Les Bonnes Choses

I received an email in my inbox just moments ago, entitled [Wilfrid Laurier] Position. My first thought was that they had a really quick turnaround for their rejection letters, as I sincerely do not expect them to entertain the idea of interviewing me, let alone hiring me. However, the email just outlined their interviewing process for shortlisted candidates, which I assume to be similar to that of other universities, and rather similar to what I just went through in San Diego -- a process which which I can happily report I am comfortable. Ken always said that, face to face, I come off very well, so the major hurdle for me is just going to be to get my foot in the door. Quite literally, I just need to make myself look better on paper.

I just received an email informing me that the U of T linguistics position is off the table. It's unsurprising, since I don't think of myself as a very cunning linguist, so it would have been a bit of a stretch for me. Truthfully, I had sort of forgotten about that application anyways, probably because I had applied knowing that I probably wasn't what they were looking for. Nonetheless, it's a bit of a drag when the rejection letters start filtering in.

I realize I haven't posted in over a week (by a few hours), so I should probably hastily jot some thoughts down.

No, I really have no thoughts. I am somewhat agitated about hearing back about either of the postdocs to which I have applied. I may have to endure a longer than strictly-necessary wait to hear about the San Diego job because I learned that there may be a policy that requires the position to be externally advertised, even if the position has effectively been filled. Still no word about the Brown one. And I have yet to apply for the one in Amy's lab. Also K (she uses initials to refer to her colleagues in her blog) is making me agitated by osmosis with her recent musings on the prospects of finding employment.

I'm sorry this entry isn't more amusing; more Tony Hawks-ish, as Carrie would call it. Unfortunately, I haven't found my thoughts to be especially amusing lately. Maybe I should read more light-hearted fare. I tend to introduce elements of the writing styles of authors that I am reading at any given time.

I already expressed these sentiments in a comment on my own note on Facebook, but that was before I made the return trip home. I just got back from a trip to San Diego where I am a candidate for a postdoctoral position at UCSD working with Jeff Elman and Marta Kutas -- though I quickly figured out that, in saying you work in so-and-so's lab, all you are really doing is indicating where your mail should be routed, because everyone works with everyone down there. It's like some kind of research orgy or something. Probably pays something like $88/hr (see Carrie's note if you can).

I don't travel quite as much as, say, John, or Chris, but I have made a decent number of trips into the US over the span of my postgraduate career. I can truly say that I have never before had a more pleasant trip. Sure, on the way down there was a brief period of panic when I was unsure whether I would catch my connecting flight out of Detroit. But in all my interactions with the various incarnations of what is now the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, everyone was pleasant and non-confrontational on both ends of the trip. Compare this to the last time I went through the border crossing, coincidentally for the purpose of my first meeting with Jeff Elman. Back then, the inquisitor at the Ambassador bridge gave me quite a rough time. When asked what the purpose of my trip was, I replied that it was for a meeting. The moron actually asked, "So why doesn't he come up there to meet you? Why do you have to come here?" I still fantasize about smacking him in the face and calling him a dipshit, but that fantasy always comes to a grinding halt when I get charged with assault and barred from entry into the US in response. Apparently, my ability to fantasize is impaired by my mind's insistence on imposing realistic constraints, and so unlike most people, I fantasize about being able to fantasize.

I'm meeting Jeff for brekkie in 30 mins. I've showered and am just going through my slides again. I woke up at about 6:30, well ahead of my 7:00 wake up call, but it felt like I slept till 9, and I slept straight through (not even waking up to pee) so I feel well rested. Also it feels like my brain is firing properly, so I think I'll be fine today. To be sure, I made myself some hotel room coffee. It tastes like how Erin and my dad make it.

I'm going into the day smelling like juniper. Maybe -- that's what the soap and lotion said (I have very dry skin). The hotel at which I am staying is the Estancia Spa/Hotel. That's right: spa. So they have fragranced everything. Funny how a dude can smell like olive oil and juniper extract, and if he has an excuse like, "I've just come from the spa," then it's okay. If instead his only excuse was that he likes to roll around in botanicals, he gets the big ole stink-eye.

I wish right now, as I sit in the London International Airport at 5:34am, that I had some kind of wireless internet package. Then, I could post directly to my blog, and then tool around on Facebook for awhile. As it is, I’ll have to content myself with writing to my word processor and copying and pasting my thoughts to the interwebs later on. I dutifully showed up well in advance of my 6:20 flight because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you take an international flight, even though this airport isn’t especially busy, even during normal daylight hours, much less at this time of day. I hope I don’t get carpal tunnel syndrome from twiddling my thumbs. My boredom can only be compounded by the fact that my flight is delayed, though I only have 59 minutes from my scheduled arrival in Detroit and subsequent boarding of my flight to Minneapolis, and only 27 minutes in the Minneapolis airport before I have to board the flight to San Diego.
I hope my two laptop batteries last the trip.

Addendum: they did last the trip. Also, because of the delay leaving London, I barely made my connecting flight from Detroit to Minneapolis. And in Minneapolis, I only had to wait about 5 minutes by the time I got to the gate before they started to board that flight.

I was just talking on the phone with Auger, when I realized:
1) I will stop getting paid at the end of April
2) Rebecca goes on maternity leave by the end of May
3) UWO has sent out emails that effectively say that, because of a budget crunch, they're cutting back on limited duties appointments (contract teaching positions), there won't me any opportunity for me to teach at UWO this summer.

