Rain, rain go away….please?

As many residents of Oregon do, I suffered from the winter blues. Whether you call it SAD (Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder) or simple a hibernation instinct I find the rainy season particularly difficult to handle on any year. This year, however, I am finding it particularly tough. After an entire year without seeing winter (I left for Australia in October and returned in March) I feel the cold and the inescapable wet as an almost physical weight on both mind and body. I don’t want to do anything except eat, sleep, take hot baths, and sleep some more. However, I must go to school, play with the dog, cuddle the cat (best done while napping though) and perform other seemingly pointless chores every day. How do I do this? Honestly some days I dont. I stay in my pajamas, I drink lots of tea and cocoa and I play video games if I am not napping or bathing. (Some times I think I should grow gills the amount of time I spend in the tub.) Previous years I have battled the blues by retreating to that haven of warmth and skin cancer known as the tanning salon. Peter has made me promise that I will save my skin and future health by ceasing that uplifting practice. So I have replaced it with workout at least once a week (twice or more is best) and sitting in the sauna in the women’s locker room when I am done.

On the plus side, the complete lack of any desire to go outside has given me many long days in the office working on school and research. I have come up with a couple of good ideas and gotten some rather good experiments run.

So, how do you deal with the rainy season?

Fall Visit

I started writing this in early October and here it’s the middle of November and I am just now getting around to finishing it. As most of my post seem to have been lately this one is about Peter’s visit. Of course there will soon be another because I pick him from the airport the 13th.

On the trip photoed below however we had a rare bit of leisure time before the term started so we decided to take a road trip. We drove up to Seattle and spent two days exploring and eating. We then adjourned to Bellingham to visit my step-brother and his partner. We had a lovely time, taking a walk and cycling downtown for some dinner and beer. Since Erik and Erin had plenty of bikes we used theirs. This little mini cycle instilled an unholy lust in me  for a cycle-cross bike. Light weight, agile and fast but still sturdy enough to jump curbs and use tires suited to mild gravel I want one of these bikes like I have seldom wanted anything. It only made it worse to take one on a test ride from Corvallis Cyclery.  Back to the visit. Deciding that another trip down I-5 was a terrible idea we detoured through Mount Saint Helen’s Naitonal Park on the way home and drove all the way to the crater lookout. Then down to I-84 and back to I-5. While this is a gorgeous drive I don’t recommend trying to do it all in one day like we did. We were exhausted for days. The visit was rounded out with Fall Festival in Corvallis and the great band Stairway Denied.

Peter Pets the Pike St Pig

Arwen and Pike Pig

WTF? A wall covered in gum?

Flying Pig!

Thpppppppp!

Peter, Peter Pumice Picker

Part way up Helens

Corvallis Fall Festival

Adventures with Pete and Beach BBQ

Peter joined mother and I on what is becoming a yearly tradition. Picking blueberries at Radke’s Farm. The Radke’s keep their bushes tall and luxuriant so even when it is sunny you are picking in the shade. Peter and picked 17.25 pounds and then helped mom finish off her 20 pounds. Peter was astounded at how cheap the berries were. A pint in Australia is about $8 AU, we paid 1.25 per pound. They are happily living in my freezer now.

Our goal this visit was to do some hiking that we had been unable to get to. My grandmother also requested that I come and help her with some computer tasks so we loaded up and headed over to Bend. Both Peter and I love Bend and were more than happy to go visit. I taught grandma how to take apart and clean her computer and made some changes to her login so it was easier and faster for her to use. We also took a lovely walk with her along the Deschutes River. On our route home we spontaneously decided to take the Old McKenzie Pass Hwy and saw some lovely scenery, hiked to Proxy falls and stopped for lunch at Scott Lake. My goal was to hike to Tamolitch Pool, which I hadn’t been to in years, so we stopped and did that as well. All in all we did about 8 miles that day.

