. It was slightly worrying because I got totally lost and ended up miles from where I should be. Eventually Orlando called me and had to come pick me up in his car. Not great for first impressions, but then again best he knows now that I’m always late for everything. I got a tour of my new building and it looks like a really great place to work. The office is conveniently located next to the train station which will make commuting fairly easy. It’s a brand new building and they’re building a leisure facility in the basement. I think they’re trying to encourage their staff to stay in the office as long as possible. I got on really well with Orlando as he’s a really friendly guy. I think I’m going to enjoy my new job. Only problem is I have to get up a 6am every morning. Nightmare!

All in all I’m settling in well. Still struggling with the jet-lag. I can’t stay up past 10pm right now. But if I’m getting up at 6am perhaps that’s a good thing. The weirdest thing is that everyone talks in a funny accent. It keeps reminding me how far away from home I am. There are perks about being here though. Eating out is loads cheaper than at home and there’s so much choice right on our doorstep. I’ve already been to a vietnamese restaurant, had proper New England clam chowda and eaten at a vegetarian fast food place. I’ll have fun trying all the new cuisines. Until next time.

Tim

Laura here. You’ll be pleased to know that Tim has arrived safely and is, as we speak, sound asleep (he made it until 10pm, though, which isn’t bad). He managed to get through immigration, baggage claim, and customs, and get himself all the way to Cambridge in less than an hour and a half! (that’s gotta be a record of some sort, right?) All in all, he seemed no worse for the wear:

First day of classes went alright, although I was so preoccupied with Tim’s arriving that I can’t say I processed much. My 2 hour proseminar turned out to actually last 2 hours, which I found slightly surprising as I was sure it would finish early. Most of this 2 hours was spent listening to a very well known psychologist tell us how gloriously difficult the next few years were going to be. In light of this observation, I decided I would not mention to my advisor that I planned on spending most of the first week of this gloriously difficult new life looking for a new sofa. Best to just be discreetly absent. Anyway, here’s me looking happy now that Tim is here (who observes – “there are an awful lot of americans here…”):

I leave you with the following, which, for lack of a better term, is “squirreltastic”.

Squirrel Obstacle Course

- Laura

Tim and I just talked about how once he starts to post things on this blog, our readers might get confused about who is writing any particular post. In order to address this, we have decided to start each post by telling you who it is that is writing that post. So, Laura here.

Classes start tomorrow, and I am currently in the office trying to get my personal space set up so that I’ll be ready to hit the ground running. I also managed to buy the textbooks for my statistics class, which was very reassuring as I assumed for most of yesterday that the university textbook store would be closed today. (I was at a friend’s house and asked her whether or not she thought there was a chance the textbook store might be open on Sunday. This friend, who has spent time living in both Spain and Italy, replied “Of course its open, you’re not in Europe anymore.” Some of you Brits are probably wondering what Europe has to do with anything.)

Anyway, let me show you around the place that is going to be my intellectual home for the next several years. I am sharing my office with one other person, an English girl who graduated from the University of Edinburgh. We are located on the 8th floor of William James Hall, facing away from Boston (The labs of tenured professors get the Boston view. My advisor is brand new and not tenured.) Part of “setting up my personal space” involves making a mess: the only way, I believe, to unambiguously signal to the world that something is yours. Or that you’re a slob. Or both. Hmm.

Being on the 8th floor, you can imagine I have a view. The windows are a bit dirty and there’s these ugly chimney things that aren’t very nice, but here it is:

William James Hall (WJH) itself is very tall and very white. Everything else at Harvard is not nearly so tall or nearly so white:

WJH is also the home to the sociology department and social anthropology (I don’t know what social anthropology is. I’ve never heard of asocial anthropology…), although its safe to say that psychology takes up the majority of the building. Let me again reemphasize the tallness of the building in contrast to other nearby buildings:

Anyway, its very exciting finally settling into my department, etc etc.

Really though, considering the eminence of the faculty, department and so on, they really do have trouble organizing things. Tomorrow, for example, I have a statistics class at 1pm and I currently have no idea what room its in. I suppose they’re going to post the room details in some obscure place tomorrow morning to help make it more exciting for us new graduate students? Also, they’ve decided to arrange the classes for us clinical students so that all of our necessary courses overlap. Fun. At any rate, I’ve purchased three $2.00 composition notebooks and a pack of pencils (The kind that you sharpen — I have a more traditional pencil aesthetic than many of my peers), along with a 3 pack of teensy weensy “moleskin” notepads, which I am told are currently the rage in student circles. I don’t know where they got this term– “moleskin”, but the notepads do not appear to be constructed of anything mole-related, skin or otherwise:

I think I am as prepared as I’m going to be. On another note, Tim arrives tomorrow! Yay! This means, among other things, that I have to clean up the mess that has somehow managed to take over half of the apartment. I also have plans for a casserole of some sort, partially because I discovered this great casserole chapter in Joy of Cooking that I hadn’t even realized was there before. Farewell, as they say in Europe!

I leave you with this:

How to Clean Your Home in 19 Minutes

- Laura