Delicious

I just made the best dinner in just about 30 minutes (take that Rachel Ray)! I made pan seared scallops with walnuts and spiced carrots. (Note: I think this would work equally well with chicken or shrimp. Chicken could marinaded and then go in the oven and just be finished on the stovetop.) It was not pretty to look at so no photo. But it made me very happy. Add a glass of red wine and I'm thinking I'm not going to work any more tonight. Yesterday was a marathon at work - approximately 7 am - 10 pm. That's too much work, especially when I worked 5 plus hours on Sunday and at least a few hours on Saturday. I was also up at approximately 4 am this morning, ate something, tried to sleep a little bit more but gave up and went to the gym and then to work. Plus I dealt with some fun student issue today with my chair observing. Nothing like nerve wracking! Everything smears together when you work this much. You forget which key goes in which lock, and you haven't even had anything to drink.

PS: Sorry to disappoint about the Roomba and the puppy. A puppy is on the wish list. I just have to figure out how to get around the clause of no pets in my lease. There is a good bit of pet damage in my apartment. And my neighbors (we share a landlord) have a dog. I don't think this will be too difficult a task. And, surprisingly, I actually don't mind vacuuming.

Here it is...

Thanks for your guesses and for being patient waiting for my camera to emerge. Here is what I purchases with my gift cards.


I've been wanting a KitchenAid mixer for at least 5 years. Now, it's on the kitchen counter and it looks lovely. Just need to find time to use it.

These arrived...

over the weekend. Can you guess what I'm going to get with them? I'm hoping that with discounts (yea! 20% off) and a current promotion, it will basically be free. I'll share with you once I have it. This is part of the reward system for productivity at work; made even better because I don't have to pay for the reward with money. The productivity is that I finished writing two grants this summer, one is submitted and one is being edited.

What they do, not what they say...

I tend to disregard the title phrase. I believe what people say. But this week, in at least two separate incidents, I think I've decided I need to pay more attention to what people are doing. And to focus less on what they say. People lie. And I think they lie a lot. The main reason for this is that I've gotten burned one too many times. So here are the example from this week. The first is entirely jaw dropping. I'm still totally in awe that this actually happened and the other party involved basically denied it to my face. I know what I saw and what I saw was cheating pure and simple.

So here's the first story. I was collecting papers from my students this week. We were in a non traditional classroom (eg no desks). The students were milling around and handing me thing, asking questions, talking to each other. I looked around and noted that one student had two papers in front of him. He was very clearly looking at one papers and copying answers onto another. Cheating pure and simple. When confronted, I believe I said something like, "Am I really seeing what I think I'm seeing?", the student replied, "Um, I'm just checking my answers with my buddy's." I think I said something to the effect of, "Well, checking answers doesn't involve writing anything down and aside from that fact, how do you know your buddy has the right answers?" I told him to come to me in the future to check answers. Last night, I pondered this incident with a friend who is a woman on the faculty at my U. I wondered if this might have been a result of my gender. My thought is that the student didn't think I would call him out or something along those lines. I know I'm probably going to get a bad evaluation score from this particular student now. But I really don't care. He was clearly breaking the rule and didn't even admit it when called out. The worst kind of cheater in my mind. He did absolutely horrible on the assignment. But I haven't figured out what if any penalty I am going to enforce.

