TLDR

Sometimes when students turn in pages of nonsense, they get TLDR written on their papers. I like this one. Try to guess what it means... I'll let you know later in the week. My dad had a better one - TMBS.

Turkey-Day Recap

I had a family filled Thanksgiving. Including meeting some additions to the extended family for the first time - my cousin's young children look like they walked off the pages of a magazine. When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was a big deal as we always traveled East (and/or North) to visit Grum and family. I don't know how my parents survived these trips with two kids in tow. I was with this portion of my extended family, but without my immediate family. The day started off well - with a long car ride. There were several interesting discussions including one that made me never want to go to a retail store again. See, the two cousins in the car have worked retail and had some pretty horrific stories. Eww... gross... germy stories. I won't elaborate here. Then there was the main event. We enjoyed appetizers, wine and lots of chatting once we arrived. It was fun to catch up with folks. Highlights included a tour of the very cool remodeled basement complete with radiant heat in the floor of the greenhouse area and a sauna, art projects with the kids (including color me), discussions of the tur-duk-in we were going to eat, learning about French bull dogs (one of the breeds of dog present), watching a bit of pool, hearing a bit of school of rock music recorded by the host cousin's kids (very talented musicians). Dinner was served around 4 pm and traditional grace was said. We missed Grum. But still, we ate, and ate. It was all delicious including the Texas beets. Apple pie for dessert an hour or so later.

Misconceptions about professors

I think there is a general belief among people outside academia that the life of a professor is easy. We all sit around all day pondering big ideas and being fed big, fat grapes. Well, this just isn't true. I've worked many 12 hour days since I got this job and I work most weekends - at least most of one day.

One of the academic blogs I read mentioned that people might get this idea because academics can to a certain degree create their own schedules. Meaning, you might find a professor mowing his lawn on any given Thursday at 2 in the afternoon. But what this blog also said is that you don't see the same professor in their home office at 2 in the morning working on a grant or paper, but they probably are (at least some of the time). I don't tend to take advantage of this policy - you will find me most days between 8 am and 6 pm on campus, mostly in my office or lab. I also take work home a lot.

Also, the other big misconception is that we get the whole month of January and three months in the summer off to do what we like with. If I did this, I'd never get any research done and surely wouldn't get tenure. I don't always get paid in the summer, but you can be sure I work. I worked on July 4th last year. And over the summer I took a long weekend Th-M off plus one day while my mom was visiting. I did take 2.5 days off after the end of the semester. So all told, I took just over a week off. Otherwise, I was working my normal long hours.

Today

I get frustrated when my students don't think and copy things of wikipedia. Ugh! No points for them!

Today, I got up and crossed the review of files of potential colleagues off of my list. Again! Ugh! These people can't read. This is the only thing I've crossed off my list for this weekend so far. I still need to:
finish grading (currently 1/2 done, will finish now with my glass of wine)
read paper to discuss with grad student
redo calculations of other grad student
check into equipment for third grad student and undergraduate
prepare lecture for Monday (including working the problems I'll present)
work on abandoned proposal to get abstract ready to send to another agency
and probably about 50 other things that I'm forgetting
But instead of crossing more things off the list today. I went for a 6 mile run at the gym (watching the food network and Today show). Then after the 1/2 grading I did, I went to see Australia with some friends. It took trying two theaters, but we made it. I really liked it. It was long, but was well paced and I really, really liked the Wizard of Oz references. I've always liked that movie and the references were well done - interwoven throughout. That is all for now. More on Thanksgiving adventures tomorrow.

Obama's first misstep

So I know there is about zero chance that I would agree with everything that Obama does, but this is a big deal and it seems too soon for such a big misstep. He had selected Lawrence Summers as the Director of our National Economic Council. Does this name sounds familiar to you? If you are a woman in science it should. Larry Summers is a former president of Harvard who was booted because of his comments about women in science which boiled down to they aren't smart enough to succeed in the field. (A little more information on the subject is here )

Blooms in the cold

Here's a plant update. The top is the violet that just opened it's blooms. I didn't know what the color was going to be, but this is a very rich, jewel toned redish purple. It's beautiful, and I'm sure the photo doesn't do it justice. Next is the mixed cactus. These are some of the most recent coral color blooms. There are also white and vibrant pink blooms on this plant. And finally, the giant cactus that is very heavy with blossoms has just begun blooming. I have a cool photo for a bit later of a double blossom at the end of one of the pieces. It's so nice to have some color in the cold, cold weather.

