Lent

To start off, I'm not Catholic. But I like the idea of sacrifice that accompanies the season of Lent. Two years ago, I started the annual process of giving up something during the 40 days of Lent. Both years I gave up sweets. (If you know me, you'll know that is a sacrifice.)

But this year, I have given up sweets (starting January 1) until my thesis is finished. (With the exception of a treat at the completion of every chapter. There are 8 chapters.) Could be as much as 9 months. (But I'm hoping it'll be closer to 5.) So I couldn't give up sweets because I already have.

I thought about it for a little while, and finally came up with something. I've decided to give up Facebook and Google Talk...but not completely. I'm giving them up during "peak cell phone hours" (that was Rebecca's idea, and I think it's a good one); that is to say, I won't be on Facebook or GTalk Monday-Friday, 6am-9pm (local time). But nights and weekends are free game.

This will be especially good because during the next 6 weeks I really need to focus and work, and no Facebook or GTalk, while it may drive me crazy, will not be around to distract me. I will admit though, I'm a little worried about falling behind in what's going on with people that I talk to on GTalk regularly. (I'm not too worried about Facebook. It's easy to catch up there.)

So if you want or need to talk to me during those hours between now and Easter, you'll have to step a few rungs down the technology ladder....email, text, or call me. :)

The Sleep Experiment: Why I now sleep with a nightlight

I am normally what some might call "a good sleeper." I sleep fairly heavily and can sometimes sleep for a long time. If something (or someone) wakes me up, I can often fall back to sleep. And I almost never wake up in the middle of the night. Once I'm out, I'm out until morning.

Over the course of the first few nights in my new basement room, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night a lot, for no apparent reason. I'd check the clock then go back to sleep. This happened several times a night. (Probably anywhere from 2-5 times.) For me, this is strange behavior. I was plenty warm (thanks to a heated mattress pad and two heavy blankets), but not too warm. I wasn't having nightmares about forgetting to teach my class or going to my thesis defense unprepared. The house is quiet at night. I'd guess it was just getting used to a new place, but after a few days, I went on an overnight trip and slept on a couch in a basement and slept fine again.

As I puzzled over it, I decided it might have to do with the fact that my new room doesn't have any windows. None. Not even a small one. There are also not any windows in the rest of the basement. As a result, it's very dark, regardless of the time of day, and light doesn't even sneak in under the door.

Based on my experience in the first week of sleeping there and from countless nights of sleeping in dark observatory dormitories, I came up with a hypothesis. It is that your body requires light and especially light cycles (such as the rising and setting sun) to sleep properly. It makes you feel safe, and aids you in knowing when to wake up. Without light, your body doesn't know when it's supposed to be awake. (Think of it this way: your body wakes up thinking, "What time is it?" "Oh, okay, I can still sleep.")

I don't mean that you can only sleep when it's dark and will wake immediately with light. (Trust me, I sleep through sunrise quite routinely.) And of course there are other reasons why someone might suffer from insomnia. But for someone who is normally a "good sleeper," I mean that after sleeping for awhile, without light your body isn't sure if it's time to wake up yet or if it should keep sleeping. Often when I sleep in the very dark rooms at the observatory, I find myself waking up every couple of hours. I usually blame that on shifting my sleep schedule, as your body can get pretty messed up working all night and sleeping all day.

But in my window-less room, I was finding the same thing. I started hypothesizing about the role that light plays in one's sleep patterns after finding myself waking up several times each night. (If I worked in some kind of physiological science, I would totally do a formal study on this. I'd actually be surprised if people haven't already.)

So after a week or so, I began the experiment on myself, starting on a Sunday. The goal was to find out if light really does affect my sleeping patterns, and if it does, to figure out an arrangement that will allow me to sleep soundly through the night. Here's what I did, along with the results:

Sunday: My cell phone's front screen stays very dimly lit when it is plugged in. Normally I turn it over as I sleep because it bugs me. Tonight I left it turned up to give me a very slight amount of light as I slept. Result: I woke up fewer times, but still woke up a couple times. Adding light to my room does seem to work, but the cell phone front is too dim to produce desired results.