Peter gave my Volkswagen Rabbit, The Bunny, a bath before he left and it looked wonderful, at least until I drove it down the dusty gravel road I live on

He left Sunday the 23rd of Aug and settled back into research. However, Mom-two (my stepmother Judy who earned the title Mom-two by being remarkably patient and loving to her newly acquired 14 year old pain in the ass step daughter) called to say that my step-siblings, Eric and Anna, would be arriving at the coast with Eric’s girlfriend of many years (who I hadn’t met yet) and my 2 1/2 year niece (who I also hadn’t met). My brother, Dana and Rhiannon also arrived and we had a beach bbq of Tuna steaks (DELICIOUS!), Oysters (MMMM), salad and marshmallows. It was lovely to see them all. Erin (other half of Eric) is wonderful and Savannah (Anna’s daughter) was also amazing.

Now I returned to research again and it is going quite well. I have ferreted out some bugs in my algorithm implementation and have high hopes of having pretty graphs to show Tom on Friday! Peter returns the 20th of Sept for 2.5 weeks and we are planning a road trip from Bellingham, Wa to Long Creek, Or.

Enjoy the photos. More on the flikr site.

Pete with blueberries

My blueberries

Mommo picking blueberries

Purple hands

Cost of Blueberries

Peter at Scott Lake

Observatory on Old McKenzie Hwy

Peter in front of Mt Washington

View from Old Mckenzie Observatory

Quinn at Scott Lake

Log scrambling

Big falls Little me

Creek through forest

no tripod

Me at Tamolitch Pool

Pete at Tamolitch Pool

Tamolitch Pool

Tamolitch Pool

Tamolitch Pool

Clean Bunny

Eric Shucking Oysters hot off the coals

Joy, Elation and Simple Happiness

Friday August 7th 2009 was a combination of tiredness and excitation. Tiredness: trying to get research, studying and cleaning done in preparation for Peter’s arrival. Excitation: Peter arriving on Saturday! It was also Katie’s birthday dinner at Block 15. I was seriously considering bailing out on the dinner part and just joining them at Katie’s house later but I really enjoy going out with my friends and, after all, it was Katie’s birthday so I made the tedious drive back into Corvallis to celebrate. As we were all sitting in the game room waiting for tables to open up for us Katie mischievously said, “Arwen, I know this is weird but would you put this blindfold on?”. For those of you who don’t know Katie and my other friends this was a reasonable request that in the past had been followed by grownup pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, so I donned my blindfold and sat, with mounting anxiety (who knows what they were going to do to me!). I heard some shuffling around and then……. (the suspense was killing me too!)

Someone took my hands and in a voice laden with love and nervousness said, “Arwen Twinkle Lettkeman, Will you marry me?” I tore off my blindfold, my own voice rather shaky, “Peter? Yes!” and threw myself into his arms not really believing that he was there (with my near legendary waterworks weeping away). After a minute or two I realized that he had brought a ring (I think he mentioned it because I could only see him). It was, without exaggeration, the ring of my dreams. Elegant, simple and indulgent; a tension set brilliant cut diamond (of nearly ostentatious size) in platinum. To satisfy the geek in both of us he had arranged to propose to me at 6:00pm August 7th 2009 which, in the style of the rest of the world, is 6pm 7/8/09.

My Perfect Ring

How did he do it?!?! I looked over his shoulder and saw my mother (in tears of course) looking on. Peter had doctored his itinerary so I thought he was arriving a day later and arranged with my mother to pick him up (though he didn’t tell her he was proposing until he got to LA). He and Katie had been in cahoots for quite some time, arranging the surprise to take place at her “birthday dinner”, discussing the ring and generally generating loving mischief. I had been feeling that Katie was upset with me for a couple of weeks because she had seemed rather distant, come to find out she was trying to keep the secret! He knows how I loved to be surprised and I am thrilled to discover that he can do it so well.

So that’s the Joy and Elation part! The simple happiness part is just being with him and knowing we are going to spend our lives together. The frustration part comes from the question that inevitably follow our announcement:

“When is the wedding? Where will it be?”

The wedding will not be until next year, probably after February, maybe not until June because I still have coursework to complete. We have decided to do a ceremony here (for all my friends and family to attend) and has a smaller one there that will be the legal ceremony (seems to make immigration easier that way). Peter is not as overwhelmed with excitement about the actually wedding as I am but Katie is throwing herself into the breach and will do all the silly girly planning stuff that we both love.

Ostentatious

Passing Time

[UPDATE] One of my friends just messaged me because this post sounds sound. On rereading I have to agree it does make me sound a bit depressed, which wasn’t exactly what I was going for. I was more just reflecting on how changeable emotions are. Also, Pete requested a post about how much I love him because he’s been giving the blog address to some friends and family. Life in general is good. I have up days and blah days. I wrote this on a blah day but it wasn’t a bad day. So thank you dear friend for taking time to check!

Have you ever looked forward to something so much that ever day just seems like you are passing time until it happens? I returned from Australia middle of July and since then every day has just seemed like a trail to get through until Peter arrives here for his next visit. Some may think that we are talking about waiting month but sadly it’s only about 3.5 weeks. 3.5 of the slowest weeks I’ve ever lived through….since the last time I was waiting for him to get here. We are lucky that he is in a position to be able to visit me so regularly. Most couples when faced with the mass of the earth being between would either resign themselves to yearly visits or sadly resign themselves to the inevitable conclusion of breaking off their relationship. Some days and some weeks are harder than others, video chatting over skype helps immensely, except when it makes it worse. Being able to see and hear someone, they feel so close but they aren’t. I worry that something will happen to one or the other of us and how would the other find out?

In order to pass the time I work on my PhD (which feels like an infinite loop of non-progress and lack of drive at times). As many of you know I am in machine learning (related to artificial intelligence) and specifically its applications to ecological problems. Currently I am trying to make the software I’ve written for my experiments scale up from working on a few thousand problems (standard dataset size) to a few billion in order to be able to make predictions across an entire satellite map of a region (specifically Victoria, Australia).

I also spend a lot of time at home with my pets, or out with friends. Occasionally I get to hang out with my brother, sister-in-law and niece. Today, my brother being entangled in an act of good Samaritan for a kids broken down car, I took my niece and Quinn to play in the small river near my house. I had forgotten how endlessly I could play in water when I was young. I loved nothing more than exploring streams, splashing diving and generally doing a pretty good otter impression, Rhiannon is similar.  I got some lovely shots of her playing and posted them to my flikr page. If you haven’t already been there you should take a look: Arwen’s Flikr Page

On other days I find myself sinking into a strange malaise from which I seem unable to rise. I get tired, sad and unable to focus. I’m cnovinced that something will go wrong with Peter and I, I have somehow offended my friends or that my dog is looking even more reproachful for her lack of walk than normal. Most of the time I pull myself out of these funks quite well but some days I revel in feeling sorry for myself. It must be a personality flaw, I think I’ll go back to playing with my niece

Vacation in Oz

Recently I gave up 3 weeks of glorious Oregon summer to visit Peter in Australia.  Though Peter has been here twice already every time he comes he loses work so this time I went to visit him. The only negative to this situation is that the point is to allow him to continue working, therefore I also worked. In reality it wasn’t bad. Matt and Graeme kindly allowed me to occupy desk space while I was there and almost everyone I know works at ARI. It was wonderful to be back in the lab and be able to visit with them. Garreth (and Kylie) had returned from their adventure in Africa and Europe, Dave was there as was Matt and Graeme. I got to go out at least once with everyone except Dave , maybe next time.

Winter in Melbourne is not a hardship. While cold, the sun still shines, plants still bloom and little jeweled birds still fly around. My first morning I was woken by the chortling of the magpies which I had missed a great deal. I even got a cycle in.

I finally met Peter’s family and they are lovely wonderful people. His parents are both Dutch and have rather thick accents but with careful listening I did quite while understanding them. Perhaps I will undertake to learn yet another language. (Or at least the basics). I have a smattering of French, German and Spanish already, enough at least to ask for directions, say please and thank you and read basic directions. We bonded over happiness that Peter was selling his motorbike

We spent one lovely weekend taking a romantic trip along the great ocean road. Staying in a wonderful Inn in Point Lonsdale and a little cottage in Port Fairy.  Later in the week we went to the Natural History Museum. I have included a gallery of images from the trip below.

I am now home and finally over the jet lag. Trying to get back to work, though I only took about a week off of research total so it’s not too bad.

Peter @ Point Lonsdale

Southern Ocean

Pete + Touareg = <3

Drive on the Left!

The 12 Apsotles and Arwen

Peter

12 Apostles

Loch Ard Gorge

Shellducks @ Tower Hill

Emu @ Tower Hill

Me birding at Tower Hill

Tower Hill overlook

Peter and I

Pete’s Last Ride

Female Bower Bird @ museum atrium

Peter playing @ Museum

Blurry Eucalypt pods

Crested Pigeon

Catching Up

It’s been a month since I posted but it like an eternity.  What has been going on since Mother’s Day you ask?

First Peter came to visit for two and a half glorious weeks.  Sadly I was still in classes we didn’t get to do much traveling. However, we did join my Grandmother, Mother and Gene on a birding trip through Malheur National Wildlife Reservation. It was gorgeous and well infested with mosquitoes. I saw many new birds, such as the Yellow Headed Blackbird and Bobolink. The drive out there from Corvallis was agony but worth it. On our way home we spent a night in Bend at my Grandmother’s so we could have a leisurely trip through the McKenzie pass with lots of exploration stops.

Yellow Headed Blackbird

Cinnamon Teal

Family Portrait

Me with Hard Cider @ St Francis School in Bend

Peter and I in front of the Three Sisters

Peter and I at Sahalie Falls

After Peter left school became my main focus and nearly overwhelmed me. At one point I nearly decided to take my master’s and hot foot it back to Australia but good sense prevailed. I will stick it out though I retain some bitter, angry feelings about it.

Now that the term is finally done I will turn back to my long forgotten research in hopes that I will have something to publish by the end of the summer! Tomorrow I return to Australia for a 3 week vacation but will spend some time at ARI working and chatting with my dear Aussie friends that I have missed terribly.

Now, I just have to pack.

Mother’s Day Weekend

As hopefully none of you forgot, today was Mother’s Day. My mommo drove over from Long Creek Friday to spend the weekend with me as time together is far more affordable, and more precious, than a gift. We had a great time and even got to take some pictures. The following is short set of photos of what we did.

Tulips at the Corvallis Saturday Farmers Market

Eastern Cotton. Native and cute unlike the evil invasive bunnies of Australia.

Killdeer at Finley Wildlife Refuge protecting its corner of the parking lot

Hi! I’m an alpaca what are you? Wanna play?

I stuck my face in a bucket of cream.

Follow the Leader

You have treats? Be right there!

This is my mommy. Happy Mother’s Day!

Wow, you’re bigger than me

Melancholy

When I was more involved in my own musicality I took a few classes ranging from Music Appreciation to History of Music. In one of those classes I first heard of the Doctrine of Ethos. A simple explanation (lifted from Guitar Press) is that the doctrine “describes the effects of sound on human behavior and therefore its moral influence. Aristotle, in his Politics, explains how the different kinds of music, imitating specific feelings (anger, kindness, love), can affect a human being with the same kind of feelings. Therefore, says Aristotle, someone who listens to the wrong kind of music will grow up to a bad person, and vice-versa. Consequently, Aristotle (and also Plato) recommended the right kind of music in the education of young citizens.” In other words, the idea that music can effect a change of mental state. Knowing I paid attention to my emotional state to different music and quickly realized the truth in it. Heavy Metal and Punk Rock (both of which I was a fan of at the time) made me angry, rebellious, reckless and generally unpleasant. Since this wasn’t really how I wanted to feel I quit listening to music that put me in that frame of mind.

However, some nights, such as tonight, I am feeling a little melancholy and I leverage the doctrine in order to wallow to my hearts content, feeling sorry for myself, lonely and sad to the accompaniment of some over dramatic emo folk music. I know that it’s probably not healthy but at it is cathartic.

So next time you are feeling blue listen to them! Are you happy? Nothing suits that better than poppy upbeat Irish traditional or Irish rock. Feeling particularly dramatic? If your leanings are towards opera then try any number of quirky female artists. As for me, tonight I am tucking into a glass of wine, a stack of machine learning papers and an IPod full of Kate Heidke-Miller. A quirky female vocalist that has tendencies towards the melancholy with enough perky tunes to keep me smiling in a sad sort of way.

Vineyards and Love

Love. Such an important word in our lives. Our parents teach us how to feel it and instill in us that it is an emotion for family. Our first tentative forays into the hormone laden world of the opposite sex taught us that it is heartache and embarrassment, a subject for notes passed in class and sweaty palmed middle school dances. As young adults  we “fall” in love as if it were a bottomless pit of drama and end of the world ends. At some point we mature and realize that it is for family, and it does come with drama and heartache but hopefully we discover that it is a wonderful emotion that can make our worlds brighter and happier. Many of us have had failed relationships. I myself have suffered the end of a marriage and it hurts and you feel like a failure. At some point though you discover that love is best in the form of friends. This I discover all over again every time my friends do wonderful caring things for each other.

My friends surprised me with a lovely birthday dinner. All of them. It was amazing and moving and I felt humbled that these dear, lovely people took the Friday evening and assembled just to wish me love on my 30th birthday. We ate and drank and I generally wallowed in the good feeling that, for the first time as an adult, I had a group of people that cared for me and would be there if I needed them. People that would call me if they needed help and would extend the same hand towards me should I need it. Thank you, all of you.

Two of these treasures, Will & Katie,  gave me, as a present, a tour of some of the Willamette Valley’s vineyards. They knew that I had developed a new appreciation for wine while dropping into the wonderful vineyards of Australia and offered to take Peter and I on a whirlwind driving trip, with designated driver, up the valley. Our first stop was Orchard Heights, it was….an experience. Peter bought a bottle though I wasn’t sure why. The tasting room was a cross between a senior center tea room and a tourist trap kitsch shop. The wine was unmemorable. The next stop, Cubanisimo, was evey thing the first was not. The tasting room was classy on a cuban theme. The tasting itself was well directed and energetic and the wine was heavenly. Will & Katie gifted me with a lovely bottle of 2008 Rosado de Pinot Noir perfect for drinking with fruit and sunshine while lounging in the grass. We visited 5 vineyards in all and wound up quite merry in the end. Peter started a cellar for his visits to this side of the planet consisting of several bottles of chardonnay, pinot noir and cuvee. The only difficulty was in finding a meal. It was too early in the season for most of the vineyards to be serving food. However, we finally discovered the Ashes Cafe in Amity. Peter was delighted with experiencing such a piece of Americana, they rest of us were wary. The food wound up being delicious greasy spoon fare with amazing milkshakes and pie to die for.

It was a bitter sweet day in one respect. It was the last day that Peter was here. He impulsively, and quite romantically, spent over 20 hours on a plane to be with me for my birthday and today I took him back to the airport. I am terribly lonely for him already. Having him here was wonderful. I got to show him around a bit and he got to experience my normal life. Since I was in classes all week we didn’t do much exploring but he wore out his shoes wandering all over town. May 14th seems so far away but that is when he will return, and for 2 1/2 weeks!

So love is the theme for the week. Love for my family who is always there for each other, love for my wonderful friends who make my life richer and love for Pete. And maybe some love for wines, vineyards and the people who run them.