Great Big World Out There

writing writing writing

I wrote all day today.  I am tired, I am cranky, and I don't know a damn thing about a damn thing.  I feel as though I've scooped my brain out with a spoon, given it a good kick in the tender parts and then reinserted the goop through a straw coated in poison ivy.

On the bright side, I have finally gotten my stats beaten into decent submission.  It was wickedly hot here today and I had the air conditioner running to take the edge off.  Then someone turned on the microwave and blew the breaker.  Normally not a problem but I had my laptop in the docking station so I could use the second monitor and loss of power in that situation seems to piss off my laptop. 

I didn't lose a whole lot, but I lost my train of thought.  That can be quite a thing to get back, so I took a walk to clear my head.  I did that a couple of times today. 

I also made potatoes.  I saw a commercial for precut frozen potatoes a while back and was bemused enough to buy them earlier this week.  Just throw the bag in the microwave for 10 minutes, throw the cooked potatoes in a bowl and add your favorite mashed potato goop and voila - lovely potatoes. 

Now I must go to sleep.  In the morning I am going to a water aerobics class that is taught by a lady who recently celebrated her 101st birthday. 

I expect to feel like a loser by the end of the class. 

will i see you tonight?

My dad wanted to go for a quad ride today, as did I.  I kind of wanted to hit up the north dunes, but was persuaded this was lunacy what with it being Saturday, a long weekend and nice weather.  The dunes were sure to be a madhouse.

So instead we went to this place:

It was not so much uncrowded, though.  Passed dozens of quads, buggies, dirt bikes and jeeps on the way in.  I cursed my inability to remember a hat, as my hair, coming out from under a helmet, resembles the ass end of an angry windblown porcupine that sat down funny without warning.  I have a photo:

The name of the place above:

 

Along the way my camera broke.  It took crap photos like this:

So we headed to Best Buy, where they replaced the camera.  And tried to sell me a warranty package that would not work in Canada.  Then I got my free drink at Sonic mmmm limeade and we came home. 

Then I found a wireless signal that actually works in my little trailer.  I am filled with joy, since I can catch up on my writing and reading.  Seeing 2000+ new posts in one's rss reader is rather terrifying. 

What else?  Hmm, the oilers won.  Go them.  It was really dusty on the trail.  Sonic's restaurant was kind of disgusting.  I want to make my own limeades.  I bought a dvd last week that I got for half the price yesterday thinking I still had the receipt for the original, and I cannot find that receipt.  Gaah.  My dad bought some really nice quads.  I am happy to drive them as they are awesome and fast and groovy. 

My stomach is kind of sore.  I am in the middle of a luscious new book series (outlander, diana gabaldon).  I suffered neck pain from reading in the truck because I didn't want to put the book down.  I did not get to swim today, being off getting a new camera.  My dad got a black friday deal tonight, a new toolbox he means to put in his garage (my little trailer bedroom).  It's quite a nice toolbox.  I bought a new rubbermaid box to put my summery clothes into - I see no point in taking them home when I have pefectly good new things to carry home.  I bought a lovely new wool coat for $60 at Kohls.  I get to go back to Kohls!  Happy day.  The dip Sylvia wanted from an outlet mall is sold online and they ship to Canada.  I will probably get to come back to California in a few months.  I'm going to buy a DSLR for myself for Christmas. 

Black Friday is to Americans and Boxing Day is to Canadians.  We would have gone to the Toys R Us in Palm Desert yesterday if I hadn't found the toy I was looking for at Kohls.  I told my sister that tonight and she was remarkably glad I'd found the tea set there too.  I kid you not, we were shopping in the Palm Desert area because they have a wide variety of the shops I wanted to go to all mooshed together in a few block radius. 

It's like getting stuck at a stop light and being all mad about being delayed and then coming upon an accident that you might have been in if you hadn't been delayed. 

Am sleepy now.  must read book and sleep.  Church and much writing will happen tomorrow. 

title: downtown train, rod stewart

Black Friday. Really Black.

We were on the road by 630 this morning, which was about what I'd expected. We all trooped to the stores, even my dad.  He had his eye on a new GPS unit for the truck - mine is a total piece of shit.  Can't find a satellite signal for anything. 

Myself, had my eye on some things.  I got most of the stuff I wanted, one of the things doesn't work and I shall have to return it.  This irks me, but I need to go to the store regardless because Kohl's gave away $10 with every $50 you spend, and we've got $50 to spend.  I shall spend it, fear not.

My wireless acess is being really stupid tonight, it won't stay on the connection and is really slow.  So I'm going to write offline later and post it tomorrow.  Lame, but it works. 

In other news, we were going to go to Toys R Us today, the same Toys R Us that had the shooting.  Rather glad we didn't go there, what with shootings and all. 

