Grum's plants and my life...

The Good and The Bad

2011-03-26T18:23:00.002-04:00

My untapped talent... pancake art:
What is it?

And the bad... I finally broke my favorite mug at work.
Any suggestions on if this can be fixed and how to do it?

Good Things

2011-03-03T18:33:00.002-05:00

No posts in February... such a shame. I have been observing good things and thought I'd share some of them.
1) A grown woman in a strawberry hat. Yes, with seeds and all observed this morning as I walked across campus.
2) A lovely spa day at Buttermilk Falls Inn. Thanks for spending a relaxing day with me, Beth. It was great to catch up!
3) A newly painted dining room. Good bye mint green, hello bark brown. It looked a bit like mint chocolate chip in process. And thank you for low/no VOC paints for allowing us to do this in the dead of winter!
4) Longer days! Yipee! Although Brrrr to today.
5) Good Mexican food... hard to find east of the Mississippi River.

Weekend Update

2011-01-30T16:51:00.004-05:00

Two posts in one month! Last weekend was great. D and I were out on Saturday at a local field with our:
It was a lovely day with lots of sun!

We made salmon burgers... sorry no pictures of this, they weren't necessarily pretty, but they sure were delicious. The recipe is a compilation from several locations:
2 (6ish oz) cans salmon (no bones or skin) - TJoes is a great source for this...
2 eggs
1/4 cup chopped tarragon (fresh)
1 T dijon mustard (ours was specialty with a bit of maple syrup in it, you could add that separately)
1 zested lemon + the juice of the lemon
1 finely chopped shallot
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
Mix this all together, form 4 or so large patties, and cook over med-high heat for about 4 min per side or until browned. You can finish these in the oven if you want, but we ate them off the stove. We used buns, tomatoes and lots of mustard. We ate these with roasted potatoes, carrots and brussel sprouts.

We also worked on some wedding details. Our photographer has been amazing and we've got some great photos of us in the snow. Speaking of the snow, it is getting very old - of course the above wouldn't have been possible without all the snow. But we have no where to put it. I need to shovel down some of my piles this week before more arrives. It gets very hard to lift a shovel above about chest high. Some of the banks are over my head! D was on the roof of his house today with his dad trying to get some of the snow clear so the roof doesn't settle any more and so there aren't leaks come the spring or warmer weather.

This weekend has been great, too. A good workout on Friday night, pesto pizza when I arrived at D's fairly late (after talking to a friend on the drive... Ole), karate with D's daughter, a relaxing afternoon, good dinner, a Trader Joes adventure with D's daughter, fun with snow (some experiments complete with lab notebook notes... what temperature is snow, what temperature after 10 seconds in the microwave, etc). And a fair amount of sleep to try to stay well while D is fighting a cold.

The week between was good as well. I have been able to get a good bit of writing done lately. Need to continue to work over the next few weeks to get several grants done. And the good news is that my graduate student's paper is just about ready for submission. Plus, I have a new grad student and an undergrad will work with us this summer, too. Things are going well, just need to keep the momentum going.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-16T14:46:00.004-05:00

Okay, okay, I know this blog has been suffering. Last semester was very busy, but I survived and have been trying to get caught up. Last weekend, D and I had a granola adventure. I've been meaning to try a recipe from John for some time. Finally...
We added dried cherries and toasted almonds plus sunflower seeds (the later a recommendation from John). It is delicious.

I have also been messing with ways to prepare oatmeal. There is a place nearby that serves the most amazing oatmeal in the mornings - or I supposed you could get it for lunch if you wanted. It's just a little salty and a little sweet and seemingly a little underdone. I couldn't get it right. It tend to buy the old fashioned oatmeal - or irish style. So the secret is to use 1/2 cup of oatmeal to a 1/2 cup of water and milk (about 1/4 cup of each). Add a pinch of salt and then cook for 2 minutes in the microwave. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and a little maple syrup. Top with fruit if you have it. We made a surprise fruit salad on Friday night for after dinner and had the rest the next morning on oatmeal. Two apples, one banana, two clementines, one mango, blueberries (thawed frozen). Delicious.

Here's to a healthy new year!

Why?

2010-10-19T18:13:00.001-04:00

Is it so hard to grow parsley and cilantro? I have beautiful basil, rosemary, oregano (though a little worse for the wear) and mint. But my parsley looks sad. Am I doing something wrong? Suggestions??

Good Things

2010-09-10T20:00:00.002-04:00

Over the summer, I was lucky enough to finish two books. These are books I read for the pleasure of reading. I wish I had more time to read. This does in no way make a dent in my pile, but it was enjoyable. D is reading the first one I finished and I think he will read the second because he read something else by that author. So, here they are for your reading pleasure.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Amiee Bender
(I read this book because of a review on npr)
Not the best reviews on Amazon, but the story seemed very original and had some nice twists. I read a book by Amiee Bender a while ago that I also liked.
That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
There was a lot of academic humor in this one. It was fun to read.

I also have a movie recommendation. It's a little off beat - not your typical chick flick (not that I only see chick flicks because I do love a good action movie!)
(500) days of Summer
An out of order (sort of) love story with some strange twists.

eeeekkkk!

2010-08-31T21:11:00.002-04:00

oh my! I complained a few weeks ago to the higher powers that I thought there had been a mouse in my desk drawers at work. I keep food and tea in one drawer, so all of that has gone into plastic containers. But he was also interested in a drawer that is filled with papers and office supplies. I followed up once and thought that would be enough. Today, a little brown mouse had the nerve to pop his head out from behind a bookcase. Not once, but twice. I don't know what makes you move your feet off the floor when there is a rodent around. But there was some standing on desks. Good times...

Reminded of...

2010-08-29T19:47:00.002-04:00

time spent in two other locals. I was reminded of white bikes and a Thursday night bike ride (bonus points to you if you know what either of these refers to). It also reminded me of formations in college. I traveled today to bbq at a friend's house. Lovely location. Good food. Good friends. And a mini adventure that involved riding an old bike about 20 minutes (up a big hill on the way there) to see some really fast things. Otherwise it's been flat out work for many weeks. Thus the lack of blog posts. Fortunately, this lack does not correlate with the lack of anything being written. Now, back to work.

Bounty!

2010-07-31T16:05:00.001-04:00

Summer is my favorite time of year for eating! I love the fresh berries (blueberries and blackberries for lunch this week, yum!). Tomatoes, peaches, corn, fresh herbs, what could be better? When I was down in Delaware a few weeks ago, I got to share some bounty with my dear friend. We invented our dinner that evening. After having happy hour complete with delicious cheese and crackers Yea for mango and ginger stilton! (This cheese has been know to bring to people with completely different tastes in cheese to agreement!) We wanted something a little less grand than the original plan. So, we made an amazing salad.
What a lovely place setting, too. The salad you see consists of:
kernels from two ears of corn
1 chopped organic tomato
1 chopped peach
a small bunch of chopped basil
(I'd recommend adding rosemary or mint, but I was too lazy to continue chopping)
lemon juice
olive oil
pan cooked scallops in lemon and lime juice (I don't think they were added yet when the photo was taken.)
and a touch of salt and pepper all served on a bed of greens
I wouldn't have guessed the corn didn't need to be cooked, but since it was such fresh bounty, it was fine.
Delicious!

Lavender

2010-07-30T21:41:00.003-04:00

It's been a rough few weeks. In short, I haven't been home for a single weekend in July and there was a good bit of work for each trip. And sometimes I didn't do my research and we ended up driving around the Adirondacks until 1:15 am and not getting back to the inn until 2:30 am. I can't remember the last time I was up that late. Did you know it's really hard to get across Lake Champlain in the middle of the night? This has made me somewhat unsettled. I have a weekend day at home tomorrow and I'm going to savor it... how, you ask, well, I'll go to Pilates and then the Farmers Market. A few other errands and just some time at home.

