The big move and a bout of semi-homelessness

This story is called The Search, The Find and the Almost Move. But don't worry, it has a happy ending :)

Last December (8 months from move-in): I started the apartment search early with the hopes of finding a decent-size, decent-price apartment near downtown Iowa City. My two roommates from my first Iowa City apartment both got married this summer (well, Katie's wedding hasn't happened yet but is just 3 weeks away!!) so I knew I had to either find two new roommates and stay in the same place, or find a new apartment. I always like adventures so figured it was time to strike out really on my own. I looked at one 1-bedroom apartment very close to downtown. I'm going to go ahead and say it was more like 1-room, not 1-bedroom. The kitchen was one wall of the living room and the bedroom was more like an entry way at the back of the apartment. Needless to say, that was not my new apartment. 

The second apartment I looked at seemed a little bit like it was out of the 80s. There was wood paneling on one of the walls in the living room. The price was decent, location was stellar and I liked that there was some separation of the living room, bedroom and kitchen. Definitely not a 1-roomer. Instead, a roomy 1-bedroom apartment. 

So about a week later, I signed the lease and paid for my August rent about 10 months ahead of time. I was set! 

Mid-May (3 months from move-in): Because the location of my chosen apartment truly was stellar (about 3 blocks from work), I inadvertently made it a habit to walk by the apartment on my way to work from my car (yes, if I drive, I typically have to park 7-10 blocks away from work). One day when I walked by there was a large truck in the drive way and construction workers were chucking stuff out of the upper apartment: wood panels, cords, glass, who knows what. I was mildly shocked so I emailed the company and I quickly received a reply that the upper floor apartments were being redone, but apartment 1 (my apartment) would stay the same. Sounds good to me! No big deal.

Late-May (about 2.5 months from move in): Dan and I went on a walk as a comps-break one afternoon and I said we should go check out my new place. Not that we'd be able to get in or even see inside, but at least he could see where I was going to live. 

To my surprise, not only could we see in my apartment, but we could also see THROUGH my apartment. That's right- there were no walls. And no flooring. The entire house had been gutted. 

Um....what?

Dan asked multiple times if I really was sure that was my apartment. Yes, it definitely was the one I was planning to move into in 2.5 months. It was. I was sure of it. Turns out (thanks for my friend Heather's sleuth skills), there had been a fire in the house in March. Thankfully, no one was injured. 

Two days later I received an email from the landlord saying the electrical was going to be redone throughout the entire house. That meant that they would redo the apartment: new hardwood floors, new kitchen, new bathroom. 

Pretty cool actually. I was excited about it. Except for the fact where they failed to mention that there had been a fire- so I felt kind of sneaky for knowing about it. 

Anyway, the habit continued. I inconspicuously (or maybe not) walked past the apartment at least twice a week and kept tabs on the progress. 

1 month to move-in: No walls. No floors. New roof nearly finished!

3 weeks to move-in: New windows! Still no walls. Still no floors. New roof looks nice. 

2 weeks to move-in: This was the most exciting. I walked past the house one Monday morning after I had driven back from Chicago. And there were walls! I could no longer see into the neighboring apartment. Hooray!

1 week to move-in: Appliances seemed to be arriving and getting settled. Hard to tell though, now that there were walls ;) 

At this point, I was a little surprised I hadn't heard anything from the landlords. August 1st was the move-in day. July 31st was my move-out day from the other place. The plan was to stay at the hotel with my mom and sister and Michael after they helped me move out on Thursday. All of my stuff was in a truck that I rented for Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning until 9 am. Seemed like a good plan. 

And then we walked past the apartment Thursday afternoon. At this point my stuff was in the truck, I was officially moved out of the old apartment and I was relatively homeless (not really--I had a place to stay. But no address to call my own). 

I called the landlord's office Thursday afternoon and received multiple conflicting responses about when to pick up the keys, such as "yes, the apartment certainly should be ready by noon tomorrow." and "Oh, you mean the fire house?? Oh yeah, we aren't sure about the state of that house right now."

Well, we had seen it. We were sure. There was no way I was moving in on Friday. The construction guys really had done a great job and they certainly were busting their butts to get it done, but I'm sorry, it just wasn't there! Which seriously was not really a big deal. I didn't mind if I had to stay with a friend. But it was a little odd not finding out until...well, the day before I was supposed to move in.

Not even a heads up. Except for my sneaky walk-bys. 

