Gratification!

I'm sure everyone is totally over these blogging awards, but it took me quite a while to get though the hundreds of blog posts I missed while I was away so I didn't know I got them . I really appreciate the honors and will pass them on even though this seems to have been round and round. Thanks so much to the bloggers who nominated me, and sorry for my belated acceptance.

I got the weird swoopy angel from Stepwise Girl and ScienceGirl and Jennie.

And the sparkly pyramid from ScientistMother and DancingFish (who has since moved).

Your blogs are awesomely awesome too!

Many of these bloggers have probably already had this memey prize but I've lost track.

I pass the angel to

Rebecca

Styleygeek

Propter Doc who's back! Under a new name.

Sciencemama

Karina

Unbalanced Reaction

Dr. Brazen Hussy

And the pyramid to

DrDrA

Amanda

Kate

JaneB

Isis the Scientist

And although there seems to be some unspoken (uh, unwritten) rule not to tag Sciblings, I still nominate

Sciencewomen and

Jane

This will rock you in the head

Watch this for funnies.

Who are you?

Drugmonkey has a post up that he wants to make all memey, so I will run with it. Most people who read blogs don't leave comments, so even with a dynamic medium like a blog, it's hard to know your audience. So the question for readers, originally from the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science, is

Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments.

So, Readers, please delurk if you care to.

Kittehs!

We are cat sitting for a friend for the next month. Having been debating getting our own cats for many months, I'm excited to have an opportunity to test drive these ones to learn more about my suspected allergies and low tolerance for hair on the furniture.

Our friend dropped them off on Friday night. They didn't leave the room where he released them, the office (except when he had them in the bathroom to clean off the poo and pee they made and then wallowed in while in the carrier), mostly hiding under the futon. Our friend spent the night on Friday, so they were with him on the futon that night. All day Saturday, they continued to hide in the office. They eventually started to venture out into the rest of our apartment, but if they saw me they'd dart back to safety under the futon.

Until last night.

They decided to come out in the middle of the night. I mandated that they should not be allowed in our bedroom. I figure any allergy problems I might have will only be worse if they sleep on my face and I really don't want all my clean clothes covered in cat hair. But, they were scratching at the door and meowing like crazy. Eventually, EGM went out to sleep on the futon with them (isn't he a peach?). They still meowed like crazy, so he gave up and came back to bed with the door open. They came in and out, roving all around but sill making lots of noise. At one point they even pulled down the curtain (on a tension rod, so not that difficult). So we locked them out again. I'm not sure if they were looking for our friend or were freaked out by bad weather outside. The noise eventually stopped, but it kept us up for much of the night. Today they are resting quietly under the futon. In summary, they keep us up all night and are no fun during the day. Little shits. Still, I'm hoping they'll come around because they are awfully cute.

So I ask: who on earth had the brilliant idea of domesticating a nocturnal animal?


I promise that academic/science posting will resume soon.

Refreshed and sorta tan

I had a great vacation! We were in northwest Florida, halfway between Panama City and Destin. I was sad to leave the beach, but I'm happy to be home and ready to get back to work.

Every day we'd get up, have breakfast, strap on bathing suits and lube up with sunscreen (SPF 15 for my friend, 55 for me) and lounge on the beach till lunch. After lunch we'd go back out till around 5, then come in for showers, snacks and drinks. Most nights we went out to dinner around 8 pm, then came home and went to bed. That's basically my ideal beach vacation. To top it off, I didn't pay for anything other than my plane ticket and part of a fishing trip. Sweeeeet.

I got only a light tan, due in part to liberal application of SPF 55 and to spending time in the shade to avoid an unpleasant rash I get with too much intense sun exposure, but I got it on much more of my skin than I had intended. I had this great bathing suit from a couple of years ago. It was a relatively modest "tankini" that covered my whole midriff. At the last minute when I was packing, I tossed in an old string bikini just in case. Good thing I did, because the first day as I was putting on the good suit, I heard a ripping sound. The elastic was totally shot through the whole thing. I was really not thrilled about wearing the skimpy backup bathing suit in front on my friend's family, but her suit was even skimpier than mine, so I'm sure they didn't care. Actually, that’s the thing with the beach. Everyone is so self-conscious, yet nobody really cares what anybody else looks like. We all need to just get over it.

The swimming wasn’t too great owing to lots of yucky seagrass/algae stuff and an unappealing density of jellyfish, so we mostly sat under umbrellas reading books. I read Lonesome Dove, which is one of the best books I’ve ever read. At nearly 1000 pages, it took me almost the whole week to finish it. Spending that much time in a book that is that well written gets you really attached to the characters; it was really sad at some parts, so the last day on the beach I was trying to stifle sobs as I read. I almost never cry, but this book just got to me. Sigh… In contrast, I read most of a Janet Evanovich mystery (Lean Mean Thirteen) that BFF loaned me for my long waits for flights home. It sucks (although I guess it could turn around at the end). I’ve been hearing people go on and on about how great these Evanovich books are, but I certainly won’t read another.

