40-40

@beatrixnz

It started as a project for my 40th birthday....

745 posts

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Shari

In honour of my friend Shari’s birthday, I wanted to write the story of how we met. In spring of my senior year in high school (probably around now) I spent a week as a ‘prospective student’ visiting colleges on the East Coast. I was matched with current freshmen and slept on the floors of dorm rooms at Harvard, Brown, and the final school I visited, Johns Hopkins. Unlike the other places I visited, Johns Hopkins had a Division III athletic program and I tentatively asked my host student who I should talk to if I wanted to walk onto the swim team. She said “let’s talk to Shari!” So I we went to another dorm room with a Blue Jays swimming bumper sticker on the door. I told Shari my times and asked if she thought I could be on the swim team. She said, “you’re faster than me! I’ll take you tomorrow and we’ll go see George.” So I spent the next morning in Shari’s delightful custody. George wasn’t in but I left him a note. And when I turned up the next year I was on the swim team.

Over the next four years my fellow distance swimmer Shari was a huge part of my life, and there for many key moments. The first time I got drunk? New Year’s eve at Shari’s house. Landlord decides to pull the kitchen out of my apartment? Shari invites me for dinner. First boyfriend at uni? Shari invited us on a double date with her and her boyfriend. I remember saying to this guy “don’t worry, it won’t be awkward. Shari talks a lot!” That was a frequent chain of events, that I would be sad or stressed out and would seek out Shari not necessarily to spill my guts, but for her to talk a lot and cheer me up with her general positive outlook. If the effort of being Tigger to my Eeyore got old, she never let on.

Shari stayed in Maryland after graduation and I saw her on a few visits to Baltimore, but eventually we lost touch until the advent of Facebook. I am so happy to be back in contact so that I can again bask in the Shari magic, albeit from a great distance.

Shari died today. I originally posted this six years ago--five years after Shari was diagnosed with breast cancer, and one year after they determined the cancer had metastasized. One of her friends posted this quote from Edna St Vincent Millay, the last three lines of "Dirge without music:"

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

John Duncan

I went to a funeral today, for a 90 year old man from our church. I know his wife better than I knew him, although I knew he was a professor of engineering and had worked at universities around the world, including the University of Auckland. His academic achievements were obviously very important to him--the funeral programme had him pictured in his DSc robes and they were actually draped over his coffin. (When I was in America I was familiar with the DSc primarily as an honorary degree you gave your graduation speaker... however in Australasia people apply for them with a career portfolio; the relevant university then certifies that this is 'above and beyond' in some way.) One of the eulogy speakers focussed on this part of his life and I found out he was considered "the father of sheet metal formation" and credited with turning this method of manufacture from an art into a science... in fact he wrote an article for Scientific American in 1994 describing the science of the aluminium beverage can. I have a feeling the professional part of my eulogy would be much shorter (if it got any air time at all).

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A post shared by Lissy and Rudi (@lissyandrudi)

Love this pink crocheted whare (house)

Birthday Lunch

Cake time today.

I made Nigella Lawson's vegan gingerbread (in a non-vegan way because I'm not buying oat milk just to make a cake) which I have been wanting to try. For the last few years I posted my cake on twitter tagging Nigella, because she (or perhaps her 'people') almost always respond. But I got fed up when twitter changed its name, and I shouldn't really need Nigella's validation anyway.

40/40: Happy birthday to me.

Post number 40–I made it, although I feel like I am limping over the finish line. I realized a couple days after I started this that I screwed up the date of day 1–the 40th post was supposed to be on my birthday, but in fact my birthday is tomorrow (Friday)–or maybe the day after that if you want to take time zones, the international dateline and my place of birth into account. So tomorrow I will post a picture of myself out with Danny at my fancy lunch. If I had any concerns about my 40th birthday it was that I wouldn’t do enough to mark the occasion, and this project has gone a long way toward addressing that. I had a hard time remembering what I did for my thirtieth birthday. I was living in Durham, North Carolina, and I think I drove out to Linden to see my aunts and uncles and cousins and celebrate all the fall birthdays in one go (one of my Aunts’ birthdays is the day after mine, but a large range of dates and people were included). But it’s possible that was my 29th birthday. My 20th birthday was possibly during fall break, and my friend Whitney made me a cake and had over people from the swim team that hadn’t gone home for the weekend. But I think that was a few days, maybe even a week before, did I do anything on the day? My 10th birthday was on a Tuesday, possibly the infamous one I insisted I didn’t want a party if it couldn’t be ON MY BIRTHDAY, so my family went to Chuck-e-cheese for dinner instead. On my 50th birthday… I remember making a cake with 50 candles for my dad’s 50th birthday; we didn’t even manage to light all of them and a huge cloud of smoke billowed up from the cake as we sang happy birthday. Even Eowyn will be able to see sort of grown-up movies by the time I’m 50, maybe we will go out to the pictures. The kids will be old enough to cope with dinner in a restaurant, or rather I could cope with them during dinner in a restaurant. Whatever we do, I hope we will all be able to celebrate together.

