On getting things done

I've been at my internship for awhile, and this week I found my enthusiasm for programming waning. Frankly, I was sick of trying to get the new statistical software package that I am using to work with me and not against me. My muttered pleas to the macro to coerce itself from a string to a number seemed to be in vain. I put the task of programming with this software on the back burner for a few days and focused on my other summer project.

I couldn't really build up enthusiasm for the other project either, though. I really just wanted to be lazy and read the New York Times all day long.

Today, I came up with a solution for my productivity problem. Last night David and I were talking about drinking coffee in the morning, and he mentioned how drinking caffeine when you are beginning a task makes you more excited about the task. I've convinced myself that this was the problem I was having. When I came into work for the first few days this week, I perused the New York Times website while drinking my cappucino. Then, the rest of the day all I wanted to do was read the New York Times. This morning, while I still might have glanced at a New York Times article and sipped at my cappucino upon arriving at work, I waited until I was engaged in my project to really drink up, and I had a very productive day.

Is it a placebo effect or is there really something to drinking coffee when starting a task? I don't care. I just want effective strategies for getting to work when I feel like being lazy even if it means manipulating my own mind and doing a pigeon dance.

straining the sauce

When David and I were at the Hyper Champion yesterday, we bought a big piece of pork to make for dinner tonight. I wasn't sure exactly what region of the pig this cut came from and Google translator wasn't really helping us translate the tag from Frech. Luckily, there are a myriad of ways to attack a problem with Google so I just googled "pork bone in steak france" thinking this might lead to a recipe for our particular cut of meat. I quickly found a recipe for Alsatian style pork that looked particularly good. The recipe was quite involved, and it involved a sauce composed of beer, cider vinegar, and cream. The sauce looked pretty terrible when it came out of the oven-not appetizing at all. The recipe called for straining the sauce, a step which I usually skip, but felt it was very necessary if we were going to consume this sauce. We poured the sauce into a fine mesh strainer and what came out looked awesome. All of the greasy badness stayed in the strainer. I'm now completely conviced of the powers of a fine mesh strainer, and I will be investing in one of my own as soon as I get back to Berkeley.

Patting the chicken dry

My boyfriend and I often make whole roast chicken for dinner. The chicken itself is delicious, and we often use the bones to make chicken stock, which is incredibly useful in small amounts in many other dishes that we make. We usually use a recipe from one of our cookbooks when we roast chicken at home, but recently I faced the task of cooking a whole chicken in Europe where I am cookbookless. Luckily, I have the Internet and access to a great website, epicurious.com, that has a collection of really great recipes. With the search term chicken and then refined with the term roast, I quickly came upon a recipe for roast chicken from Thomas Keller, one of America's great chefs. In Keller's recipe, he gives an explicit direction to rinse the chicken and then thoroughly pat it dry. As I recall from my cookbooks, most recipes tell you to pat the chicken dry, but I had never before comprehended the reason for this before reading Keller's recipe. He states that you want to make sure that the chicken is dry so that it doesn't steam in the oven. This makes so much sense. I'd always sort of half-heartedly patted the chicken dry before reading this recipe, but now I'm hooked on drying the chicken. From what I can tell, it produces a much crispier bird.

Dressing for Success

I've really been trying to get in the habit of dressing professionally for work, but on Friday of last week I really felt like wearing jeans. I justified my decision by noting that many of my coworkers of the same age wear jeans to the office occasionally. Sure, they have paid positions, and I am just a lowly intern at the bottom of the heap who needs to work her way up but that shouldn't matter. So I wore my jeans, a snazzy purple top, and bright orange sandals. I looked quite good, but after arriving at work, I quickly realized my wardrobe error when I refreshed my inbox and noticed a message stating that interns were supposed to meet with a really important person that morning. There would be a photo taken. Now, I'd received emails about this event for awhile, and I'd stupidly neglected to RSVP for this meeting. So Friday morning I just consigned myself to not going, and berated myself for neglecting to take advantage of awesome opportunities.

One of my co-interns asked me whether I "could just not be bothered to attend the meeting".

I really appreciated her question because she sort of gave me the benefit of the doubt and assumed that maybe I am just too busy to meet with really important people. This is definitely not the case. I just felt inappropriately underdressed.

the sinkhole that is my night

I have a problem now that I am in Europe concerning my night time productivity. When I get home from work, I check my favorite blogs. I probably do this for about an hour and a half before I pause to make a good dinner and enjoy eating it with my boyfriend. We might watch an episode of The Daily Show while we eat dinner. Then, I go back and check the blogs and probably spend another hour or two on the Internet. I don't like this pattern, but it's hard to stop. There's not much else to do really, and I do so enjoy keeping up with things on the Internet. The nice/bad thing about reading US blogs while in Europe is that they are constantly updated throughout the evening since it is during work hours in the US.

I guess it's okay to take this leisure time in the evening since I'm working all day at my internship, but it still feels wrong. I'm looking at a computer like 12 hours a day.

Why joining Facebook has caused me to reflect on my life

I was very hesitant to join Facebook with the term very hesitant being somewhat of an understatement. I think that I first heard about Facebook near the beginning of 2005 and finally joined the summer of 2008. There were many reasons that I had for not joining Facebook with one of them being a desire to keep the past in the past so to speak. I value the connections that I have made with people during different time points in my life, but I don't necessarily feel the need to keep up these connections indefinitely. Also, reconnecting with people from the past tends to bring up buried feelings and makes me question the decisions that I have made in my life. Thus, joining Facebook has really been a impetus for personal reflection.

I was feeling kind of overwhelmed with all of the connections that I was making last week through Facebook. I seemed to stay up later and later each night clicking through the pages that contained "friends" of my "friends" looking for people to connect with. I realized sorting through pictures of people that I vaguely know that I have missed a lot of opportunities to get to know people. The self-criticism begins: why didn't I try to be more social in college. Why am I still afraid of reaching out to new people?

My self reflective thoughts had been swimming through my head all week so when I met three guys from Tennessee who just graduated high school on the overnight train to Florence on Friday I was eager to share my feelings with them. We were discussing their decisions about which college to attend. This is something that I often think about with regard to my own decision. It's not that I didn't like my college experience (it was enjoyable), but I didn't really explore all my options or make my decision in any logical manner. I had a sort of breakthrough after struggling with this issue for many years while talking to the guys from Tennesse.

The problem with trying to decide whether I've made the right decisions in life is that I can't observe the counterfactual. That is, I don't know what would have happened in my life had I made alternate decisions. I can imagine that my life would have been better had I actually chosen to date guys who liked me at the beginning of high school rather than guys who were pressured by their friends to have a girlfriend but maybe the alternate reality would not have proven as rosy as I picture it. I deride myself for not socializing enough in college, but I worked really hard while I was in college and now I am having a great experience in graduate school at Berkeley.

I don't regret not going out on that Friday night when it made sense to stay home and study. These nights may not be as memorable, but I think that cumulatively these sacrifices led to something good (but I don't know since I can't observe the counterfactual).

My current Facebook profile picture:

Things I learned on my trip to Florence

1. Never reserve the top bunk on an overnight train in the summer.
2. Book museum tickets ahead especially at the Ufizzi Gallery so you don't have to wait in the heat. I chose this option, and I would imagine it's worth the extra 4 euro not to wait for hours in the heat.
3. Don't order gelato near the tourist areas without finding out how much it costs-unless you don't mind paying $15 for a cup of gelato to share with your traveling companion.