The landlord was quite nice though and insisted that he'd have a place to put my stuff until they could get me moved in, which would be "definitely by tomorrow (Saturday) at 4 pm." (as you'll see later, that did not turn out to be the case). 

Well, he did have a place to put my stuff. But we didn't get that whole issue sorted out until 7:30 pm Friday evening, after he started ignoring my calls and also gave us the wrong address for the garage we would be using. I'll just say, it was an ordeal. 

I have awesome friends. I texted nearly everyone I knew in the Iowa City region and I had a whole gang show up to help unload my stuff into that garage. They were rewarded with cookies and my undying affection. 

We returned the truck that evening and were quite grateful for some food and a place to sleep after a rather long day. My stuff was relatively safely stored and I had a bed to sleep in, so I was content. 

Saturday morning, Michael and I took some cookies to the workers who seriously looked like they'd gotten no sleep for approximately 2 weeks. And they were nice enough to show us the apartment! Ordeal or not, the apartment was awesome! I couldn't stop saying how beautiful it was. 

I ended up staying at the hotel until Sunday and then staying at my friend/coworker Arianna's house until Tuesday morning, at which point I met my mom, the landlord and 4 construction worker-type guys at the garage. We all loaded my stuff onto an open trailer and then the construction worker-type guys sat on top of my stuff to ride the 6 blocks to the apartment. Admittedly, it was quite a hilarious sight. 3 loads of trailer, my mom's car and my car all packed full and about an hour later and nearly all my stuff was in the new apartment! 

I am officially settled into it now. I even had my couch delivered this morning! I am 3 blocks from work and all of my favorite things (froyo, restaurants, swing dance, High Ground coffee shop). 

The construction guys are still working on the other apartments in the building, so I've decided I'll be making them brownies or something within the next few days. They did a pretty good job on this apartment ;)

You are all welcome to come check it out sometime! I'd love to have you over for tea....and leftover brownies.  

Let's stand up to cancer...and laugh at Rachel! #4

So this embarrassing story is a bit overdue. Thank you for your patience! Especially you Aunt Liza ;) And thanks for the donation!!

Tonight I will be writing about some other people besides myself and since their names are necessary for the story, I will be using fake names. Meet Shane and Fayne. These are names of people from my past but not the people in the story. These names just work well because they rhyme. And the real names rhyme. So it'll help me write the story.

Ok, enjoy! This story is mainly going to be an interaction between Shane and myself. Picture this:

It's the middle of winter at the beginning of 2013 and classes haven't started yet. And I'm throwing a party. It's a Friday evening. I spent all afternoon making food, cleaning and generally making the whole apartment look awesome. I've invited everyone in my neuro cohort, as well as some other friends. A few of my friends arrive together and we start eating and listening to music and talking about winter break (also known as "time in the lab with no classes!"). My friend Frank arrives and tells me one of his other friends, Shane, will be showing up soon. I know Shane from just a few brief interactions. Shane is tall, quiet and very nice. He's a med student and probably a few years older than me. Now, let me set up this story by saying that there is another person named Fayne. I know Fayne through Frank as well, as Fayne came to some study sessions for my neurobiology class in the fall. Fayne is younger than me, about my height and maybe slightly more annoying than Shane (who is not annoying at all).

So, Frank says to me: Shane is just about here. Would you mind letting him in downstairs?

Me: Not at all! I'll go get him.

And I rush downstairs.

Now, I have no excuse for what happened next except for pretty poor memory for the whole face/name connection thing, as well as a basic inability to remember any context for where I met people. So, in my mind- I am picturing Fayne. The much shorter undergrad. I know that I'm looking for someone named Shane but I'm picturing Fayne. And for whatever reason, I have no doubts about who this person is. I just had it set in my head that the person whose real name is Fayne....was Shane. You follow?

So, when I get downstairs, Shane (the actual Shane) is standing a little ways away from the door. Remember, I've only met him once or twice and very briefly. He sees me and says, Hi!

I say: Hi!
I definitely recognize him but the thought has not even crossed my mind at this point that this is who I went downstairs to retrieve.

He says: I'm Frank's friend.

I think: Cool! Frank invited more friends. But I'm not about to tell him I don't know his name.

I say: Yeah! I remember! I'm so glad you came! 

I am standing with the door open and it's winter so he walks inside the building.

I explain to him: Oh I'm just waiting for Shane. 

No reaction.

I continue: Shane's not here yet. We'll just wait for him and then go upstairs. 

The actual Shane...whose name I don't remember...who is standing right in front of me says: Oh. Ok 

And then he walks through the door back outside.

We stand there for a second (which actually felt like at least 45 minutes) and start to make small talk. It's winter. I'm holding the door open. While waiting for Shane. Who is standing right there. Whose name I still don't know.

The Shane I'm picturing doesn't show up. The real Shane and I hadn't been talking long when either I let it slip that I couldn't remember his name or he asks me mine and then I ask his.....whichever way it happened, soon Shane says: Oh, my name is Shane.

Cue dawn of realization.

Oh.

Uh oh.

I say...hopefully without too much of a super awkward pause: Ok then. We can go upstairs now. 

And up we go. And we talk about all kinds of things while walking up the stairs, anything besides the fact that I just made a total fool of myself. To this day, I don't know if Shane understands exactly what happened. I think he maybe does and he is just far too nice to embarrass me. So he never let on. He didn't even act like anything weird happened.

I played it cool the whole night. No, I did not get these two very different people mixed up just because their names rhyme. No, I did not act like I knew Shane's name when in fact I definitely did not know it. No, I did not refer to Shane in the third person, when he was right there, and say that Shane had not arrived yet.

Oh wait, yes I did.

______________________
Reminder- only one more week until Relay for Life!! If you want to donate (any amount!! Even $1!!) go to this page and donate and then I will tell you all another embarrassing story!

Thanks :)

Let's stand up to cancer...and laugh at Rachel! #3

I got another donation! Henceforth there shall be more embarrassment. Now...which story shall I tell?

The fake cockroach?

The REAL cockroach?

Getting lost and driving in circles in Peoria?

Getting "locked in" the park in Nice, France after dusk and all the French kids could say was "no. no....it's closed!" Oh and they could laugh.



Definitely the real cockroach one.

So this experience occurred only a few weeks ago (surprised that, even at this age, I still embarrass myself? Yeah, me too). Late one night, after both my roommates had gone to sleep, I finished up some work and headed for my bedroom. As I hit the doorway, I spotted something on the floor that made my stomach leap to my throat (I have a pretty large startle reflex). A giant cockroach. And I mean giant!! It would've been at least the length of my pinky finger...had I gotten closer enough to make that kind of comparison.

I was freaking out. The roach was close to underneath my bed, near some shoes, so I did not know what to do. I didn't want to scare it because then it would scram into the wilderness under the bed and I would never find it. Or it would crawl into my bed and eat me at night!! So by this point I had called Michael for moral support and also put on my roommate's super tall, very bright yellow rain boots. I am standing guard at my bedroom door, clad in unmatching pajamas with doubly unmatching rain boots, telling Michael I seriously do not know what to do. I can't kill it because I can't get close enough. Plus, it's huge!! I can't put something over it because I am not about to set one foot inside the doorway. And what would I do anyway, with a bowl that's covering a cockroach just handing out on the floor near my bed. No way would I even sleep in the same room as it. I took a picture and send it to Michael to assure him that this thing was huge and I was only partially overreacting. I think he agreed, although he was pretty sure he could have taken care of it for me had it been here.

I was pacing back and forth between my room and the kitchen (quite loudly, apparently), trembling in my rain boots (well, Lauren's rain boots), not sure if I should call the police or the SWAT team. Or at least my friend Jayson. I figured he'd know what to do with it.

I was still on the phone with Michael, convinced I was either going to have to be incredibly brave and take a literal stab at it or totally wimp out and call someone.

As I stared at the horrible huge insect, I had a passing thought that maybe it wasn't a cockroach. In an instant I realized it might actually be a feather. I realized that I did in fact have these interesting blueish/blackish feathers from the mask I made for the burlesque dance I was in....the roach was kind of the same shape as the feathers. And about the right size.

Regardless of this very rational thought, I still couldn't bring myself to actually go into my room.

My ensuing thought process:

It might be a feather.

No.

Definitely a cockroach.

A horrible cockroach!!

Or maybe a feather.

Ok, it's probably a feather.

Definitely a feather.

But it still could maybe be a cockroach? 

I finally got close enough to see that yes, it was in fact a feather. It still took me 10 minutes to get close enough to poke it with a pencil. And then I finally took the rain boots off. And then I eventually, probably 30 minutes after the whole ordeal started, picked up the feather cockroach and threw it away.

