advising

My advisor came up to SF today, so M and I met with him this afternoon, which ended up being very productive and helpful. He showed us how to make some necessary additions and modifications to our data so that we can run our regressions. I'm still missing the data that I need to run a village-level fixed effects regression (rather than a household-level one), but I was actually able to estimate some preliminary results today, which is exciting. (It's also a very good thing, since the Pacific Development conference is two weeks from now.)

My advisor made the weirdest comment to me today and I think I was kind of rude about it. I have a picture of DWE on my computer's desktop; it's a profile shot of him working on his laptop at the Sacramento airport, so his face is only partially visible. My advisor, who is a pretty good-looking white guy in (I think) his very early forties, saw the picture and asked who it was. I told him that it was my boyfriend. Then he said, "Gosh, he sort of looks like me." Now, like I said, my advisor is not bad looking, but I still found the comparison horrifying. First of all, he does not look like DWE (other than being of a similar age, having shortish brown hair, and being a white guy). Second of all, my advisor is, for various reasons, one of the last people on earth that I want compared to my boyfriend. He's a very nice guy, and he's a very smart guy, but he drives me nuts half the time, he can't spell my name right after almost two years (he calls me "Jen"), and I think of him as a very married, grown-up, nonsexual person.

Anyway, my reaction to him was literally to say, "Oh my god, please don't say that," in a sort of joking-yet-horrified way. And when M got there I told her to tell him that he doesn't look like DWE. I basically acted like it was the grossest thing I'd ever heard, and now I feel bad. But seriously, it was a vaguely creepy comment. (Which is not to say that he meant anything creepy by it, because he is not a creepy guy, but still.)

In other news, I'm going to the ballet again tomorrow, to see Sleeping Beauty. Other than that, it's going to be a working weekend--I have a Macro midterm to study for, exams to grade, thesis work to do, about four loads of laundry waiting, and my apartment is a pig sty. I really should have been more productive this evening, but I guess it's a little late for that.