the 100th post spectacular

Welcome to the j-curve's 100th blog entry. So much blathering on about India and economics and boys and the random minutiae of my life, and I couldn't have done it without you, my loyal readers. To quote Homer Simpson (in the episode where he becomes obese so that he can be legally disabled and work at home, upon the dedication of his remote work station): "Thank you for your pity." Really, though, blogging is fun, and I'm happy that y'all are still reading from time to time.

I probably shouldn't have chosen 1:30 a.m. as the time to start this post. It probably won't be very spectacular, since I'm getting sleepy already. But I'll give you a quick rundown of my weekend, and then a few more Belize pics.

I got quite a bit of work done on our data (entering the last couple surveys, compiling the data that each of us enetered into a single spreadsheet with consistent formatting, making some of the changes recommended by my advisor, etc). I wish I could say that it's finished, but I have to go back and add some dummy variables for type of business, and I have to correct some inconsistencies in how I entered what year certain things happened, because I realized that somewhere along the line I changed the way I was doing it. I'm hoping all that can be completed in another day or two. I finally did laundry and some other random chores, and I worked on my macro reading, so all in all it was a reasonably productive couple of days.

I dragged the still-jetlagged and majorly stressed DWE out on Friday and Saturday night to hang with my school peeps. Friday was just drinks at the Pig and Whistle, but Saturday we went to a salsa club. DWE is very unenthusiastic about participating in dance that involves specific steps (as opposed to, say, just gettin' down with one's bad self, which he doesn't seem to love but is at least willing to do in the right context and with some mild coaxing). The husband of one of my dear classmates taught me to salsa. It's not terribly hard, and he was a very good teacher, but it takes some getting used to. I also danced with JSOC for a little bit; he loves to salsa and was out on the dance floor all night. I ran into a friend that graduated from IDEC last year; I didn't even know she was still in town, and it turns out that she works two blocks from where I live, which is neat. It was really good to catch up with her a bit.

I hung out with DWE for a while tonight, but due in large part to his work-induced stress (there are major changes/expansions/challenges/etc happening in his company right now, and much of the responsibility for making things happen falls on his shoulders), he's increasingly needing time to himself. Sometimes it is disappointing, because he's out of town so often that when he's here I want to see him as much as I can. On the other hand, his need for alone time is completely understandable (especially since his job, particularly while he's out of town, very often has a social component that takes up many of his evenings). And tonight, for example, I didn't even really mind that he didn't come over. I've become increasingly greedy about my own alone time, and I'm feeling a lot of urgency about working on my data, especially since I found out yesterday that I will indeed be presenting my research at the Pacific Development Conference (as will three of my fellow IDECers and two of the department's professors, including my advisor).

Enough about school and stress and all that. Let's pretend I'm back in Belize instead:



"Go Slow": The island's ubiquitous motto.

This is the guest house where we stayed. Our room was on the top floor, left hand side. From the patio, you looked out onto the ocean to the east, but if you walked to the right side and leaned over the railing just a touch, you could also look at the ocean to the west. Very weird being on such a skinny strip of land.

This is just sort of a typical island view: palm trees, a pier, really blue water, and a bit of a charming, worn, windswept feel to everything.

This is Leo, a little kitten that DWE befriended on the beach while I was scattering the little bit of my dad's ashes that I brought (as is my new travel custom). The kitten followed DWE over to me and he (DWE, not the cat) said, "This is Leo." I asked DWE how he knew the cat's name, since he wasn't wearing a collar. DWE had just made the name up. Anyway, Leo was adorable, and he climbed right in my lap and loved all over me, and was not creepy and flea-infested like the cats in India. I wanted desperately to smuggle him back to the US in my suitcase.

Leo loved DWE too (although not as much as me), but he (Leo, that is) was sort of done posing for pictures by the time I took this one. DWE wore that stupid hat all weekend, because he needed a haircut and thought his hair looked "poofy".