Awesome.

So I guess I really had better make this interview count, because I haven't heard back from anything else to which I have applied.

I've been reading. I just finished reading Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, which was a remarkably fast and enjoyable read. I received a book called The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch, in my stocking this past Christmas. Apparently, Carnegie Mellon had a series of lectures called The Last Lecture, where speakers were invited to pass on their wisdom for the ages, as though it were their last chance to be heard. In the case of Randy Pausch, when he gave the lecture on September 18, 2007 (my birthday), he did so knowing that it was his last lecture because he had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He died July 25, 2008. I'm going to go ahead and read the book, but damn, that's just the most depressing way to start off a book. It doesn't help much that the book is peppered with photos and such of him with his three young kids. I'm not sure if it's a cause or an effect of my vocation, but I very often find myself putting myself inside someone else's head. It's very useful when trying to figure out what the hell people are doing (or are going to do) when they're taking part in psychological experiments (which often require perfectly normal people to do rather bizarre things). But sometimes empathy is a real pain in the ass.

Maybe I should just read the volumes of research put out by the people I will be visiting in San Diego on Monday. I doubt I'll feel too much one way or another while reading Neurophysiological evidence for transfer appropriate processing of memory: processing versus feature similarity.

I like lobster, however I seldom eat it. There are two reasons for that: expense, and the fact that Rebecca doesn't like any invertebrate seafood. I can't do much about the second factor, however it appears that the first factor has been mitigated somewhat by an oversupply of PEI lobster. Now that I think about it, the last time I had lobster, it was in PEI. That was about 8 or 9 years ago. Wow. Next time I'm at Sunripe, my new favourite store, I'm going to look into it. It might be worth making two dinners one night.

I know it's unethical, because he cannot give informed consent, but as my son, Pokey's life to date is a bit of an experiment. Though he is quite articulate for a 2-year-old, his language development has taken a bit of an odd turn by virtue of the fact that we often choose to use a bizarre selection of words around our house, and indeed also at his nana and papa's house. Of course, I tend to associate with like-minded people who have similarly thrown off the shackles of normalcy. One of my good friends, John, was good enough to give Jude a plush toy for Christmas a few weeks back. It's a plush Cthulhu. If you're not familiar with Cthulhu, here's what this demon devourer of souls looks like, according to the mythology:

Plush vacation Cthulhu looks a little different though. And has become Jude's favourite movie-watching buddy. It is customary for Cthulhu to dance to the opening Sheryl Crow song, Real Gone when watching the Disney/Pixar Cars movie.
All in all, Cthulhu has been a good childhood friend while on his vacation from devouring souls, though he is a bit of a shark at playing cards and dices.

I just edited my first Wikipedia page. Okay, maybe edit is too strong of a word. I corrected the improper use of the word 'their' (when the author meant 'there' -- one of my pet peeves.). But it was really easy to do. I could see how someone with an anal-retentive streak like mine could get hooked on editing wikipedia pages. I don't know the stupid syntax - wiki uses its own markup, which gets converted into HTML so that people don't have to learn HTML. Of course, I know HTML, so you can probably see the perverseness in my learning wiki markup. And that's why I won't become a compulsive wiki editor, so you can cancel that intervention you were planning.

I failed at pizza. The other day I used a pizza kit to try to make a 'homemade' pizza. The kit, I believe produced by Kraft, contained a pizza dough flour mix (just add water and let it rise), tomato sauce, some dried herbs (just oregano, I think) and Parmesan cheese. I've tried to make a pizza crust from scratch before. I sucked then too. I can make the dough well enough. My problem is in taking the ball of risen dough and turning it into a pizza crust. I can't make a round flat crust without overworking the dough, which I think undoes the rising process by pressing all the CO2 out. I can't get the crust uniformly thick, either. Instead I get some spots that are way too thick, and others that are thin to the point of becoming holes. It's all very frustrating, and nothing like I must have learned from television in my childhood with the throwing spinning disks of dough into the air. On one hand, I could avoid all that frustration by giving up and just buying the ready-made crusts from the store. But then I'd never learn how to do it, and it bugs me that I can't figure it out. If anyone can show me how to make a proper pizza crust, I'd be happy to apprentice.

Speaking as a geek, and as someone who has made excessively elabourate cakes, I can appreciate how awesome this birthday must have been for the celebrant who got this cake:



However, if you check out the rest of the flikr images associated with the cake, you might wonder whether the birthday boy and his friends realize they have allowed themselves to become caricatures.

Lots going on in '09. First off, there's all those things that are supposed to happen by 2010 that have to get taken care of. I couldn't find an online list, but I imagine there were quite a few outlandish prognostications made 10, 25 and 50 years ago.

My own prediction for the upcoming year is that things are going to get up-ended around here. I'm jetting down to San Diego in a couple of weeks to check out Jeff Elman's digs. I'm not entirely sure what that says about the likelihood of me getting an offer for a postdoc, but that's sort of what I'm banking on because I haven't heard back about any of the faculty positions to which I applied (which means I'll have to wait until March to start getting the "we like you, but just as a friend" letters). And of course, on top of that, Rebecca will be giving birth to the child now referred to as Tricky Monkey in the middle of all this, possibly at about the time that we're selling our house.

2009 is going to be a big production.