The other problem is related to work. A number of things have conspired against me this summer and I haven't come even close to meeting my goals. I had to pick up and move my lab, office, teaching lab and various other things I'm supposed to oversee. And all of this into space that wasn't really ready for us and is compressed (meaning less space). Then, I've had a visiting student in my group this summer who has not turned out as expected.

But with all of this, there have been some good highlights.
1)
These arrived at my office on Wednesday! Lovely! And they smell divine! Thanks D!
2) We had an incredible dinner out last Saturday. I got all dressed up - something I haven't done in a while. Have you ever seen me wear makeup? And the bonus was we could walk to the restaurant. We shared a bottle of Lange Pino Gris. And enjoyed a cheese plate to start. The chevre was drizzled with lavender honey. Amazing. I have to try this at home. Funny thing is that I just bought some organic dried lavender on a trip to Delaware/Pennsylvania to visit a college friend a few weekends ago. Now I really have to try it. And D's main dish was lavender encrusted tuna. Amazing.
3) I have new music. The New Pornographers are incredible. Thanks to another friend from college for the recommendation.
4) I'm moving up in the world and I have 2 followers. Sorry to disappoint you all with my lack of posts recently.

Short AT Hike

2010-07-13T17:20:00.003-04:00

Okay, okay, I have not been blogging much. Life has been busy. D and I went to a wedding celebration last weekend. It was a ton of fun. Great to see friends I haven't seen in a while and some three legged racing funniness. In conjunction with this trip , we got the chance to hike a short bit of the AT. (Note: I have always thought it would be fun to hike the AT, especially after reading A Walk In the Woods, but really, I won't ever do it.) Here are a few photos of our adventure. Part of the fun is that we got to see a really cool waterfall...
What do you see in the stream?
I think he thought we couldn't see him. His camouflage is pretty good, huh?

Good Things

2010-06-04T21:30:00.003-04:00

I have several posts in the works (or at least the ideas are in my head). But I wanted to post some of my recent photos of good things going on around here...

at the beach (look at the blue sky!)

early tomato blossoms

Mr. Plant blooms (maybe it's Mrs. Plant?)
This is one of Grum's plants and it's the first time it's bloomed for me. It's a begonia of some sort. It loves the light from the window, all of the leaves face that way and see how close the blooms are to the window. The wax plant also did amazingly well this year as I had over 10 pods of blooms this year!

a lovely bouquet (what do you this of this rustic herb bouquet?)

Music

2010-04-21T21:01:00.002-04:00

Because I haven't posted in awhile and because I was just enjoying some music while eating dinner, I thought I'd share some of my musical opinions. I worked with a postdoc who liked crazy music. We used to listed to some loud music in the lab by artists like Propellerheads (which I love because they did the theme song to one of the James Bond movies and I like James Bond movies) and The Prodigy and Blur. Some of it is from Britain because that's where he's from and others were just things he heard in clubs. I typically prefer folk music. I am currently loving Justin Roth who I found out about through a friend who teaches guitar. My two favorites are She Dances and Fatima's Waltz (I believe after The Alchemist). You can find him here or on iTunes. He does some awesome guitar work.

Hiking Fun

2010-03-23T18:21:00.004-04:00

I traveled at the end of last week. Where was I? On Saturday, March 20th, I hiked this mountain with my sister and D. The weather was lovely - sunny and warm but not too hot. I enjoyed getting some vitamin D as I'm sure I'm lacking it from the long dark winter. It was a somewhat of a strenuous hike with some scrambling sections, but the views were awesome and well worth it.

I also enjoyed some awesome eating. Cafe Forte on Saturday night and the Good Egg on Sunday morning. Both are highly recommended if you happen to be in this desert location.

Beautiful bathroom

2010-03-15T18:06:00.004-04:00

I have been busy recently. I was especially productive about a few tasks I have been avoiding or haven't had time to complete around the house. I finally cleaned the floors in my house. I really love having clean floors and they look beautiful. I also got around to hemming and putting up these curtains in my bathroom. I moved the mini-blinds that were there to the kitchen to replace one of two blinds that had broken. The set of blinds from the kitchen that were still okay, I moved to the dining room. Everything looks great and new. Spring cleaning is fun. I also took a photo of a flower I have in my bathroom. It reminds me of a pillow my friend made. (See point 4 in the link for photos of the pillow.)
I have several big tasks to complete at work this week, but I ended up coming home early today to check on my basement. There has been a lot of rain in New England and so I don't think there are any dry basements in this region. Luckily mine isn't that bad and I don't store anything down there. Plus, the rest of the week is supposed to be glorious. I can't wait. Hope it's sunny where you are.

Reading

2010-02-26T17:19:00.002-05:00

I've recently finished two great books. They receive my highest recommendation. The first is a pretty standard novel, that I found out was also read by a fellow blogger, FSP (female science professor). The books is A Gate at the Stairs. It's set in a college town but the story largely revolves around a student who becomes a nanny for a couple adopting a child. It was quite good and did really pull me in. I think the ending could have been done better, but it was okay.

The other book is A Homemade Life. My friend, Jill, gave me this book for Christmas after she mentioned it during a phone conversation and I thought it sounded wonderful. This is not your typical novel. Molly Wizenberg writes a blog that is in someways the basis for the book. The blog links her life to recipes. The book does the same. I have now made two of the recipes from the book. The ginger lemon scones are awesome. D and I ate some this morning from a batch I made more than a week ago. And I also made a dish that involved poaching salmon in apple cider. It was also delicious, though I wasn't quite patient enough to wait for the sauce to reduce as it should have.

Something new

2010-02-24T22:08:00.002-05:00

Last weekend, I went on a New England adventure. D had planned the trip and we stayed in an adorable inn. The inn had amazing breakfasts, despite some mixed reviews online. We both had omelets the first morning (mine had a bunch of veggies in it and D had assorted veggies, spinach and mushrooms if I remember correctly, along with cheddar cheese). The second morning I had delicious whole grain pancakes with blueberries and D had a breakfast burrito. There was also a fun buffet with good pastries and fruit... yes, we ate a lot, but it's a good thing since the skiing was exhausting. The town where the inn is located is home to one of the infamous Winter Olympians (can you guess who?) so there was much signage cheering him on. We hit one local store and when we were paying, some of the staff was checking the scores for women's skiing. We didn't partake in the downhill events, but rather spent the better part of two days cross country skiing. Those of you who know me, might know that I learned to down hill ski in high school but haven't done much of it since. (I did go with friends once in 2007. And had fun, but it's just not my favorite sport.) I had never cross country skied. I had a bad NordicTrack experience in the distant past. Those things are only for super coordinated people. This adventure went well. It took a bit for me to get the hang of it and I think that was at least partly influenced by the bad conditions the first day. Things improved on the second. We woke up to light and lovely snow. And we also overhead some folks talking about different trails than what we had originally tried. So, even though I had trouble with the down hills (too narrow, sometimes too many uncovered rocks and branches, possibly somewhat unkept equipment), it was a lot of fun overall. I was very sore on Sunday night. But have recovered nicely. And I am also now back to my gym routine and Pilates - it was a rough month including being sick and having some weird rib injuries (did you know you can basically pop a rib out of place... yes, it's as painful as it sounds.) . Things are looking up. But I'm still very busy at work.

Don't you wish...

