I've been an absolute lump all weekend. Not an entirely unproductive lump, nor an entirely sedentary lump, but a lump nonetheless. I'm not sure why, but I haven't felt like doing much besides staying in my apartment watching DVDs. I should get together with a couple of school people and work on my Macro problem set tonight, but I'm uninterested in both doing the assignment and interacting with others right now. I'm not feeling depressed or cranky, just, I don't know, lumpy.
The good news is that I can still do ten-key by touch while in lump form, and as a result I finished making the necessary revisions and additions to our data. I would say that the data is finally complete, but that's not true, because we still need info from IMED on when each area first had access to credit. But the data is really, really close to being complete. It was good that I went back through each survey, because I caught a couple of data entry errors that I had made, and I was able to make sure that information was interpreted and entered in a uniform way by E, M, and me. As I'm sure I've mentioned at least once, our data consist of 420 borrowers, with a time span of anywhere between 2 and 15 years (depending on age) for each borrower, giving us a total of 5450 observations (an "observation" is a single borrower in a single year). For each observation there are 34 variables, which doesn't include E's child schooling variables (of which there are 3 for every school-aged child in the household) or the variables that identify year, borrower, and borrower group. The point is, it's a lot of numbers in little boxes, and there's still a tiny part of me that's like, "dude, when did I become the kind of person who puts numbers in boxes and manipulates them mathematically?" But clearly I've been (or been becoming) that person for a while, so it's just about time to get over it.
I decided to visit Bakersfield over President's day weekend, which works nicely because I'll have an even longer weekend than normal and Amtrak seems immune to holiday weekend price hikes. I'll need to work on my thesis while I'm home, but it's a chance to see the fam and an inexpensive change of scenery.
And now I'm going to go be lumpy somewhere outside of my apartment before it gets totally dark.
The good news is that I can still do ten-key by touch while in lump form, and as a result I finished making the necessary revisions and additions to our data. I would say that the data is finally complete, but that's not true, because we still need info from IMED on when each area first had access to credit. But the data is really, really close to being complete. It was good that I went back through each survey, because I caught a couple of data entry errors that I had made, and I was able to make sure that information was interpreted and entered in a uniform way by E, M, and me. As I'm sure I've mentioned at least once, our data consist of 420 borrowers, with a time span of anywhere between 2 and 15 years (depending on age) for each borrower, giving us a total of 5450 observations (an "observation" is a single borrower in a single year). For each observation there are 34 variables, which doesn't include E's child schooling variables (of which there are 3 for every school-aged child in the household) or the variables that identify year, borrower, and borrower group. The point is, it's a lot of numbers in little boxes, and there's still a tiny part of me that's like, "dude, when did I become the kind of person who puts numbers in boxes and manipulates them mathematically?" But clearly I've been (or been becoming) that person for a while, so it's just about time to get over it.
I decided to visit Bakersfield over President's day weekend, which works nicely because I'll have an even longer weekend than normal and Amtrak seems immune to holiday weekend price hikes. I'll need to work on my thesis while I'm home, but it's a chance to see the fam and an inexpensive change of scenery.
And now I'm going to go be lumpy somewhere outside of my apartment before it gets totally dark.
Speaking of lumpy things, this is my "new" futon, which I inherited from E when he went to D.C. Its cushion is a bit lumpy, and I've spent most of my time as a lump sitting on it.
4 comments:
LOL! You're a transponster!
what's a transponster? i'm feeling a bit lumpy these days myself...i wish i could come over and sit on your new futon and be a lump with you. i'd bring my new laptop and pirate your neighbor's wireless internet and never get up!
On that episode of Friends when they play the game show one of the questions is "what is Chandlers' job?"
Rachel starts saying "it's something to do with numbers... and transponding.... Transponster! HE'S A TRANSPONSTER!"
And Monica screams "THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD!"
i miss that show! it was so funny. and so our generation before we got all grown up and busy (and out of town) and stuff, when we used to just sit around each others' apartments all the time. or go to the beach in the middle of the night just because we could.
one of my absolute favorites (besids whenever joey got a turkey stuck on his head...didn't that happen a few times?) was when joey didn't know how to use air quotes and apologized with them.
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