Happy Turkey Day.

It's funny.  I sat in front of my laptop working for most of the day and still didn't manage to get this written while I had a working wifi connection.

I need to look into signal boosters or something like that.  This is starting to make me crazy.

anyway, I partook in a perfectly lovely meal with some lovely interfaith church goers at FOY today.  Those ladies can cook, man.  Well, imagine 100 grandparents in a room and you've got one hell of a potluck.  Yummy.  I had scalloped corn today that was so good I couldn't stand it.  Fluffy textures appeal to me. 

The sweet potatoes could make you cry, I swear. 

Speaking of sweet potatoes, I was in a store last week and saw that they were selling sweet potatoes - 5 lb for a buck.  A lady in line at lunch said she'd seen them at walmart for 18 cents a pound.  I think I pay a couple of dollars a pound at home.

I mentioned above that I worked most of today - it's true.  I started really getting into my tables - I'd done some talking about interactions to this point because I was avoiding working with the tables.  It's not that they're hard - just time consuming.

In the course of things, I realized I hadn't calculated a couple of things, so I wrestled with the best way to do that.  In my orginal excel data files (10 to fix, which is a pain) or do the calculations in my stats program (it required ATAN and square roots and so on and I had no idea how to do that).

I had the calculation formulae in another excel spreadsheet, so I went with the tedious 10 file fixing solution.  Except - after I'd finished the 10 files I realized I'd done some editing inside the original data files to remove egregious outliers.  More than a few std dev and I drop the outliers.  ANYWAY, I have changed how I drop outliers - I do it inside my stats program so I don't have to fiddle fart around with original data sets and the originals stay pristine. 

So I fixed those problems and in the course of doing that, realized that my formulas weren't calculating properly.  They showed correctly but the values didn't make any sense. 

I got fed up and decided that this was God's way of making me learn something new about my stats program, so I went back to all 10 files, deleted the calcuations within them and made the calculations inside the stats program.  It's tidier AND I learned something new.  Yay! 

I'm glad I had to go back into the source data files though, because I had forgotten that I'd made those edits and had subsequently dropped more outliers from the already trimmed dataset.  It's not like were talking about dozens of drops, maybe 4-5 from a dataset of 500 individuals, but still.  The upshot was that when I dropped my outliers properly it changed some of my means (I wasn't dropping as many outliers as before, so that makes sense). The problem was that it appeared that my outlier drops had resulted in a pretty significant change - not terrible, not inexplicable but not as tidy as it had been orginally.

I'd been working so long that I thought I'd really screwed something up.  I felt a real idiot, and wrestled with the dataset for ages until it was time to go watch a movie with some friends.  I left the work behind me though, and watched the river wild with no thoughts of my data - how could you with that creepy Kevin Bacon in that movie?  Blech.  I came back and checked my stats output - I'd left a model running when I left and wanted to see what had happened. 

The numbers were essentially the same - and coming back fresh was when I realized that the numbers I thought were wrong?  Yeah, weren't wrong or different at all.  I just can't read.  I was so relieved that I hadn't been going around telling people the wrong result for the past 6 months I tried to explain my new realization to my mom. 

My mom is not dummy, but a statistician she is not.  Even if she didn't have any idea what I was talking about, she smiled and nodded in all the right places and sometimes that is all you need from a listener. 

There's a couple lessons to be learned here.  a) A well timed break can be worth its weight in gold - whether 2 hours or 2 weeks.  b) Listen well enough to know what response it required. 

Now I must go to bed - we are hitting up the early sales tomorrow (no 4am for me, though) and I should get a little sleep.  I've printed my shopping lists - not that I will buy 4 pages of stuff, but  there are things I want to look at if nothing else.  I want to see what all the hullabaloo about black friday is about.  By the time I load this I expect the shopping will be over with so I shall have to write about that and the stuff I said I would talk about yesterday.  I'm not quite sleepy yet so I shall have to read my book for a while.

I am loving the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  In case I haven't mentioned that yet.

a photo meme

It being thanksgiving, I am playing around and thesis writing.  Football on the tv, hot desert sun outside.  that's something to be thankful for.

Anyway, this is the meme.  You go to your pictures folder, select the 6th folder, then the 6th picture.

Here's mine:

   

From this summer, my brother, pushing one niece on the swings and carrying the other whereever she wishes to go.

making my list, checking it at least twice

I had the fun and excitement of going to Mexico today.  We were gone all day and I am quite tired from all the walking and beer drinking.  Also all the online shopping list making for Black Friday shopping.  I am so going to Kohls on Friday, they have some wicked deals.