Monday: Left my cell phone flipped open all night on the dresser, so the light was slightly brighter. Result: I slept better. Hardly woke up in the night. However, I don't want to give my cell phone that kind of wear.

Tuesday: Bought a nightlight for 99 cents at Target. Plugged it in on the far side of my dresser, so it provided light, but not too much light. Result: I slept all night, except once or twice when I woke up because the nightlight was TOO bright.

Wednesday: Provided the nightlight with even more shading (from an open suitcase and an overflowing laundry basket). Result: Slept all night, but still woke up because the light was STILL too bright.

Thursday: Bought a plug timer from Walmart for $4. I plugged the nightlight into it. I set it to turn off 30 minutes after I went to bed and turn on 15 minutes before my alarm. Result: I slept through the entire night, waking up about 10 minutes after the light turned on and a few minutes before my alarm went off.

By this point I felt pretty confident in my theory and new set up. But I knew it would need to be further tested; I'd need to sleep a few days with no light again, then a few days with the timed nightlight. This would confirm whether or not the change in my sleep patterns are in fact related to lack of light cycles, or if it's something else. Like adjusting to sleeping in a new place.

Friday: Nightlight turned off before I was ready to go to sleep, so I went to sleep without, though it turned on the next morning. Result: I woke up several times in the night again.

Saturday/Sunday: Nightlight timing set. Result: I still found myself waking up a time or two in the night. Hmm....need to revise a bit.

Monday/Tuesday: Tried the timed nightlight as well as leaving my charging cell phone positioned so the very dim light shines all night. Result: I slept through the entirety of both nights.

This last set up (the timed nightlight and the dim light from the cell phone) is how I've slept every night since then, and I sleep great now.

Conclusion: Our bodies needs light and light cycles to sleep properly. This makes sense if you think of how humans functioned before electricity. The sun provided light cycles, and at night it is never truly dark: the moon and stars provide light. (I've been in enough of the darkest sites around the world to know that even in the remotest places far from the city lights, it is never ever TRULY "dark.") Light likely also provides some kind of "safety" feeling.

I am sleeping well again because I have simulated these light cycles with my nightlight. Every night I set my alarm, but I also set my nightlight (I have to set the time on both ends...when to turn off and when to turn on).

Ode to my Valentine

We've been together awhile, you and I.
When was it...four or five years past?
Since then, we've been through a lot, you and I.
Fruition is coming, coming at last. (I hope.)

We've stuck together, you and I.
The final hurdle towards the PhD.
At times we've been negligent, you and I.
Though I guess that was mostly me. (Actually, all me.)

We've been around the world, you and I.
To an Observatory, or a conference.
Seen interesting things, you and I.
Luckily it was all at my adviser's expense. (Thanks Ted!)

We've pulled all nighters, you and I.
Sometimes it was just part of the grind.
Written proposals and papers, you and I.
Sometimes nearly losing my mind. (Seriously.)

We've been inseparable, you and I.
You're omnipresent, never-yielding, aggressive.
The task master, the servant, you and I.
Though I wouldn't say you're...oppressive. (Yet.)

We've now gone into hiding, you and I.
In a place that's so very, very cold.
No more excuses exist for you and I.
Your full beauty we'll all soon behold. (Hopefully with six signatures.)

We've got to focus, can't delay, you and I.
Time, time, I just need more time!
But we've got a deadline, you and I.
So will you be my Valentine? (Sans chocolate.*)





* At least until the completion of Chapter 2.

Winter in New York

This weekend I went to went to a young single adult (YSA) conference* in Ithaca, New York. I had a good time. I didn't take many pictures though. (Others I know did, maybe I'll get them to send me some. Though they are on Facebook; if you're on Facebook, you can see the ones I was tagged in.)

Saturday afternoon we went on a hike. I should say "hike." :) It's more like walking a flat stretch of trail (I hear it's paved, but it was covered with snow and ice, so it was hard to tell). Anyway, this trail wound it's way next to a river, in a gorge, until it finally came to Taughannock Falls. (We were told that it is the highest waterfall east of the Rockies. However, a bit of interenet research this morning showed me that several other places claim that title. So, I'll just say that it was a really awesomely tall waterfall.)

Here are some pictures.

First we drove above to the lookout point. This was our first view.

Then we went down and hiked into the gorge. This is the river. It's frozen! FROZEN! This totally blows my mind.

(This one is the river, NOT the trail.)

Here I am, with the frozen river in the background. This is such beautiful country!

We arrived at the falls. It's mostly frozen, though because the temperature had warmed up to about 40 that day (HEAT WAVE!!), part of the falls were flowing.

Flowing into an icy river below...

This is me again.

And this is me with my friend Reija. She is in med school at Rochester, and showed up to the conference too.





* In a nutshell, these conferences are held to give single Mormons between the ages of 18 and 31 a chance to meet other young, single Mormons. (Especially since the population density of Mormons is so low in these parts.) People drive a couple hours, stay a couple days, and are treated to a variety of activites including a dance, religious speakers, workshops on a variety of topics (both religious and not), service projects, some kind of fun activity, and lots of socializing.

The Albany Life

I have been in Albany for about 3 weeks. Here's how my life and routine is shaping up.

I arrived in Albany on a Friday night. Julia flew back to Utah Saturday afternoon. I was going to live with 2 cool girls from my branch (read: my local congregation at church). After being in Albany for roughly 48 hours, my living situation changed. At my first Sunday at church, the branch president (the leader of the congregation) wanted to meet with me to get to know me. As we chatted and I told him I was here to write my dissertation, and he invited me to live with him and his wife. I moved in Tuesday morning.

The branch president and his wife are great. They live very near the same place I was going to live (which is about 15 or 20 minutes from campus; that's half what my commute in Austin was). Their kids are all married and gone, and they have a big house. I have the entire basement to myself. I am set to live the ideal life of an academic hermit.

Here are some pictures of my new place of residence.

This is the driveway.

I park my car next to the house in a smaller driveway off the main driveway.

The backyard. (Very woodsy.)

These are some pictures of the basement, where I live.


My room.

I have two offices on campus at Siena. One is a shared office with other adjunct faculty. Since I'm teaching a class (intro astronomy for non majors), I have a spot in there. I work there sometimes, mostly when I have office hours. The other is actually my adviser's "outer office" (his office has two rooms). That's where I work most of the time. It's just me, my laptop, and a big table. This office is really cold. I usually have a blanket on my lap (or around my shoulders) and a space heater roaring next to me almost non-stop.

This is me in my office, working on my laptop, drinking hot chocolate.

Besides sleeping and working, I am also finding my gym routine again. I tried the gym on campus at Siena, as I get to use it for free. The college is small, which means the gym is small. It was a few steps up from an apartment complex work out room. Although the weight room was pretty decent...I tried it out, and was the only girl among like 20 guys (who are all like 19, by the way). That kind of thing doesn't deter me though. The funniest part was as I started my weight lifting, the radio in the room was blasting Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies." Ha! Anyway...

Nothing can replace Gregory Gym in my heart, but this didn't look like it would be able to replace it in functionality either. I needed more.

So I went to check out Gold's Gym. (I would have also looked into 24 Hour Fitness, but sadly, they don't have any up here.) The nearest Golds to my new place is a 10 minute drive. There's another on my way to school, about 5 minutes out of my way (in Latham). I checked out the one up in my town. It was pretty nice, despite not having a swimming pool (but there's a pool on campus). I got a multi-club membership so I can use that one or the one in Latham on my way into or out of campus. The one nearer my place is a lot nicer than the Latham gym, but it's nice to have options. I've worked out a couple times at each place, and feel fairly neutral about it. But it seems to be doing the job, so I'm satisfied.

