Virtually Home

Minnesotans are terrible drivers. Part of the problem seems to be their interstate system, which was evidently designed around the existing Cities and can therefore be mostly forgiven for its windiness and the resulting 55 mph speed limits. What it cannot be forgiven for is the dynamic nature of those speed limits, which can change one lane at a time down to as low as 30 mph. It cannot be forgiven for its propensity to have entrances and exits on both sides of the interstate simultaneously. And it certainly cannot be forgiven for putting all of its entrances within 200 feet of the exits sharing the same lane, so that every quarter mile is a chaotic jumble of cars entering and exiting from both sides onto an interstate with an unknowable speed limit. At least, I think this might be what makes Minnesotans insane. The fact is, Minnesotan drivers run red lights. I'm not talking about lazy, rolling-through-a-yellow type infractions. I'm talking about from-a-dead-stop, turning-left...

Today, I got a haircut from a random stranger. This was weird for me, since most of my life I've had my hair cut by the same person, from 1995 to 2012. It ended badly. Not only did she blow-dry and straighten my hair just moments after I finished explaining that I never used blow-driers or straighteners, but she also cut about four inches more than I asked her to. It made me miss my old hair dresser. I find myself in need of a new doctor and dentist as well, and, for the first time in my life, don't have a family referral for a good one. I really hope I don't end up with a physician as bad as that stylist. The consequences could be much more severe.

When I moved to Saint Paul, I was terrified that my life was going to turn out like this song by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. It's about a girl who graduates from college at age 22 and moves to Saint Paul, where she's basically miserable and alone. Hey, I was a 22-year-old girl graduating from college and moving to Saint Paul. Huh. So far, it hasn't been like that. But winter is coming. "It's gonna be a cold, white Christmas in Saint Paul."

Desaparecidos released one punk rock album in 2002, called Read Music/Speak Spanish after frontman Conor Oberst's goals for that year. Forming the band was widely regarded as a terrible move by Oberst's critics. One of my favorite cuts from the record responds "They say it's murder on your folk career to make a rock record with The Disappeared -- Well let the police helicopters pull stereos out of the lakes. There's not an image that I must defend, there are no art forms now, just capitalism." The whole album is an indictment of the American obsession with wealth and possessions, and the effects of that obsession on our relationships, communities, and political system. It's loud and distorted, and remarkably few fans of Oberst's work with Bright Eyes or the Mystic Valley Band or Monsters of Folk identify as Desaparecidos fans, despite similar themes and the same solid songwriting we have come to expect from him. Oberst is notoriously prolific...

Night on the frog pond is magical. Sure, it's kind of exhausting, tromping through thick, sticky mud and trying not to fall down. And if you're not careful with the bug spray, you'll lose a pint of perfectly good blood to mosquitoes on any given night. And it's often frustrating, particularly at this point in the breeding season, when (I'm told) there are fewer frogs to be caught and more effort has to be put in to every capture. But last night the moon was waning, half-full, and brilliantly orange on the horizon. The frogs were singing, in a chorus of more than one species. As I looked for gray treefrogs I found lurking green frogs and huge, conspicuous leopard frogs that stayed perfectly still until they were absolutely sure you saw them, then leapt into the water with an ungainly splash. There is the occasional toad floating on top of the water, spotted and glandular. You can pick them up, right off the surface of the water, without much trouble. They're ca...

Moving in worked out all right, for all that the apartment is in an old two-story building with no elevator and narrow staircases with no dedicated parking. We were able to park the UHaul on the side of the building (because there's no way we could have parallel parked it in front of the building with enough space to get the ramp out behind it). All the furniture I brought fit nicely into the apartment, and my windowsills are now full of herbs. I started work almost immediately in the lab, helping a post-doc run some phonotaxis experiments in one of the several sound chambers that belong to the lab. He ran the computers that simulate the signals and background noise, while I shuffled frogs back and forth from the incubator to the testing chamber. We're working with Hyla chrysoscelis , commonly called Cope's Gray Treefrog. It's pretty abundant and widely-distributed in the US. In Oklahoma, it's most often a mottled gray color (hence the name) but here in Minneso...

Yesterday I took my last final, and today I was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. I'm waiting to see what grade I get in Animal Development, but otherwise my grades are final and I'm all set to graduate tomorrow. I'll walk across a stage -- twice -- and shake some hands and then I'll officially be an educated adult. I'm not sure how that's remotely possible. I know if I could meet me from five years ago, I'd probably notice a difference, but whatever change higher education has wrought has been unnoticeable to me. Next week I'm moving away from Oklahoma for the first time. I feel more melancholy about that than I thought I would. Not that there's anything inherently good about this place or its people, it's just that I've been working very hard for the last almost-23 years to find all the best people that live here, and now I have to start all over again, and what I have made here can never be the same, and the tyranny of distance makes all rel...