random question

So . . . I can't really figure this out, and I don't think anyone can give me a hard and fast answer either, but I'm going to ask it anyway just to see how people respond. :) :)

You see, I have many friends who don't share my faith, and a good number of them are guys because I believe that men and women can have platonic relationships and if I weren't "allowed" to have guy friends, my life would be infinitely poorer. But of course, maintaining a platonic r/ship sometimes takes work . . . but so do my friendships with girls! All r/ships take work, basically.

I'm being long-winded only because I am anticipating in my mind some of the responses of the people I know (if they are indeed reading this blog!). Anyway. :):)

My question is, how do I react to male friends who fwd risque jokes to me? I don't want to make the generalization that men tend to gravitate toward more vulgar humor, but well . . . my women friends don't do that!!

I guess I'm not offended when I receive those emails, but it does make me want to keep more of a distance. :) And usually I just don't respond to the emails. But then again, most ppl don't respond to fwded jokes even when they enjoy them, so . . .

p.s - I really want to get a post out on the dorm elections and everything, but I'm afraid it'll take too much time. For the record, I'm writing page 26 now of that first chapter!! I want to finish it by tomorrow, and hopefully, I'll have about 28 pages (not inclusive of bibliography and endnotes).

back from CT

The CT Open was so much fun!! In the mixed doubles, Alan and I won the first round easily, but came up against the eventual champions in the second round, haha. We still had a lot of fun playing Andy (whom we are friends with because we brought him up to Cornell for a coaching clinic last year) and his partner (a squash coach at Mt Holyoke). Scores were 21-9, 21-11, which I think were decent given that Andy was/is a pro player and Silvi was a pro in squash.

In the doubles, we got second in the consolation rounds (we were knocked right out of the main draw). Maybe if we had practiced together we'd have won. But we did fine and I definitely had a lot of fun.

I know though that because I'm not used to playing in tournaments, I still get horribly jittery and nervous and usually don't know what exactly I'm doing on court.

My head now really hurts, and I can't decide if I'm fatigued from the 6-hr drive last night, or from learning so much by watching/playing at the tournament. Playing competitive sports makes your brain work differently. :) I have a great deal of respect for players who take their games seriously.

No snow/ice/rain on the drives back and forth, so it was a pretty uneventful, if long, journey.

Much work to do now, sigh. I feel like my mind isn't working.

Also, more to report on re elections for leadership in the dorm. (I got voted in for one of the main leadership committees, but there's a story for that. It does mean more work.)

snow outside the window

this post isn't really about snow, but I just happened to glance out the window, and it's snowing pretty heavily! Doesn't look like it'll stick though. Looks more like lake-effect snow than the real deal.

Well, I'm driving down to Connecticut tomorrow evening for some badminton matches on Saturday. The Connecticut Open is Sat-Sun, but I suspect all of us will lose by Saturday evening. :):) It'll be nice to drive back early Sunday morning though, because we have elections in my dorm on Sun afternoon and I can't vote if I'm not present at the meeting.

I'm playing mixed-doubles with one of our freshman guys whom I'm not really used to playing with so even though he's a strong singles player, I don't expect much from our combination. Then I'm playing women's doubles with someone from New York City. I've seen her play before, but we've never played as partners! Plus, I'm still trying to get over this stinking cold!!!

Well, my partners are pretty relaxed, so we'll just try to have fun at the tournament this weekend. I'm pretty excited!

Oh, and I'm also excited that I've actually managed to get a goodly amount of writing done this past week so I won't feel at all guilty this weekend when I'm playing and hanging out with other badminton nutters!

more drugs

Despite drowning myself in chicken soup, throwing back echinacea and vitamin C pills, the inevitable cold became, well, inevitable. Fortunately, a friend recommended Zicam, and it's a MIRACLE drug!!

Yesterday, my nose started getting a teeny bit congested, and my throat had the faint beginnings of scratchiness so I started using the nasal gel, and usually by today I'm prostrate in bed coughing my lungs out. But now, I think I may actually get back to work on my dissertation!

I'm still taking it easy and skipping badminton/work-out sessions, but the fact that I can actually walk around or sit at my desk . . . it's a MIRACLE! I'm really psyched about this because I have to go down to Connecticut this weekend for a badminton tournament, and if I spend the entire week sniffling, coughing, and sleeping, I'd be no better than a rubber doll on court. And my doubles and mixed-doubles partners will kill me.

I should warn you though, that some people have experienced adverse reactions to Zicam and have lost their sense of smell, but I suspect it's because they didn't use the product carefully enough. So if you're planning on trying out Zicam (and you should!), read the instructions VERY VERY CAREFULLY.

moving around

At T-House, most people change rooms every semester. We usually share a room, although there are sometimes 2 rooms used for singles, and singles are assigned based on seniority (i.e. if you've been here 3-4 years, you're likely to get a single one of the semesters). The shuffle also helps because not everyone gets a long with their roommates, and some rooms are bigger than others.