That's about it. I am not completely a hermit though, I regularly attend activities (namely FHE every other Monday and Institute every Thursday) with the young single adults from the branch. (All 10 of them.) They're a great group. This weekend I'm going out with a few of them to a regional YSA conference in Ithaca (where Cornell is; about 3 hours from here). That ought to be fun.

In the meantime, I better get back to work.

The Journey to Albany

My sister Julia flew down to Austin to make the long drive to Albany with me. After a smashing going away party courtesy of Michelle and Rebecca (who I can't thank enough for putting it all together. I thought the Elizabeth Trivia game was particularly awesome.), we got everything finished up (the packing, the moving, the cleaning, etc.), and we left Austin on Tuesday afternoon.

Because we left so late, we didn't get very far in the first day. We were going to hit Dallas at 5:00, so we created a detour, taking back roads to avoid rush hour. It worked out just fine. And we found this sign, which we thought was funny.

The caption is "Wait....which way is north??"

We spent the night in Texarkana. Originally I wanted to make sure that we were at least out of Texas on the first day. I had to call a couple hotels before finding a vacant non-smoking room in town, and it ended up being on the Texas side of the street. (Literally. The main street in town is the border...one side of the street is Arkansas, the other side is Texas.)

We stayed at a Ramada Inn, and it comes with a funny story. We checked in, and went to our assigned room. We opened the door and found the light on, a bag on the bed, and the bed already turned down. Thankfully there was no one in it, but it appeared that it was definitely occupied. We went back to the front desk to inform the clerk that she'd assigned us a room that was already taken. She assigned us another room. We went there, fortunately this one was empty. Julia suggested we lock the top latch right away, which turned out to be a good idea. After we'd been in there about an hour, we heard someone unlocking the door and attempting to get in. (It was only an attempt because we'd locked the top.) They knocked and said through the door, "Is someone in there?" We said back that the room was occupied (we didn't go to the door, as we were both wearing our pajamas), and that we too had been assigned a room that was already taken, so they should probably go back to the front desk to get another. Ha!

We survived the night and continued on the drive. Because I have a goal to go to every state capital in the country, we made a point to go to those that were on our way (and some that were just a little bit out of our way). First up was Little Rock, Arkansas.

We crossed the Mississippi River and into Tennessee where we stopped for lunch in Memphis.

We later stopped in Nashville at the capitol building.

We made it to just past Knoxville before we stopped for the night.

The next day we made it out of Tennessee and into Virginia.

Virginia is beautiful, even in the middle of the winter.

Going to Richmond was a bit out of our way, but we figured we might as well go.

That night we stayed with my friend Sarah in her apartment just outside D.C. It was great to see her, even if our visit was brief. I wish we could have spent more time there, but we needed to get back on the road. But we drove through so we could at least see some of it.


A bit of rerouting took us to Annapolis and Dover, which must be among the smallest capitol cities in the country. In Annapolis, I wasn't even convinced the map was taking us to the right place. Turns out the biggest domed building in Annapolis in NOT the capitol, but rather a church at the US Naval Academy.

Annapolis. The plaque out front says it is the oldest capitol building in the country that is still in use. (And there's pretty much no where to park.)

We made it to Delaware.

And saw the capitol in Dover.

New Jersey welcomes us in a digital way.

But fortunately, they had a real sign too.

Continuing north we made our way to Trenton. It's kind of ghetto. We didn't want to stay there long. (And it was cold.)

We hit a bit of traffic in northern New Jersey, but avoided I-95 through Newark and New York City, which probably eased the traffic we did have to sit in.