I was going to write more, but everyone is going to bed and I shall have to wait until tomorrow.  Am excited to go to bed.  I just wrote another couple of paragraphs and I threw in some more figures.  I will have a final report that can be converted to a thesis chapter by the time I go home.  I'll also be able to start reading papers for the lit review again.  Once I start writing for the day, it isn't so hard to keep writing. 

It's the starting that is the problem.

So I don't forget, tomorrow I plan to write about Mexico, show some pictures, the flea market, trying to find a stinking paper, how discrimination is alive and well and US customs.  (The last two aren't really related, they just seem like they might be).

writing. no time for writing here

I bought a new camera today, I discovered a good price (better than at home) and they had it in stock at the Best Buy in El Centro.  Also bought party supplies for a birthday party, a Uniqua doll and some groceries at Walmart. 

Then was nearly late for dinner.  Oops. 

Have been writing this evening, am going for chinese food in Mexico tomorrow.  I am amused and cannot wait.

Is time for bed.

ow. just ow.

We quadded all day.  I just spent an hour in the hot tub to soak away the aches and pains.  I read my book in the hot tub, which was lovely until my arms got tired.

I have a sunburn.  How very lame.  I've also got wickedly dry skin; it's starting to make me crazy.  I've used countless applications of skin cream, it works but it isn't a miracle cure.  I'm in the middle of a desert.

Where it is supposed to rain a few days hence.  Everyone tells me that means there will be exactly 3 drops and I shouldn't be concerned.  I wasn't really concerned, per se.  I was more interested in seeing a flash flood or similar.  Does that make me weirder?

I have grand plans for tomorrow of doing some writing.  I'm getting things accomplished even when I'm not actually sitting down writing.  The long hours on the back of a quad lead to a decision about how to organize my results and discussion.  I have 'extra' data for 2 groups of my experiment, not all 5.  So I'm going to look at all of the 5 groups without the extra data.  It just ocurred to me that I should be doing that anyway since I'm not including that extra data in my thesis; it is for the final report and eventual publication.

Suddenly I feel much better - I wonder how I forgot that - I write that as I realize it is simply the tunnel vision of doing such a specific thing for so damn long.  Eventually you start to think that all these trees must mean something, hmm, green, hmm, life, hmm, trees, wait, no, forest?  Yeah, forest.

Then you spend a fair amount of time feeling like an idiot for getting so engrossed in all the trees you never noticed the lovely forest.  Lame and oft used analogy but it works for me. 

***

We went off road today.  For real.  There are a lot of trails in the back country desert but for some reason we leapt off the road today.  It was - gnarly - for lack of a better word that will do.  I'm no chicken - I've bargained shopped for parasailing (my advice - don't do that), I routinely skiied black diamond runs once I figured out I was good enough to manage it.  I had to get my dad to move the quad for me - it was beyond my skill and nerve.

Did I mention I'm no chicken?

Anyway, I made it through the day with minimal damage to my body but I was pretty sore by the time we trailed into the park.  I made supper with some of the lovely pre-made dinner things I got at Walmart last week.  I love American grocery stuff.  They've got an impressive pile of stuff you can just heat up.  Hurray for convenience.

It's nearly 930 here and I'm exhausted.  I should go to bed but that would require an effort on my part.  I haven't got the energy for efforts.  I could go for a glass of milk too.  Again, effort. 

Oi.  Am tired.  Will go to bed regardless of effort required.

sunday

I must say, I am irked with the wireless access.  It works ok from the rocking chair, but much better from the couch a foot and a half away.  In my little woodshed bedroom it works not at all.  That's actually not entirely true; I suppose in the interests of full disclosure I should say that I can get a connection in here but it can't actually do anything.  This leads me to ask why I even tried.

I'm an optimist, I suppose.  So I'm writing this Sunday night but will have to find some time tomorrow to actually post it and the other bits I haven't gotten around to posting just yet. 

I had a lovely day.  We headed out early to attend a church service in Indio.  I know my age is encroaching ever faster; when describing the service to someone this evening I had the opportunity to say that I'd attended that church 25 years ago. Mein Gott in dem Himmel.  The same sort of thing happened a couple of years ago when I was visiting this area - we'd gone to a potluck at the park my parents were at (different than where they live now) and someone asked if I'd ever been there before.

I had to laugh as I told that very nice lady, "well, yeah, about 20 years ago.  It hasn't really changed at all!"  She was kind of surprised and I was amused because she likely was still working and wishing she could get away from it all when I'd been there 20 years before. After writing this I realize I am old and weird.  It's good I've accepted that, I can just move on.

So anyway, we went to church this morning and the service was quite nice.  The pastor who preached the sermon was totally blind - he'd been in the area to attend a workshop and was quite happy to have escaped from the cold weather back in St Louis.  It was 18 F there this week and we hit close to 90 several days.  I've not spent a lot of time with blind or visually impaired people and I confess I was surprised by this man's speaking ability.  He might not be able to see, but you almost couldn't tell - as he spoke his gaze went over the congregation.  It wasn't until he came out and said he was blind that I could really see that he was blind. 

