skating away on the thin ice of a new day...

Other Blog

2008-05-29T22:10:22Z

For the summer, I've been using: lovesthesox.blogspot.com to post about my AK experience.

Pictures posted there too!

Love,

Sarah B

Life Update

2008-03-20T00:16:23Z

Well, it's been a while. I am sitting at Amer's eating this cauliflower thing with pita and reading about speciation. Tuesday nights are always difficult to me because I meet with my co-advisor on Wednesday mornings. Last night was particularly difficult. After a long day at school I went home around midnight to find a GIANT sopping wet spot on my floor. To cut to the chase, the drain in the sink in the first floor kitchen is connected by a pipe to the rest of the pipe system. I suppose I should say theoretically connected. This connection inexplicably became the opposite of a connection... i.e. the pipe broke and water from a well-intentioned housemate cleaning dishes seeped (or rather downpoured) through the floor down through my ceiling onto the floor.

Things to be thankful for:
1) this water is not sewage
2) the pipe is fixed
3) my external harddrive was sitting 2 feet away from the downpour not directly under the downpour

Things I am concerned about:
1) mold
2) more mold
3) mold and the lack of confidence I have in our superintendant to fix the mold problem...

So that is that. I have been told that my carpet has been ripped up. I have been told that my dresser and many furniture items have been moved. I haven't seen the fallout but it's all towards a good end.

Well, today though, my co-advisor gave me some good encouragement and comments on my initial stab at my term paper so that's pretty exciting. I think I have something that ultimately could be publishable so we'll see.

Okay time to head home to survey the damage.

last king of scotland

2007-11-03T07:54:55Z

so tonight i went to a bar and then to a day of the dead party and then i came home. while i was waiting for housemates to go to the bar i sat with justsomesleddog and watched the first hour of the last king of scotland. when i came back from the parties (2 am) i watched the last hour. holy crap that's an intense movie. a little less intense than hotel rwanda. but still really amazingly good. forest whittaker (sp?) is truly wonderful in it.

but then it freaked me out so i had to go wander around and find housemates. so i talked to nate for half an hour about religion. it was pretty impressive, the level of intelligence that is, that our conversation took on at 3:30 am.

goooood night y'all.

Fidel Castro hats were made to be worn by Fidel Castro. Not hipster losers trying to look ironic.

2007-11-03T00:32:02Z

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=fashion

how hysterical is that? i wear crocs (allll the time) so someone sent it to me. i laughed. it's funny. read it.

two interesting tidbits on my mind

2007-11-02T15:46:44Z

first of all - i posted to my other blog about grad school in case y'all are interested. (lovesthesox.blogspot.com)

second:

Story #1:
yesterday in lab (i teach intro to global change) someone said something like "then will be now" so i quoted spaceballs at them "when will then be now!" and that got them laughing. then i said, "you know, it's interesting - in a few years, people won't get a lot of the jokes in spaceballs... like they use vhs tapes for the part about merchandise and the C3PO character's name is Dot Matrix..."

one girl goes "so i know what a vhs is, but dot matrix?"

i gulped and surveyed the class "who knows what a dot matrix printer is?"

:: blaaaank stares ::

oh my gosh. i felt old. and i'm NOT old!

Story #2:

have you read freakonomics? so there's a chapter in there about a daycare center that put a cost to parents being late to pick up their kids. this effectively INCREASED the number of late parents because they wrote off their moral conundrum with a 5$ check (or however much it was).

so i read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/world/middleeast/02orthodox.html?em&ex=1194148800&en=065b477ed4979317&ei=5087%0A

and the second paragraph talks about how these ultra-orthodox (i.e. kosher) cell phones charge 2 cents per minute every day (to other kosher phones) except saturday when it's 2.14$ per minute... i find this really intriguing. first of all, doesn't this just put a cost on an equivalent moral infraction? secondly, using economics to incentivise following your religious code seems very odd to me. third, why use economics? why not just mandate that all calls to kosher phones or any phones not work...?

anyways that's what's on my mind.

Starting to post again

2007-10-29T17:58:38Z

so i'm starting to post to my other blog again - it's mainly for the family but just in case y'all want to see my post on my lovely weekend... lovesthesox.blogspot.com

woo!

uhh... yeeeeahhh.

