Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Tessa's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, April 8th, 2010
9:02 pm	Spring Quarter - Week 2 Reading Ch.2 and Ch. 5 (Sections 5.1-5.9) Research Design and Statistical Analysis Pages 473-500 The Marx-Engels Reader Merrifield, "Backstreet Boy in Manchester" Metromarxism Fisher, To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City Reviews of To Dwell Among Friends from Am J Soc, Contemporary Historian, Soc and Culture Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revivial of American Community Flanigan, Urban Sociology Ch. 3 (Comment on this)
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
11:29 pm	To Do List My homework load is pretty heavy this semester, and includes a lot of reading. When I was on Plan I used to post my weekly reading list on LJ. Just knowing that other folks would see what did and didn't have strikethroughs by the end of the week was a good motivation to keep on top of everything. I was talking to inthewall about reinstating the idea - it feels like time. Spring Quarter - Week 1 Reading Ch.2 and Ch. 5 (Sections 5.1-5.9) Research Design and Statistical Analysis Schutt Ch.6 Study Designs for Statistics Pages 146-175 The Marx-Engels Reader Documentary Imagining Radical Change Chapters 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14 Urban Politics: Power in Metropolitan America Feiock, "Rational Choice and Regional Governance" J Urban Afairs Hamilton, "Developing Regional Regimes" J Urban Affairs (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
10:40 pm	I'm sorta-kinda-nearly-almost considering not eating sugar for the month of April. I have no idea if I'll actually do it or if I could ever hope to succeed. So far the main thing that presents itself is that I may have to cut out coffee, since coffee without sugar tastes pretty boring to me. Thinking about it though, coffee with sugar is just a stimulant with added quick-metabolizing energy. Hmmm. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
11:02 am	Typical -my body hates me -I'm done for the quarter -leaving for the airport in two hours (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
2:35 pm	Dear Desk at PSU, You afford me, in both practical and symbolic terms, a sense of place-based identity and involvement at school which I've been sorely missing. Thank you for existing, for being mine, and incidentally for having a nail at just the right spot to hang my Cat-Lovers Against the Bomb calendar. In greeting and anticipation of many hours at your side, -OTREC Research Assistant Dear Celsy, It's fantastic that you are fixated on catching and eating flies - it makes me feel somewhat comforted in my inability to offer you a yard full of mousies and climbing trees and passers-by to give you scritches. However, please don't break my window when you jump half way up to teeter on the frame of the lower pane and swat your flies, and please don't break yourself jumping down. Many worries and thanks, -Your Human Dear Body, I remind myself that you are working very hard right now, when really it feels like you're staging a union walk-out and I have nothing to bring to the bargaining table. With some resentment, -The Bits that Don't Hurt Evening addendum: Dear Kitteh Asleep on my Lap, Love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love! Love, -Your Human (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
10:31 pm	Dear Kittehs: You do numerous things that I absolutely love, such as curling up under lamps as if you were seedlings started before the frost date, and dashing to the window to natter at every single bird or helicopter in the sky. I especially love it when you spend cold days curled up together under my duvet. However, when you leave chewed-off claw pieces in my bed, under said duvet, I will be annoyed at you. Every time. I actually mind this more than the mornings when 6:45 is declared Play Hour and the game is Bite Tessa's Elbow Bones Until She Hides. Love, Tessa (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
6:32 pm	Life's pretty damn sweet this week. I finally have enough schoolwork to keep me busy and feeling good about not holding a job outside of PSU, I have a job interview lined up Monday for work at PSU coordinating a speakers series on diversity, and in a couple weeks I find out whether my application to transfer from the Masters to PhD program has been accepted. The quality of the light out here has been really fantastic the past few days. It's squarely and thoroughly spring - daffs and cherries blooming everywhere, and asparagus in the stores for cheap. The past week has all been clear days, but the sun's still low enough that the light gets deep into my apartment. The cats and I follow it across the floor all afternoon. I crashed my bike last Tuesday, essentially totaling it (replacement parts were worth significantly more than I paid for it in the first place), and have since been lightly crippled physically (strained and achy - most everything worked itself out by the weekend), and hugely crippled travel-wise. I'm doing a lot of work in school right now on place accessibility and transportation modes - basically reaffirming, yet again, what a hugely incefficient idea it is to design cities around the private car. It's been interesting watching how drastically my travel patterns changed when I lost my 10mph mode and had to revert to 3mph. It left my options feeling horribly limited, and my inclination to make any extra trips completely gone. This is somewhat an extension to feelings I was already having, with my squeaky, heavy bike with its poor gear spread and hatred of hills. So I got myself a bike today: a brand new one. Buying new leaves me feeling somewhat shocked (what do I ever buy new, other that school loans and water bottles?), but in the long run it makes some sense. Most of the used bikes I looked at were heavy and didn't have a super-low gear or brakes in a location I felt comfy with. For the price of a used bike plus the tune-up I would have gotten for it soon anyway, I got a light bike with a year of parts warrenty and free tune-ups, all the features I was looking for, plus in-brake shifting, which I've gotta say is pretty nifty. Bikes and computers - two things I could sink a number of hours into learning to rebuild/repair, but which I'd way, way rather pay somebody else to do instead. The cats continue to be amazing. I can play four Greg Brown songs on the guitar, and I have the calluses to prove it. I'm learning to blues dance. I get to Wisconsin for spring break. Yup, life, pretty cool. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
