September 9th

It's been a while, it's been busy. But I am back, with a Sunday evening glass of wine to tell you of my ostracism experiment. There is a well known ostracism paradigm, which produces extremely strong effects. A participant comes into the lab and 2 confederates are throwing one another a ball, they also throw it to the participant three times, and then continue only throwing to one another. Participants experience very strong emotional reactions to this exclusion paradigm. So do I. I found that out on Thursday evening when I took part in football practice and was part of a 3 men team. They did not shoot me the ball once, even though I was always free, and they did not talk to me, only to one another, and they did not even realize when I stopped doing anything (to test whether they would realize). TO my great disgust I nearly cried, it took immense self control and a lot of deep breathing to survive that first half, and the break. I was then switched by T's boyfriend (=only one who realized what was going on) to the other team. T asked why I don;t stop going, I refuse to give up. I know I can get better and I want to show them that. And, if I don;t cry next time I am going to tell them I am part of the team too and that they should share the ball with me.
T and boyfriend D took me out for dinner after that, where I could get annoyed at a hopeless unfriendly waitress, actually helped (still have to find a good restaurant here).
Friday I finally submitted my paper (long term Leiden project that was), gave me a headache and red head and made sure I could not be very productive after that. Also have accepted 2 RAs (=research assistants). Both are very enthousiastic and I like them and get on well with them. Only thing that worries me is that they are also both very busy, and I don;t know whether other people expect their RAs to work some weeks fulltime every now and then when they run studies. MIne could not I fear. Should probably have found that out before accepting them but the other option was the RA I talked about a few days ago, and to be honest this seemed like a far more attractive option. Friday evening I bumped my way to a faculty buffet dinner and party (they live at the end of a dirt track). Was actually fun I found. Got to know some more graduate students (as well as the husband of the person giving the party, who will invite me to a piano recital at his house, he said - only occurred to me afterwards I was not sure I would feel very comfortable going to that, I like music but perhaps not as much as I appeared to in front of him..) After the party we went to a very downtown (down village more like) place and played pool. Was fun. I then spent half the night wide awake, not used to drinking diet coke instead of wine (Yes, cars do have some disadvantages). Saturday morning bright and early L and I were going to leave for BOston. THat meant i had to get up even brighter and earlier as an unforeseen remark by me has lumbered me with an obese dog for 2 weeks and she had to be let out, as did B because he hates being left out of things (I had said that after 2 weeks running with me she'd be thin again - next day I was told that the owner thought that was a good idea. But I don't dare take her on my 6 mile runs, she'd have a heart attack). Anyway, L asked what I wanted to see in Boston and whether I had looked up activities. I had 2 ideas (seemed enough to me). Little did I know that L likes organization and planning. She thought I would read the entire guide (in some ways she does not know me well yet) and have a plan for the whole day. I said I just start walking and see what happens ("Boston is big" I was told). So everytime we did not quite know where to go, out would come the map and we would have to sit down to plot the route. We ended up giggling at one another - and discovered that otherwise we are quite compatible in towns, we looked at a beautiful museum/house of a lady who collected art and furniture in the 18th century - Isabella Gardner, (my suggestion by the way) and both loved it. That to me was the highlight (just as well given that Blove told me today that I had missed almost all the other Boston sights I should have seen - maybe I should start reading guide books...). I was actually very glad to get back to Coventry. I feel no need to be in towns at the moment, love this peaceful rural life, walking out late at night into the field and looking at the full moon.
work wise next week may be a little more peaceful. J is sending me frequent mails to see how I am (well, today's was to enquire which BElgium beer he should drink, I'd told him to drink a duvel for me). Tomorrow I tell my RAs what to do the coming weeks. I hope by tomorrow afternoon I know what they should do... Have no idea at the moment how to fill 12 hours of someone elses time (that is how much they should work per week, combined together). Perhaps they can do my stats homework for me?
Gotta let out dog.