2007-10-29T05:18:50Z

sooooo we just won the world series. i'm just throwing that out there.

i am REALLY upset that i am not in boston. my friend called me from jillian's and it sounded f'n fantastic.

in other news - this weekend my housemate took us all rowing (she coaches crew at eastern michigan university and they had a learn to row day). THEN we went to donuts at my great uncle's donut shop (like 5 of my housemates) - i will post a picture at my other blog which i have revived!. then we prepped for our halloween party... woo! which was so fun. and then today i graded papers for 6 hours. and then we won the world series.

basically one of the best weekends... EVER.

word.

In honor of the series...

2007-10-25T01:28:53Z

... I"M POSTING.

This game is ROCKING out.

4-1 after the 2nd.

word.

WORLD SERIES BABY

2007-10-22T04:00:41Z

WE'RE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!!!!

sad news and a very weird dream

2007-10-17T12:44:39Z

joe leaves for iraq today. that is heavy news indeed. a 15 month tour. fernando is there already, so is steve, micah leaves today. it's a little crazy. dumb ass war.

i had the strangest dream potentially ever last night. i dreamt i and a few other people would fly to the moon (where we didn't need oxygen), and then we hiked up this hill to look into the dark side crater where i noticed there was a whole colony of people (all living in houses that looked very tudor). when they noticed us peering down at them they said "you're not supposed to be here till tomorrow!" and came and attacked us. then we went back to earth and i found out the cleveland indians had also gone there from the other side - so they corroborated our story (which of course no one believed - that there were people on the moon).

f'n weird. i think it was because i started reading the sirens of titan last night.

okay off to class.

wowie!

2007-10-16T13:29:54Z

so how bout them there rockies?

sunday i heard a brilliant lecture on coupled oscillations and how that relates to ecosystem ecology. i'm still thinking about it. i love it.

explodingdog

2007-10-15T15:26:47Z

Very sweet: http://www.explodingdog.com/january2/turtlelove.html

i'm hungry

2007-10-12T13:54:18Z

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

w.t.f.? i mean - clearly islam, buddhism, hinduism to name a few don't even cross the radar screen. but even so. i'm shocked - even for her.

in other news i'm really not sure how i feel about al gore winning the peace prize. he's just become such a poster child for global warming - and i do think he's a good link to policy makers and i like that he's adopted it as his cause, but i don't know, i feel uncomfortable with this. i think i worry that it could spiral and anti-environmental-movement? not sure.

WHOOOSH!

2007-10-08T00:27:39Z

alcs baby.

poison sumac!

2007-10-02T01:01:05Z

apparently i am not allergic to poison sumac. we were tromping around in it on saturday and i got nothin'! woot!

wait wait...

2007-10-01T13:46:46Z

let's recap -

the phillies are in the playoffs? what?

angels v red sox
yanks v indians

cubbies v dbacks
phillies v sdp or the rockies?

whew.

i've been completely absent for all of this. i feel like in the blink of an eye (i.e. september) the field totally changed! am i wrong here?

i wonder how it will all go... is it wrong to say i'd like to see the cubbies play the sox in the series? oh my god it's almost the playoffs. i just had this rush of excitement. time to funnel that energy into reading about the janzen connell effect!! woo!!! it's really quite interesting actually :)

kick it

2007-09-13T01:59:07Z

i am on a huge regina spektor kick.

my favorite song at the moment is: ghost of corporate future. but i enjoy everything on "begin to hope" and "soviet kitsch"

i also had my very first discussion section today. i think it went reasonably well. i may need some practice with knowing when to speak up, how much to say to stimulate discussion, and when to chill out and let students come to something on their own (if ever).

it will come. i am not worried.

that is all.

long and political post. you've been forwarned.