2010-02-16T20:13:00.003-05:00

you were taking my friend's science course. He has crafted an entire exam based on the Olympics! I was proud to help him craft a question for a concept that he wasn't quite sure how to test. How fun. Watched the opening ceremony with friends on Friday. Had to leave before it was over, too tired. So I missed the snafu with the lighting of the flame. Have watched the updates but not time to see much else.

Recent Thought

2010-01-30T11:31:00.001-05:00

Women are high school teachers. Men are college professors. Discuss.

Unique Pizza

2010-01-24T14:42:00.002-05:00

You all know that I'm a pretty unique person. I invented this pizza after my friend Beth told me about her butternut squash pizza and after I started making a casserole with these ingredients. My pizza is topped with caramelized onions, butternut squash (slightly precooked in the microwave), blue cheese and candied walnuts on top of Trader Joe's herbed pizza dough! Delicious!

(I store this Trader Joe's product in my freezer and thaw it a day or so before I use it.)

The Numbers

2010-01-04T19:50:00.002-05:00

This is my 100th blog post. (I love numbers.) When I made my last post, I noticed that I had 49 posts in 2008 and 49 posts in 2009. I thought that was interesting especially since the time the blog was active during both of those years is not equal. I did not post much last year. I will try to be a bit better this year, but no guarantees. The only other real number of interest from 2009 is that I ran 40 some odd more miles in 2009 than in 2008. I know, I'm crazy for keeping track of these things. But perhaps this explains the lack of blog posts?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2010-01-01T18:29:00.003-05:00

I hope you all had a wonderful season! I have been meaning to post some holiday photos for quite some time. I had fun a few weekends ago. I did my traditional baking. It was snowing outside and I had the oven on all day. This year I made Cherry Shortbread Cookies, Dark Chocolate Ginger Crinkles, Russian Teacakes, and lots of Pumpkin Cranberry Bread. I took a hint from my friend Kyle and re-purposed some of the large cookie tubs I get from Trader Joe's. The only problem is that they had labels on the side that are impossible to remove. I covered them with wrapping paper. This is the finished product.
I decorated my tree, too. I think it looks great. The only thing missing is garland of some sort. I saw a fun one yesterday - it was fake popcorn and cranberry strings. I only wish it had been slightly more realistic. Might get something next year. Here's the shot with the flash:
I also had lots of fun going through all of my ornaments. Here are a few that I selected to put at the top of the tree. Some of you might know the symbolism to these. I have several that are like the kangaroo - a gold fish, a small blue dove and a white cat (with blue and purple sequins). I asked my mom about these because I know they are some of the oldest ones, but didn't remember where they came from. My mom remembers them being from a store that my grandma shopped at near the town where my mom grew up. It sounded a bit like the ornaments were tied to wrapped packages - a different one each year. The unicorn and bell are both more symbolic. I really enjoyed having all of the ornaments this year!

It's beginning to look...

2009-12-16T21:05:00.004-05:00

a bit like Christmas. Over the weekend, D and I went on an adventure. I had gotten it in my head that I wanted to go to a local tree farm and cut down a Christmas tree. Thank goodness he was willing to humor me, especially since it meant he had to do the cutting and the ground had a good covering of snow/ice. It was a fun adventure. I also now know I should bring work gloves among other things. Here is the leaning tree. It has since been straightened (my geometry gene wasn't working over the weekend). The tree is slowly getting decorated and my ornaments we collected every year when I was younger are on there way here. Thanks Mom! I can't wait to open the box since I only remember one ornament.
Also, D and I made some delicious stuffed mushrooms over the weekend. The stuffing is rather like a hummus. It is quite tasty and so I'll share the stuffing recipe with you. I modified it from a book called Cooking with Pumpkins and Squash by Brian Glover.
Defrost two one lb packages of pureed butternut squash (the recipe tells you to roast the squash, but sometimes that just takes too darn long, so this short cut is perfect for the holidays). Puree one can of garbanzo beans (minus the liquid). Combine these ingredients. Add 1 T olive oil, a small bunch of chopped thyme, 1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes, 1 chopped garlic clove, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, juice from 1 lemon, 2 T chopped parsley. Salt and pepper to taste. You can just puree the whole lot if you have a large food processor, or you can combine a small amount of the earlier puree with these last ingredients in a smaller food processor. Everything should be well combined and smooth. This is delicious on crackers. It was pretty good in the mushroom caps (add and cook at 375 for 10-20 minutes). And I had it as part of a simple salad tonight. There is a yogurt sauce that goes with it, however, I cannot attest to how good the sauce is, so I won't report the recipe here. See I told you I wish I was a food blogger.

Insulated

2009-11-29T13:26:00.003-05:00

Last year during a power outage some of the pipes that supply hot water to my baseboard radiators froze. They froze in a corner on my house that has always been cold. I had used towels and a small blanket to try to insulate that area but it always seemed that cold air was blowing in. After reminding my landlord about this again this year and proposing a solution that he hated, he decided to have a contractor do the work. It's much warmer in that room now and the hole to the outside in the basement has been filled with insulation. Here's the work in one corner (they ended up doing all the corners in the living room):
You see the funny colored wood cut out next to the upright post? That had basically just been a hole in the floor, though it didn't go all the way through to the basement. They added insulation and closed up the hole. The contractor also ran caulk (in brown) along each side of all of the posts in the room. I'm hoping that I don't have the same freezing problem this year.

In order to be even more insulated, I've just finished the plastic on my windows. I have 5 new windows in my place - upstairs. But there are a total of 8 old windows. These are old windows where I have to slide the screen up and a second pane of glass down in the winter. Yet, cold air still blows into my house. I've done the plastic trick each year and it seems to help. I also do passive solar heating, meaning I open the blinds during the day and close them at night. This works especially well since I have a southern exposure in 80% of the windows. Here's a photo of my handy work.
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I was visiting friends from grad school. It was fun, the food delicious and the chance to catch up wonderful. But, I ended up driving quite a bit; I must give a shout out to the toll transponders... what an awesome invention.

Sometimes I wish...

2009-11-21T20:08:00.004-05:00

I was a food blogger. I made a delicious dinner tonight. Simple whitefish with lemon and herbs accompanied by orange-glazed brussels (is that "s" at the end really correct?) sprouts and carrots. There is also some Arborio rice cooked in broth which was left over from last night but made a nice addition to the plate. Here's a picture:
(Okay, so I'm not the best food photographer, but it was delicious.) This is my first attempt at cooking fish in parchment paper. I've always wanted to try that but never had. It turned out quite nicely. And I must say it's a little funny that I just had parchment paper lying around. I can't remember what I purchased it for, but there it was in the cabinet just waiting to be used.

Otherwise, I had a fun day. I slept a lot last night. I needed it. This morning, I worked on an assignment for my students. I am about half way finished. I need to do some of the calculations myself before deciding exactly what I will ask them to do. That can wait until tomorrow morning. This afternoon, I did my part to stimulate the economy. I shopped and shopped some more. I had some brilliant ideas for holiday gifts for friends and family. And so I got a significant amount of gift buying done. It was fun. I sometimes need some retail therapy, even if I'm not buying things for myself.

Blooms

2009-11-07T09:39:00.003-05:00

I have been neglecting my blog recently. I have been busy at work and in my personal life. But many of the things that have been happening are not things I want to blog about or I feel like I can't blog about them (especially when it comes to interactions with students). Things are blooming around here. It's especially nice since there's a chill in the air on some days. Here are a few recent blooms:
I think my cacti must be Thanksgiving cacti. They bloomed at about the same time last year. I'm looking forward to the white blooms opening on the mixed cactus. See the coral and pink flowers above. You might also be able to spot a white bud or three that haven't yet opened. The larger cactus (entirely pink) is in full bloom. It's lovely.
These were a big surprise. There was a dozen but I didn't think to snap a photo until some of them were a little droopy. They are absolutely beautiful. And even a few weeks later now, 1 or 2 of them still look great! I have them in the cut out between my kitchen and dining room. I can gaze at them while I do the dishes.

