Movin' On

Decided that Blogger's not for me anymore - Not Liz, for what it's worth, can now be found at http://notliz.wordpress.com/

Cheers!

Here I go again...

Tomorrow is the first day of school.

In my life, I will have started at a new school seven times. It has consumed nineteen years of my life. That's nearly 75%. And much of the remaining quarter was before age five. I've attended schools in five states, two countries, and four time zones. It's bizarre, but starting school is starting to feel almost as routine to me as going through security at the airport...Except, y'know, more exciting and/or stressful.

Before even beginning, I know what three of my classes will be, since they're required: two are basically "meet people and see what they do" seminars that shouldn't require much actual work (but do require me to show up to class on Mondays and Fridays), and the third is Research Design, which should be a heinie-kicker.

The fourth class I get to choose, and though I am a little sad that it will mean missing out on "Knowledge Representation," I'm think I'll be taking a sexy Philosophy class called "Privacy Rights: Moral and Legal Foundations." The first reading (for the first class session on Thursday) is Warren & Brandeis from 1890. Hot.

For now, as I contemplate how I am going to sleep tonight, I will leave you with a photo of Buster, my hamster, who provides my daily moment(s) of Zen. True, he's not the dog I was hoping for, but he's done surprisingly well at filling the void until I have the means care for a more demanding critter. (And anyway, he's just so darn cute...)

Out of Context

Well, I made it to Seattle. In fact, I made it here nearly a month ago now. And, tentatively, keeping in mind that it's summer and the weather has been misleadingly perfect every single day since I've been here, I think I like living here. I certainly like it better than Ann Arbor (with apologies to those who think A2 is the center of all that's good and pure).

Among the things that I have found cool so far:

(1) There are mountains. MOUNTAINS. I live just at the crest of a ridge, and when I pop over it in the bus or on my bike and see the Olympics, I know I'm home. And when I wander around the business district that falls along that same ridge, there are several places where I can look to my right and see the Olympics, and then look left and see the Cascades. And I can see all of them from the roof of my building. Never having lived near any mountains, I think this is rad. (Not so rad while biking though — this place is killer hilly!)

(2) Orchids grow like weeds in people's yards. Where I'm from, orchids are these delicate creatures that require year-round climate control and tedious care — like bonsai trees, only worse. Here, they shoot up in big unruly fuschia clumps from the most unkempt of gardens — or even lawns. Beyond that, the orchids are actually only a single symptom of the fact that seemingly anything will grow here. You want palm trees? They're yours. Hydrangea? Butterfly bush? Tomatoes? It all grows like mad. This temperate stuff — I just don't get it. Where's the challenge without several hard frosts a year? It's awfully pretty though. And the herbs I grow in my window are no exception to the "grows like crazy" thing.

(3) The vibe is much like Madison, where I grew up, only somewhat more cosmopolitan (perhaps obviously, since Seattle has roughly twelve times Madison's population). This makes me feel at home. People don't seem as self conscious as they are in Ann Arbor, New York, or even Chicago. There is a stereotype about everyone wearing fleece and sandals...and it exists for a reason. I don't necessarily participate (and many others don't either), but I feel pretty ok just throwing on whatever's on top in my dresser. A nice change from last summer's Manhattan-induced outfit-creation obsession. And the pervasive emphasis on recycling, organics, conservation, etc. is really refreshing after nearly ten years in cities where the programs for such things were rather subpar.

(4) This is sort of a corollary of (2), but the produce is amazing. I get every-other-week crates of fresh organic produce delivered to me at home, and today I went to my first Seattle neighborhood farmer's market, in Phinney Ridge, to supplement yesterday's crate. And wow. I'm not sure I've ever had strawberries so good in my entire life. They taste like candy. And the raspberries and tayberries — lovely as well. The cheese...well...it's not Wisconsin, I admit. But one of the farmers made an admirable stab at cheese curds (though they called them "squeaky cheese"), and everyone was talking about them as though they were mysterious and fascinating. It was adorable. One thing I didn't try — instead of beef and pork, they have salmon and oysters...one of these days, when I've gotten a paycheck, I really must check that out.

That's not everything (there's also the weather, the waterfront(s), the coffee, the public libraries...), but I'll leave it there for now.

While I'm adjusting to Seattle, I've also been doing some research at the UW to pay the bills — some for a professor in the iSchool, and some for an administrator at the library. Between the two, I'm working nearly full time (though blessedly, mostly at home — or wherever I feel like being), and learning things about knowledge management, project management, cyberinfrastructure/e-science, and grid computing. It's not utterly exactly what I'd love to be studying, but it's interesting enough, and it keeps me in organic produce and skim lattes...

The one downer so far has been the downshift in how many friends I have around and how often I see the ones that are here. I guess it's mainly a function of being new and not being in my program for real yet, but it's a little lonely here without my crazy Ann Arborites. Hopefully some of them will come visit sometime though (hint, hint).

Well, I think that's plenty long enough. And I didn't even talk about my roadtrip! I probably won't do that here though. If you want to know about it, check out my Flickr and Twitter pages — it's covered copiously on both.