2007-09-12T00:20:17Z

i am sitting here in my towel dripping wet listening to the grateful dead (ripple at the moment). i just went for a run with my housemate katrina who i have decided i like very much. we went running yesterday too. i was a huge fan. she runs slowly. just like me :) but we got faster from yesterday (not that it matters) but it was nice to see that we are consistent.

today i went to a fantastic lecture. my other housemate josh is in the public policy school here and he finds out about wonderful lectures and seminars and tells me about them. so josh told me about a lecture that happened today at 4 pm. basically to backtrack a bit, this dude (josh rosenthal - a different josh) died sept. 11th in the second tower. he went to umich. his mother teaches at umich-dearborn campus. she endowed a lecture series after his death to engage the community, the academics, students etc in discussion about world politics, human rights, etc etc so we don't get trapped in a vortex of fear and vapid acceptance of our government's response to the world stage... okay so the lecture today: larry cox, the executive director of amnesty international (usa branch) came and spoke about human rights and the subsequent loss of america's credibility in that realm since sept. 11th.

it was profoundly interesting, pressing and eloquent. he made several really important points - i can only hope to articulate a fraction of them less than half as well as he conveyed them. anyhow - the most striking were that america is not a nation that created human rights, but rather embodies them (or used to). we stand for universal human rights. people are guarenteed (supposedly) several unalienable human rights by our constitution. for example, habeus corpus (a term meaning when someone is convicted of a crime, they must be physically presented in court to show that now physical mistreatment has taken place), the rights to know the charges brought against you if hauled off to prison somewhere, the right to vote etc etc... for all people regardless of what they believe, think, do, have done etc. he made the point that the u.s. has backtracked severely from the days when we fought in ww2 and brought a coalition of allies together that after the war helped rebuild nations that had been on the other side. rebuild them effectively. okay - so what have we done since sept 11 '01? we take "enemy combatants," squirrel them away at guantanamo bay, or other admitted 'secret' detention facilities in europe, asia, etc, or put them under the jurisdiction of other countries (ahem *syria, iran etc*) that will sure as hell torture them, then at guantanamo or the secret prisons - torture them, never charge them with anything, sometimes release them when they realize once and for all they got the wrong guy or they dont' have anything on them...

there's no system. okay so this is bad. but what is worse is this: other countries surely have far more heinous a rap sheet for their own human rights violations. there are countries where women are treated in ways i don't even want to imagine. innocent people are routinely taken away from their communties, families, lives etc because their political views differ from those in power. what makes america's utter and open neglect of human rights unacceptable is that the world looks to america as a leading power - an example. by neglecting human rights ourselves, it allows say iran to say "hey, glad you finally came around. now you see this is how we keep people under control" it legitimizes torture and the infringement on human rights by other countries.

also - by treating these detainees as 'enemy combatants' we have elevated the level of 'terrorists' from just a rag-tag band of dudes hanging out in caves to a nation state headed by the various names you've heard many times in the news over the past few years (bin laden, ahmadinejad, nasrallah, etc)

anyways - the lecture was very interesting and left a few points i'd have liked to hear more about but it ran late as it was. things i wished he'd covered (and that i perpetually wish lectures like this would cover although i know it to be nearly impossible to offer concrete points about): what can we do? i mean, given that all of this is in the hands of high up policy makers, what honestly can we do? i think the response should have been a bit more resounding - contact your representatives and senators at all levels. but it also lead me to think about something i often wonder: back in the 60's, i get the (maybe incorrect?) sense that young people were incredibly involved. people were out on the streets in protest. kent state. buffalo springfield's for what it's worth... etc etc. people wanted peace and they were asking for it visibly. now in this age of instant internet, politics are only influenced by lobbyists financed by groups with $. people protest by emailing. i can't imagine that's very effective. now i criticize, but then again what have i done? i protested once in college when senator frist was attempting to repeal the filibuster for judicial nominations. but the issues presented in this lecture, and moreover many issues of today (environmental, social, political) are pressing, important, and people are incredibly apathetic... i'm not sure how my own realized apathy (that is to say, i may be energetically opposed to or for something but in practice i do very little about it) fits in here...

anyways. it was a kickass lecture that i am still thinking about.

in other news, this morning at my population and community ecology lecture the prof who is SO COOL gave this wonderful lecture that explained a lot of the equations i was having some issues with. but it was funny bc the powerpoint started off in spanish and we even had this equation:
n(hoy) = 2n(ayer) (population today = twice the population yesterday) ... it was funny because it was in spanish. i was amused.

now that i have essentially written a novel of a post - i am going to hang up my hammock on my front porch and do a little reading...

