The Heusens

I've been told by a few of my friends that, when they first met me, I came across to them as overly formal and uber-professional. Huh? It's one of those things that surprises me every time I hear it, because it's so not the image I have of myself. And after getting to know me, I'm sure every impression of formality/professionalism goes out the window.

I think it might be because I do a lot of brow furrowing. Also, I think my normal, neutral face looks kind of sad/angry. I don't know why. When people see me not smiling, they always ask me what's wrong.

In Indiana, I don't want to come across to my colleagues as too formal or unfriendly. My strategy (besides being informal and friendly) is to decorate my office like a candy store. I would love to have an office that looks like a candy store. I have never been good at decorating but recently (since my pregnancy nesting hit full force) I've started to gain an appreciation for good design (hello, Dave and Erin's condo!).

I've also noticed that having an office that you want to spend time in can make all the difference in the world. My gross desk with sharp, exposed corners (that I actually cut my knee on once) doesn't provide me with any incentive to spend more time at work.

On the other hand, I work with a woman whose office has great furniture, one of those oil diffuser things, nice photos on the wall, an electric mini-fountain (I know it sounds tacky, but it makes her office feel more like a zen spa than an office), a jar of chocolates and Enya music playing. Whenever I'm there I'm tempted to ask her if it's okay if I just park myself there and work for the rest of the day.

And wouldn't you love to spend the day in a candy store? Kris doesn't think it's a great idea to have my office look like a candy store. He thinks people will think I'm a weirdo. But my strategy is not unlike that of the witch in Hansel and Gretl. I plan to counter all people's perceptions of me as overly formal by luring them with candy, trapping them, cooking them in my oven, and then eating them. Just kidding about that last part! I would never eat them. What do you think I am, a monster?

I plan to enhance my productivity by creating a work space where I actually enjoy spending time. I'm willing to invest in my own office furniture and decor since I'll be there for at least six years.

Here is my vision. My office will try to look like Miette Confiserie in San Francisco:


I would like to have white bookshelves lining the walls, with a few candy-filled apothecary jars:


A glass-topped desk:


With a cool white desk chair from West Elm:


A fun, comfortable orange couch from IKEA:

With some great pillows from CB2:
A great coffee table from CB2:
With some of these on top:


And one of these underneath:


And a few additional white chairs from West Elm:


Lots of family photos on the walls, along with some Etsy prints by Matte Stephens:


And this great poster from SFGirlByTheBay:


A diffuser from Antica Farmacista:


Magazine butlers from West Elm:


Cute file folders:

This letter carrier to keep mail:
A white mini-fridge to store milk and Diet Coke, and an orange or green coffee station (picture on top of it an espresso machine, espresso grinder, frother, and another apothecary jar to use as a sugar bowl):


and an assortment of whimsical coffee mugs from Lux Delux:


Don't you think this little exercise has already been good for my productivity?

Posted by Ashlyn at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments

There shall be no cohesion whatsoever to this post.

When I was growing up we used to go to Yaohan Plaza in LA's Lil' Tokyo. There was a store there that was seriously called "Dried Fish, Frozen Fish, Auto Parts, and Stationery." My fav! This post is the internet equivalent of that store.

Here are some things that have been on my mind lately and stressing me out:

My groin. (Don't worry, I'm giggling too, just reading that word...it's almost like onomatopoeia!) A few weeks ago I pulled my groin muscle while I was running. This injury just highlights the fact that I have the sense of humor of a fifteen year old boy. The pain factor is totally outweighed by the fun I have yelling "MY GROIN!!" all dramatically, doing a Michael Jackson groin-clutching move and then collapsing on the couch.

(Kris doesn't really like when I talk about my groin. Here's another thing he doesn't like: You know how the tops of the hip bones in your back (they're called the iliac crests) form two ball-shaped masses on the sides of your lower back? Well, those hurt when I was pregnant. I got such a kick out of asking Kris to massage my balls. But he did not.)

The point is that I was worried about my GROIN and didn't know whether I should keep running. I decided to take a break for two weeks for it to heal...I heard too many horror stories of people running themselves into the ground and developing permanent injuries. So now I think it's okay again, but now I'm totally off track for the 10k training schedule. I'm going to try to do it anyway but don't know if I'm just asking for punishment.

Indiana. I am an uber-procrastinator, so all I need is the excuse that I'm moving away in six months, and poof! All my work motivation is sucked up into looking at how big of a house I can rent for $800 in Bloomington. Turns out I can get a horse farm for that money!