I suppose I wasn't actually embarrassed in front of anyone except Michael. And the SWAT team I almost called.

And now all of you.


Oh wait, that was the fake cockroach story after all ;) Hope you enjoyed it!

Let's stand up to cancer...and laugh at Rachel! #2

Time for Round Two! I got another donation-- thank you!!

I could go chronologically in order. But I've decided not to. Let me take you back to the childhood days  of Rachel Clark. This story is called Panties in the Pool.

It's short but hopefully the level of embarrassment is worth it.

For all of my childhood and adolescence, we belonged to this small, semi-private pool called the Teacher's Pool. It was kept alive by some fancy family fund and it was designed to provide a pool for, you guessed it, teachers in the community. I loved the Teacher's Pool. It was not usually super crowded, and I was scared of the big pool where anyone and everyone went, so it made sense that I relished in the relative emptiness and quietness of the Teacher's Pool.

To the embarrassing part.

The Teacher's Pool had two small bathrooms so sometimes we would just take our swim suits with us and change once we got there. I honestly don't know how old I was this particular time, I'm going to say somewhere around 10. Whatever age I was, I know I was far too old for what happened to have actually happened. I went to the girls bathroom, changed into my swim suit, ran back out, tossed my swim bag onto one of those folding lounge chairs and went to get in the water with my sister.

Because I was young, I don't have a stellar memory for all the details. However, I do remember that I was slowly inching my way in to the deep end via the ladder. I got in up to my shins. Then my knees. Then my thighs. Then my stomach. And suddenly, I was like.....something feels weird. It kind of felt like I was wearing a diaper.

That's right, I had accidentally forgotten to take my underwear off. In all of my hurry to change and get in the pool, I had put my swim suit on right on top of my underwear. How on earth I had left it on and not immediately realized it, I seriously do not know. Once I realized I was wearing it, I noticed that it definitely felt like I had multiple layers on. I'm unfortunately guessing that my swim suit didn't even cover all of it. So I had probably run out of the bathroom with underwear visibly underneath my suit. Whether anyone saw, I'll never know.

I honestly don't know if I was obvious enough about it that my sister or my dad realized what had happened but I'm guessing I turned bright red and ran back to the bathroom. I'll have to ask Abby if she knows this story.

I had no other option at that point than to deal with my soaking wet underwear. I think I considered throwing it away. Instead I tried to hide it in my hand as I sprinted to our chairs. I rolled it up in my towel and shoved it in my bag. I don't remember this part but I have a feeling I also had difficulty later when I had to actually use that towel to dry off after swimming and I didn't want to have to explain to anyone why my underwear had been soaking wet.

Whether this is a semi-normal mistake for 8 or 10 year olds, I have no idea. But I must have been really embarrassed, to remember it clearly to this day. The best part I think is that I didn't just start to put on my swim suit and realize I was still wearing something (although that has happened many times), but I actually went through the whole process and even got in the pool. Yeesh.

I remember my 8 or 10 year old brain thinking, "I will never ever ever tell anyone about this."  Well, thanks to that donation-- the cat's out of the bag ;)

Let's stand up to cancer...and laugh at Rachel! #1

If you haven't seen this on my Facebook page yet, I've decided to exchange embarrassing stories about myself for donations to our Relay for Life team, Clark Kent. I realized recently that embarrassing stories are at a premium. People (for good reason) want to put their best foot (and face) forward. I've noticed that this sometimes gives me what (I hope) is a false sense of everyone else's "graceful, charming lives".  Except for professional comedians, I feel like I rarely hear good down-to-earth, "I just massively embarrassed myself" stories....except for when I'm telling them. So now I'd like to share some such stories and assure you all that I do not, in fact, always have a graceful, charming life. I hope I at least make you laugh a little. 

Who knows who will eventually read any of these embarrassing stories....but it's a small price to pay for encouraging some donations so that we can stand up to cancer and help those in their time of need-- just as many people did for my family and I when my grandma and my dad were sick. 

Since I've already had an anonymous donation to my Relay for Life page, it is now time for embarrassing story #1.