Neat-o Keen!

2007-09-06T04:42:40Z

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/05/ancient.honey.ap/index.html

how cool is that? more cool than when my housemates and i found a wasp nest embedded in our front porch i will tell you that much!

i am really quite pleased. i have made myself a 'chill' playlist. it is wonderful and it makes me supremely happy.

also, i'm teaching this semester - global change - and i think it will be quite the educational experience. not really sure how to teach. pointers welcome from any and all educators on here (i can think of two off the top of my head *cough cough* tigercelly and power_squid)

in other news, i'm using matlab for one of my classes. and then i discovered one of my housemates is a pro at said program. woot for me! things are lookin' up. for now!

well well well

2007-09-03T02:49:03Z

so. i go to michigan now. where we supposedly have a phenomenal football team. as i will be taking a field course that necessitates my non-participation in almost all of the football games this season, i took my undergrad friend up on her offer to take me to the season opener. we played appalachian state, although if you have recently checked out espn, you know that.

we were supposed to utterly dominate the game. not only did we not dominate, we kind of sucked. it seems to me that we have one and a half pretty damn good offensive players... and then some mediocre ones. i'm not sure about our defense. have i mentioned that we went for two point conversions twice and failed on both accounts? how bout the two field goal attempts that were BOTH blocked. by this school: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2679633

wow. i mean just wow.

new picture album...

2007-07-16T16:34:02Z

tryin' to keep this album on the d.l. from say, family members? but

http://picasaweb.google.com/sbarbrow/ToolikParties

woo!

love

sarah b

woo!

2007-07-08T23:26:35Z

wow. so fourth of july was so freaking fun. i was a clown. i'm posting pictures at my blogspot blog.

today is a lazy sunday. our p.i. left, so now we're on our own!

this next week is going to be intense. we have a crazy sampling schedule. i guess not crazy but pretty intense.

that's all - i'm more verbose on my other blog.

duckies!

2007-07-03T07:51:46Z

so i know i posted this on my other blog, but it was still really great anyways. i woke up this morning and walked out of my weatherport and saw a little family of ducklings. they were cuuuute cute.

also, tonight i saunaed again. man i am going to MISS that! woo! and the lake is sooo cold but soooo refreshing :)

that is all. nighty night!

woo!

2007-06-21T08:00:58Z

so i've posted more (and more pix) to my other blog (www.lovesthesox.blogspot.com) - sorry i'm very verbose over there but that's what happens when internet craps out on me and i just write write write. not all of it is coherent. but you can meet my friend karl with a k who likes death metal. i am a fan - but he's leaving tomorrow for a month.

also i have to say - i did indulge in the sauna experience. wow did THAT freakin' rock!!! liberating. and when you feel super disgustingly gross, a sauna + shower (in the open!!) facing a lake and beautiful landscape? yeah that's the stuff.

and now i have introduced a bunch of people here to me first and the gimme gimmes.

god i love this place. i know i was worried about leaving boston - but this feels really right.

okay i'm super hungry but tomorrow's another day (helicopter ride part deux!! - you'll have to read about that in my other blog).

bed time.

exciting times ahead

2007-06-13T19:07:37Z

well tomorrow i leave for minneapolis, and then after an hour or so layover, subsequently leave for fairbanks alaska. after that we stay over night and travel a long way north on the pipeline road to toolik lake.

i'm really relieved that starting in minneapolis, i'll be in the company of a fifth year in the lab i'm joining who will show me the ropes... relieved is an understatement. i think i'd be flipping out all together if i didn't think there'd be someone very experienced/farther along on the track i'm taking accompanying me!

last night i had a really nice night. i went to jess's and helped her a bit with her essay for med school - but really we made dinner, and went over to a friend's place and hung out on the roof eating ice cream (excuse me, frozen yogurt). i was a fan. a little surreal to think "gosh" this is my laaast night in boston/cambridge for a long while.

*in other news, i adore priceline commercials because of william shatner. he's brilliant.

also, i think we need to get that san diego catcher so we can shuffle mirabelli out. i think he's not pulling his weight offensively - and if there's another catcher who can catch for a knuckleballer then he doesn't have a monopoly on that position!

alright. arctic circle in 2 days!! woo!