And whither travel? Kris and I wanted to take a big trip to Asia before we moved to the Midwest. Turns out we probably won't have time. Here's our crazy schedule:

This month, I'm going to San Diego. Also, Anita's going to be back from Africa and I want to spend as much time with her as possible.
February: Tahoe and probably Indiana to house-hunt.
March: Nashville for AEFA
April: San Diego for AERA
May: Yosemite, and Kris goes to Japan to present TWO papers that he just got accepted to a fancy conference!
June: Phoenix to pack up furniture from my old condo
July: Move to Indiana
August: Back to California for Maryn's wedding!

I know it doesn't sound like a lot (mostly weekend trips) but I'm also trying to be productive, so I don't know how I'm supposed to get publications in the pipeline AND go to Asia AND be a good mom AND not live in squalor AND do the above traveling. Something's gotta give. And that something might be a trip to Vietnam. Unless you maybe think otherwise?

I mean, should we just go for it? It's a lot easier to get to Vietnam from California than it is from Indiana...

Also, about Indiana: I have to find day care for Saya. I have no idea what I'm doing or what I should be looking for! And I have no idea what the wait list situation is. All the more reason to go to Indiana sooner, rather than later.

I also just found out that the class I'm teaching at Indiana is from 5:30 - 6:45 p.m. on MW with a lab from 7-8 p.m. on Mondays. Yuck. The day care doesn't run that late. And I know senior faculty get their pick of times. But they also don't have babies that need to be picked up from day care at 5:30. Sucks.

Procrastination. I am the world's worst procrastinator in the world. I have had serious focus issues for the last ten years but they're just getting worse! I've been sitting on a revise and resubmit for three months now and can't muster the energy or focus to write a paragraph of revisions. I need to set a goal and then just do it. Any tips? I really want to finish them before Anita gets to town (in two weeks) so we can celebrate with good eats.

Adding to my feelings of inadequacy is that Kris now has eleven (eleven!) publications and just chugs away, no problem. He is like a machine. I kind of just sulk around him looking like a sad puppy and saying "But where are we going to live in Indiana?!"

Also, I haven't been running as often (see groin issue above), my hygiene is marginal this week, I haven't done any housework, and haven't done any cooking. I feel like a loser. Because I have absolutely nothing to show for my lack of productivity! Not even a clean bathroom. Or clean molars.

I'm way beyond using the baby as an excuse. I'm just distracted by all these minutiae and I. Cannot. Focus. It's like "Oh wait, I can't do any programming today. Gotta write those Xmas thank you notes!" "Oh wait, I can't send that email today. Gotta empty the trash!" ...Or do a blog post! I seriously need a slap in the face.

But! Here are some good things that I am thinking about:

Maryn's Engagement. I am so excited about Maryn and Brian's wedding! You can read all about their amazing engagement story here. Let the planning begin! (Just got a big lecture from Kris tonight about how I cannot spend three hours a day planning Maryn's wedding...procrastination issues, remember?!?!)

Academic News. I just found out that the NSF grant I applied for (and submitted like five days after Saya was born) was funded! Unfortunately I was unable to be listed as a principal investigator (my lowly post-doc status persists) but it will pay my summer support for the next three years. I'm really excited about that and feel extremely grateful to have two awesome co-authors, Ed and Wei, as the principal investigators.

And, as mentioned above, Kris got two papers accepted to the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Kobe, Japan. Huge news! Congratulations my darling!

In other news, I spent all weekend long at the American Economics Association conference in San Francisco, helping to interview new job candidates for SPEA. The job market is so, so crazy competitive this year. I am not trying to be modest when I say that there is no way I would have made even the first round of interviews this year. It's a total buyer's market, with huge numbers of highly qualified graduates, and hardly any positions (a ton of universities have hiring freezes right now). We conducted sixteen hour-long interviews and I came away feeling (1) very relieved to have a job, and (2) I felt very sad about the sense of desperation coming from several candidates, who in a different economy would have no problem getting a job. It seriously felt like splitting hairs. It was like "Well, this guy's got a Yale economics Ph.D. and seven publications, only one of which is with a Nobel prize winner, while this Harvard economics Ph.D. has only five publications, but they're in better journals." Crazy.

Latte Perfection. It is now achieved. Kris kept complaining that our coffee mugs were too big for him to make the cool foam designs. He insisted that he needed a smaller 6 oz. teacup to make the cool designs. When he told me this, this is what I heard: "Blah blah blah." But I ended up buying him some really great teacups at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito, which my mom ended up buying from me and giving him for Christmas (thanks Mom!).

And whaddaya know? My engineering savvy loverboy was right. Check it out:


Now I'm a total latte snob and ruined forever. Kris' lattes are so, so good. Perfect foam.

Saya agrees, apparently. Today we didn't have any more milk so I ran over to Starbucks. Saya is getting very expressive with her hands and the barista noticed that Saya was actually flipping her off. Saya is internalizing more than I thought about our coffee preferences! There was nothing wrong with the barista as a person, but her foam? Not so much.

