Sunday, December 21, 2008

Today

It snowed a lot here this weekend. I have been shoveling a lot. Here's what I've accomplished:


Photo on the left is the large pile that is next to my drive way - literally, I can no longer get snow up to the top and have to walk the snow around. The photo on the right is the view from the bottom of my front steps. Remember when you were young and you made paths and tunnels in the snow and how cool it was. It's not cool anymore.

In addition, I also baked these:

Which contain:

Lt to right and around the plate from the top: pumpkin cranberry bread (smells heavenly), ginger snaps (yes, they do that broken top thing all by themselves), Russian tea cakes (or Mexican wedding cakes), and these delicious broken top double chocolate with ginger cookies that are new this year. I made cookies to take to the staff at work tomorrow and for my students. We started this tradition of taking cookies to the staff as a thank you during grad school. Everyone brought one type of cookie and we walked around like elves around the holidays delivering them to everyone who made our work run as smoothly as it did. It was a big thank you. It was great because we only had to make one type of cookie and everyone got a random assortment. I made the variety today because I was seriously avoiding work! I also did 3 loads of laundry, shoveled for about 1.5 hrs, wrote about 1/2 of my holiday cards, put away a bunch of things. I'm exhausted and sore. No more snow, please.

1 foot, 2 feet, and more?

How much have you shoveled recently? I believe I'm at a total of about 2 hours for the weekend. And I believe we have more than 2 feet on the ground. It's still coming down. I just shoveled out my car and walkways even though I'm not going anywhere. I'm hoping this will cut down on my time tomorrow morning... or I might take the bus.

Now it's time to make some more cookies.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Uninformed

It turns out I was very uninformed about how bad the ice storm was in my area. All schools were closed today. And of the faculty in my department, only about half have power, and I think I was the first to have my power return. Lucky, I guess. Now if that luck would just turn into some funding for my research, that'd be great.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Icy!

In case you are wondering, I am fine. My area was spared the worst of the ice storm. I had power all last night and woke up this morning at 5 am - and had my tea and oatmeal and sent some urgent emails. Just after I sent the last email, the power went out. I'm not exactly sure when it came back on because I went out with a friend around noon. We needed to check on equipment at the U. But then, because the main roads were fine and had been cleared of most branches, we went on an adventure in search of places with power. I'm sad for the loss of my long planned day in the lab, but the day just seemed decadent since I really didn't work much. I won't be able to get back in the lab - probably - until next Thursday because of days at the beginning of the week that are at least half full of meeting. Yuck! I now hate meetings - it always seems like we are just going around in circles. Back to work now.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Not much to say

I am exhausted. So I have not had much to say recently. Sorry. More in the new year hopefully - or maybe before?

Friday, December 5, 2008

What does it mean?

TLDR is Too Long Didn't Read. This is what my TAs came up with when students revert back to their freshman ways of writing things in lists or describing with completely unnecessary detail what they did in lab. No need for the detail and they are told not to include it. But yet so still do.

It has been a very long week. I have gotten a good bit done. My list was much reduced, but then I realized I needed to get on with many things I'd been neglecting. I plan to work all day next Friday in the lab and am looking forward to it. But until then there are meetings and various things that need to be done.