This one is called......The Fatal Belch

So I was at my friend's house a few weeks ago. Before I get in to this story too far, I should just disclose one  embarrassing basic fact about myself. I burp. A lot. And not daintily. Loudly and obnoxiously. This burping started sometime around the start of grad school. Before that, I literally could not burp. I would try and try and yet I couldn't make it happen. I didn't actually care that I couldn't- it was just odd to be deficient in this one specific skill. I must have very little muscular control over my diaphragm or whatever muscle actually allows burps to happen. It was almost a pathetic inability to burp, similar to my pathetic inability to roll my Rs. I just plain can't do it. Spit gets everywhere....when trying to roll my Rs. Not when trying to burp. Or maybe in both cases, I don't know.

Anyway, now I burp. Often. I've gotten to a point, perhaps unfortunately, where I really don't try very hard (or at all) to cover it up. Especially if I'm at home, work or a friend's house. So I was at a friend's house, practicing some swing dancing with that friend and another swing dancer friend.

Let me set the stage: we were in the driveway. It was dusk or slightly after. Maybe around 9:00 pm and since it was sometime in late April or early May, it was pretty much dark at that point. I was standing near the garage, under a light. There were some bugs flying around but I hadn't noticed them too much. I was watching my friends practice the routine we were working on. They stopped and came over to talk to me and just as I was going to tell them something I turned my head to the side and let out a fairly forceful burp. It was an odd one. Mostly an exhalation of air, rather than a loud burp.  One of my friends let out a surprised sound just before I actually burped and then immediately cracked up laughing. I could barely get him to stop laughing long enough to tell me what happened.

What happened was this.

 Just as I had turned my head to the side, a moth dove down from the light and flew straight for my mouth. Because of the type of burp this was, the exhaling kind, my mouth was pretty wide open. Apparently the moth was literally inches from just entering my mouth like it was a cozy cave. However, thanks to whatever I had actually exhaled at that very moment, instead of flying into my mouth, the moth...................DIED. That's right. My burp literally killed a moth. It had gotten knocked to the ground due to either the force or the content of my burp. Or both.

Pretty ladylike, huh?

I almost didn't believe my laughing friend, but sure enough, I looked down and there it was. A (really large!) white moth. On the ground. If not dead, at least near its eventual demise. It was a goner.

I suppose I'm grateful it didn't actually make it in my mouth. I also just realized how similar of words "mouth" and "moth" are. Ironic. This would probably have been an equally- or more- funny story had the moth flown straight in. But at least now I know I have a talent as a moth exterminator. As long as I don't know it's there. Because I definitely would not have opened my mouth had I noticed my proximity to the furry white flying creature.

I made my friends promise not to tell anyone. Thanks to the recent donation to my Relay for Life page, however, they no longer have to keep my secret :)

Anyone need any moths taken care of?

Love and grief and a wonderful little kitty

Having finished classes two weeks ago, I figured I'd soon have a chance to write a comprehensive blog post on what the semester was like and how this upcoming summer is looking in terms of my big upcoming "exam" and what all it will entail.

Unfortunately, my week was turned upside down when I found out my cat of 16 years, Scooter, was hurt. The last few days have been somewhat traumatizing and it still feels a little bit like a sad dream that ended in the worst way. I'll admit that he was old (16 healthy years!!) and that I knew someday he would not be with our family anymore, but he's been around for so long it is just hard to comprehend anything else. I spent a sweet morning and afternoon cuddling and brushing him on Thursday and then on Friday Michael and I went back to Newton to be with my family to grieve, but also to look at pictures and remember what fun we had with Scooter.

He was just an amazing kitty. Throughout my elementary-high school years, Scooter would plant himself on dad's lap every morning and stay for as long as possible. In these last few years, he has been wholly devoted to my mom; sleeping in her bed, getting in the way of her feet as she cooked, eagerly awaiting every time she came home. He loved Abby and I too but I think he was a little mad at us for leaving as often as we did. Even after he turned 16, he still could play with his toys like a young kitty. I could never believe how much energy he had, but also how lazy he could be- just curled up on a chair or in front of a window for hours and hours. Scooter had so much personality. His green eyes shone, especially when he would play with a laser or a feather or the light underneath the door that always eluded his grasp. Sometimes he would lick my leg or my hand non-stop until I would push him away or reposition because if I didn't he would lick the same spot until it was raw. Scooty would always keep me company on the couch or in my bed if I had to stay home sick. He would usually comply with my love of putting his leash on him and taking him on a "walk", which usually consisted of basically pulling him to the end of the driveway before he laid down and rolled around in the dust. He would always try to escape our back door as we went in and out but he really just loved the thrill of being outside and typically didn't try to run very far away. We could usually crawl under the cars or truck and drag him back inside.