Other Sayas. I was in a store the other day and I saw this Asian woman with her half Asian daughter. She said "Saya! Come here!" I was shocked. I asked the woman what her daughter's name was, and the woman confirmed that she was Japanese and that her daughter's name was indeed Saya.

It's really shocking because Saya isn't even a real Japanese name. It's a word that means "pea pod" and is a generic term referring to things that encase other things. Wouldn't you be surprised if you named your kid Pea Pod and then met another kid with the same name (conditional on the Bayesian prior that you are not a celebrity)? Yeah, it's basically the same thing.

Susanna's daughter Rhea actually came up with the name Saya for us. It turns out that Rhea knows of a little girl named Saya who is also hapa (half Japanese) and whose dad is a professor at Stanford. So it occurred to me that the Saya I saw in the store could be the little girl that Rhea knew. So I asked the woman whether her husband was a Stanford prof, and she said no.

This means that there are three different little half Asian girls running around Palo Alto, all with the name Saya. That's kind of crazy, right?

Swinging. Saya is obsessed. Kris took her for the first time on New Year's and we've taken her every day since (there is a park right behind our apartment). She goes totally nuts and laughs and screams with joy the whole time. When I watch her on the swing, I seriously feel like my heart is going to burst with happiness and love.

Posted by Ashlyn at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments

My dad is Swedish. What this means is: well, basically nothing. Except that he is not very bendy (random fact: Scandinavians are the least flexible people in the whole world, and my dad contributes to this finding). My dad has some vague memories of his grandfather eating pickled herring. But his Swedishness ends there.

To my mom, not knowing about and celebrating one's culture is tantamount to heresy. She believes in celebrating all holidays, great and small, and only needs a little bit of encouragement (or, no encouragement) to adopt others' holidays. Her exuberance is really catching.

For example. My mom had a Polish friend who baked a cake in the shape of a lamb every Easter. Are we Polish? No. Do we know the significance of this tradition? No. But do we now bake a lamb-shaped cake every Easter? You betcha!

So imagine my mom's horror when she married a man who - gasp! - had lost his Swedish cultural identity in the melting pot of white America. What could she do to resuscitate his ethnic identity...except to buy a bunch of Swedish holiday decorations and start CELEBRATING?! From the time I was a little girl, my mom made a heart-warmingly big deal about the Swedish St. Lucia holiday.

For those of you who are not familiar, let me explain about St. Lucia day. Basically, it pays homage to a martyred Italian saint, Lucia. There are several versions of the story of her martyrdom, which you can read here. The short version is that Lucia pledged herself to a life of chastity, but a pagan Roman soldier wanted to marry her. In some versions of the story, Lucia gouges out her own eyes in order to not cast her eyes upon him (um, crazy!?!). Anyway, homeboy (the Roman soldier) got pissed about this, and sent some soldiers to kill her. Miraculously, attempts to burn her at the stake and remove her from her home did not work. Unmiraculously, her divine protection ended there and she ended up getting stabbed to death.

In Sweden, celebrating St. Lucia Day on December 13 basically became an excuse for parents to get breakfast in bed. Little girls wake up very early on this morning, dress themselves in a white robe with a red sash, place a wreath of candles on their head, and bring their parents breakfast in bed while singing the traditional St. Lucia song. (You can read about the significance of these traditions on Wikipedia).

Growing up, Maryn and I celebrated St. Lucia Day every year. We woke early, dressed in our white gowns with red sashes, donned our battery-operated candle head wreaths, and brought breakfast to our parents in bed. Breakfast is not complete without hot breakfast buns and pepparkakor, a flower-shaped ginger cookie that you can usually buy at Ikea or your local Safeway (look for Anna's cookies in the box with the Swedish flag). My mom always made the day extra special by giving us a little Swedish themed present (a straw ornament, a necklace) and making Swedish meatballs with crispy Hasselback potates for dinner.

Socially Awkward Swedish Moment #1:
Dressing up as St. Lucia for Halloween. Yes, I did this as a kid. And, obviously, no-one knew who I was. I remember trick-or-treating in my costume.

Family answering knock: Wow, it's the Statue of Liberty!
(To be fair, St. Lucia does look a LOT like Lady Liberty.)
Me (matter of fact): Actually, I'm a martyr. St. Lucia...ever heard of her?
Family (shifting uncomfortably): Um, no.

Anyway...

This year I was feeling nostalgic about celebrating. I still have my costume in a box, and even though my plastic wreath is being held together with Scotch tape and half of the candles don't work, it still lights up. I thought that I would go ahead and celebrate St. Lucia day.

