Ahh! Divine Discipline!

My Pastor taught on receiving the correction of God last Sunday (See Hebrews 12). Let me tell you, if you have never heard a message on divine discipline, you are missing out! (and uninformed as to the ways of God). I was chuckling a little through the message because I had just come out of a year of divine discipline and I could totally relate to everything Pastor was saying. (I think it was two years, but God definitely kicked it up a notch in the second year.)

After church, I related a funny story about a minor chastisement I received from the Lord. It is such a hilarious story to me. So here goes...

Last summer I was getting ready to mow the lawn as my previous boyfriend was preparing to sand the table. Before we started, he told me about his trip to visit his sister the previous weekend. Unfortunately, on the way back, as he gassed up, he got distracted and left his gas cap at the gas station. He drove a considerable distance completely unaware that he was missing his gas cap. Then he had to buy a new gas cap because it was too far away to return and retrieve it. I commiserated and felt sorry for him. But then I remembered that he has a tendency towards distractibility and forgetfulness. My ego kicked in and I stated that I had never lost my gas cap before. I've never been distracted so much that I've ever done anything like that. In fact, this sort of thing would never happened to me.

Then we parted ways to go about our tasks, his to the sanding, and mine to the lawn mowing. I pushed the lawnmower out back and filled up the gas tank for a full day's mowing. Then my adorable kitty walked towards me, mewling. Of course, I dropped everything to pet her and give her attention. As I returned to the lawnmower, I started the mower up and pushed off into the grass. A strange clunking and ripping sound arrested me, and I immediately turned off the mower. To my embarrassment and consternation, the cat had distracted me into forgetting to twist the gas cap back on and I had just mowed over the gas cap. I whipped off the bag and shook the gas cap out. It was so badly mangled and cut that it could no longer be used.

I wailed, beat my chest, tore my clothes and sat in the dust, if I was an Israelite, that is. Since I wasn't, I just immediately repented of my pride and the words I had just spoken to my previous boyfriend. I begged God for forgiveness and then ran inside to apologize to my boyfriend and beg forgiveness. Let me tell you, I was so embarrassed and fully chastised that my boyfriend had to comfort me.

This was not the end of the story, though, as I had neglected to mention the rest of the story at church. God is so merciful and kind that he actually rewarded me next. We looked up a store that might be open and carry gas caps on a Saturday. We immediately drove over there and bought the gas cap (my embarrassment flared up again at the counter when I had to ask for a gas cap). Right next door to the store was an antique shop. I really wanted to go in just for a peek (I love antiques!) and discovered the most beautiful three panel antique screen (from 1917). It was exactly what I had been praying to God for because I didn't have any place to keep the cat boxes, so they were pushed to the side of my den, but right in the open for everyone to see. I wanted a three panel screen to hide the cat boxes and I had actually petitioned God for it (I highly recommend asking God for specific things; He does want to give you good things and knows the desires of your heart). So I bought the screen and placed it where I needed it. Needless to say my embarrassment completely gave way to joy and satisfaction.

Moral of the story: Don't be prideful, because if God loves you, He won't hesitate to reprimand you. But, when He does and you display a contrite heart, He may just reward you. (I believe there is a little known corollary to the commandment concerning worshipping idols. It reads something like this, "Thou shalt not puff thyself up as thine own idol.") ;)

By the way, here's a pic of my antique three panel screen:

Hmmm...This appears to be research week...(with parenthetical commentaries)

In which various unconnected people contact me to participate in research endeavors. Two of which are through my GRA that I have for the summer. One of which is an old undergrad contact who wants to give me his data so maybe I can do something with it (hint, publish, hint!). I met with my advisor and I'm glad I'm working with her. She is actually going to have me do some important things, rather than busywork (I hope!). But, the most recent contact has to do with one other prof here who (I have a sneaky suspicion) just wants to steal me away from my advisor! Just kidding! But, really, I think he's just digging around for something for me to do so he can inculcate me into his lab. (Am I that paranoid??? Conspiracy theories anyone??). He just has some data entry and coding for me to do (gag!! blech!! yech!! Did I hear that right??). But, in any case, perhaps I should network a little here (for perhaps his vast knowledge shall serve me well in the future). The thing is, I don't think he and my advisor are compatible (as in, blatant polar opinions on certain research topics and conflicting personality styles). But, we shall just see how things go (I mean, what else can I do?).

