MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Back in Davis wooohaaa

Mmmm back in this sleepy college town. I missed Davis sooooooo much while I was gone, but now that I am back here, I kind of miss China too. Well, not the humidity, or the traffic, or the dirtiness, but this does kind of feel like a country bumpkin hamlet compared to the mega cities there.

So not excited about school starting tomorrow, yipes! Between work and travel and miscellaneous duties, I think I spent all my summer running around checking things off of my summer to-do list (fyi- I accomplished 6 of 8 checklist items). Now that that's done, damn it, school has to start. I couldn't get one week of just nothing- Teen Mom and Jersey Shore reruns (yes I have horrible taste in tv, but don't hate), sleeping in, going to last of farmer's market, eating popcorn for breakfast and enjoying it?

I found this lovely gem of a poem a while back (doesn't it match my mood?):

I Resign
Unknown
I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult.
I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8-year-old again.
I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four star restaurant.
I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make ripples with rocks.
I want to think M&Ms are better than money because you can eat them.
I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer day.
I want to return to a time when life was simple.
When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn't bother you, because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care.
All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset.
I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good.
I want to believe that anything is possible.
I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again.
I want to live simple again.
I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip,illness, and loss of loved ones.
I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow.
So...here's my checkbook and my car keys, my credit cards and all my responsibility.
I am officially resigning from adulthood. And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to catch me first, 'cause,
"Tag! You're it."

The master blog list!!!

Sometimes people tell me that they found another blog through my blog. I wanted to make am list of all the blogs I read, and put it in one place so other people can discover new blogs too :) My blog reads span a lot of genres, which will probably will not all appeal to one person (and even I can't read all of them at once. I have to be in certain moods to read certain ones...*ahem*statistics*ahem), but here it is, by genre. The first blog in each list is the one I read the most often:

STATISTICS/R
Probability And Statistics Blog
Andrew Gelman's Blog
Blog About Stats
And R Blog From All R Blogs

DATING/HUMOR/SATIRE/FRIENDSHIP
Sex Lies & Dating In The City (Simone's blog is the ONLY one on this list I read EVERY day without fail)
Love In the Dumps
Guyspeak
All The Single Ladies ChicagoNow
Matty D

ECONOMICS/INVESTING/PERSONAL FINANCE
Money Under 30
20 Something Finance
Poorer Than You
Roubini's Ecomonitor
MSN Money Stocks Blogs
Lloyd's Investment Blog
Market Analysis

SEWING/PHOTOGRAPHY/VINTAGE/DESIGN
Bleubird Vintage
Promise Tangeman Her website is equally adorable
Elsie Flannigan
Thompson Family-life
Skunkboy Creatures
Lisa's Likes

GIRLY STUFF- SKINCARE/MAKEUP/FASHION
Bubblegarm
Jenna's Model Life
Joseibi
Lookbook.nu Not really a blog, but inspiration none the less. Lots of pretty clothes/people.
Vivawoman Singapore
Skin Deco

Enjoy!

I never think there's anything a guy can do that I can't

I was thinking tonight about determination. A while ago someone told me I was conceited for saying something on email. The details are not important, but it got me thinking about how much confidence we place in our abilities. Me: I tend to be competitive, and also very anal about things. If there was an easy way of doing something without understanding it, and a hard way that did, I would most likely pick the hard way. It's more important to me to understand the principle of something than to get it right.

Often times people ask the question would you rather be right or would you rather be happy? In a rhetorical way, because the right answer is to be happy. And my answer is, for the most part, I would rather be right. I don't think I could be happy if I knew I was wrong. I know I'm extremely stubborn in this sense, which gets me in trouble, but I refuse to compromise my principles.

Which brings me to the thought that often times I feel very androgynous. I'm very right-brained by nature, and for that very fact alone, sometimes I just feel like more of a guy. My interests are so wide spread, I would feel just as comfortable fixing a car as I would shopping. Whenever I'm with my guy friends, I'm always digging for information from them about things I'm interested in, but have no one to talk to about like: programming, stocks, video games, construction.....etc... And I get annoyed when they don't want to talk about it (because I suspect it's because I'm a girl, even when maybe they just don't feel like it) lol.