That was incredibly stupid last sentence and also almost profound.  Anyway, he works for a mission group that provides support and services to visually impaired and blind people.  4% of the population is blind and many of those people are completely cut off from society.  He showed a monthly devotion booklet that is published by a lutheran publishing company - portals of prayer.  One was the version I see every month - it's really tiny, about the size of my blackberry but rather thinner.  The braille version looks like the annual report of a major company.  It's ridiculous. 

I picked up some materials from their group, I think I'd like to help them out if I can.  I can't imagine being blind.

***

The coyotes are howling outside my trailer.  They do this every night.  I remember being scared of the sound when I was a kid.  Doesn't bother me now - it just reminds me I'm basically in the middle of nowhere with several hundred other people. 

I'm taking a day off writing tomorrow to head out on a big quad ride.  I've never gotten in on one of these big rides before and I'm rather looking forward to it.  My mom is worried about my back - I confess I am as well but I plan to load up on advil before we leave and I'll be driving the good quad with the fancy suspension and cushy seat and all so I should be fine. 

***

We also hit up the College of the Desert street fair after church.  I really like this street fair; I've talked about it before.  I first attended it many years ago, then again here, and again last year.  Not being a crazy long weekend like in March, it wasn't quite as busy today.  I managed to find a change purse (beaded ladybug for $3!) some knives for my sister and some cranberries.  I think that's all I bought today. 

Then I wanted to go to the mall just up the road from the College; they have a barnes and noble and I wanted to buy some books. When I'm not writing I am busy reading - I just got into the outlander series and I am hooked.  I bought almost the whole series - they didn't have one of the books so I'll just have to keep my eyes open for that one.  I suppose I could just order it on amazon and have it delivered here.  Heh, that actually seems a good idea now that I think about it.  I could have done that with the books I bought today as well but I am nearly done the series I'm working on while I was waiting to find a bookstore and I didn't want to wait.  I really hate when you're buying a series of books and you don't know what order they go in - it doesn't always say 'book 3' in the blahblah series.  I wish they'd do that more often; it would make my life easier.  I actually went online to the authors website to be sure I got them in the right order.  Publication date might have worked as well; but I was online anyway and the books were across the trailer from me.

I am nothing if not lazy. 

I also acquired a new bathrobe at the mall; I had to go in to bath and body works even though we have our own store in Edmonton.  I neglected to bring any bodywash with me and the bathrobe was so luscious I could not resist it.  I got a grey one originally, got 10 steps out of the store and realized I'd really wanted the red one.  So I went back and exchanged it.  The cool thing was I got a coupon on my exchange receipt for $10 off a $30 purchase!  Yay! Their feedback coupons never expire. 

I think I left it on the floor in the other trailer though; I hope it will not be thrown out.  I need it to cross the border regardless.

I should probably shut up now.  We're leaving for our quad trip at 830; I've set the alarm for 745 which should be more than sufficient time to get up, dressed, make a sandwich and pack my quad.  I wish I could retire already, I could get used to this kind of lifestyle.

my aching brain

Oh, what a beautiful day.  I lazed about for most of the morning; it was lovely.  I finished reading a book while ensconsed upon a sofa.  I thought about getting some writing done for most of the morning, then my dad wanted to go quadding so I wandered off with him.

We drove to the oasis and over the whoop-de-doos.  I don't know any other name more descriptive than whoop-de-doos.  It's what they are.  I was driving a lovely quad today so the bumps weren't too hard on my back and I've also got the whole method for that figured out.  It's kind of like posting on a horse.

Not that I'm any riding expert or anything. 

***

I'd forgotten how dirty one gets riding through a dusty desert, when I returned from quadding it was hard to tell where the dust left off and I began - I had a hard time telling if the sandal lines on my feet were dust or tan based.  I think a little of both.

***

I was just watching CNN, it's too depressing to keep watching the doom and gloom for long.  Call me an ostrich; I don't care.  I want to ignore how bad things are as long as possible. 

***

I got a solid couple of hours of work in tonight - I'm at a bit of a crossroads with the chapter I am working on.  I have additional data to add in to my analysis, but I don't know how to use the data.  I've got some ideas, of course, but I am having a hard time deciding what to do.  That's frustrating because if I could just decide I could move on and get the writing done.

***

We're going to the College of the Desert swap meet tomorrow.  I am pleased, it is one of my favorite swap meets.  Then I hope to hit up a bookstore and maybe target.  I love target, have I ever mentioned that?

Now I should go to bed because we are leaving early tomorrow morning.