Yelp!

2009-10-11T13:12:00.004-04:00

I verbally yelped when I heard about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win on Friday. It was surprising. But I think it speaks to the change that's possible with him in office and the hope he brings the people of this country and perhaps even more importantly, the world.

I also yelped earlier in the week about this:

I looked back at my blog and the date corresponds to almost when I posted buds on the Christmas cactus last year. Funny.

Also, I was delighted to see:
on the curtain in my living room today. Can you tell it's a little lady bug.

Otherwise, things are going well.

Still Smiling

2009-10-04T12:53:00.003-04:00

So I gave the guy (not my student, but the guy I'd been on a date with) from my "What they do, not what they say..." post a few weeks ago a second chance. We had a movie and dinner date last weekend. And yesterday, we spent the good part of the rainy day together. We had wanted to go hiking but decided on indoor activities instead. So, we went bowling. This was New England style bowling. I had never been candlepin bowling before - apparently this has been around since the 1880. It's like normal bowling, but with thinner pins and smaller balls without holes. In each frame you bowl three balls. It was hard to get the hang of and I was beat the first two games (in fact the first game I only got 22 points). My date made the observation that I seemed to do better when I was really following through with my throw; this proved to be completely correct once I started paying attention to it. By the last frame, I got a strike and then knocked all 10 pins down on the second ball of the extra frame. At the beginning, I was worried how it would all work out, but I would totally go again. We also had pizza at my favorite place and baked some awesome cookies (oatmeal with chocolate chips instead of raisins) at my place. It's going surprisingly well. And my prior comments about him can now be considered false. I think this will likely be the last time I blog about him. I just want to enjoy the moments.

Extensions...

2009-10-01T21:23:00.003-04:00

I have two comments about extensions. First off, I do not grant them unless it's an emergency. If my students can't get things in on time, I don't think they will be able to meet deadlines in the real world. There should be some sort of penalty. But I do understand that they have a lot of demands on their time. These could be things that I also think are important or things that I don't think they should be spending time on in a million years. So I just make it a policy that I don't care why a paper is late, I just give it the late penalty.

The other extension connection is something I recently observed. It's the cell phone is an extension of the hand/ear of the current student. I have a classroom near my office and I happened to be walking back to my office as a class was letting out recently. At least 90% of the students pulled their cell phones out immediately after walking out of the classroom. They were texting, getting messages and making calls. It makes it really hard to navigate a hallway when it is full of students who are not paying attention to walking or where they are going. And it is very annoying.

Delicious

2009-09-29T19:51:00.006-04:00

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...

2009-09-26T19:49:00.004-04:00

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...

2009-09-21T17:59:00.003-04:00

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...

2009-09-20T09:29:00.003-04:00

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...

2009-09-08T21:11:00.005-04:00

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!

Things that make you go hmm...

2009-08-15T12:27:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I've been posting in bursts lately, often two posts at almost the same time. I wonder what this does to folks following on a reader? Anyway, I have a few short comments for today.

I drove a Yaris last weekend. I got 42 MPG! This was mostly highway driving, but some of the highway driving was slow as molasses (<20 mph) due to construction and weather. I was pretty impressed with this. I had driven a Yaris when I was researching new cars, but I didn't like how close my head felt to the ceiling. I did have probably 4 inches (or possibly more) clearance, but I didn't like it. It was a four door and had a large trunk.
I don't like the Verizon wireless program NE2 - getting a new phone at a discount every two years. I'm super tempted to get a smart phone, but really I don't need one and it's an added expense that I also don't need. I mean really, is a cell phone worn out after only two years of use?
The bounty at the farmers market is awesome!
My tomatoes are out of control. Yum! I may have a delicious recipe to share later this weekend. I'd like to have a photo and my camera is currently hiding out at work.
Pilates this morning was awesome. Small class and good flow.
I was very lazy this week and only ran once. Need to get back in the routine.

More of the beach

2009-08-13T18:29:00.003-04:00

Out towards the point, it was a lovely day!
From the porch, can you smell the ocean?
From the farmers market, yummy snacks. The blackberries in the top bin were picked by yours truly.

The Bug

2009-08-13T18:18:00.003-04:00

A quick get away last weekend took me to the midwest. I have a good friend from college there. She lives in a cool town. And more importantly, I was going for her baby shower. When I decided to go, I was prepared for a lovely shower with decorations and food orchestrated by another friend from college. The flags above and the roses below are part of the loveliness that I was expecting. But...
unexpectedly, I also go to meet the bug (as they have nicknamed her). She was born 6 weeks early, and not in her home city - there's a long story that goes along with this. But she is beautiful and is doing just fine. Mom and dad are doing well, too. They both absolutely adore their new addition! It was awesome to get to see their growing family!

Sound of the waves

2009-08-03T21:47:00.002-04:00

Lost and Found

2009-08-03T19:03:00.003-04:00

I misplace items from time to time. I usually do okay with keys, cell phone, etc because I either have places for them or I leave them in plain view. It's the things I use less often that tend to get lost. Anyhow, I have been missing several items. Today, I found my black kitten heal shoes that have been missing for months. And, I also found a guidebook for a nearby city that had been missing since around July 4th. Yippee! I wonder what else I'll find? Buried treasure, a pile of gold, science funding??

Beachy Keen

2009-08-03T17:55:00.002-04:00

I spent a lovely weekend at the beach. No computer, no internet. It was quite possibly the best Saturday of the summer - weather wise, too! Here's some of what I saw:

Clockwise from upper left: Morning glory among the grape vines, soon to be blackberries, hydrangea, the surf.

Left to right: Cabana door and a dewy spider web.

More soon...

I did it...

2009-07-30T22:34:00.001-04:00

A while ago, I wondered on this very blog if I could run 100 miles in one month. Well, I did it. This month my total is 100.4 miles! Yipee! That is all.

today

2009-07-25T20:48:00.005-04:00

I have been wanting to show you a photo of my lovely tomato plant for a while but keep forgetting to take one. Earlier this week, I had a tomato accident. It was quite stormy one night and when I got up in the morning the tomato plant (despite the tomato plant cage) had toppled over. I let out a yelp of oh no! I now have an additional stake in so hopefully that won't happen again. I did loose a branch that had a bundle of tomatoes growing and lots of promising flower. But as you can see from the photos, there are still ones that are looking okay on the plant.
Today, I have done very little work, but I needed a tiny break. I've been processing things in my head though and have taken notes and will make improvements in my writing tomorrow. What did I do instead? I ate some delicious food. I stuffed some zucchini and other squash tonight - I invented the stuffing based on what I had in my refrigerator - this included onions, garlic, mushrooms, rice pilaf, crushed tomatoes, sunflower seeds and cut up squash. The remaining stuffing, I added some wine and more tomatoes to make a sauce I'll eat with pasta for lunch this week. Delicious. I also ate some wonderful strawberries and enjoyed delicious lemon frozen yogurt!

Please do, please don't...

