Motivation

Or maybe I should title it "Motivation, or lack there of"

I know that productivity comes in waves and that in graduate school especially there are times where you are super productive and inspired to do work ... and then there are other times where a whole lot of nothing gets done ... but for the past month (or well probably the past three months, but i traveled a lot for two of those months, so i didn't feel guilty about being unproductive) I've been following this downward spiral of nothingness and the deeper I fall the harder it is to find my way out ... in other words I don't really have anything to work on ... and I need to figure something out ASAP otherwise I am never going to get anywhere ...

Anyway to accomplish "figuring out what to do with my academic/social life" I have decided to do a bit of spring cleaning ... 

In the next 24 hrs I plan to:

1) Clean my office (I am almost done there)

2) Clean my car (including washing and vacuuming the inside)

3) Clean my house (including scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen floors, vacuuming the carpets and laundry)

4) Get my hair cut (10 am tomorrow morning)

5) Meeting with my advisor to work on some sort of "figure out Rachel's PhD topic" plan ... ugh

Anyway, maybe tomorrow if i start the day out with a clean house, clean car, and clean office AND I have clean clothes and a new haircut ... i'll actually be productive ... but no matter what I am sure that i will fell less Blah :)

a whole new level

Today I have reached a whole new level of pathetic ...

I am currently drinking half a bottle of coke that has been sitting on my desk since yesterday ... I left said bottle of coke open all night/day and just now I thought "it sure is a good idea for me to drink this gross coke" ... and you know what ... it tastes pretty darn good and its not even flat!!!

What has graduate school done to me that I think its ok to drink the random things left open on my desk ... days after they have first been opened???

also

If you are looking for some good newish (and by newish i mean less than 10 years old, haha) music I suggest you check out "Sun Kil Moon" .... AMAZING.  That is what I am listening to right now, and I am somewhat in love :)

Changes

I have decided that I hate this blog, and I hate blogging and I suck at it ... so from this point forward i am going to try and keep a written journal that is for my eyes only I guess and I will probably be posting here even less than I already do ... everyone of you who read my blog are also my facebook friends ... so on occasion I might post something here rather than on facebook ... but as you already know, I am obsessed with facebook ... maybe i'll just delete this blog soon.

Anyway, if you really want to know/care/are interested in what's going on in my life, I am more than willing to share ... why not send me an email or an IM sometime or even more amazingly, why don't you give me a call and invite me to get coffee with you or go to the movies.  This blog is a poor substitute for real friendship ... and, well I suck at maintaining it

  

I no longer want to be part of why you never get any work done ... and I would rather have real conversations with all of you who read this silly thing  

That being said ... i love reading all of your blogs (laura, amy, anna etc ...) and I love that I get to know you better in your blogs ... If i was better about posting about my life ... or if i didn't feel pathetic about posting what i really want to talk about (things like my desire to loose weight, or to find a boyfriend) than maybe my blog would be more interesting/honest/good ... but instead I post stupid things and I never really talk about my life and i just feel lame for a) having this thing at all and b) never every posting anything of substance

I guess what I am trying to say is that I am much much much more interesting in person than I am in this blog ... and I am sick of trying to be something that I am not ... aka someone who is organized enough to keep up a coherent blog and is a good enough writer to not feel worried that one of you is out there judging me for my crappy writing/grammar skills.

wow .... what a rant ... :)  

Anyway, its been fun i guess :)

PS don't be surprised if I take this post down in a few days and start blogging again ... maybe one day i'll actually figure out this crap. 

Rachel Needs

So I am a little obsessed with these facebook chain letter things that have been going around ... but i am sick of posting them on facebook ... especially since I learned that facebook now OWNS everything we post on facebook ... even if we delete our accounts. So here goes another chain ... 

The Instructions:

Do a Google search for "YourName needs" -- including the quotes.  In my case, I searched for "Rachel needs".  Then list the first ten

Rachel needs to refer to Web sites, manuals, and a variety of documentation.

Rachel needs 2 get over herself and she needs 2 do it Now

Rachel needs guidance and normal supervision 

Rachel needs your Help

Rachel needs to have blush that is very bright and colorful

Rachel needs bearded dudes

Rachel needs bigger car seats

Rachel needs help when she enters Manhattan's meat-packing district to help three transvestites

RACHEL NEEDS US

Rachel needs to join the Original Jyter's Group

Israel in a nutshell ...

I had a crazy January ... this post might be a little long/incoherent, but here is my trip to NYC and Israel in brief :)

Monday 1/5 - Fly to NYC, drink beer with college friends, eat cheap falafel (yum!)

Tuesday 1/6 - CMMAP team meeting, dinner at Grand Sichuan Chinese, drink beer with CMMAP gradstudents, find this amazing piece of"art" on the wall of Peculier Pub that only truly dorky atmospheric scientists can really love :) 

Wednesday 1/7 - CMMAP team meeting, teaching Climate Change course impromptu meeting, visit the NY Public Library, dinner at Otto with gradstudents, followed by

 what might be considered a poor life decision :)

Thursday 1/8 - CMMAP team meeting, visit Natural History Museum, Visit the Studio Museum in Harlem (i've been wanting to go there for years), eat at Katz Deli (yum!)

Friday 1/9 - run around NYC like a crazy person looking for a converter for a 3-prong Grounding Adapter (because my electrical converter only works with a two prong plug, and my laptop only has a three prong plug), Kate decides very last minute to leave the meetin

g early (this occurs during a somewhat awkward lunch with Kate) , I spend the next 3-4hrs on the phone trying to figure out what I am going to do (To travel around Israel alone or not???) ugh, get on a plane and fly to Frankfurt ... meet cool Peruvian guy who is studying in Germany.

