Looking for my Sheep

I'm finally able to verbalize why I am persuing a degree that is quite unnecessary and possibly silly for my career. :)

Adair Lara, a newspaper columnist whom I quite enjoyed (before her column was discontinued when my hometown newspaper decided that they needed their columnists to be younger and hipper, hrrmph!), once wrote:

"If you're like my son Patrick, you want to know what you're for, what your special gifts are. He makes me think of my dog Cody. Cody snaps at our heels, trying to get us to turn. He doesn't know why he does that because he doesn't know he's a sheepdog, born to herd sheep. He doesn't know what he's for. I bet he will find out in a hurry if we ever come across some sheep.

"Watch for your sheep."

Yeah, working dogs are awesome like that. Have you ever seen how well an urban dog takes to his breed's calling, even when he's never known it in his life? Take a collie, or even a corgi, and put him in a pen full of sheep or goats. His face will light up, and he'll round them up into a corner. Do you know what the most difficult command is to teach a sled dog? "Whoa" or "stop" or "slow down." There is a common vocabulary that all sled dogs learn (i.e., "gee" for right, "haw" for left, "whoa" for slow down), but there is one word that they just don't need. 'Go.' The most common command for 'go' is "Okay." Seriously! You release their brakes, and all they need is for you to permit them to go, and they take off, with joy lighting up their faces!

I'm not sure that humans work this way, but I have to confess that I've never felt that sort of passion about anything before and I wonder if I can just find the right calling, it will happen for me. Don't get me wrong--I love being an engineer, and I love studying physics. I am very proud of my chosen career, and I've met such wonderful people and learned such wonderful things! But at the end of any given day or week or month, I will have to tell you that my happiest moments were ones that have nothing whatsoever to do with work or school. Driving the Eastbound Dumbarton at sunrise. Sleeping in and snuggling up against Dan on a Sunday morning. My long runs and walks with Autumn on our snowy trails, as I marvel over the red sun hanging low on the horizon. I love school and am doing well in school, and I've loved most of my Sili Valley jobs, especially my recent ones. But the things that give me joy are not those, and I wonder if I might have a true calling out there somewhere.

It's silly and artificial, I know. I've met quite a few people in Chinese factory towns who work the most tedious jobs imaginable, but they live happy lives simply because they make good wages compared to their hometowns, and they have no familial obligations in their daily lives. On weekends the young people fill the streets, their arms linked, laughing and gossiping, although the streets are filled with rubble and dirt and soot from the factories. It's silly to think that each of us has some higher intellectual calling, so I feel somewhat embarrassed and spoilt, to admit that that was part of what I was chasing when I came here. But I think deep down, that was part of it.

I am fortunate to be a happy, if discontent, person by nature. I can honestly tell you that I had a happy childhood, even though objectively it was pretty bad. My family didn't have a lot of money, and my mother was always stressed out and sometimes lashed out at us kids. I was picked on mercilessly by other school kids because I was nerdy and weird, and I didn't have any friends. And yet... I remember being a happy kid.

More and more, I realize that happiness is a trait of character and not of circumstance. We all know people who should be happy and who are not. And we all know people who should not be happy and who are.

I've been happy. But I still keep trying...

Awww! :*)

I got my TA evaluations back this week. The questions they were asked referred more to the lab in general than to me as a TA:

1) Was this class intellectually stimulating? Did it stretch your thinking?

2) What aspects of this class contributed most to your learning?

3) What aspects of this class detracted from your learning?

4) What suggestions do you have for improving the class?

Nevertheless, a quarter of them answered #2 with some variation of "Our TA! She's great with explaining things!" They actually said that! One person wrote "You're lucky to have her in your department."

Awwwww!! *blushing*

Bipolar Autumn

First, we have Outdoor Autumn. Sorry these are so far away. Taking these was quite difficult since I had to keep the camera under my jacket otherwise it wouldn't work in the cold. So it's unzip, dig camera out, power, focus, for every shot. And Autumn moves at mach four. And I was fumbling with gloves. Wah, wah, getting cute photos of my dog to brag about is so difficult!

Autumn in sled dog mode--running and leaping and smiling!


Standing in the snow waiting for me to catch up. That is snow around her muzzle from running through snowdrifts. She does not collect frozen water vapor around her nose and mouth just from breathing, the way I do. I think it's some magic in the oils in her coat that prevent it.


This is her standard walking mode. Leading the way, about thirty feet in front of me, glancing back frequently to make sure I am still there.


"So what's on the other side of the trail now?" You can see some of the grace of her gait in this photo. She doesn't bounce. She's very purposeful. There is no energy wasted. She's smooth as a windsail.


When she disappears for too long on one of her side excursions, all it takes is one call from me to bring her bursting back onto the trail! She often checks back on me unbidden, too, poking her little head out in between trees. I don't know how she's bonded with me so quickly, but I consider it a very sweet blessing!


Now here is Indoor Autumn. She'll sit like this until I forcibly extract myself. And she is so cuddly that I usually can't bring myself to do this until I have to pee or something equally pressing:

Misc. Photos

Hangin' with my bud:


View from the window at the base of the stairs. This is the first coherent thing I see most mornings. I check the weather, whether there is snow on my car, etc.


Imagine my surprise to sometimes see this (taken Fall 2006):

Losing the Suffering Game

I have to say that my most recent employers in the Sili Valley had pretty healthy corporate cultures for the most part, but a few before that... Well everyone played The Suffering Game. Here is an example. Monday morning, you bump into a coworker at the coffee pot. You exchange Good Mornings, and then ask, "How was your weekend?"

It is NOT okay to say, "It was great! I went for a long hike with my dog, and then went to the beach and cooled off in the water!" No, no, no! You have to have to say, "I had to work. I was here all day Saturday and then half of Sunday. The other half of Sunday, I had to stain the deck." You might squeek by if you rattle off a list of household chores, but only if you follow it up by intimating that this only bothered you because it kept you from doing *work* work.

I was reminded of this by one of my commenters, under my post Life is an Adventure:

"Just don't mistake adventure for purposely choosing to make your life difficult."

Because the Suffering Game requires authenticity, and playing the Suffering Game actually does sometimes entail purposely choosing to make one's life difficult. I honestly believe that none of us (and yes, that includes me during that time period) were lying or exaggerating our "horrible lives that were dominated by work." We actually got sucked into the real thing. It sounds crazy, but I bet my Sili Valley readers know exactly what I am talking about.

Thankfully, I had much better experiences at my later Sili Valley jobs. I had good bosses who actually did not play The Suffering Game themselves, and did not want to hear it from us!

I'm trying to think now whether UAF physics grad students play The Suffering Game. I think some do, but I feel fortunate to realize now that I haven't been. But I do have to guard against it, as it can creep up pretty easily!

More Ice Sculptures!

These all appeared within the last few weeks. Even the carved-off ice chunks littered around them are beautiful--crystal-clear ice that is mesmerizing to look at and turn in your hand under the light.

Here are some musk oxen. They are actually quite detailed and amazing to look at. The photos don't have enough contrast though. :(


Here is this geometric snowflake design in front of the International Arctic Research Center. This is an awesome building, whose conference rooms have sweeping views to the South, overlooking the city to the Alaska Range. In Winter, you can sit here and watch the sun arc ever so gently from the left edge of the horizon to the right. The angle that the sun makes with the horizon is so small that, should you be lucky enough to catch a green flash, it will last for a long moment.


Here is an owl. He sits in front of the fire station.


A polar bear marches off to school.


Here is granny wolf reading to red riding hood. They are in front of the main campus library.


If you like these, check out the ones in the World Ice Art Championships!

Okay now what would a photo set be without any animals, eh?

Here is Autumn sitting and looking cute. This is very difficult to capture because as soon as you look at her, she runs over to you, so you can't really get a photo. Also, she rarely has her ears up. They usually stick straight out to the sides, making her look a bit like Yoda.


Autumn hanging out with me as I watch the wabbits. I know, I know, my life is so exciting you are beside yourself with envy!


Millie sitting there looking cute:


Autumn waiting to greet her papa as she hears his footsteps approach the door from the outside:

Life is an Adventure!

Okay before I get into it, the sign on the corner says it is -20F/-29C right now. Huh. I didn't feel any colder this morning in particular...

Anyway, before I get off to the lab I have a story for youse guys. :)

This is about my graduate adviser at Santa Clara University, who said something I will never forget. This was before she was my adviser or my friend. I was in her course on plastics processing, and at one point she passed around something for us to look at that was, for some reason I can't recall, somewhat intimidating to touch. Maybe she had just pulled it out of the hot thermal chamber or something. Anyway, the first student she attempted to pass it to shrunk back. She let out an exasperated huff. "Oh come on!" she said grandly. "Don't be such a weenie! Life is an adventure! Live it!"

I thought that that was fantastic, and scribbled it down in my notebook, alongside my notes on ideal plastic processing parameters and how to select an appropriate resin: Don't be weenie. Life = adventure. Live!