2009-07-22T08:56:00.003-04:00

I had my neighbors over for dinner earlier this week. They were so funny in the conversation when I invited them. They said a new roommate would be moving in to their place. With the economy as it is, I thought, okay. I know they have an extra bedroom. But I didn't at all put two and two together... so then they said, the new baby would arrive at the beginning of January! How exciting. And congratulations! They brought me beautiful flowers when they came to dinner (so that's the please do...). Here they are:

But, I had bought some "good" salsa in the produce section. You know the kind. What Chipotle calls "fresh tomato salsa." I thought it would be a good second option to fresh guac with chips for an appetizer. Well, this is the please don't... please don't put cucumber in salsa. It does not belong!

Feet up, but working

2009-07-19T10:02:00.001-04:00

This morning, I have my feet up, but I am working. I am drinking spiced iced tea, have my computer on my lap and am surrounded with books and papers. It is lovely outside and I hope to escape at some point today to enjoy it!

Random Photos

2009-07-14T20:28:00.003-04:00

This wine bottle makes me think of grad school and the postdoc I worked with who talked about cricket a lot. I thought it was pretty neat. Though I never did really understand the game.

Ahhhh! This guy (the scream) is always in my bathroom!

Paint samples for my kitchen on the kitchen counter. I'm planning to paint between the cabinets and counter and around the pass through - not the whole space. For those of you who've seen my kitchen in it's old state, currently all of the walls are white, there is no more blue sponge painting. The colors are pretty true. The one of the right is close to one of the colors in the knobs on the cabinets. I really have no idea what I'm going to pick. I'm always up for opinions, so consider the polls open.

Blooming

2009-07-13T17:49:00.002-04:00

This is Grum's blooming wax plant (Hoya carnosa). The buds are just opening here. I ended up with quite a few buds this year. It's a funny plant as the blooms smell very strong and have a viscous liquid on them so it looks like the buds are crying! Also, each of the buds here is on it's own little stem and they all fall off once the flowers have gone brown. I really like this plant - it's in a hanging basket in my East facing window.

Floating away?

2009-07-08T21:01:00.002-04:00

Yes, I know I have been away from my blog for an extended time. And, no, I have not floated away in the rains. While I was away, I have been house hunting, but I am done for the year. There is nothing on the market for me right now; npr has confirmed that banks (and likely individual owners) are holding onto properties while the market is bad. I did put in a very low ball offer that was not accepted. I will stay put for at least another year, and potentially until I get tenure. This is fine with me. I like where I live, despite the negatives. Also, I was traveling, mostly for work, but I did get to catch up with some friends, both here and there recently. I got to meet a very new baby! and a slightly older baby, and see a friends' new condo, and catch up with a friend and her husband - they're pregnant, and see friends I haven't seen in about a year. I also met a whole slew of new and exciting people, who I have not been doing a good job at keeping in touch with. There is also some awesome science percolating and some work writing going on. And I had an absolutely fabulous 4th of July adventure with about 1/2 a million other folks. Otherwise, I do not have terribly much more to say at the moment.

A Gift!

2009-06-08T17:02:00.004-04:00

These flower photos are quite old and I have been meaning to share them for some time. A series of blooms happened on significant days this year for my one day bloom plant. And these doubles were especially rare.

Off the list

2009-05-30T19:04:00.002-04:00

I've been productive today and recently, in fact. Earlier this week, I cleaned all the floors in my place. This involved 5 different cleaning methods - broom, swiffer, generic cleaning solution, Murphy's oil soap, and a vacuum. And I'm very pleased with my results. I'm a fan of having clean floors under my feet and I had almost forgotten what if feels like.

Today I had breakfast at my favorite place, ran a bunch of errands, had a late lunch, ran some more errands, had a nap, went for a long run outside, finished two things on my work list and now I think I'm going to watch a movie (or some old TV) or I might end up reading. Though I should spend a little time making 3 other lists. One list is for shopping I need to do tomorrow at Trader Joe's. Another is for my upcoming trip - I'll be traveling for about 2 weeks, most of which is work related. And the last list is for my house hunting.

The house hunting is coming along fairly well, thought I haven't yet found the one. I have seen more than one that could work. I'm still mulling my options and I will see three-four more options this week along with a revisit of three of my favorites.

Breakfast

2009-05-17T17:48:00.004-04:00

edited to correct typos:
Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day. Sometimes I eat it three times in one day. I recently finished reading Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies, which was highly recommended by NPR and a bit heart breaking. One of my favorite parts of the book was her talking about a breakfast she had with her family. The special was savory pancakes. It was pancakes covered with asparagus, Gruyere and ham. Covered with two sunny side up eggs and drown the whole lot in maple syrup. I'd pass on the ham. But otherwise it sounds divine. Though I don't think I could eat it right now. I have been having a culinary adventure that I would rather have avoided. I have switched my whole way of eating to try to stay healthy. I eat bread topped with applesauce for breakfast - a trick learned from my sister. And I've been eating a lot of roasted vegetables and way more meat that I normally do. My new favorite roasted vegetable is fennel. If you aren't totally averse to licorice and can find it at your local market, roast it up (400 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so) with what ever other veggies you'd like. I recommend precooking potatoes slightly. Couscous has become a staple again, too. Today I broke all the rules and had breakfast for lunch. I ate delicious lemon poppy seed toast coated with cream cheese. The cream cheese had lavender mixed in. This was a wonderful invention, but I think I would have also added a little honey and lemon zest to the cream cheese, too.

Mothers

2009-05-11T17:54:00.003-04:00

I have been reading for pleasure a good bit over the last few weeks. Yesterday I finished a short book that I highly recommend. Ruth Reichl's new book Not Becoming My Mother was excellent. It is all about how the women of earlier generations didn't get to do what they really wanted. Ruth talks about her mom being an incredibly intelligent women who just ended up bored - partly because her parents discouraged her from becoming a doctor. Ruth is glad she didn't end up with that kind of life and knows that it's partly because her mother thought she could do anything. (In case you don't know the name, Ruth Reichl is the editor of Gourmet and a former food critic of the NYTimes and LATimes.) I think there are still walls and ceilings that women hit from time to time (and a good bit of it comes from others who still have a certain belief about what women should do with their life). But anyhow, it's a great read if you are looking for a short, funny, enlightened book, I highly recommend it.

Random Musings

2009-05-10T21:49:00.002-04:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks...
I was dating one of the guys I mentioned earlier. But it turns out I'm pretty blind when it comes to someone being interested in me. This guy was all wrong from the beginning. When I think about it now, I can't believe I missed all these things. I know I was hesitant for a reason, but I went along with thing for too long because he called me and was in general interested. Sad. But I learned something.
I used a natural drain cleaner that worked like a charm. 1/2 cup baking soda + 1/2 cup vinegar put down the drain and plug the drain for 5 minutes. Then pour boiling water down. Impressive.
I went and looked at houses this weekend. I found one that I liked, but I think it's out of my price range. The location is great. I listened carefully as the real estate agent doing the showing said the builder had done a similar build nearby. The other property is way cheaper. I did a driveby today of the other property. It's in a good location for work, but not near a town, which I was hoping to find. I'm looking at a couple of other options later this week.
I did my shopping today and got about $40 worth of groceries, etc for about $5. I love the deals that stores have right now that you can get $10 off coupons. Good stuff.
My running total for the week was about 18 miles!

In the classroom

2009-05-10T09:42:00.005-04:00

I had an interesting conversation recently with two colleagues outside of my department. It's funny, it doesn't sound like this should be a rare occurrence, but it sort of is. In academia, we don't mix well across departments. And outside of our building is even worse. I wonder if it's like this in the humanities and social sciences? I know that everything is not the same between the arts and the sciences. Some folks in the arts get the summers off (I wouldn't say all, nor do I even know if a large % of them take the time off), but most (if not all) folks in the sciences work in the summer. This is even if we are only making a 9 or 10 month salary. We'd never get our scholarship/research done if we didn't.

Okay, back to the conversation. It was about students who come to class but don't pay attention. The faculty member who initiated the conversation was speaking about a class where the students bring computers and are working on projects with them, but that he suspects that they are surfing the internet or doing other things. He suggested that he'd like parabolic mirrors in his classroom. I strongly disagree with this. But, this semester has been the worst for students multitasking in my course. At various points in time, I have had students texting, reading novels and/or listening to iPods. I wonder if they think I can't see them? I'm pretty sure that they don't think about if I can see them when they are doing it. But I'm not really sure I know what makes them do it. I know my lectures aren't 100% engaging during 100% of the class time to 100% of the students, but such blatant disregard is a bit astonishing. I've thought about taking points off for students who have been grossly off task. I know all of my students by name, so I could easily do it, if I made a point of keeping track from the beginning. I have added into my grade book this semester notes on students who have participated in class a lot. I could also add notes for students who are absent a lot and/or who are off task a lot. All of this is super interesting to me because I always went to class (I think I missed <10 classes in my 4 years at college) and I always was on task (there weren't so many distractions back then, no cell phones and hardly anyone brought computers to class, but I don't think I would have been distracted even if I had this technology). But I am also of the ilk that the students are adults and they should make their own choices. I have been thinking that I might say a few words about classroom etiquette at the beginning of the year next time around. But it seems that a large number of students forget everything from the first week of classes by the last week of classes, so I don't know how effective this would be.

Hmm... I just had an interesting idea. Thinking back, one of the reasons I went to all my classes in college was because a professor early in my career mentioned (almost as an aside) that we were paying ~$100 for each class hour. I wouldn't throw $100 away, which was how I thought about not going to classes (and not being on task in class). I might be able to incorporate this into my class in an interesting way. One of the things that we do is work on statistical handling of data. I might see what happens if I ask my students how much they think they are paying to come to class and we could do some statistics on the data. We could easily look at the class average and the standard deviation, etc. Then I could tell them what the answer really is. This might be very interesting to try next fall because I'd be teaching concepts while also getting a point across that might translate into improved etiquette.

Gone Away

2009-05-02T07:56:00.002-04:00

I've been away from my blog for awhile. I was at an event last night and the speaker said that in our current culture, we spend too much private time in public spaces. This was in response to thinking about the fact that more people are dining at home (especially with the economy as it is) but there was also an element of connecting to people through online media. I was sort of beginning to feel that I was being too public, although this blog isn't truly public (in that I think the only people who read it are friends and family I've mentioned it to). I have also not been feeling 100%. Within the last week, I started to try something new and am beginning to feel better. I hope that my trajectory will continue in this direction. One week earlier in April, I only ran 3 miles (in the whole week). That was very sad, but I couldn't muster any more. I have also been working on writing projects at work and so have been a little less inclined to write here. I hope to write you all a bit more this weekend. But I need to get moving this morning so I can make sure to get a few errands done.

Three Strikes

2009-03-14T07:19:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was a day of three strikes...
Strike 1 - I have a graduate student who is not engaged in work. A clockwatcher, the student leaves promptly at 5 pm every day and arrives at 9 am on the dot. Research is not a 9-5 job, rather it needs to happen in patches and it's best not to leave when you are in the middle of a thought or experiment. You get out of research, what you put into it. Yesterday, I arrived at work at about 7:40 am. I walked past their office and noticed the light on (it is usually not on when I arrive). I looked in and was excited to see the student there working. I thought, maybe the seminar speaker yesterday brought things around for the student or maybe it was just figured out. I got to my office and downloaded my email and found that my excitement was totally unfounded. The early arrival was simply to "make up" the time since 3:30 would be the end of the day. What? What? What? There was also no explanation as to why this was happening.
Strike 2- Space and money = power in academia. Oh, and maybe rank factors in. I have none of these. Well, I guess I should say that I currently have space but that won't last long due to some complicated factors that mean that I can't stay in my current space. I had thought I had found a solution that would work perfectly. I even had a verbal agreement going back a few months and that was reaffirmed recently. But no - over the last week it has come crumbling down. This is making me very stressed out because it means that I will be letting down my students (they need space to do their research and research to get their degrees) and (of less importance), it will be very hard to get tenure. Have I made a giant mistake?
Strike 3- I got a wonderfully impersonal email at exactly 5 pm yesterday that said my recent grant submission is NOT funded.
Three strikes! I am not doing any work today!

If you were wondering...

2009-03-13T12:47:00.003-04:00

what the blooms would look like, here is the first one that appeared this week. They only last for about 12 hrs, but luckily each pod has more than one bloom (usually three) and I have 5 pods on this plant and 4 on the other. Usually they open in the morning, but this one opened sometime while I was at work and was gone the next morning.

This plant is really easy to make more plants from. I have already given away two (that have 3 bundles each). A bundle comes from the pod once all the blooms are finished. I stuck this in water and once roots were growing, planted it. One of the ones that I gave away has already bloomed multiple times this year.

(I'm not sure if my terminology is technically correct about the plants.)

I'm melting, melting, melting (ALA Wicked Witch)

2009-03-08T23:45:00.003-04:00

A lovely weekend and I made myself get outside for a long run on Saturday! It was sunny and warm (no jacket required) and the scenery was beautiful.

Now, everything is melting and from beneath that blanket of white appears something that is brownish-green and hairy. What is the foreign species? Oh, grass you say... it's been a while.

Getting back out there...

2009-03-05T22:21:00.002-05:00

So after a long hiatus (and recovery?), it seems that I have found 3 appropriate guys to date. I saw one for the first time tonight (guy one), tomorrow I will see a guy for the second time (yes, the guy I wrote about a bit ago, this is shocking because I am the one date wonder), and Saturday, I might be meeting another (third) guy for the first time. (I hope they will all end up with more appropriate nicknames in the future, but this will have to do for now.)

The first date exceeded my expectations (does this mean my expectations are too low?). Guy one is great - has been since I first started corresponding with him. He is not "in science," (though he has done some science-y things in the past) but is definitely smart enough to talk with me about science things. This makes me happy. He is pretty liberal - which also makes me smile. And he makes me laugh - which is very important.

That is all for now. Possibly more in the future or possibly not.

Two secrets (or confessions)

2009-03-03T14:17:00.003-05:00

I some times indulge in reality TV. I used to watch Survivor back in the day. But last night I watched the Bachelor final. I had a mini crush on Jason, but I think I'm cured after the craziness that happened. I also am fascinated by the Biggest Loser, though I don't know why. I often watch it while I'm at the gym... is that weird?

I had been eating a lot of chocolate. I have stopped cold turkey. I think it was making me feel a little off. It was either cutting out chocolate or starting to do Pilates (and trying yoga) that seems to have solved my problem.

Totally Opposite!

2009-02-24T08:00:00.002-05:00

My friend Kyle posted this about the train station in Warrington, England. I thought I'd counter with something of a different sort from a park-n-ride that I know! I like this idea better.

Just when...

2009-02-20T20:24:00.004-05:00

The snow was melting and you could see the grass, more arrived. Luckily it wasn't too much. But it does make me long for a garage.

For the record it is Friday night at nearly 8:30 and I am in my office working. I am listening to my very favorite radio station (other than NPR) on my computer so that makes this situation sort of okay. I am trying to decide if I should try to grade another problem before I go home. I think I will.

I was very sick earlier this week. I slept for a good portion of M and T. Thankfully, I had a flexible enough schedule that I only needed to come in for short amounts of time. It appears that I haven't infected anyone else. I am trying to catch up.