Scooter let me do crazy things to him, like put him in baskets with my beanie babies and dress him in my Magic Attic doll Heather's dresses and boas and sunglasses and fancy hats. He always looked stunning.

My mom says that grief is the price we pay for love. And I suppose I agree that love wouldn't be nearly as sweet if it were free.....but I sure am tired of paying the price. Then again, I also think that if at the beginning someone told me I could have Scooter only if I agreed to let him go after 24 years, I would have said yes in a heartbeat. The time with him was well worth it. He was such a perfect kitty for our family. Thank you to everyone that ever loved him.

Someday soon I will write about my current life, which includes my comprehensive exam being due June 16th, Michael's trip to Haiti (he leaves tomorrow morning!!) and our super cool Iowa City summer Swing Dance project. I'll try not to wait too long before writing again. This last gap between posts was ridiculous. I think I need to get back to my Friday night blogging habit.

Hope you all are enjoying the start of summer.

I thought 'coding' was what you did when you wanted to send a secret message to your best friend

I am willing to admit that as a 13-year old, my best friend and I made up symbols for certain people and things (boys we liked, girls we didn't like, types of food, places to go after school). She would draw beautiful symbols and I would crudely copy them when trying to formulate a hidden message for her. We also had code names for the same types of things. Part of me wishes I could remember what those code names were. The other part of me is satisfied just knowing we had them, without the embarrassment of actually remembering what they were (for example, I think one particular boy's code name had something to do with falling...because I fell for him. I know what you are thinking...what's embarrassing about that?.....Only everything) Anyway, the maybe-even-more embarrassing part is that as a 21-year old, my friends and I still had codes! Different friends, different code names. Again, for boys. Apparently it's really fun or something.

And this is why it's so shocking to me that I had barely even heard of actual coding, you know, like computer programming, until graduate school. You might think I should have been an expert given my past experience developing our fake 8th grade lexicon and using the words and symbols profusely, much to the chagrin of the boys whose names were subtly hidden by our creative codes. But either no one taught me or (the more likely possibility) I didn't pay attention when I should have figured out that our world of technology is essentially run by foreign, mysterious languages.

When I started my first year at Knox, I had planned to take a computer science course. I thought, that sounds like something I should start to understand. My advisor quickly rearranged my schedule saying, "If you are going to do Neuroscience, you need to get started right away on biology and chemistry. You don't need computer science."

I NEEDED COMPUTER SCIENCE.

Knox rarely led me astray and I have little complaints about my education. However, this is one of them. I admit that no one is really to blame. I just wish someone had said, "Oh, if you are planning to go to graduate school for neuroscience or psychology (which I was planning for all along) maybe you should think about learning some different types of programming. It might come in handy."

It would have come in very handy.

I am doing fine in graduate school (I think). But I do think I've had a slow-ish learning curve with the different types of programming languages that I should be learning by now. For example, we use one language to communicate with the computer operating system, we use another language to tell our very cool computer program what to do to make the experiments we run with participants in our study, we use another language to tell a program what to do with all the numbers (data) we throw at it in order to make sense of our experiment results.

I am still on the beginner side of understanding all of these. The thing that is most striking to me, however, is how much faster I started to learn the second one after I got a handle on learning the first one.  For this reason, if someone said to me "well, you don't need to know HTML (the language used to design many websites), so don't bother learning it",  I would say to them, "It's not the specific language I need to learn....instead, I need to learn how to learn these types of languages." I need to understand the concepts behind why we need symbols and codes to talk to computers. I need to appreciate and be in awe of how much control and flexibility users can have if they know how to use the right tools. I need to feel free to be creative, instead of thinking of using programming languages as "plug-and-chug". As far as I can tell, yes there are grammatical-type rules, and yes there are syntax-type rules, and yes there are definitely spelling rules, but, like writing English, just because you CAN write a message one way, that doesn't mean you HAVE to write the message that way. You can get the same (or better!) idea across in a different way, one that makes more sense to you.