48/50 So today is the day before my birthday, and I obviously haven't timed my 50th post quite correctly. My plan for tomorrow is to leave work early, get a pedicure, and enjoy cake and ice cream with my family when the kids get home from school. I have also decided the way I want to enjoy my older children is to leave them at home and go out to dinner with my husband, which we will do on the weekend. (By the way, Eowyn now likes movies/TV shows that are too scary for me. She was watching the new Goosebumps and I had to leave the room because I was getting creeped out.)

39/40: The year ahead

Still trying to write something about the future. Looking at the year ahead I come up with the sort of laundry list of activities that I write on my performance plan for the year, which is really not that interesting. I also look at the transitions ahead for my kids–Albert will have a new teacher for year three, starting in February; Eowyn will move to the toddler’s room at daycare in April; Sadie will start school a year from now (you start when you turn 5 here… she will have one term of ‘year zero’ and then start year one the following February). What life looks like for me will depend hugely on how these transitions go. Sometimes I feel buffeted by these external forces that are my children.

47/50 Well, I've already had to write my plan for next year in my research and study leave (sabbatical) application. I'll have a whole semester with out teaching, but travel to the US for only about 8 weeks, late November to mid January. I will visit a couple different universities, and attend the International Biometrics Conference, for those that know what that is, which will be in Atlanta. My kids will come as well, and spend some time with my parents while I am working. Danny will come nearer Christmas. Albert will have finished high school by then (!).

38/40: Reactionary

Sometimes I feel like I am just ricocheting from one situation to another, having to react to each one and never getting (or getting around to) setting my own direction. Some of this is inevitable, like spending Sunday afternoon cuddling a toddler with a fever and pushing the birthday cake making until the (late) evening. I feel like work should be… not a haven from all that unpredictable kid stuff, but not its own series of reactions. I mean, I’ve got to specify the grading scheme for the courses I teach a year in advance, there is–or is supposed to be–plenty of lead time on everything. But for awhile my research work has gone like 1) someone asks for help, 2) I try to help them. It feels very reactionary and crowds out other stuff. My graduate department had statisticians that were famous for contributing major new methodology for other fields; conservation, genetics, climatology. Which is different from what we would call statistical consulting, applying existing methods for someone else. The past few years I have been hovering on the edge of these two, with some consulting work leading to incremental improvements to existing methods so they work better for a particular application. But the momentum is down and not up. I need a big idea of my own to work on.

46/50 I still do mostly what I would consider consulting-type work, although I have better, longer term relationships with my collaborators and better assurances that the work I do will end up in publications. I also have a better appreciation of how little methods work actually ends up getting used for data analysis, and when it does the effort that goes into software and, essentially, pure promotion.

For those interested in how our election turned out, the by-election will not be determining the government--the "other side" won fairly convincingly. I am grateful, however, for our 'routine,' free and fair election; no one is disputing the results. I am also grateful that the campaigning can, by law, only take place for 6 weeks, and all the signs have to be taken down the day before Election Day.

This time around, both the Labour (red) and National (blue) party leaders are called "Chris," and my son referred to this as the 'one Chris, two Chris, Red Chris, Blue Chris" election.

37/40: Happy Birthday to Sadie

Happy Birthday to Sadie, who turns four today. I feel like these are special birthdays for us because, as you know, my birthday will also have a four in it. She knows her brother is the oldest, and her sister is the youngest, so sometimes she refers to herself as “the mediumest.” Sounds like a good two word definition of the median–I will have to tell my next intro class about it.

45/50 And of course today is happy 14th birthday Sadie. Sadie said it is weird to be 14. Most birthdays for a long time she has been thinking of herself as the older age for at least 3 months before her birthday. I also was thinking of her that way, and I suspect everyone else was too. But this year feels a bit different.

44/50 Vision

Over the last 5 years my eyesight has really packed it in. I have always been nearsighted... I think 40 was about the age I gave up on trying to wear contacts, just because it seemed like a child always wanted something just as I was about to stick the contact lens in my eye. Now that wouldn't be a problem--but I wouldn't be able to lift up my glasses when I need to see something close, which I discovered is the secret power of nearsighted people. If you hold it close enough, you can see it. Still, after marking exams at the end of 2018 I went to the optometrist and said "I need reading glasses." At the end of 2022 I went and said "I need computer glasses." So now I have a pair of progressive glasses that covers all distances, and a pair of computer glasses that covers computers and reading. I have forgotten those glasses today and am realising how much I need them. My parents have both had cataract surgery in the past couple years, so I have that to look forward to.