We live in an apartment across from a Swedish family. They have a Swedish flag hanging in their window and we can always hear them speaking Swedish. I've only waved to them and had a short conversation with them before, but I thought that it would be fun if I showed up at their door dressed up as St. Lucia, bearing gifts of saffron buns and pepparkakor. I thought they would appreciate it and feel like it was a little taste of home.

Socially Awkward Swedish Moment #2:
I shared my idea with a few different people (N=5) who did not disguise the looks of horror on their faces when I shared this idea. I was told that the Swedes would think I was a "weirdo" and "insane" for showing up dressed in a costume at the crack of dawn. Another friend told me that she would "kill me" if I showed up at her house like that. I was asked "DO YOU EVEN KNOW THESE PEOPLE?" And when I replied "no" in a small voice, their looks of horror and incredulity only increased. It made me sad. Not only because their reactions made me feel that I'd lost touch with reality (and what is considered normal or not, hahaha) but also because I didn't have support for celebrating my special holiday. Sniff!

So...I decided to celebrate anyway. I awoke at 5 a.m. on December 13th and proceeded to bake for three hours. I had to make dough, wait for it to rise, shape the dough, bake it, etc. Did I mention that I've never actually attempted to make bread before?

First, I attempted to make cross-shaped Lussekatter, the traditional sweet St. Lucia saffron buns. I used the recipe I found here, and only kind of freaked out when I realized the recipe never said what to do with the sugar. Doh! (Or in this case, Dough!) I added it in at the last minute, which meant that it didn't get incorporated as well as I'd hoped, but I think the buns still turned out well, and tasted great:


Then, I made a traditional St. Lucia currant and saffron wreath, which turned out really beautifully (and which I did not get a good picture of, unfortunately). I used this recipe.

I wrapped up the breads, donned my costume, packed up some candles, pepparkakor, lingonberry jam, and napkins with Swedish flags on them (a gift from my mom from a different St. Lucia Day), and grabbed Saya. We were ready to celebrate, whether people were open to the idea or not.

First I texted Marsha: am coming to u with candles on my head.
Marsha, early riser that she is, was already driving to San Jose for a little Xmas shopping. She actually turned the car around and drove home.
She texted me back: am coming back. cannot miss this.
She greeted me with her camera, which is how I got this shot as I dropped off her lussekatter:


(Sorry about the wrinkles in my white robe. It was sitting in a box for the last year, and I have a strict no-ironing policy.)

Then it was off to Susanna's house, where I was greeted like Santa Claus by her four-year old Mari (who had a look of awe in her eyes as I came to the door). We had a wonderful morning as we lit candles on the Lucia wreath, ate the still-warm bread, and played games trying to break our pepparkakor into four pieces (considered good luck).


Here, you can kind of see the wreath in the lower right corner (click the photo to enlarge):


As you can see, Saya was accosted by Susanna's kids. Mari matter-of-factly told me: "Everyone in my family likes your baby." Which I appreciated!

Socially Awkward Swedish Moment #3:
Susanna: What a beautiful red sash! What does it symbolize?
Me: Blood.
Susanna: Oh.

Then it was off to Nicole's. She was the "friend" who told me that she would "kill" me if I showed up at her house with candles on my head. Which of course I then proceeded to threaten to do. And then did. It was great. She was still sleeping when I showed up. She sounded sleepy and PISSED when I knocked on her door. Then she started laughing hysterically when she realized what was actually happening, and jumped right out of bed.

The best part was this. As I was jumping out of my car to harass Nicole, I noticed someone in the neighboring house looking out their window at me. I thought, oh lordy, they are going to think I need to be institutionalized.

But...quite the contrary! As I was leaving Nicole's, an extremely friendly woman burst out of the neighboring house, camera in hand, yelling "HAPPY SANTA LUCIA DAY!" I was so relieved (and happy) that she knew who I was! Turns out she lived in Denmark for several years and was feeling nostalgic. She was so happy to see me, I felt like Santa Claus for the second time that day.

I completed my rounds at our Swedish neighbors'. The woman (who has two small kids) looked so happy that she was about to cry. She explained that she had tried to make her own lussekatter earlier in the week, but that it hadn't turned out because she didn't get the European cooking conversions right. Her bread had turned out hard as a rock, and she was thrilled to have some warm buns to eat on St. Lucia morning.

Then I went back to my apartment to treat myself to another kind of warm buns, if you know what I mean.

And that, my friends, was how it went down. NOT AWKWARD AT ALL!!! Just pure happy.

Posted by Ashlyn at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments

Guess what? BRIAN POPPED THE QUESTION. Not just any question. The question.

And now, my baby sister is engaged.


Congratulations, M+B :)

Posted by Ashlyn at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments