dear upstairs neighbors,

I appreciate you not holding band practice tonight. However, I do not appreciate you throwing a party tonight with loud music and bass that is now nearly shaking my furniture.

I never see you early in the mornings. May I suggest that you shift all of your daily activities forward by approximately two hours? Then, we would never have problems.

love,
lauren

dear upstairs neighbors,

I am also a musician and I understand and support your endeavors to start a band and become musicians. You're not too terribly bad, especially since your lead singer got drastically better over break, or you replaced him with one who could actually sing, or you just stopped trying to sing Kings of Leon, whichever actually happened. At any rate, I admire your persistent, every night practicing, and I can hear your improvement. What I want to know is why I have to hear your improvement at midnight and after. Your neighbors would like to be able to turn on and off the music that they hear, especially when they are trying to sleep...

love,
lauren

sometime over Christmas break or maybe a little before I remembered that music existed.  I mean, I had been listening to music and all, but something, and I don't even remember what, made me remember that music comes from real people and isn't magically generated out of a computer like iTunes makes it out to be.

So, I have decided to remember how to play piano. I didn't practice any over break due to busyness and to not particularly wanting to be heard. But I've been here for a week and have practiced five days. It's been good. I remember more than I thought I would.

I like practicing here. The practice rooms are warm. The upright pianos let me play more comfortably and expressively than the baby grands did at Winthrop (yeah, I'm weird). And so far I haven't heard anyone else practicing who was exquisitely good at piano like I did in the practice rooms at Winthrop. That makes it a whole lot less intimidating to sit down and play as I want to, mistakes and all. And it's more enjoyable since when I sit down at the piano I don't have to panic about having to play this for anyone else if I don't want to. There's no teacher looking for my mistakes, no jury at the end of the semester asking me to play the one scale that I can't remember, and no expectation that I have my pieces perfected and memorized in 15 weeks. I'm on my own schedule and I'm my own worst critic.

I'm working on getting Chopin's Nocturne in C# minor back to well-polished (and I'm pretty close). I really would like to finish the rest of Mozart's Twelve Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star--I play probably five or six of the twelve variations well and I'd like to learn the two I skipped and get the remaining variations to the point where I play them well. I have no interest into returning to the two Bach inventions I learned, haha. After I get those two pieces down I'll probably polish up the Granados Danza Espanola No. 2.

I'd like to start a new piece or two as well. Probably one at a time for now. I'd really like to eventually attempt Granados' Valses Poeticos but I think it's a bit beyond my skill level right now, as is his Danza Espanola No. 8, which no one in the world seems to have recorded except perhaps Ms. de Larrocha, and I can't find a link for her (excellent in my opinion) rendition anywhere. So we'll skip the Granados for now. I'm thinking about finally learning the rest of Mozart's Sonata K545 that I've known the first bit of for forever. I've got a book of Clementi sonatinas that might be another potential option, or I might just pick something out of my big book of classics. I'd like to play Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 but all those triplets over eighths might kill me. We'll see. I just need to find something the right difficulty level--challenging enough to increase my skill but easy enough that I won't get frustrated with it.

I'm going to try to be disciplined and practice at least three times a week. I can spare a half-hour three times a week and that'll work wonders. Hopefully my academic schedule won't be chaotic enough to stop me.

mk that's all for now.

about the fellowship

I get angry sometimes when I talk to people about my fellowship. I'm really thankful for it and most days I think it's too good to be true. But when talking about it, people say things like, "Oh, you got lucky!", to which I think, it's not like NSF rolled dice and happened to come up with my number. But that's not so bad because we toss around luck to mean a lot of things. The ones that really get me are the true statements. "Oh, well, because you applied to Clemson and that's a smaller school in the south and they're worried about geographic distribution you had a better chance," and "Because you're a woman your proposal was considered for two funding options!"

Both true. But can't I have also just flat out earned it? Is it inconceivable that my proposal was actually good and that NSF thought that I had the intellecual merit and the broader impacts that all the other fellowship recipients did, male or female, undergraduate or graduate, from MIT or from some tiny school in the south?

I am thankful that NSF tries to make things fair and I think that's good. And I know that people saying this to me mean nothing by what they're saying, but it feels like they're trying to explain away any of my effort and attribute the award to qualifications I really had no control over. It's just irritating to have worked really hard for something and to have that work totally discounted.

The end.

I think this is wonderful.

http://www.blogher.com/2009-swimsuit-brigade-honest-photos-0

I'm even considering participating. I believe so strongly that every person should have the right to feel comfortable in his or her own body.

Dealing with body image is such a terrible game to play. The solution is not to buy better clothes, get a makeover, pamper yourself, or even to lose weight. I'm fifty pounds lighter than five years ago, and honestly, I think I'm more self-conscious now than I was then. I've resolved to not speak badly about my body and to not encourage or allow that kind of conversation around my friends. And overall, I really am okay with how I look and how healthy I am. But somewhere in my mind there is still this image that I measure myself against, and I end up scolding myself for eating cookies, skipping the workout when I'm sick, or drinking a soda. Recently I have realized that this is stupid, and that the image I'm comparing myself to it's an impossible image for the way my body is built.

One of the things I enjoy the most about going to the gym is seeing the variety of people who are there. When I'm working out I watch people. Not in a creepy stalker way, just in a this is what real people look like kind of way. There are old people and young people, people smaller than me, people bigger than me, muscular people, frail-looking people, stick-thin people and people with curves. And I don't think any less or any more of any of them for their appearance. This is the best kind of therapy for the impossibility that exists in my mind--seeing other people and telling myself that these are real people, not the sickly, atrophied preteen-esque people living in the media and in my head, and that I don't view them any differently for their appearances, so other people probably don't view me differently either.

bedtime. on a related note, this was also heartwarming (warning, the model is covered but only wearing her underwear).

resolutions

In my week of doing pretty much nothing, there are some things I've decided I want to accomplish this fall.

1) Be better to the environment. Stop using ziploc bags when tupperware will work. Reuse things if posssible. Pay attention and choose the items with less packaging. Recycle more. Take public transit if possible. Conserve energy and water.

2) Read while in school. Surely I can handle a couple books alongside schoolwork.

3) Memorize more scripture. I'd like to finish memorizing Colossians and make good progress into Romans 8.

4) Volunteer somewhere, if school doesn't kill me.

5) Be involved on campus in something non-computer science related, possibly a campus ministry or an intramural sport.

6) Go to bed early and get up early so that I can use my time more effectively.

7) Read scripture better and deeper, not as a half-hearted bedtime story.

I think that's it for now...

first day in the lab

Pretty uneventful. I met a few new people. Toni, Amy, Yvon(ne?) and I ate lunch together. I set up my desk, which I think is cute, but I forgot to put pictures up of it. Got my parking permit, turned in my final transcript, helped take apart a couple tables, filled out more paperwork, worked a bit on my personal website.

I think the most eventful thing that happened, though, was early this morning. I was leaving for campus right at 9 this morning with my hands full of stuff to go to the lab. It was raining a little and I had just got to my car outside my apartment when I saw this woman walking across the parking lot, barefoot, carrying her shoes, in soaking wet clothes, and crying. She asked me if I was headed to the university, and I said yes. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said no, hesitated, and then sobbing, told me to go to school and finish my degree because life on drugs wasn't good.

I asked her if I could do anything for her, she said no. I asked if I could pray with her and she said she'd let me, so I did. Then she left, seemed in a hurry to get somewhere. But I just felt so much compassion towards her.

I've been thinking about the nature of addiction, bondage, and sin lately. Last night I had decided to start working on memorizing all of Romans 8. I had been working on the first three verses this morning:

"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do." Romans 8:1-3a, ESV

Sin's nature is interesting and counterintuitive. Paul explained it in Romans 7, talking about how he's constantly doing what he doesn't want to do because of the sinful nature that's living within him. He knows what the law is. He knows what choices he should make, yet he fails to do them. It's a predicament, but his triumphant statement ending that chapter makes it clear that Jesus delivers us from that slavery. Those three verses then follow, assuring us of God's grace towards us and reminding us of our purchased freedom that allows us to serve Christ instead of our sinful nature. Is that grace and freedom a license to sin more? No (cf Romans 6). But it is an assurance that in the end, our sins are fully covered by the blood of a perfect Savior, and no one stands to condemn us.

Sin is a terrible thing. It is a lie, convincing people to choose things that will never satisfy in place of the infinitely good. It breaks relationship between people. It breaks relationship with God. It enslaves and leaves people barefoot in parking lots crying their eyes out, or confessing things to their loved ones that break hearts, or with a hopeless medical diagnosis, and ultimately, in a torturous eternity separate from their Creator.

It is absolutely incredible that God shows us grace and offers to rescue us from our own devastating tendencies. I am very thankful because I know that not a whole lot separates me from the woman I was talking to this morning. I want to get better at understanding sin and reacting properly to it, not with indifference or pride, but with compassion, anger, and mercy in proper proportions.