Sunshine and the Dell guy

Today, two happy things happened. The sun was shining when I drove to work too early this morning. The sun was shining most of the day and the sky was blue. This hasn’t happened much recently so it was particularly nice. Sunshine makes me happy.

Then, the repair guy from Dell (I highly recommend getting the at home warranty for 3 years, as I’m just shy of 2 years now) came to my office and replaced the LCD screen in 30 minutes! It is so awesome to be able to see what I am typing now.

Of course, with the good has to come some bad. I’ve been told that the grant I’ve been working on for the last few weeks (for long hours) will almost certainly not be funded based on the spin I’ve put on my work and on the fact that there is no money. This makes me not want to finish it because there are likely two more long days involved and I have zero motivation to make it happen. My chair disagrees and says a submission in the Dean’s eyes is better than no submission. Ugh! I’ll get some more advice and continue working, but might find that by the deadline, it’s just not worth it. I mean, why make the program officer mad, right?

tomatoes

I moved my tomato plant with it's green tomatoes inside when it got cold, so I'm still enjoying the fruits of my summer planting. Here's a photo of this tomato when it was green, on the plant and outside. And what it looked like just before I ate it this past week. Delicious. It's a lovely yellow color and is a heirloom variety. I'm glad I put them in pots because it was nice to enjoy on the door step of winter!

Curious

I just read (in some random bit of junk mail, while I was eating dinner) that Christmas cacti give off oxygen at night - unlike other plants that give off oxygen during the day. This is very curious indeed. And perhaps I am not deserving of the title - scientist (which by they way they don't like you to say at the boarder when crossing back into the US from Canada, even if you are flashing a US passport, they want to know what kind of scientist and what you study). My understanding is that plants take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen during photosynthesis. They do this only during the day because it requires sunlight. Chlorophyll needs light to do its thing - and that thing is the first step in the process. I can't remember the details, but I know it's the first step and I think it has to do with ATP. I suppose there could be a delay between steps... does any one know?

Otherwise, today, make that this week, was very long. I am working on a big project that might mean some money to pay my students so they don't have to teach (forever). I rewarded myself with nachos for dinner and I am going to have some coffee frozen yogurt - maybe even with some caramel sauce ooooh and maybe chocolate sauce, too for dessert. Yum! Then I'm going to watch Grey's Anatomy that was on in the middle of the night last night due to football. This sounds lovely.

I wish...

I never thought I would wish for snow, but I'm wishing for it now. I don't like cold rain. It chills you all the way through. And it means it is grey outside. I like it less than snow. Right now, I would rather have the snow already. But I think we're stuck with rain for the time being.

Hmmm...

I got gas tonight and paid just over $20 for a full tank. Prices are now below $2 here. I have an approach avoidance about this. I would love for gas prices to stay high so that people would drive less, but because everything else is getting so expensive, it makes sense that something should be dropping in price. Especially because most raises are not currently matching cost of living increases. I have certainly noticed that my grocery bill has increased by about a 1/4 of the total.

A Cake!

Now that's a cake!

My friend is headed off to be a volcanologist and several friends of mine figured this would be a fitting send off. It was revealed at a fun surprise going away party!

Jumping the line

I just finished a great book. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It jumped the line of all the other books on my night stand because I wanted something entertaining for the plane a few weeks ago. It was excellent - I highly recommend it to those of you who didn't recommend it to me. It was a brilliant look inside the head of someone who has autism. Plus the message at the end - you can do anything if you put your mind to it - is one of my mantras. I liked that the boy in the book, Christopher. He does math to calm himself down when he's in a difficult or new situation. I do math when I run. I know it's strange. And it's really not for the comfort or anything but usually it's just fractions of how far I've gone, how far there is left to go, or how much time it will take me to get there. The time thing used to be really easy to figure out when I ran 10 min miles, but I do more speed work these days, and it's usually not whole number divisions.

Plant Update

The plants are doing lovely. Cactus one is blooming with 5 fully opened blooms and 2 that are just about ready plus many in the waiting. The other cactus might have at least one bloom by the end of the week. And in case you thought it was a fluke, another violet is getting ready to bloom. Yipee!