I am going on a "date" tomorrow.

I had a "fight" with my financial planner last week. I told him to stop my auto invest. I want to keep the money I have saved (and continue to save) for a house safe. He disagreed. I think I proved him wrong this week as the market continues to tank. I have decided to try to plot my investments in Excel. It might be depressing.

I might get to do a really cool workshop this summer in an awesome location!

I think I am going to buy flowers on my way home tonight. Some of you might know what this means, most of you don't. Happy, Happy to those of you who know!

This past week

2009-02-14T14:24:00.002-05:00

Busy, busy, busy. This is what I've done in the past week:

Ran >16 miles
Went to a defense
Took my students to see a very famous scientist give a seminar at a nearby school
Baked banana bread with chocolate chips and pecans
Had a marathon faculty meeting (Where I learned that there's a whole lot more politics in my department than I realized. I know this because one of my colleagues had told me he supported my preference several days before the meeting, but then when the other way during the meeting. AKA: my honeymoon is over.)
Met with a visiting speaker
Began learning a new instrument (another new piece of equipment will arrive next week)
Went to dinner at the house of a friend I met through AWIS
Participated in a study session for a super interesting project
Spoke with a visiting prospective student
Spent countless hours (>5) helping my slightly clueless students who are working on a large project (which is due next week)
Supervised 1/2 of a lab session for a sick TA.
Plus the usual stuff!

It was a pretty jam packed week. I am working today and will be working tomorrow. I hope to get out of here by 4:30 so I can run errands and get to the gym before it closes.

Random

2009-02-10T21:59:00.002-05:00

I've been busy. Here are some random musings...

Does tea expire?
Negotiating prices at Kohl's isn't as difficult as you might think.
Why has it gotten so much warmer since I purchased snow shoes on Saturday?
How can I get my students to do better at synthesizing information? One of my very best students has been in my office recently asking question about an assignment I commented on about a week ago. The assignment was more or less complete. But, these questions are leading me to believe that she doesn't understand what she did or why she did it.
Is it possible for me to run 100 miles in a month? Have I done this in the past? (I'm not quite sure as I can't access my 2005 running log right now.)
Is there any chance I could get more hours in the day?
Why was everyone I know at my favorite breakfast place on Sunday morning? (Well, maybe not everyone, but at one point I knew 6 people getting breakfast. I don't know that many people in this area.)

That is about all for now.

Springsteen is AWESOME!

2009-02-01T20:20:00.002-05:00

despite the Walmart "mistake."

From the Other Side

2009-02-01T11:59:00.005-05:00

It has been an interesting adventure to be on the search committee for a new colleague. I very recently got my position (which is a discussion for another time), but suffice to say, it is very close to me. An academic interview in the physical sciences is at least a day long. It involves shuttling between all of the faculty in the department (and some outside the department depending on interests) for 30 minute blocks. There are several ways to approach these sessions.

You can just listen. Most academics are able to fill 30 minutes talking about themselves and their science.
Talk the whole time about your experiences and basically don't let the professor get a word in edge wise.
Mainly let the professor control the discussion but make sure to ask a few questions that either come up or are things you want to know about the department. If asked questions, make sure to answer completely, but keep it short.

Interesting to observe, we have had candidates in each of these categories. About the candidate who talked the whole time, I wrote on my "score card," that he didn't listen much. This came out in his interview talk as well.

Speaking of the interview talk, that is another piece of the process. This is typically an hour long talk about the science the candidate has done. Some candidates talk about work from their first post doc appointment, or their second, or some mixture, but rarely do the candidates talk about their Ph.D. work. We did have one of the later in this round, which I thought was unusual. In addition, our candidates have to talk about their proposed research and teaching. One piece of the application packet is a teaching philosophy, so the candidates will have thought about the basics, but sometimes not the specifics. Before you actually get up and teach, it's hard to say what specific examples you may use. I think it's unfair to ask these types of questions. I don't think I could have answered these well when I was interviewing, but I wasn't often asked.

Finally, there is a chance for the dean, who will make the hire official, to interview the candidate. This was perhaps the piece of the interview I was most intimidated about, but in reality, it wasn't too bad. I was always surprised that the dean had read my whole file, unlike some of the faculty.

In addition to the formal pieces of the interview, there are always meals that are typically shared with faculty. I have been on dinner duty and have had at least one dinner with each of the faculty candidates. It's fun in the sense that I get to go out and try new places without the expense, but it's also really restrictive to my time. It makes the evening a no go for getting anything else done. I often work into the evenings and on those nights, I have to leave at the designated time no matter what I'm in the middle of working on. It makes me less productive.

Overall, it has been an interesting experience. But I hope not to have to do it again anytime soon.

New Beginnings

2009-01-20T19:36:00.000-05:00

Blooms to come!

New Dinner

2009-01-19T21:06:00.002-05:00

Here's a new recipe I created tonight:

Baked Apple Salad for 1

1 baking apple (center cored out)
1/4 cup apple granola (Trader Joe's)
1/4 cup cut up cheddar cheese
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t demura (sp?) sugar
2 cups lettuce
1 t apple cider vinegar
1 t EVOO
1/4 t cinnamon

Mix up the granola, cheese, cinnamon and sugar and stuff into the apple. Put the apple in a glass baking dish and add 1/4 cup water. Bake in a 350 oven for 30 minutes until tender (more for firmer apples). In the meanwhile, wash the lettuce. Mix the last 3 ingredients well. When the apple is done, cut up into pieces and add to the lettuce. Top with dressing. It was quite good. Salty, sweet, savory. Winter salad.

Wicked Cool

2009-01-19T21:03:00.002-05:00

I just hooked up my new wireless printer and tried it out. It's awesome. I can now print from anywhere in my house. How cool is that. Now if only I had a pool boy to bring me my print outs, I'd be all set. Do you think I could train a dog to do it??

Snow For Sale!

2009-01-19T20:57:00.006-05:00

I have snow for sale here. Get it cheap while it lasts. I have no where else to put it, so am happy to ship it to you.

I admit to being incredibly jealous of those of you who have temperatures over 50 degrees F. It's cold here and more snow. We are well above average snow fall this year, but somehow are not keeping pace with last year. Though it seems to me like we are ahead. I'm done for the year.

In our last cold snatch, we unfortunately lost power for 4 hrs in the middle of the night. I was surprised when I woke up to find it 46 degrees downstairs. Hmmm... something was wrong with this picture. Called some folks. The heater guy came and concluded that there was nothing he could do with the plastic piping in the heating system frozen! Frozen pipes. This is new to me. At least it wasn't a frozen sewer line - I hear that this happened. So turns out the remedy is just to heat up the house as much as possible. Glad I had two space heaters. They helped on the main floor and I used a hair dryer in the basement to heat the exact location that was the problem. I had things flowing within about 4 hrs of realizing the problem. My neighbors - we share a duplex - on the other hand needed 10 hrs to get one zone working and 3 days for the other!!! Yipes.

Sunny beaches are sounding really good right now!

Being the Best

2009-01-06T17:54:00.003-05:00

When I was visiting my family, I observed an interesting exchange between my dad and stepsister. She was saying that she didn't really care if the US was number 1 in the world when she was a grown up and my dad was noting that this is a common thought with the folks that are about 10 years behind me in age. I think I agree but I think that this negativity (or perhaps more precisely this not wanting to be the best or not searching for the best solutions) is a huge problem right now! And not just with a particular age group. Not sure what is causing it, but I have experienced twice since this time someone not seeking to be the best they can be. The most recent happened in a meeting today when someone who is doing some planning for our department said that he couldn't come up with a perfect solution. If you begin a process by thinking that, isn't your outcome just going to be mediocre? The other was with someone looking to change jobs and instead of trying to be the best, he was just trying to fit a perceived limitation instead of what he said he ultimately envisioned.