I know this was kind of vague as to what programming languages really are; maybe I will write a more detailed blog about coding in another edition of Stream of [Neuro]science  (http://clarkonneuroscience.blogspot.com/), but for now I just wanted to reflect on how important this skill I do not have is and likely will be in the future. I was inspired to write this by a very fascinating Kickstarter project I stumbled upon. If you're not familiar, Kickstarter is an online platform to share ideas for projects and ask people to be involved by pledging certain amounts of money. The cool thing is that "backers" (the people who provide the moo-la for each project) get rewards from the project based on the amount of money they give. So then, as a backer, I really get to follow each project as the developers make progress. I've already backed many projects, which I get a weird amount of joy out of doing. Anyway, I get emails each week highlighting the coolest Kickstarter projects. This week, the email struck my eye because the subject line read "Projects we love: Code and Canned Goods".  I honestly didn't care so much about the canned goods (it was the idea for an art installation of knitted pieces that looked like spam, beans and tomato soup. creative), but I was intrigued by the Code part. I went on an at least 20 minute adventure reading all about this idea for HelloRuby, a children's book written by a woman computer programming teacher from Finland with the goal of getting children excited about the world of technology and introducing them to programming. Where was this when I was 10??? (Don't worry, mom, you didn't miss anything -- there was no such thing when I was a kid!)

I couldn't stop watching videos of this woman talking about her project and reading about the exciting characters that will be in her book. It looks magical.

And educational. How can you say no to that combination?

My credit card couldn't say no either. If all goes well, sometime within the next year I'll be a proud owner of a hardcover copy of this magical book.

And then I'll have to find some kids who I can teach about coding.

Here is the link to her project page, if you want to see what got me so excited:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lindaliukas/hello-ruby?ref=NewsJan2314&utm_campaign=Jan+23&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter 

Wow, this was a long post. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through :)  Time for me to go to work and read about developmental neurobiology (how the cells of the spinal cord and brain are formed) and neurophysiology (how electrical signals travel between neurons to convey information throughout the brain. note: it has a lot to do with math and physics. yikes!)

Stay safe and warm :)
-Rachel

Oh!! One more note: I am officially Clark, R.
That means I am an author on a peer-reviewed journal article. It is a review that our lab wrote this summer about how extended sitting can have negative effects on the body and brain because of what happens to our different types of cells and chemicals when we don't move many muscles for long amounts of time.
It's still in press and I'm not sure if this page will allow you to at least see the abstract or not, but it's worth a try
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755296614000027
To celebrate, last week my mom came to Iowa City and we went to a fitness class at the gym on campus and then went out for a healthy brunch. Made my day :)

New year- new post!!

2014. Sounds really futuristic, doesn't it? The other day I literally wrote 2001 on something. As though that were just yesterday. And then I realized that I was 11 years old then. And holy cow, that was a long time ago! I've kind of changed since then...quite a lot actually. 

So it really is 2014. I'm excited for this year. I think it will hold a lot of challenges (not the least of which is the comprehensive exam I have to pass this summer in order to continue working towards my phD!). But I also think it will be a lovely year for many reasons. Being more settled here in Iowa City after a full year of school means I get to teach Zumba regularly, swing dance at least once a week, know where my favorite coffee shops are and what kind of food to order there...lots of things to be thankful for :)

This year will also include some minor traveling. Lots of trips to and from Chicago (location of Michael's med school....and location of Michael). A few swing dance festivals around the midwest. A conference in Georgia (Cognitive Aging Conference). Hopefully another visit to Michigan (Michael's home state). 

Probably not Europe though. Gotta save up for another trip like that one. Maybe in 10 years ;)

It has been such a long time since I've written a blog post, I feel like I've forgotten how to do it! Most of the time I write for me, in such a way that I first presume no one is going to read it and then later decide it's decent enough to be shared. Right now I just feel like I'm writing a Christmas letter! Maybe that's ok, though. It'll probably be a few years before I write a real Christmas letter. Although this wouldn't be a Christmas letter. It would be a 11-days-post-New Year's letter. (and probably not a very good one, at that) But I do hope these have been a good 11 days for you. 

By the way, one of my resolutions for 2014 is to gain direction and focus for what I actually want to spend the majority of my life doing (no, not just swing dancing or teaching Zumba)...my actual career. I'm torn between feeling like I want to teach Neuroscience (or positive psych, or health psych/neuroscience, or something of that nature) and feeling like I want to be in a lab, writing grants, running subjects, developing projects...but I also have a strong feeling that I really want to work on developing projects that can be implemented in communities- to promote activity, wellness and body and brain health. Can I just do all of them? And also maybe write a book? 

Lofty goals. One step at a time. 

Happy 3rd week of 2014 :)