The other incident, is just related to me and my one on one interactions. It doesn't have to do with work at all. So, what I was going to reveal at the end of my last post was that I had had a nice date with a guy I was excited about seeing again. I didn't want to jinx things, so I didn't tell you all about it. Well due to circumstances I knew about, I couldn't see him last weekend. We had planned to meet for an adventure this weekend, something that would overall take about a day, though which day wasn't decided until late in the week. Meaning that I had kept my entire weekend clear to make sure that whatever he decided I could go along with. Well, no more! He canceled late in the day on Thursday! I understand that work gets in the way sometimes and that sometimes the unexpected happens. Believe me, I understand this. But I had worked hard all week to make sure that I had a day free over the weekend and I kept my schedule clear. I'm kicking myself now. And I'm really on the fence in my decision as to if I'm going to give him another chance. I'm disappointed and I'm angry at myself for falling into my usual pattern of waiting for a guy. I think what I've decided is that unless he is really willing to go out of his way to set something else up, to really step up, I'm not going to see him again. (BTW, he canceled in a voicemail and I have returned two phone calls since then, both of his calls included apologies and the later asked for a rain check. But, the ball is currently in his court. And I was pretty disappointed when he said in the last voicemail that he wasn't going into work until 1 pm on Saturday, so I could call him at home until then. What I don't understand is why he didn't ask me to come meet him for breakfast on Saturday or something else that wasn't a whole day adventure but could be done with the small amount of personal time he had over the weekend. I think this means that something has changed and he's really not interested.)

This later incident just seems to be another in the long string of such incidents. I was actually fascinated at a comment made when I met up for dinner with one of my former roommates from grad school a few years ago now. He and I were aware of each others dating lives or lack of them during grad school. I told him a story during dinner about my current status. His response was something along the line of how he thought I really had never gotten the respect that I deserve. I was surprised that he said that, but really I guess it's true. I was excited about this new guy because he said that he wanted to see me again and that he enjoyed out date. He even called me a few days later (that almost never happens to me). But currently, this seems like just one more to add to the list.

What...

What have I been doing you might ask during this nearly month long blog absence? I have been super busy. For example, the weekend before last, I had submitted one of the two big grants from the summer (the other is still being edited and I hope to submit it by the end of October). So, I did the things I had been meaning to do all summer. I got a second cabinet for my bedroom (so I don't have clothes all over the place). Here's what the two look like:
That's a cute owl on the upper handle. I also fixed the pulls - the cabinets come with white pulls, but I like the stainless/chrome much better since it matches the other accents in my room. But when I originally got them, the screws were too long for the cabinets. I've fixed this with some added washers. I could have purchased different screws, but the washers seemed faster since I didn't want to have to figure out the threads on the screws.

That weekend, I also cleaned all the floors in my house (well, okay, I haven't yet gotten around to vacuuming the guest room, but everything else is clean). It's lovely to have clean floors. I used some new fangled Meyer's lavender scent cleaner. It was quite soothing and nice and is supposed to be eco-friendly.

I also finally got around to painting the kitchen. I'm not totally thrilled with the results but it's growing on me. So here was the inspiration, these are the pulls on the kitchen cabinets, along with the color of the cabinets:

So are you ready for the finished product:

(the counters are actually more blue that it shows on my monitor.)
Also, I had a painting error that I have yet to fix. This is the ceiling above my sink. I have white paint to fix it with, just haven't had the time yet.
What else could I possible have fit into that weekend? Well, I'll tell you. Pilates, the farmers market, getting some new umbrellas and a funky orange blazer (very cool), some cooking of farmers market things, including my favorite potato salad complete with tomatoes from my garden plus my roast eggplant dish (super easy, just dice and mix with tomatoes and other veggies, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic and roast at 400 for 25 minutes or so).

This past weekend was much the same. Running, Pilates, farmers market, helping a good friend pack and load for a move (very sad!), to IKEA (bad idea, forgot about college move in, duh!), to Trader Joe's (yea! pizza dough) - that was Saturday. Sunday was a long 8 mile run outside. I have a hunch that's why I've also been MIA - the weather has been delightful! A few other things that I might elaborate on at some point. Then I worked on Monday and was very productive since there were no distractions from students. Monday night I made a delicious frittata with farmers market eggs, local smoked swiss cheese, roasted corn and basil! Yum! And now it's back to the usual routine. Teaching, seminars, advising (and sometimes badly), faculty meetings, and the like. It's been busy!