Saturday 1/10 - Land super early in Frankfurt, freak out about my credit card that stopped working (ugh), go through extra special security for Israel, fly to Israel (where I sleep on the plane ... wonderful!) Land in Israel,  meet up with some students from the meeting and take the shuttle to Jeruslaem, too tired to understand what the Shabbat elevator means (oops), eat cheap Schuarma (or kebab), PASS OUT. 

Sunday 1/11 - Tour Old City of Jerusalem with Kate ... see some amazing stuff (check out my pictures here), dinner with people from the meeting (amazing and vegetarian and can i just say amazing), have a horrible nights sleep and feel super super crappy ... note - don't take naps when you are jet lagged ... you will screw yourself over :(

Monday 1/12 - Wake up at 2 am with horrible headache ... ugh, worry a whole lot about traveling after the meeting, but decide to suck it up and be brave and stay in Israel (the best decision ever), feel like a zombie through the entire first day of the meeting (and kinda wishing i was dead), meet some totally awesome students/people, reception after the meeting, take sleeping pills and CRASH

Tuesday 1/13 - cloud day at the meeting (aka, rachel actually knows whats going on :)), pretty boring poster session, work on summary of d. hartmann's talk for the next day (finally not jet lagged)

Wednesday 1/14 - Half day at the meeting, take horrible weird tour of Ein Kerem with the worst tour guide ever, beers at the hotel bar (which appears to also be a dating spot for religious jews in Jerusalem, cute!)

    

Thursday 1/15 - Full day at the meeting, send 

post cards to friends/family after lunch (where I am totally ripped off by the post office ... weird), visit the old city at night with the Germans :), amazing dinner with people from the meeting, actually get to talk to K. Emanuel 

Friday 1/16 - Full day at the meeting, tour Jerusalem with Diana and get to see some pretty cool things, visit the Western Wall at the start of Schabbat (which is amazing and powerful, but also kinda weird), dinner at a pretty good restaurant, beers at a local bar, walk home:)

Saturday 1/17 - Visit the Dead Sea and Masada with the Germans and Zan ... rather crappy tour guide, but pretty awesome places to see :)

Sunday 1/18 - Head to the old city with Tasmanians, visit the Temple Mount, then tour the City of David in the afternoon. 

Monday 1/19 - Head home starting at 2am ... sit at the airport and watch security go though all of my luggage (dirty underwear and all) by hand for two hours ... finally get on the plane.  When I land in denver, find out that my building has been sold and that my new landlord does not think that I paid my rent (UGH), thankfully Anna picked me up from the airport ... and I worked everything out with my landlord

So pretty much that was my January in a nutshell ... this post is probably more for me, than for you, but I thought that I would share :)

2009 and more

I've been inspired by Anna's most recent blog post ... I too have about a million things that I want to accomplish this year.  Before moving to Colorado, I always thought that it was silly that people made "bucket lists" or "everything I want to do before I die" lists, but now that I have been living here for a few years, and hanging out with all the crazy people i've met in CO ... I have about a million different lists.  Some things are of course completely impractical ... others are maybe things that I could actually get done this year if I put my mind to it ... the real problem that I face is that there are too many things in the world that I want to do and not enough time or money ... argh

So here is a list of things that I want to accomplish this year ... they are subdivided into work and play 

Work

1.  Figure out my PhD research ... hopefully i'll find something that I am passionate about again :)

2. Finish my prelims ... and pass :)

3. Become more involved with local climate change issues 

4. Stay involved in drought issues even if I stop studying drought academically ... 

5. Teach a 4 week course on climate change at Colorado College

6. Teach a 4 week course on IDL ... can someone say BORING???

7. Make and maintain academic relationships outside of CSU ... to help in the act of getting a real job one day :)

Play

1. Run a half marathon

2. Start enjoying yoga, again

3. Visit Laura in Australia and do something crazy while I am there ... :)

4. Visit Marie in Denmark!

5. Take spanish language classes and stop being scared of speaking to people in spanish

6. Go on a real date ... with someone I actually like ... who is not unhealthy for me

7. Start actually backpacking with Michelle :) (or whoever wants to go with me)

8. Finally hike up Longs Peak

9. Be able to ski blues comfortably, and blacks with only a little bit of fear :)

Ok so thats probably enough ... other things that I would like to do in the not so distant future include ...

1. Climb Kilimanjaro

2. Be able to climb 5.10 outside ... and not be freaked out by leading

3. Go to Peru 

4. Move to a developing country and work with kids ... teaching etc.  

Things I should be doing

First of all I would like to say that I am extremely tired ... despite getting a whole lot of sleep.

List of things I should be accomplishing at the moment:

1) Planning for the IDL course I am teaching in a few weeks

2) Planning for the climate change course that I am teaching in a couple of months

3) Figuring out what my PhD research is going to be about

4) Preparing for meeting with Jonathan Overpeck on Thursday

5) Planning for my trip to Australia!!!

6) Blogging about my trip to Israel so that I actually remember it someday ... 

List of things that I am actually doing at the moment

1) Obsessing about cute boys

2) Facebook stalking

3) Buying used books online

4) Spending obscene amounts of money on material goods 

5) Blogging about stupid things like this

6) looking up recipes

and the list could go on.

I hate when I am incapable of  being productive, but I come to work anyway and sit here wasting away the day ... I would probably be better of at home reading a good book and going for a run or something, but instead I waste my life procrastinating on the internet ... ugh :(

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