So I spent most of yesterday moving my things into my new room (just one door down, thankfully), and it took long because I had to move my friend's things out of her room before I could move my things in (she's not back yet). Anyway, I like the change because my new room is bigger, and I like my new roommate MUCH better than my last one. My old roommate was actually Person X, so those of you followed the saga know how much I enjoyed all that.

The only thing is, my new roommate (who is nice and cool and all that) tends to be a little noisier . . . a little more fond of talk, and she needs to use skype to talk to her family. It's no big deal right now, and hopefully we can work things out so I can sit quietly in my room for periods of time.

I'm one of those weird people who *like* and *need* to keep silent for hours on end, especially when I'm not "on duty."

Got it!

Melatonin pills: supports healthy sleep patterns. The body naturally releases melatonin in response to changes in light, with melatonin levels rising at night. Vitamin B6 is essential for melatonin production. It is in this way that melatonin helps promote sleep.

I managed to sleep through most of the night last night!!!

need a few tricks?

this is just too funny . . .

---

Nytimes
June 25, 2006

Modern Love

What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage

By AMY SUTHERLAND

AS I wash dishes at the kitchen sink, my husband paces behind me, irritated. "Have you seen my keys?" he snarls, then huffs out a loud sigh and stomps from the room with our dog, Dixie, at his heels, anxious over her favorite human's upset.

In the past I would have been right behind Dixie. I would have turned off the faucet and joined the hunt while trying to soothe my husband with bromides like, "Don't worry, they'll turn up." But that only made him angrier, and a simple case of missing keys soon would become a full-blown angst-ridden drama starring the two of us and our poor nervous dog.

Now, I focus on the wet dish in my hands. I don't turn around. I don't say a word. I'm using a technique I learned from a dolphin trainer.

I love my husband. He's well read, adventurous and does a hysterical rendition of a northern Vermont accent that still cracks me up after 12 years of marriage.

But he also tends to be forgetful, and is often tardy and mercurial. He hovers around me in the kitchen asking if I read this or that piece in The New Yorker when I'm trying to concentrate on the simmering pans. He leaves wadded tissues in his wake. He suffers from serious bouts of spousal deafness but never fails to hear me when I mutter to myself on the other side of the house. "What did you say?" he'll shout.

These minor annoyances are not the stuff of separation and divorce, but in sum they began to dull my love for Scott. I wanted — needed — to nudge him a little closer to perfect, to make him into a mate who might annoy me a little less, who wouldn't keep me waiting at restaurants, a mate who would be easier to love.

So, like many wives before me, I ignored a library of advice books and set about improving him. By nagging, of course, which only made his behavior worse: he'd drive faster instead of slower; shave less frequently, not more; and leave his reeking bike garb on the bedroom floor longer than ever.

We went to a counselor to smooth the edges off our marriage. She didn't understand what we were doing there and complimented us repeatedly on how well we communicated. I gave up. I guessed she was right — our union was better than most — and resigned myself to stretches of slow-boil resentment and occasional sarcasm.

Then something magical happened. For a book I was writing about a school for exotic animal trainers, I started commuting from Maine to California, where I spent my days watching students do the seemingly impossible: teaching hyenas to pirouette on command, cougars to offer their paws for a nail clipping, and baboons to skateboard.

I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American husband.

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don't. After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.

Back in Maine, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the hamper. If he threw in two, I'd kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller.

I was using what trainers call "approximations," rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behavior. You can't expect a baboon to learn to flip on command in one session, just as you can't expect an American husband to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for picking up a single sock. With the baboon you first reward a hop, then a bigger hop, then an even bigger hop. With Scott the husband, I began to praise every small act every time: if he drove just a mile an hour slower, tossed one pair of shorts into the hamper, or was on time for anything.

I also began to analyze my husband the way a trainer considers an exotic animal. Enlightened trainers learn all they can about a species, from anatomy to social structure, to understand how it thinks, what it likes and dislikes, what comes easily to it and what doesn't. For example, an elephant is a herd animal, so it responds to hierarchy. It cannot jump, but can stand on its head. It is a vegetarian.

The exotic animal known as Scott is a loner, but an alpha male. So hierarchy matters, but being in a group doesn't so much. He has the balance of a gymnast, but moves slowly, especially when getting dressed. Skiing comes naturally, but being on time does not. He's an omnivore, and what a trainer would call food-driven.

Once I started thinking this way, I couldn't stop. At the school in California, I'd be scribbling notes on how to walk an emu or have a wolf accept you as a pack member, but I'd be thinking, "I can't wait to try this on Scott."

On a field trip with the students, I listened to a professional trainer describe how he had taught African crested cranes to stop landing on his head and shoulders. He did this by training the leggy birds to land on mats on the ground. This, he explained, is what is called an "incompatible behavior," a simple but brilliant concept.

Rather than teach the cranes to stop landing on him, the trainer taught the birds something else, a behavior that would make the undesirable behavior impossible. The birds couldn't alight on the mats and his head simultaneously.

At home, I came up with incompatible behaviors for Scott to keep him from crowding me while I cooked. To lure him away from the stove, I piled up parsley for him to chop or cheese for him to grate at the other end of the kitchen island. Or I'd set out a bowl of chips and salsa across the room. Soon I'd done it: no more Scott hovering around me while I cooked.

