Operation Bravo Alpha Marriage commencing.

Just bought plane tickets, my fiance and I will be back in our hometown for 8 days of nuptial excitement. Now we get a month to figure out what couches we're surfing on. We're almost definitely staying at my mom's on day one, but everything else is up in the air right now.

It's kind of cool, because even though we are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too poor for our honeymoon right now - we're okay with waiting a while to do it, considering all the stuff that's been going on - going back home is a nice mini-vacation.

NCUR Summation

Currently on the train back from NCUR, and it's a real relief. The last week or so has been all sorts of rollercoaster.

Last Monday I had to catch the train from Seattle to Minneapolis, which is easy enough in theory. In practice, my fiance and I forget about Seattle's unique rush hour and then go to the wrong train station. One of the main downtown public transit stations is right next to the Amtrak station, so I ran as fast I could to the fancier station only to find that I had to haul my bright pink suitcase 200 yards back to the crumbling Amtrack depot.

One major lesson I learned about Amtrak last week: It is many things, but it is not fancy.

Also, bring your own food. Otherwise you can expect an extra 40 dollars on your travel costs and some serious concern for your G.I. tract. Seriously, the stuff's nastiness is completely untamed by train's microwaves.

I ended up getting to the station after the train was sealed up, but I was able to beg my way on in the nick of time. Then a tree hit the train. I always thought that trees were stationary, but apparently that's not the case in Montana. Duct taping / Repairing the damage to the train tacked on another three hours to the original 36, and subsequent delays had us rolling into MSP about an hour after my plane had taken off for New York. The tree also messed up a phone interview I was supposed to have on the train by stopping the train in one of Montana's numerous black holes of cellular service. Luckily, my school had also chartered a second plane I was able to sneak on and the tutoring agency accepts malicious trees as an excuse for missing an appointment. I made it safe and sound to my hotel and probably get to look forward to tutoring high schoolers struggling to stay afloat.

After all I'd gone though to get to the conference, I decided I needed to make the most of it, though I found that was harder than it seemed. To give you an idea, Ithaca college is roughly the size of wow and the buildings tend to look like the future. With over a thousand attendees, the oral presentations had to be held during class in multiple buildings. This made it challenging to pick and choose what speeches I wanted to see, as they were usually far apart and congested with both presenters and normal Ithaca students. I ended up running around a lot more than I should have in dress clothes trying to bounce between social science, criminal science, and biology presentations. Occasionally, the presentations were too packed to get in (strangely, that happened a lot with the criminal science presentations) so I had time to check out the art exhibits or the gym that had about 60 posters being presented at any given time. Honestly, the posters may have been my favorite part.

Of all the ways to present something, I think posters are probably the best for undergraduate work. From a reader's perspective, you can easily see if you are going to be interested in what is being presented while having unique access to the researcher. From a presenter's perspective, it allows you the most flexibility to tailor your words to your audience and I think it's a lot more exciting to do. You don't really get any of those benefits with speeches. Most people at an undergraduate conference are going to have very diverse backgrounds and attention spans, even if they do understand what you're saying, they might find out in the first five minutes that they'd rather be listening to someone else. Sadly, this happened a lot for me. If they weren't completely over my head, they were completely under it.

The only reason I tried to go to as many oral presentations that I did was that I'd never really seen any by undergraduate researchers before. Granted, there were also some poster presenters that had to be reeeeel bored. A surprising number of people were either uninteresting or were only presenting preliminary research and planning. I'm really not trying to seem pretentious, but it made me wonder just how far undergraduate research has to go. Maybe it's unfair to compare other's work with my own, but there was at least half a year of hard work backing up my poster. I actually had found something and had something to say. When I wasn't talking about research, I was promoting the trip and the Gilman Scholarship. Most importantly, I still had questions I wanted to answer and was able to learn new possible routes of discovery by talking with my fellow researchers. Perhaps I'm being to critical, but I think if you're flying half-way across the country to a national conference, you should at least have something concrete to show for it.

I'm over it. Besides, there was some pretty awesome work there. One group at the University of Minnesota did a pilot study of a chiropractic remedy for peanut allergy, wherein they found that while the blood chemistry of the subjects (n=6) did not change, they were able to eat peanuts after 6 weeks. Basically, the mechanism of allergic reactions, even anaphylaxis, is more complex than we thought. Another cool project was done by an University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire student who analyzed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and concluded that it was ineffective in smoothing over racial tensions that remained after the end of apartheid. One of my favorite projects was probably the criminal science presentation I saw about the CSI effect and it's apparently negligible effect on jury voting. One of my karate instructors was a prosecutor for my county and he had talked about it as a big concern nowadays, so it was nice to hear that the research indicates that jurors are still voting as they normally do.