This goes back to another conversation that I had with my dad about goal setting. He tells a story similar to this in a class that he teaches and I'm debating including it in my class in the future. The story goes something like this. In the Business School at Harvard, there was a survey done years ago about the goal setting of the students. It was determined that out of the class of ~450, there were 15 students that were considered to be goal setters. All of the students were followed after graduation and in the subsequent years the salary of the goal setter fraction (15/450 or 1/30, which is ~3%) was compared to the remaining 435. It was found that the goal setters as a group earned more than the other 97%! This was surprising to me. But I forget that there are people out there who are not goal setters like myself.

My opinion: Set out to be the best, it just might happen! If you set goals, it's probably more likely to happen.

Recently

2009-01-05T22:11:00.004-05:00

I've been busy. There have been lots of things on my plate. I enjoyed a trip home. Since I've been back, I have done lots of projects. One of the first things I did was to water my plants and trim those that needed it. I have a violet that is just about ready to bloom and the fushia one is still in full bloom.
I also went to the local outdoor sports store and bought some heavy socks. From left to right, I got a pair of wicking socks, an awesome pair of Smart Wool socks and some grey fleece socks. My feet are no longer cold. I think I need to get another few pairs of the fleece ones. These are definitely a good thing!
Over this past weekend, I took one day off and enjoyed an afternoon at the art museum. I also enjoyed a great Thai meal. I worked on Sunday and that night when I got home at 9 pm, I decided it was time to paint my kitchen. If you'd seen the previous speckled blue paint job that was stained from one too many exploded sodas or other kitchen disasters, it's all gone! It's now white. I was using up a leftover can of white paint, but I ended up needing to get a second can. Too bad Home Depot isn't open at 11 pm on Sunday night. I finished the job tonight. Now I just need to reinstall the pot rack and hang up some new decorations. I'm very pleased with my adventure in painting. It was fun to have an outlet since work has been and will be crazy for the near future.

Today

2008-12-21T21:48:00.008-05:00

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?

2008-12-21T17:15:00.002-05:00

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.

Uninformed

2008-12-15T20:28:00.002-05:00

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.

Icy!

2008-12-12T19:06:00.003-05:00

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.

Not much to say

2008-12-08T18:06:00.001-05:00

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

What does it mean?

2008-12-05T18:25:00.002-05:00

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.

TLDR

2008-11-30T19:32:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-30T19:15:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-29T14:14:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-28T19:49:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-24T19:00:00.010-05:00

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

2008-11-23T16:08:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-18T17:41:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-16T10:16:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-14T20:18:00.003-05:00

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...

2008-11-13T21:21:00.002-05:00

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...

2008-11-12T21:05:00.002-05:00

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!

2008-11-09T20:24:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-09T20:17:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-09T20:12:00.003-05:00

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

2008-11-04T18:31:00.002-05:00

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!

2008-11-04T12:44:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-04T06:39:00.002-05:00

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!

2008-11-02T10:44:00.003-05:00

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!

2008-11-02T10:34:00.004-05:00

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.

Childhood Memory

2008-10-29T17:13:00.003-04:00

On Monday night, I was flipping through the channels looking for something mindless to watch. I ended up on Jon and Kate plus 8. It was a Valentine's Day episode. I'm not a huge fan - I much prefer the holiday this week - Halloween. In fact, it's pretty clear that some of my neighbors agree. I need to go take a picture of this house that is totally decked out. I'll try to post it tomorrow. So you are wondering why I mentioned this. Well, Kate had set up a scavenger hunt for the kids to find their gift (with clues that took them throughout the house). We used to do that as kids - my sister and I. But our hunt was for Easter. The Easter bunny would always leave clues for us and at the end was our candy filled Easter basket. We always had real baskets. None of this plastic stuff from the grocery store; though there was a time in my life I was jealous of that "junk," I'm now really glad we had real baskets. They had ribbons woven through the holes of the basket and were just overall pretty cool. But I think the best thing about Easter was the scavenger hunt. Definitely a tradition that I remember very well - and not just because there are photos of it, but because it made a lasting impression. I was glad to see that the kids on the show also thought it was pretty darn cool, too. I highly recommend this as a fun way to give a gift.

Almost 50:50

2008-10-28T08:41:00.003-04:00

Typically when I go to conferences, I am one of only a handful of women in the room. And often there is only one or two female speakers (sometimes for the whole week)! I was in a session earlier this year (at a different conference) where there was only 1 female speaker and probably only 5 women in the room of at least 30 people total. (This is not a good ratio!) This is the danger of being a woman in the physical sciences. There are many ideas of why this happens, but I'm not sure I believe any of them! In any case, I made an interesting observation at this meeting that even prompted me to do a quick count in one of the sessions I was attending. I counted 33 women in a room of 70 people. That's almost 50%, folks! That means it absolutely can be done. And not only that, we had at least one of the "big" talks given by a woman. Plus when discussing who we wanted to nominate for next year, at least one woman's name came up. I can't tell you how rare this is. It was very exciting for me to notice. Overall, the folks at this conference were awesome - both the men and the women. They seem to work together more and don't seem scared to be trumped by someone stealing ideas. It was a welcome change of pace.

Travel Karma

2008-10-27T19:35:00.004-04:00

I am having a string of good travel karma, however I really shouldn't say this because I might just jinx myself. However this is well deserved as it is following up a bunch of bad karma that included getting stuck in a snowstorm of several (read 3) days a couple of years ago, having my luggage arrive late when trying to string two trips together and having some serious luggage damage (to the tune of several hundred dollars). My good karma this time allowed another conference attendee to be able to retrieve checked luggage and catch the "early" bus on Friday night. We were supposed to land at 8:45 - which only gave ~30 minutes to deplane, get luggage and get to the curb. Instead we landed at 8:10 and made the bus no problem. Folks from the plane even tried to make the earlier bus.

Also, can I just commend JetBlue on their on time record. I have not yet had a late JetBlue flight - though I have not yet taken JetBlue through JFK.

Conferences make me tired

2008-10-23T19:13:00.002-04:00

I'm exhausted. It's been a long week and it's not over yet. But it's been a good week... lots of great ideas floating around. A few things that people mentioned that will either improve my work or tie my work to what they are doing. I consider both of these great. It's also been fun to catch up with people I haven't seen in a while, though I haven't done as much networking as I should. I've sometimes gone to conferences in the past with a list of "big-wigs" I wanted to meet. But I didn't do that this time. One of the reasons I had done this in the past is partly because you must be known in your field to get tenure. Departments "go out for letters." Meaning they ask people in your field to write basically a letter of recommendation on your behalf. It's all kind of weird, especially when you are in a field that cuts across lots of different sciences. I don't know who they would have write at this point, but that's still a long way off.

The hotel is very swanky. I must note that I am a big klutz. I was so looking forward to enjoying the pool at my hotel, but I now have very bruised legs. I nearly fell down the stairs yesterday. I caught myself on the way down, but I still knocked my shins on the hard stone steps pretty good. I have a scraped knee and some nice big bruises (that I'm certain aren't done forming yet). So no skirts today (though this is one of the things I look forward to about conferences since I don't have a chance of being in the lab, where I won't where skirts).

Also, a strange observation about the hotel I made today. The shower looks like it is stone. Well, it's a stone design on regular tile. I think it's pretty strange.