Overly Eventful

The problem with being insanely busy is that it doesn't leave much time to post things to my blog.

Wait, I don't really have a problem with that...

Anyway, the month since graduation has been completely crazy. I have taken two trips by airplane — one to Charlottesville and Richmond to visit family, the other to Seattle to find an apartment (I'll be living in a very nice complex in Greenwood) — and just six hours ago departed on what will be a 2.5 week odyssey across the country, encompassing visits with various friends and family members, my first (and second, and possibly third) time camping alone, and roughly 2700 miles of (solo) highway driving.

This morning, I moved out of my apartment in Ann Arbor. Oddly, though I loved many aspects of living there, I wasn't that attached to it as my home. My friends, on the other hand, were really hard to leave. A bunch of us had a picnic of wonderfulness from Morgan and York last night, and then two of the picnickers actually stayed up till 2 am with me just hanging out, and then got up again to have breakfast at 8:30 am, before I left. These are good people. Saying I'm going to miss them...it doesn't really cover it.

However, I probably shouldn't lapse fully into maudlin so early in such a long trip. I am happy to be where I am right now — at Bobtail, in Chicago, just down the block from where I used to live, having an iced coffee. Coming into town an hour or so ago, I realized (not for the first time) that in some ways Chicago feels more like home to me that my actual hometown. Driving in, seeing the skyline...it just makes me feel restful, like everything's ok, and I'm where I'm supposed to be. I wonder if I'll get to feel the same way about Seattle (or somewhere else), or if that feeling will just stay attached to Chicago, since that's where I started to become a real person. Guess we'll see.

In terms of itinerary, for those who are following my journeys: I'll be here in Chicago until Sunday, and then in Madison until Thursday. After that, I'll proceed on through Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, finally arriving in Seattle on June 11. I'll try to blog it as much as I can, but since I'll often be camping, I don't know how much internet access I'll find.

Finally, just a note on routes across Michigan. I loathe (loatheloatheloathe) driving I-94 across central Michigan. It is flat, bland, usually gray, and there is just nothing at all to look at from the road. So today, I spent about 15 minutes on it before deciding to take a detour. I took M-60 from Jackson to Niles, and then US-12 across to the Indiana toll road — and that was really, really pretty. Rolling hills, trees, small towns...a vast improvement on the usual central Michigan bland.

And with that, I am going to sit back, relax, and enjoy the fact that I am no longer hauling boxes or scrubbing out major appliances. Life is beautiful.

Not Liz, MSI

Well, I'm done. I graduated on Friday from the University of Michigan School of Information...and I even won me a little award.

I kind of can't begin to process things right now. This year was pretty hard for me on a personal level — full of huge family changes, several reoriented friendships, and, yeah, a fair amount of romantic tribulation (at least to start with). Now that it's finally over, my immune system has thrown up its hands in defeat, and I'm coming down with some kind of icky bug. It's just like when I used to do theater — final curtain, first sniffles.

On top of the creeping head cold, I'm just plain crazy busy, despite being nominally "finished." For one thing, I'm planning my road trip to Seattle — which I'm doing solo, much to my mother's dismay. So I'm figuring out which states I want to drive through, where I want to camp, whom I'd like to visit en route, and what all I need to do in terms of supply-purchasing and auto maintenance. Among the key things considered so far: a reliable way to guarantee daily coffee, a new tent that actually shows some semblance of water resistance, and a gadget that will unleash my iPod library on my car stereo. 2300 miles and nine (ten?) states, here I come!

But before I even get started on that, I'll be going to Virginia to see my grandmother, and also, in fact, to Seattle itself to look for housing. (I'd like to have an actual destination for that roadtrip, after all.) And of course I'll officially get another year older sometime in there too.

I think I'm ready to graduate from whatever this period of my life might be called...

{sniffle} {sniffle}

Utter Zen.

Hello Washington!

I gather the link to this blog just got passed around to all the faculty and doctoral students at the iSchool, so I thought I'd just say...

Hi!

Leave me a comment, it makes it more fun...

Decisions, Decisions

Well, the interviews are over, the options are clear, and the ballots have been counted. One month from yesterday, I will receive my Master's degree from the School of Information at the University of Michigan. But will I deign to enter the real world? Oh no. Within the next few months, I will be road-tripping across the western U.S. en route to my next ivory tower.

That's right, folks: in four or five years, I'm going to be Dr. Not Liz, courtesy of the fine folks at the University of Washington iSchool.

And they really are fine folks. I have held back on posting about this until I knew where the chips would fall, but visiting Seattle in late February, I was just so blown away by how friendly, collegial, and intellectually challenging the faculty and students at Washington are. I left there just dying to be a part of that community, and though I had a few blips of hesitation along the way, I definitely feel like I've ended up on the right path.

Besides: the best coffee in the world, marvelous seafood, fanatical environmental consciousness, farmer's markets all over the place, two mountain ranges, a climate that rarely dips below freezing, bodies of water everywhere, lots of arts and music and other civic activities...what's not to love?

Oh, and money or no money, I am so getting my dog.