Another Election Year Memory

I wanted to go to the gym tonight before I go to have dinner at a friend's house and watch the election results, but I'm too late leaving work, so I'll go tomorrow morning instead. To take up that time, I have another story for you all. I don't think many people have heard this story, so here goes. In 2000, I was living in a house with two guys and one gal. I would say they are (or rather were, in one case) my friends. The gal and I used to go swing dancing at a local place. This was in the time when people would judge your "swing coolness" by asking if you began dancing before or after the Gap ads. Only cool if before the ads. I don't think I was particularly cool by that metric. I had fun doing it and it was great because the guys would really ask the women to dance. I found this refreshing. I met two guys one night - and corresponded with both for at least a short time. (Don't worry, we will get around to the election connection.) So one of these guys had the initials WAF. I can still remember exactly what it stood for because the game when we parted ways the first night we met, was that I would try to guess his middle name - purely from his initial A - in 50 guesses or less. If I didn't guess it, I would have to cook him dinner at my place - and if I did guess it he would take me out to dinner. Now you've heard the background that I had many roomates, and knew that I could get at least one of the guys to stick around some evening if I was cooking dinner for this guy (especially if I shared what I cooked). The only sketchy thing about WAF was that he rode a motorcycle, but that sort of intrigued me. You'd think this would be easy, but there are a large number of A names (or things that could possibly be names, like, oh say, Apple). So off I go guessing. I had long lists of possible names and I would guess by email every few days and he would reply, no, no, no, no, no. Turns out I got to 50 and was told, nope, I hadn't gotten it. But he wouldn't tell me what it was until dinner. So I prepared a special feast on election night 2000. We had some sort of chicken parm and apple pie. Sort of the all-American flavor in honor of the election. It was a pretty good meal. And at the end of the night (I kicked him out long before the election was decided - in fact, it wasn't really decided for some time after that night, if I recall correctly) he told me that he had lied. I did guess his middle name in my last batch. It was either the last or second to last name I guessed. It was Aloysius. In any case, I didn't see him again.

Get out there and vote!

I voted this morning first thing. I went with my friend who lives in the same town as I do. She picked me up just before 7 am. We got to the polling place and found a parking spot (or rather made a parking spot like many other people had done). It was clear that it was going to be crowded. But that made me even prouder to be in America! We waited for about 1/2 hour. And we were lucky because our line (for our section of the alphabet) was short - in fact it was the shortest line there. I walked over to the booth with my ballot. Closed the very patriotic screen (if you've seen the photo of the guy in Cambridge, MA walking out of the booth - it's all over the internet, that's what our booths look like). And marked the scan-tron like boxes. Carefully checked everything. And deposited my ballot in the scan box. I've done my duty. So all of you out there... get out and vote. Especially since I know many of you live in places where it really counts!

Also, just a quick memory. I've voted in nearly every election since I was able to vote, even many of the small elections. I've voted in many ways. I've used an electronic machine (in a polling location where there were only 4 machines), I've voted in a "hanging chad" type of booth where you can vote the party line by pulling a lever, I've voted in a mail in election (but I had to drop off my ballot because I missed the post marked by date), and I've voted on paper, like I did today. It's interesting to me how many ways there are to vote! But I'm glad we get to.

To Don't List

While talking to my dad over the weekend, the topic of a "to don't list" came up. This is not a new idea, but it is an interesting one. I had not followed my unofficial/just in my head "to don't list" recently and it had gotten me into a bit of a pickle. Basically the idea is that most folks have a "to do list" but rarely have a list of things that they shouldn't do. I think the "don't" is perhaps more important than the "do" list. It can really help you from getting into trouble and can perhaps help you stay on task when you are distracted by other things.

Thanks!

I just wanted to give a shout out to all of you who have been reading my blog and commenting. It's been a fun month and it has gotten me writing more (and also has pointed out that sometimes I am not as clear as I could be in my writing). Overall a good time!

Halloween!

Okay, I'm a bit late to the party, but I had a great Halloween. And I promised to share photos of a local house that was all decked out. I wasn't able to get the nighttime shots that I really wanted, but here are some from this morning. They have a bunch of lights on the fence constructed just for the occasion. In addition to noticing some excellent decorations, I was lucky enough to catch a local parade. Everyone loves a parade! And I'm a fan of Halloween parades - I think in part because I was introduced to the idea several years ago with the over the top parade in the village in NYC. That was the year of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, so many of the costumes consisted of a blue dress. The best costume - if I had to vote - would have been for this group of people (office workers?) who had made dinosaur costumes out of those cone cups you get at a water cooler. They were over the top. The parade on Friday night was just as creative. There were stilt walkers, excellent large puppet costumes and a few bands to boot. Plus it was fun to hang out with a few friends - even if the time/parade was short.