Now I'm focusing on getting a job. After three months of nothing, suddenly I've an interview at a restaurant on Friday and I get to call back the people at Best Buy when the train roams out into somewhere where my phone gets service. All this is on top of the tutoring gig, a possible job as a temp lab tech (which I almost certainly would have got if I still lived in River Falls – go figure), and, most interestingly, an opportunity to teach yoga and taichi. A local school put an ad up on craigslist and offered scholarships to anyone who is interested in learning and helping them expand into new areas. That last one might take a while, but I'm seriously excited about it. Not only is a great background for naturopathic medicine, but this is one of those things I've wanted to do in the back of my head for a long while.

Established in Seattle

Quickly coming up on week two in Seattle now. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot that happened since the last post. We're both looking for work, and when my fiancé and I aren't searching the internet for employment, we're combing through thrift stores for things to replace what we left in Wisconsin. Our apartment now has most of the furniture we want, excepting a couple chairs and things that will have to wait until I have a job so that I can pay for materials to build them. Our neighbors are going to think we're building a doomsday device with all the crap I'm planning on doing. It's mostly just shelves, but they might secretly be DOOM SHELVES!

I'm particularly proud of our new sleeper sofa. It's not really interesting or even good looking, there are even a couple of light stains here and there, so it's not the thing itself I'm proud of. My pride resides in how all it's bajillion pounds got into the apartment from 4 miles away and up three flights of stairs. We found it cheap on craigslist, and we also found a guy that hires truck drivers in major U.S. cities to do furniture delivery for cheap as well. Cheap-cheap. It's called Craig's truck and is actually based in Seattle, so I got to meet the owner when he picked me up so I could help him lift the sofa into his truck. He's a bit of mixed bag, and I'm not sure who was more foolish: me for getting into a stranger's van or the stranger who let me get into it. After a conversation that included everything from Christian rap music to the Seattle couch-trade, I determined that we both had definitely made better decisions in our lives, but were both safe acquaintances.

And now we have a couch.

Otherwise...we celebrated pi day a few days ago by making pie. Next year, I think we'll have to only eat food that is circular or has pi in it. Double points for foods like pizza and tillapia (that's been cut into a circle).

Next up: Things to do with the upcoming trip to NCUR.

Post about moving in I meant to do roughly forever ago.

I'm in Seattle now.

The preparation for the trip out here and the trip itself were great ways to wrap in tarp/bury in concrete whatever time my Fiance and I had. Even though we spread the trip out over five days (it was only supposed to be four, more on that later), the stress from it was enough to shrink my appetite and the number of hours I normally sleep in half. It probably would have been easier if we had more than a month prior to get everything packed and shipped out, and it definitely would have been easier if both of us hadn't participated in the River Falls Community Theatre production of Much Ado About Nothing. My soon to be wife was cast as Lenora, a female equivalent to Leonato. I'm engaged, by the way. Been that way for a little more than a year now. She did great, despite the gender-bending and other circumstances of the show. As if moving half-way across the country weren't bad enough, the play was more than a bit of a circus. I won't linger on it, but just to give you an idea, the initial actor playing Verges showed up to all of three rehearsals and was generally useless while he was there. I ended up being re-cast for the part a week before the first show. With the exception of a few high school theatre classes, it was my first time really acting on stage. Hopefully I broke a few legs.

Along with the shortage of time, the weather was very problematic. Wisconsin, in addition to surprisingly large political unrest, was recently hit by some nasty blizzards. This made visiting friends and family before we left difficult. We really weren't keen on crashing into a snowdrift immediately before driving it to Seattle. We did manage to see the majority of people we wanted to see, although not all of them. We'll soon be back in Wisconsin for the wedding and a few other things, so hopefully we'll catch up with them then. Thankfully, we'll get to take the train back. While it won't be as bad in the summer, driving through the mountains is a real challenge during the winter, particularly through Idaho. On the outside, it just looks like funky shaped state full of potatoes. Do not be fooled, as it's primary export is actually death. Idaho is like the Ninja of the United States. It's deceivingly small section of I-90 is dangerously graded and normally racing with semis and secretly-aspiring nascar drivers. We decided that it was bad enough without being covered in snow and ice and so spent another night in our hotel waiting for I-90 to become less terrifying.

P.S.

For some reason, I was also unable or forgot to return almost any of our friends' and family members' possessions that we've borrowed. The right thing to do would be to mail it to them, but that seems counterproductive. I'm sorely tempted to create just one more incentive for people to come visit us.

Presenting-Time.

In roughly an hour and a half, I will present my experiences with study abroad and research to roughly 60 students in Dr. Tim Lyden's Anatomy and Physiology class. I'm a little terrified. It's mostly just excitement that's getting lost somewhere in my throat I think, but I'm nervous either way. Of all the presentations I've done in the past few years, this is the least....research-y.  My normally effervescent nerd-soul will have to be kept on a tight leash, as I'm talking about something besides zebrafish for once. I'll have to whip out all the fancy colloquial words like "ain't" and "nifty".

On a brighter note, my fiance and I have a hotel all set for NCUR. Now we just need plane tickets and the name of a good show on Broadway to go see. AAaaaand a money-tree.

Can I plant this?

More pictures!

Check it out, I finally got some more of these things up.

Where's my reset button?

I've been home for over a week now, and it's a little weird.

A lot of it has less to do with being back and more with getting ready to leave. The last week largely consisted of sending out more job applications and looking for a place to safely pass out in for a week after driving the 28 hours to Seattle. Some might see it as apartment searching, but after the amount of walking, driving, and flying I've done in the past few weeks, as long as the mice don't mind another snuggle-buddy I'll be happy where ever.

Our goal is to get everything squared away by the beginning of March. Between the planning and the worrying and the arguing and the nerve-racking, I'm about one more bout of food poisoning away from ecstasy. At least I think we've got our new apartment nailed down. We sent them money and called dibs. DIBS I SAY.

There's other things that are weird about being back. Even though Taiwan has a lot in common with the States, I've had to readjust to the things I was used to a month ago. Some things, like the floor toilets and the possibility of becoming road pizza whenever I was near a street, have been left behind fairly easily. The floor toilets provided a Great Fun in trying to not fall into them. Other things have taken longer. For instance, now that I'm diligently job searching, I pretty much need a crowbar every time I want some separation from my chair. Being in my apartment for long stretches of the day is very different from my time in Taiwan and being almost constantly on the move. While it was exhausting to travel and do so much, it was by no means boring.  Even when I am successful in rending my behind away from in front of my computer, River Falls provides only so much diversity in locale. It's a far cry from the kaleidoscope of Taiwan's scooter-filled metropolises, murmuring seashores, and wide variety of architecture and local business. 

It sounds strange to me, as I'm more of the "hide in my cave while everyone else has enjoyable interactions" type, but I also miss having a lot of people around. Part of me misses all the people-watching, but I wasn't exclusively a wallflower over there. It's a good thing too. Almost everyone in Taiwan - and there were a lot of them - was nothing but kind and willing to put up with me masticating the Chinese language into a pulp. Even though it was difficult to get our points across, I really enjoyed being around so many people that were as nerdy as I am. I've worked in a lab with other people before, but not with as many people or with as large a set-up as in Taiwan. Adding to the awesome, most of the people we were working with were brilliant. It was a little intimidating at first, as I am neither tri-lingual, bi-lingual, and I don't even have a master's degree, but everyone there was just too generous for my embarrassment to last for long. 

Now, I'm back to my friends who have no qualms with telling me, "I love you, but you need to actually open your mouth when you talk or quit attempting speech with a mouth full of peanut butter" and other sweet nothings regarding how much of a socially-stunted over-achieving dork I am.

Not having a state-wide snow emergency was pretty nice as well. The heaven's picked the exact worst time to dump it's contents on me. I'm having enough trouble accomplishing everything I need to and squeezing in last minute visits with friends before we go due to my job/apartment/figuring out how to move/packing up things. The last thing I need is being blinded by plumes of snow on a frozen highway.

Until the Midwest road system becomes largely dependent on tunnels, I'll have to make do. There's a small mountain of things on my to-do list, including:

• Find a Job.
• Figure out how to ship things to our apartment.
• Finish my research with Dr. Huang.
• Meet with some bio/chem/tech clubs and a few teachers on campus to give presentations of my experiences
• Prepare said presentations
• Prepare a poster for NCUR that combines my last year of work, including the trip to Taiwan.
• Meet up with friends one last time before going out to Seattle (and convince them to come visit)
• Help out in the play my fiancé is currently struggling to keep afloat.

Fun side note: I can make soy milk now, thanks to the tutelage of Dr. Huang's wife.

Also, I totally typed in "globspot" instead of blogspot and think the former is Much better.