Grey Hairs

I have so many... I started pulling them out, but my Greek friend told me her grandmother says two grow back to replace each one. I felt like I should believe Greek grandmother wisdom, so tried to leave them alone. I mentioned this to my sister and she told me that when you pull one out "six come to the funeral." Glad I stopped when I did! It's alright though--I'll be a cool young grey-haired person. I just wish they'd start coming in somewhere less obvious than my bangs, come on! Particularly that curly one that sticks out the front of my stick-straight hair like a unicorn horn :)

Baking scones to awesome music...

...makes for an excellent Saturday morning(ish). The plan for Terrapin (a brewery) with the family later makes the evening look pretty good too!

Awesome Music: http://8tracks.com/annickoost/pity-party-cancelled-due-to-outrageous-dancing

Figuring out my life update

I was pretty bummed when  my job fell through. Come on--I was supposed to be going to Reunion Island (it's ok to have never heard of it, no one has. It's off the coast of Madagascar). Tropical yet French, with awesome curry, beaches, and mountains. Now, post-moping, I'm ok with it: The island has a "restless" volcano (you can scroll down a bit to see that it erupts at least once most years) and angry sharks and is on the rear end of the universe (it doesn't show up on world maps).

I was also only going to be there for 18 months and was then going to have to revisit the "what do I do with my life" question, my all-time favorite. The idea was to turn the position into a PhD, but you never know if that kind of thing will work out (and given how me having any involvement in the project went, I was right to be skeptical!). So this way I got started earlier sorting out my future.  After thinking about the options and what I want to do with myself, I came to a shocking realization---for the first time ever, I actually want to get a PhD. I never thought I'd feel like that--I thought I'd eventually end up getting one as a logical step in my career. But I have finally found that part of science that keeps me up late happily reading papers. Spatial epidemiology (aka, among other things, landscape epidemiology, ecoepidemiology, and medical/health geography) is the study of the spatial patterns of diseases, and I love it! The methods themselves are fun--I get to make maps and look at satellite images and huge tables of variables--and the questions I can ask with them are awesome. I like it enough to not even be bothered that I've become a statistician of sorts, which I never thought would happen and amuses the people around me to no end.

So now here I am, applying to school again. I do that a lot. I would like to get back over to Europe, and so am looking there. There are great people for me in the UK, where unfortunately funding for non-UK/EU citizens is only slightly more common than unicorns. Maybe it's a good thing--I like the sun and don't want to take a three-year break from it... Maybe I'll have more luck on the continent. I'm also looking in the US to give myself more options (and please my mother), even though I don't really want to stay here. I have found one program I'm excited about against my will though. We'll see! As usual, onward!

Meilleurs Voeux for 2013!

It's the time of year to bring out a tradition I discovered and loved while in Europe. French friends introduced me to it, but a German one recently did the same thing, so I'm not sure how widespread it is. The tradition is really wishing someone a happy new year, as in sending a personalized message with specific wishes for them for their upcoming year.  I remembered too late to get cards out to you guys this year, so I'm going to violate the whole idea by posting general wishes for all of you, but it's still better than just wishing you a Happy New Year (although that is certainly part of the package)! You guys are all doing such different things it's hard to generalize, but no matter what you're up to, I wish all of you a happy 2013 full of awesome adventures of whatever suits you best, from travel to work/school to home life!