I feel like I need to balance this with something positive--so I'll let you know my pushup game is stronger than it's ever been. Yesterday, in the course of 3 sets in a circuit workout, I did 40 pushups.

43/50 It's election time again, this time for the central government. There is some serious election nerd commentary happening because a candidate in one electorate has died. Despite the fact that this was not a candidate that was likely to win, that electorate will need to have a by-election after the actual election. We have a system called "MMP" (I think like Germany?) where there are electorate votes and party votes. If you win your electorate you end up in parliament, and then they add MPs from the "list" to make the proportions match the party vote. Yes, there are mathematical problems with this ("the overhang") which means sometimes they will add more politicians to parliament to get the proportions correct. Well, for a by-election of this sort it seems they just add an MP, rather than counting them against the party's percentage. So this actually will affect the final proportions in parliament in a different way to the likely candidate just winning the electorate. This opens the way to "death as a strategy," because the by-election is triggered by the death of *any* candidate, not just one "in the running." My friend that I was discussing this with suggested fabricating a party (or several) and nominating old, frail people that had a reasonable chance of dying in the election period. I’m afraid my mind went into a sort of ‘Midsummer Murders’ mode where unusual accidents start befalling minor party candidates.

36/40: High Rise

So yesterday I mailed my vote for mayor, councillors, local board, and district health board. A couple of years ago Auckland adopted regional or “Super City” government, so previously I lived in North Shore City, but now I just live in Auckland. About 1/3 of New Zealanders live in Auckland, its population is growing fast, and there is a housing shortage. The councillors each represent an area of the city, and the candidates for my area universally oppose “high rise” residential development in our district’s town centers–areas that are not downtown Auckland, but that have quite a bit of commercial activity. I am guessing this unanimity reflects the fact that a large proportion of the electorate feels the same way. “High rise” in this case means 8 stories, which perhaps begins to tell you something about the local mindset. I am not sure to what extent this represents a head-in-the-sand denial that change (in the form of increased population) is coming, and to what extent it is a knowing embrace of urban sprawl.

I have only known a few people that lived in high rise buildings–and I refer to real high rises, in fact high end high rises. The first was our department chair in grad school. I never saw his actual apartment, but he had a party for the department in the swanky function room in his building. He had one of those mid-life crisis sports cars and I imagined the apartment to be in that vein. He lived in Belltown, a neighborhood to which we would occasionally make trips to for a particular mexican restaurant and a pub called the Virginia Inn. There were many other restaurants and pubs there, and a club called Jazz Alley, that were not compatible with the student budget, at least not as a regular outlay. My other high rise experience was visiting a friend lived who lived in Arlington, Virginia, and was working at a large law firm. She had paid off her school debt; she lived with her sister in an apartment that was not huge, but pretty nice, with a 24 hour doorman. Her building was near a subway stop and surrounded by restaurants and coffee places. So when I think high rise, I think of autonomy and disposable income and never having to cook when you don’t feel like it–I can’t think of any reason to be opposed. This might be quite different from the likely developments, but are those opposed any more realistic? What are they imagining, and what are they afraid of?

42/50 I do still click on ads for fancy apartment buildings they are building in "city fringe" (guaranteeing that I get many more ads for such apartments), however I do recognise I would not have wanted to spend the pandemic in one. I loved walking through my neighbourhood, and having a big enough house that everyone could be in their own room. I liked the idea that even if I got covid I would be able to go outside into my yard (in the end I got Covid while I was at my parents house in Michigan, so I had even more space).

Anyway, NIMBYism is still alive and well.. if you look at the picture below, you see one tall pointy building (which, granted, is taller than 8 stories). The latest thing people are worked up about is that they want to build another one of similar height a few blocks away from the first one... because a second skyscraper will change the character of the neighbourhood? :shrug:

35/40: Looking ahead

I feel like I should write something about the decade or year ahead, but I am having trouble looking past the week ahead. Today, Saturday: Sadie’s dance class and a play date, and some sort of dry run for leaving Eowyn with a sitter for a few hours next weekend (she has not stayed with a sitter other than Nana or Granny before). Sunday: intercessions, therefore church attendance mandatory, also baking at least one cake for.. Monday, Sadie’s birthday, decorations and cake at day care, her favorite meal (and another cake?) at home. Tuesday: gym training session, research presentation and my last class of the semester, including a new format for the perennially disappointing teaching evaluations. Wednesday, two research meetings in the morning; for the afternoon I have cleverly double booked myself for administrative meetings so I will get to skip half of one, followed by the dress rehearsal for Sadie’s upcoming dance recital. Thursday: a debrief on the teaching evaluations, Albert’s touch rugby practice, and hopefully getting my hair done so I can look nice for… Friday, my birthday. I have taken a vacation day and booked lunch with Danny at a fancy restaurant on Princes’ wharf.