I followed the students to SeaWorld San Diego, where a dolphin trainer introduced me to least reinforcing syndrome (L. R. S.). When a dolphin does something wrong, the trainer doesn't respond in any way. He stands still for a few beats, careful not to look at the dolphin, and then returns to work. The idea is that any response, positive or negative, fuels a behavior. If a behavior provokes no response, it typically dies away.

In the margins of my notes I wrote, "Try on Scott!"

It was only a matter of time before he was again tearing around the house searching for his keys, at which point I said nothing and kept at what I was doing. It took a lot of discipline to maintain my calm, but results were immediate and stunning. His temper fell far shy of its usual pitch and then waned like a fast-moving storm. I felt as if I should throw him a mackerel.

Now he's at it again; I hear him banging a closet door shut, rustling through papers on a chest in the front hall and thumping upstairs. At the sink, I hold steady. Then, sure enough, all goes quiet. A moment later, he walks into the kitchen, keys in hand, and says calmly, "Found them."

Without turning, I call out, "Great, see you later."

Off he goes with our much-calmed pup.

After two years of exotic animal training, my marriage is far smoother, my husband much easier to love. I used to take his faults personally; his dirty clothes on the floor were an affront, a symbol of how he didn't care enough about me. But thinking of my husband as an exotic species gave me the distance I needed to consider our differences more objectively.

I adopted the trainers' motto: "It's never the animal's fault." When my training attempts failed, I didn't blame Scott. Rather, I brainstormed new strategies, thought up more incompatible behaviors and used smaller approximations. I dissected my own behavior, considered how my actions might inadvertently fuel his. I also accepted that some behaviors were too entrenched, too instinctive to train away. You can't stop a badger from digging, and you can't stop my husband from losing his wallet and keys.

PROFESSIONALS talk of animals that understand training so well they eventually use it back on the trainer. My animal did the same. When the training techniques worked so beautifully, I couldn't resist telling my husband what I was up to. He wasn't offended, just amused. As I explained the techniques and terminology, he soaked it up. Far more than I realized.

Last fall, firmly in middle age, I learned that I needed braces. They were not only humiliating, but also excruciating. For weeks my gums, teeth, jaw and sinuses throbbed. I complained frequently and loudly. Scott assured me that I would become used to all the metal in my mouth. I did not.

One morning, as I launched into yet another tirade about how uncomfortable I was, Scott just looked at me blankly. He didn't say a word or acknowledge my rant in any way, not even with a nod.

I quickly ran out of steam and started to walk away. Then I realized what was happening, and I turned and asked, "Are you giving me an L. R. S.?" Silence. "You are, aren't you?"

He finally smiled, but his L. R. S. has already done the trick. He'd begun to train me, the American wife.

Amy Sutherland is the author of "Kicked, Bitten and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers" (Viking, June 2006). She lives in Boston and in Portland, Me.

jet lag sucks

I feel sick. Someone needs to figure out a way to make the trip go faster. Someone needs to find a cure for jet-lag.

Jet-lagged in Ithaca

Got here Sunday, about 4am (EST; Malaysian time: Sun, 5pm) after about 35-hours of car, bus, and plane rides and some waiting about. I'm now serious jet-lagged. Wanted to take a nap at about 11:30am, and ended up waking up only at 7:30pm. Still tired, so I hope I'll get to fall asleep again tonight.

The T-ride branches at Cornell and Michigan have a 3-day seminar (this year's topic is on US-China relations) that I was supposed to be at too, but they set the date a weekend earlier than I expected, and I didn't want to change my plane tickets. Everyone's away at Michigan now and I think I'm the only one in the House. Someone's been into the kitchen though (lights turned on, some plates washed), and I'm hoping the chef is just in doing minor prep work. Hmmmm. I'm a little scared, but not terribly so. Everything in the House, and in Ithaca, is really quiet now, and I like quiet.:)

The trip was pretty good. I got to have 5-seats to myself on the leg from Stockholm to Newark, and managed to sleep for about 4 hours, I think. That really helped. Had a bit of stomach problems right before I boarded the plane in Malaysia, and as I had had the same problems off and on during my 5 weeks there, I was a little panicky.

Decided to try a little red wine when the attendants gave us our dinner (soon enough after take-off) , and was relieved that it helped unclench my stomach muscles. It started working after a few sips and I was so, so thankful. Otherwise, I'd have sat there for hours feeling awful. A little red wine does indeed settle the stomach.:):)

Now, I need to find something to settle the homesickness. It's not a horrible case, just a little one. But I'm definitely thinking that going home for good soon may not be such a bad idea after all. All this flying back and forth between two lives is rich and I learn so much; but it really isn't at all easy.

tech blur

had to switch over, out of beta, and changed my template too, but don't think it works.

next week

Umm. Leaving next Sat. Aaahhh. Yucks.

Not again.

Wish I have two bodies, so I can live two lives in two places, all at the same time.