That having been said, I'm also waaaay girly in other ways. But I maintain, that there's nothing a guy can do that I can't or wouldn't be better at if I wanted to :D Whether this makes me a femi-nazi, or just someone whose really anal, who would never be good at being a housewife because I'm too curious about how everything works ... I just feel determined about it.

Where will the market go next?

Last week the 50 day moving average of the S&P 500, dipped below its 200 day moving average. In the financial world, this is known as the "looming death cross". Jim Cramer wrote a funny blog about it here. As you can tell from the graph of the last 10 years of the S&P 500, this has only happened 5 other times, and at least 2 of those times it directly preceded a recession (2001, and 2008).



So are we doomed to be double dipping into another recession? My thought is no. First, we are already in one, and the two times it preceded the recession were relatively good times for the market, which is not the case now. Secondly, I believe that the cross between the moving averages simply signifies change, of any kind, in the market, good or bad. And if I have some time I would like to look into its significance from a time analysis point of view. Both of the times when the "looming death cross" occurred but did not signify a recession, the 50 day MA was able to cross back above the 200 day MA within 1 or 2 months. So, my thought is that that second cross will occur in this case as well within the next few months. If however, it does not occur, we will all have greater things to worry about than markets!

Berry picking

Today I went berry picking at Impossible Acres, a cute little farm off of Covell blvd, on the edge of Davis. I was surprised by their selection of berries and other fruits. Not every variety was ripe yet, but I picked some Rasberries, Mungo berries (a variety of blackberry), Boysenberries, and Marionberries for my berry basket. Everything came out to a little over one pound. I was charged a grand total of only $3.25, about 3 or 4 times less than what I would have paid at the grocery store! And I had a lot of fun. So I think I'm going to continue picking my own berries while I can instead of buying them.

Actually, today started with getting up at 8:30 in the morning for another reason all together. The hunt for an elusive berry known as the black rasberry- a fruit that has been elevated, in my mind, to almost mythical proportions now. I had not heard of this berry until my friends told me about it recently. According to them, it has the taste and look of a blackberry, but more antioxidants than a blueberry. And is so rare that its picking season is only two weeks out of a year. There are only two places close by that grow this berry for picking, one is in Grass valley and the other is in the mountains by Placerville. We drove to one of the places today, only to find that it was not open yet. And spent the rest of the day shopping, eating korean food, and picking some more ordinary berries, which was just fine by me.

Phillip picking berries in his mom's hat.

Me and Phillip showing off our berries. He had more in the hat, but took them out to weigh them.

Boggle

One year over... I feel slightly nostalgic about my first year ending, even though I will still be in MSB almost every day. It wont be the same. Today I walked by the office where everyone would hang out during the year, and the door was closed (which almost never is the case). And it reminded me that I wouldn't see those people for a while. I'll miss the random conversations, statistics puns, problem solving, general dorkiness, and playing games on the computer... Speaking of which, I am officially obsessed with wordsplay or boggle in other words (I know boggle sounds like what my grandma would play if she was white, but trust me this is different). The one I play is on wordsplay.net, and the board is timed. You get 3 minutes to make as many words as you can on a 5 by 5 board, competing against anyone else that is playing at the time. When your time runs out, you get to see your ranking and all the words you made and missed, and what everyone else made. Try it! If you like scrabble or text twist, you will love this. Btw- how many words can you make from the board above? Partial answers below... (don't peek!)

MSB kind of reminds me of Hogwarts, only instead of learning magic and wizardry, you spend every day learning math, until eventually you're decent at it. You hang out with and see the same people every day, except during the summer. There are also the good and the evil professors... but there isn't nearly as much excitement or danger, or cool shifting staircases and secret rooms and stuff.