And I will be writing posts everyday because the queue, folder, and notebook are empty again.

41/50 Apparently there is a popular book at the moment called "Rest as Resistance." I keep joking that this is the form of rebellion my teenagers are engaging in. No sports, no activities, very few social occasions. They do their homework and the rest of the time they play video games or watch TV. This all started in the pandemic, when they realised how much they enjoyed doing nothing. Sometimes I worry they are missing out, but they are not stressed--at all--and it does reduce my mom-taxi duties considerably.

34/40: The Zero

Auckland War Memorial museum is partly a cultural museum, partly a natural history museum, and partly a military history museum. They made it free for Auckland residents probably four years ago now and for a while we were regulars. Every weekend Albert would ask to go, and most of the time we would say yes. Why not? it was free. We always visited the planes on the top floor. They have a Spitfire, and also a Spitfire engine you can examine. Over the stairwell is one of the german ‘flying bombs’, and on the other side of the building a Japanese plane, the Zero. There are not that many Zeros left because toward the end of the war the Japanese started flying them into US aircraft carriers. Kamikaze missions. That was what was supposed to happen to this plane. The pilot had a picture taken for his for his family in his uniform with a white aviator’s scarf and a ceremonial sword; the picture and sword are also in the exhibit. But the plane needed repairs… and while it was being repaired the war ended. I can’t remember if I read this in the exhibit or just inferred it, but I think the mechanics put the go-slow on. I love those mechanics.

40/50

Five year old Albert with the Spitfire:

Fifteen year old Albert with the spitfire:

Because it is a "War Memorial" Museum they also have a list of names of Aucklanders killed in various conflicts, carved into a marble wall. Further down the corridor you find this:

33/40: Complaining

I try to avoid complaining, because for me, a lot of times complaining makes it worse. It means I’ve held on to whatever annoyance I had, and thought about how to phrase it to Danny or my journal or ‘social media,' and made it a bigger deal than it was to start with. This is something I’ve realized in part after moving to New Zealand. Despite the tribulations and adjustments associated with moving I never wanted to let loose and trash the place because it’s Danny’s home nation and blowing off steam wasn’t worth hurting his feelings. That prevented a negative feedback loop between us, and to some extent within my own mind as well. So recently they’ve asked all the staff at work to complete a survey about our working environment. There were just two open ended questions, the first, name the three best things about the university, and the second, three ways the university could improve. So, I wrote down three good things and three bad things. But then I went back and instead of just griping, took the time to phrase my gripes in terms of improvements that could be made, which made me feel…. not one bit better. Avoiding complaining will only get you so far.

39/50 We have a staff survey every couple of years at my current job. My department frequently rates the highest in terms of worker satisfaction, so much so that other Science department heads have asked my boss what his "secret" is. His reply? "In Stats there is no equipment or lab space to fight over. I'm pretty sure that's all it is."

32/40: School Holidays

Albert is in the middle of his school holidays. They have four terms a year, with a two week break between each and then a 6 week break at summer/Christmas time. There are day programs that you can send your kids to, but we feel like they wouldn’t give him the break he needs. So Danny and I take turns off work, or if we both have to be at a meeting Albert will sit in one of our offices for an hour and play video games or draw pictures. We go to the beach, the museum, cafes, parks, do baking, do art, and sometimes let him watch TV and have video games. I am always amazed at how manageable one child on their own is. Today we went to the zoo, and I finally got to see the improved exhibits on New Zealand native animals that were built a couple of years ago. The last time we went Sadie was petrified of the net-enclosed areas for the native birds and I had to wait outside with her. Tomorrow Danny is planning to take Albert to North Head, where there are a bunch of tunnels and mounted guns in case the Japanese decided to invade Auckland harbor.

For the holidays in April I was able to take off the whole two weeks–not only did I have them as vacation days, I was able to finish the project I was working on before hand so there was nothing I was trying to get done in the background. It was one of the best breaks from work I’ve had.

38/50 Today is the second to last day of the spring school holidays. The kids are mostly old enough to entertain themselves (in other words, we have switched to an entirely TV and video games strategy) although Danny took them out to a new park on Wednesday. I have been hard at work the whole two weeks. Trying to squeeze a little fun into the last couple of days I took the girls to a store with Halloween stuff this morning.

(BTW, that April holidays mentioned above is still the most recent break I've had where I finished all my work and didn't have anything hanging over me.)

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