2:06 pm	Template for a Winter Sunday Weather: Rain storm. Cat #1: In bed (under the covers). Cat #2: Like a sofa pillow (but sharp sometimes). Heater: On. Me: Snug between heater and Cat #2. Guitar and digestive biscuits within reach. To Do: Some preliminary lit reviews, not pressing. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
2:06 am	Ok, so I was all set to write a term paper on how Vancouver B.C. plays itself in so many movies while simultaneously subbing for just about everywhere in the continental U.S. As examples, I was going to use Juno and Saved, two sweet, smart little indy flicks both set in U.S. towns over 1500 miles away, and both featuring lots of driving around the city in vans. And then I realized - they're both teen pregnancy flicks. Why the heck is it that coming of age movies (which I love) starring girls (which is ++good in the still pre-Bechdel Test film industry) so repeatedly use pregnancy and the go-to plot device? Eraaagghhh! I know many, many, many young women who came of age in dramatic/adventurous/insightful/growth-filled ways that did not involve popping out a baby in the third act. Edit: So, the next idea was to look at Paranoid Park, but I'm not sure I'm up for watching a murder movie in enough detail to write a paper on, even if it is set in Portland, plus I'd feel guilty for giving Gus Van Sant's 2007 movie a whole academic paper when I haven't yet gotten around to seeing Milk. So, final plan (and discussed with professor, so I won't be changing it again) is to look at the portreyals of New York City in Julie Taymor's Frida and Across the Universe. Yay having an excuse to re-watch two movies I love, yay maybe even buying a copy of Frida, yay female director (after all the snark above), yay totally different symbolic uses of NYC. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
3:25 pm	My latest attempt to find a dehumidifier appropriate for a 400 square food apartment failed, but it's sunny out, and warm enough to bike in just a sweater, and I think the adorable dyke at Twisted flirted with me, so in all it's a good day. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
10:24 pm	Dear Marlboro College, Thank you, thank you, thank you for teaching me how to write. Thank you for drilling good sentence structure into my head that I can at least spot its absence, thank you for desensitizing me completely to long or frequent assignments, thank you for making 'graduate caliber writing', whatever exactly that means, feel easy. You saved me so much time and anxiety. Love and gratitude, and even occasional correct use of Affect, Effect, Capitol, and Capital, -Me (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
1:40 pm	Lie To Me, season 2: your one-stop source for watching actors who've played Buffy's morally questionable exes in morally questionable roles. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
1:11 pm	Ready Already! I am newly enamored with list-making, mostly due to my complete helplessness about my upcoming entry into grad school. Ten days out, and other than having paper to write on and a place file shit I am pretty much helpless until the whole show starts. I wish financial aid disbursements happened just a little sooner. Top on my list are painting my apartment, getting (and probably painting) a desk, and acquiring cats (they stay the same color). I could really do with having those three things sorted before starting classes. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
4:35 pm	At the moment I am a professional scrounger and nester. I'm unemployed, living solo, and setting up my own apartment. For my own records, I'm going to try to keep a running list on LJ of my improvement projects and acquisitions while settling in. Today Bought plywood and 1x1s to fill in two gaps in my kitchen counters - where the old stove used to be, and an extra bit of counter space I've squeezed in between the stove and fridge. All materials came from the ReBuilding Center, $5 for all wood, screws, and nails. I still need to find some food safe varnish/sealant. Splurged a bit (not so much, if we get an indian summer) and bought garden starts. My building has a bunch of little 3x3 garden boxes out back for tenants to claim. They have a south exposure, and are pretty sheltered. I bought local, organic starts from a sweet little place up on Mississippi that has bantams running around out back. They were $2 each for four-packs of lettuce, arugula, and late-producing broccoli, and two different kinds of sweet peppers. I may not get many peppers, but the littler greens should do ok. I was told to cloche the broccoli in September to get it to keep producing into rainy season. Found free today - a pair of gumboots. Also, a promising looking dumpster on 17th where I may be able to pick up some narrow boards to use in turning my ironing board closet into a spice rack. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 5th, 2009
4:39 pm	I just became a mac user. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
10:21 am	Today I want to work for UNESCO, on new World Heritage sites. (Comment on this)
Friday, May 15th, 2009
4:15 pm	This looks like a decently set up mac. Opinions? http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/sys/1171794314.html (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
9:25 pm	This weekend has been a lot of sorting and packing, alternating between eating junk and cooking healthful yummy meals. It's also been a time for lots of thinking about nostalgia and security, specifically, what the objects I've collected in my five years out east mean to me, and how much of that history and emotional security I can afford to bring to Portland. Also, a weekend of realizing that an awful lot of people - including my mom - think that an airstream is a not-bad idea! (Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
1:46 pm	Please, do me a favor and tear my Airstream dream to pieces. ( No, really. ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
1:19 pm	There is a livable 31' Airstream listed on the Portland Craigslist for $3000. I badly, badly, BADLY want to buy that puppy and nest in it for the next 3 years. (5 Comments |Comment on this)