Photomontage of my antique-table-refinishing project: Part 2

Then we applied the second coat of polyurethane finish. The table looked so much better with a second coat on. You can't really tell from the pictures, though.

Here's the other side of the table after the second coat of finish. The kind we used was so strong and hard that I think it would resist anything. Although, I'm still concerned about cat scratch marks. Luckily, Megan hasn't shown any tendency to scratch the legs, even though wood is her favorite thing to sharpen her nails on.

Here is the finished product! Isn't this table absolutely gorgeous? It was worth the whole seven months it took us, working on this table only on the weekends.

Here I am proudly posing with my table. It turned out far better than what I imagined it would look like. My advice to those of you who want to start a do-it-yourself refinishing project? Start small and get a boyfriend whose hobby is carpentry!

Photomontage of my antique-table-refinishing project: Part 1

When I bought this table, the legs were covered in a discusting white finish that was cracking and peeling. My sister-in-law thought that it would actually dimish the value of the antique table to strip it off. But, I wanted a sleek, dark, beautiful table. The top was so oily and grimy that I was afraid to eat off of it.

It took me and my previous boyfriend four or five times to strip off all the paint and grime. It was a dirty and smelly job, but afterwards we discovered the true nature of the shade of wood underneath. This picture was taken after the table was sanded, which took months (notice the film of dust on the lense). I almost decided to go with the beautiful light shade of wood! The legs, however, appeared to be a different type of wood (it was supposed to be an oak table). So then I contemplated staining the legs a dark shade and the table a light shade. Spooky...

This picture was taken after the first staining of the dark red color. We stained it about twice (correction: my previous boyfriend did all the staining and sanding. Hey! I was outside mowing the lawn! At least I helped with the stripping of the paint and the varnishing.)

I finally decided on all one shade. I think it was "Red Oak." This picture was taken after the first coat of finish. Notice the two leaves? One is propped up to the side of the right side of the table. My cat decided one night that it would be fun to jump on top of this leaf. I found the leaf tilted on the floor the next morning. I wish I'd seen Megan's face when she found out the leaf was not exactly steady!

Cutest Picture of My Cat Ever

Doing nothing and loving it!

Ahhhh! It's been a whole week since I've been back and I'm not taking any summer classes. I've been vegging out and reading for fun. Hours spent on the internet and two books read in four days. Reading books for fun! It's so nice to be able to do that. My first research meeting is on Tuesday and I'm not leading it (yes!). Until then, I plan to keep relaxing and enoying the fact that nothing is required of me. Ahhhhh!

Unusual turn of events...

I returned and found that the dissertation had been delivered to my door. Unfortunately, I discovered that the theory of mind measure I had constructed was based on exactly the same scenario as the actual theory of mind measure I just obtained. How unusual...but, as such, I could not use this measure because it was too similar to the one I had already given (see post below). Mine was slightly more elaborate and the wording was a little different, but otherwise the scenario was exactly the same. It was as if I foreknew what the story was going to be. I just wish the slight modification in wording hadn't affected the reliability so extremely.

All is not lost, though, even though I'm going to have to scrap the quantitative analysis, I do plan to conduct a qualitative analysis (which never has to reach statistical significance because it is not based on numbers). I'm going to sit in on a qualitative analysis class this summer to learn more about this type of methodology. The video recordings of the reading groups and the open-ended written summaries will provide great fodder for qualitative analyses (yes, for those of you whom I have teased in the past about this great divide between qualitative and quantitative analysis and the obvious superiority of quantitative analysis, I eat my words and apologize profusely :) ).

In other news, God has orchestrated a series of financial fiascoes that resulted in my withdrawal from all the summer courses I had intended to take. I don't really understand God's purpose in all this, yet. But, I do know that God was the one who did it, and that it was for a specific purpose. I imagine that God has other plans for me this summer. I just hope I manage to figure them out and walk out God's plans for me anyways.

My little niece...

My little niece told me that I laugh a lot. After I finished laughing at her proclamation...she told me that when I laugh it makes her laugh. Pretty soon there will be more laughter than words around here.

He, he, he...

I am victorious!

I made it through the end of the semester and wrote the last paper (stayed up until 4am writing it though). Even though there were no findings to speak of, I still managed to ramble on for a few pages in the discussion and make it sound like something positive had come out of it (it deserves some qualitative analysis when I have more time). I contacted the teacher and she was willing to give the post measure if I receive it by next Tuesday. Here's hoping...

Ohhh, it feels so amazingly nice to be free of paper-writing, but I actually had a great deal of fun writing the discussions. Hmm, perhaps my intense dislike of writing is starting to fade. No doubt this blog is helping me get past that, but journaling is a whole different matter from academic writing. Perhaps it generalizes to all types of writing.

Anyways, all is well with the world, and I'm away with my family until next Tuesday when summer school starts back up.

Once again, Research bites me on the nose and runs away laughing

I hit a snag today as I was trying to analyze the results of my Theory of Mind (ToM) and language study. The post-theory of mind measure had a reliability of .17, which is bad, very, very bad. It basically means that I can't use this measure to reliably assess whether there was any effect of our treatment. What happened was that we decided to use a ToM measure that someone had created, but they only included one of the pair in the appendix of the research article. So we contacted her (names will not be used to protect the identity of the uncooperative party) and asked for the other measure and the scoring protocol. She replied by telling us we could find it in her dissertation (which is in Toronto, Canada!!!). Unsurprisingly, we couldn't get ahold of it through interlibrary loan. So I made one up that I thought was similar to the other measure. Unfortunately, it didn't work. The reliability is so low that we can't use it. So I went ahead and bought her dissertation online for $41 (grumble, grumble) and contacted the teacher to see if she would be willing to give it later (which may be too late to pick up any effect of the treatment). If I was that lady, I would have emailed my whole dissertation to whomever wanted it. In fact, I already emailed my computerized version of the Tower of Hanoi to someone who requested it. See, I'm much nicer and cooperative in the name of furthering other's research.

So if you are out there reading this right now, please pray for me because I'm going to have to pull an all-nighter in order to code and analyze the children's passage summaries so that we have some results to speak of. And so that I can let go of my anger and bitterness at the aforementioned, unnamed, uncooperative individual. Blech!

Farewells are hard...

Hey, my most excellent friend who is traveling for the next month. I will miss you much. You better eat good food and travel safe and bring back crazy stories. Have much fun with your traveling buddy and say hi to everyone for me. Eat sushi till there's no tomorrow and may the fish reign supreme in all the land. A month will fly by and you'll be surprised by the day that the good ol' USA is under your feet again.

Till then, my friend, adieu.

And so it is that the semester ends...

I was looking back at my posts from the end of last semester and I find that I was much more peppy back then. My recent posts from the end of this semester were much more dreary. I think that last semester was a blissful time that will never be recreated. It was the very beginning of my program and I had much more free time to play on the internet and veg. Now, I've been juggling so much more that I can't even play on the internet like I used to. In all those previous posts where I lamented my addiction to the internet, I thought I needed to excercise self-control. In actuality, I just needed my time to be filled to the brim, which only elevates my stress level. It always works out this way; the first year is blissfully slow and the subsequent years are impossibly filled with far too much.

A friend of mine told me that all I do is complain about research on my blog. Well, friend, if you are reading this, be happy that I don't complain about you on my blog. He,he,he. My Pastor just told me that he finds my blog enjoyable and humorous. See how much better it is to say things that build others up? For it could be none other than the Holy Spirit within my Pastor that gives him such joy and shows him how to see the positive within others (and their blogs) and find humor in the quirky way that I express myself online. For though I have not been quirky as of late, the quirkiness shall return. And the beginning of summer shall hopefully provide more positive fodder for my online thoughts. Perhaps I shall blog about the cuteness that is my neice and nephew (both of whom I absolutely adore). Or perhaps I shall soliloquize about nothing in particular. But, in any case, I myself hope that the attitude and mood that brings about my quirkiness will return and manifest itself joyfully online.

And yes, the semester is slowly coming to a close with the completion of one more paper within the next couple of days. Then I am off to see my family for a week. The change of pace shall be nice and no thought of school shall enter my mind.

Research is the pits

Once again, my research has suffered major mishaps in the first day and I am the one to take the heat for it. Oh, it is so difficult and I have so little experience and understanding; I just don't know what to expect and I can't seem to put myself in other's shoes in order to predict potential problems.

Sigh...

I talked with my pastor last Sunday about my research and he kept building me up by telling me how exciting and amazing this research is that I'm doing. But, when I get back to school, it doesn't feel so special, because everyone here is doing some form of research and it's just as good, if not better, than what I'm doing. So I don't feel so amazing, in fact, every time I've started some research this semester, I've been shot down for it.

Everything is a lot harder in real life than you ever expect it to be. I wish I could take a break from it all, but I still have to make it through next Tuesday.