Finally we crossed the border into New York (we tried taking a picture of the sign, but it was too dark at this point), and after a final 3 hours of driving, arrived at my new apartment. (My living situation has since changed, but that's a long story.) I live about 15 minutes north of Albany. I slept the first night on the floor, but was so glad to sleep in. I took Julia to the airport Saturday afternoon. I can't say enough how grateful I am that she was willing to make the long journey with me! Thanks Julia!! Thanks for all your help, support, and the company. (And for bringing Harry Potter on your iPod! :) )

Our trip couldn't have been better. The weather was perfect, the roads were dry, the car had no problems. We drove just over 2000 miles (according to my odometer) and it took us three and a half days. The weather is cold, cold, cold. There is a ton of snow on the ground and snowed an additional 5 or 6 inches this weekend. My car doesn't seem particularly pleased about the cold weather, but it's being a trouper. (Especially since I replaced the battery on Tuesday morning...)

I bought a pair of snow boots Saturday night, so it's official. I'm here to stay the winter.

Goodbye Austin.

There are times when we have so much to say about something that any attempt to do so will be inadequate. But you have to say something, else you would do it a disservice. That's how I feel about leaving Austin right now.

My first Sunday in Austin, the bishop of my ward welcomed those of us that were new and told us that Austin did something to people. He said that people moved here for one reason or another and then after awhile they didn't want to leave. I didn't really believe him. Especially because I had just left my family and friends, I missed my life at BYU, and starting over isn't the easiest thing for me to do.

But, he was right. After 5 1/2 years, Austin has done something to me. Austin has changed me in every good way. Austin has made me better. I've met some of the greatest people I've known and have made some amazing and lasting friends. I found an Elizabeth inside me in the process that I didn't even know existed. If it was possible, I would live in Austin forever and I would be happy.

In the time I've been in Austin, I've lived in nine different places, and had twelve roommates. I've traveled. I've learned things. Not just in school, but about life. Particularly that everyone I meet has something to teach me.

Well, I don't want to say much more except that I'll miss you Austin. Thank you for being so good to me. Thank you to all the wonderful people I've met, thank you for being my friends. I'll miss all of you. I won't forget you or my time there.

But seeing as I'm not falling off the face of the earth, I'll try to stop this from sounding any more like a eulogy than it already does. But I will miss you Austin in more ways than I have words to describe.

The last 5 1/2 years have been full of adventures. Here are some pictures of some of them. This list is in no way exhaustive (and in absolutely no particular order). That's just impossible. But some include:

Meeting fellow Heisman winner, Ty Detmer.

Being on the championship bowling team for the interdisciplinary bowling smackdown. Go Team Astro!

Eating a lot of sausage at Wurstfest.

Running a 10K.

Biking around Town Lake.

Going to UT football games!

Playing games like Nertz and Speed Scrabble.


Surviving one particularly big ice storm. (I sent my pictures to KSL news in Utah and they showed them!)

Remembering the Alamo.

Taking some friends to McDonald Observatory.

Lots of late nights observing around the world.

Being on a team to run a marathon relay.

Kami getting married.

Climbing the highest mountain in Texas.

Hiking into and out of the Grand Canyon.

Getting hot chocolate with extra whipped cream at Kerby Lane.

Making a flux cake-pacitor.

Seeing the world.



Using lots of telescopes.



Observing in the Chilean Andes (twice).

Having a random Polish astronomer take this picture of me at Las Campanas.

Going on a cruise, and seeing Tulum.

Rebecca and William getting married.


Seeing the Texas Capitol.

Having awesome birthday parties.

Angela's wedding.

Enjoying blue bonnets (and wild flower season in general).

Hosting a housewarming party and almost burning my arm off.

No one being able to break the pinata at said housewarming party.

The speed limit on I-10 changing to 80 mph. (That was a beautiful day.)

Going to McDonald Observatory...a lot.

Seeing the top of the UT tower.

Running 5Ks.

Julia visiting a couple times; us and the tower.

My first trip to McDonald Observatory....this was December!

Hiking around McDonald.

My roommate Mariah working at Amys and bringing home free ice cream for Sarah and I to enjoy.

Running a triathlon.


And of course....the people are what really made Austin great. I'll miss you all!!
































Thanks again Austin. I'll miss you.