Well, I’m going to start reading the 213 blog posts that accumulated in my reader last week and take a look at my email. Hopefully they’ll be better than Lean Mean Thirteen and less sad than Lonesome Dove.

I'm off!

I'm going on vacation tomorrow! I'm going to Florida for a week with my BFF and her parents and her gram. Aside from a half-day fishing trip, we'll spend pretty much the whole time laying on the beach. I worked my tail off the last couple of weeks to get lab work wrapped up on one of my projects so that I could vege for a week without guilt*. I came really close, so I feel pretty good about leaving.

I had planned to not even bring my laptop, but now I'm going to. We still don't have tickets to France for EGM's sister's wedding in late August. They are super expensive, so I'm going to wait for EGM to give me the name of the travel agent they sometimes use for work trips who seems to be able to find good deals. Even if that fails, our next credit card billing cycling starts Tuesday, so by waiting four days to buy the tickets, we'll have an extra month to pay for them. Another reason to bring the 'top is so I can email EGM. :)

In other news, once again I dragged my heels writing a post for Scientiae and missed it. It was a great topic too, so check it out. Also, Karina has an interesting post that you should comment on.

Have a great week, everyone!



*Remember this post when I said how Academic Advisor "joked" that I should have my paper submitted before this trip? Well, I've given him two drafts since then. He hasn't looked at them.

Good for morale

At my lab, we like to talk about Lost the day after it airs. It used to be a string of individual conversations that seemed to go on all day. I'd talk to the first guy who got in, then later Awesome Technician and I would talk about it, then maybe later Research Advisor would want to chew on it with us too, then I'd see the other technician chatting with AT, and on it went. Now we take turns bringing donuts. No one is allowed to talk about last night's show until we're all together and then we hash out our theories and questions over some Boston cream.

I really like that we do this. Sure, it's 30 min of wasted time, but I think it's good for us. It's nice to have a little fun at work, as long as it doesn't get out of hand. On top of that, it often devolves into work talk.

I'd like to note that people in the lab who don't watch Lost are welcome to join us for donuts if they don't mind listening to us hypothesize about hatches and smoke monsters.

Fast cash

I made the easiest money of my life last week.

A friend called me two weeks ago to invite to participate in a focus group she was hosting at her apartment. She had to get 7-8 of her friends to call the market research company and they would choose 5 of those to go to her place for two hours to discuss alcohol. My friend said she didn't know what exactly it was for, but the participants had to be screened by the market research people; she told me exactly what I had to say to qualify.

I felt terrible after I called because I had to lie about almost everything. I had to say I was older than I am, make more money than I do, go to the bar more often than I do, drink more than I do, and drink mostly cocktails, especially appletinis, which I had never even tasted. But I got in! I felt so bad about it that I went out and bought liquor to make appletinis because I was so afraid I would be asked something that I didn't know. What an over achiever I am!

I had to do "homework" before the focus group met. I had to print a picture of my liquor storage area and respond to questions like, "what is your favorite drink to have at the bar and what do you love about it?" I've had a house guest for the last month (hence my lighter-than-usual blogging) so we made cocktails every night so I'd have something to say that wasn't a total lie.

It turns out that I did represent the intended demographic pretty well even though I had to fib to qualify. Although they didn't come out and tell us their purpose, I'm sure the researchers were for a company that makes fruity liqueurs that you're all familiar with. The focus group started with my friend making cocktails for everyone (I had a chocolatini which I had never had before despite telling the phone screener it was one of my favorite things to order at the bar) while a man and woman from the market research company asked us questions. They mostly had us talk about our drinking and shopping habits and asked us questions to get us to elaborate. They wanted to know things like how we find out about new drinks, how we know how to make drinks, when we have different drinks, etc. We brought up how we drink differently now than we did in college and they wanted to know a whole lot about that. The most interesting part was when they got out a bottle of watermelon schnapps and asked us how we would redesign the product/package to better market it to people like us. The package is really stupid, so we had a lot to say. They liked that and had us do two more. I'm pretty sure the point of it all was for the company to learn how to better market its fruity liqueur line to older people (35-year-olds instead of college kids).

In the end, I got $20 for cab fare (much more than the cab cost) and $175 dollars for participating. How cool is that? I hope I'm in the database now so I'll get called to do more focus groups!

Lost = awesome

This season of Lost has been brilliant. The pacing is fantastic, the plot is dramatic and complex, and every single episode ends with a twist out of absolutely nowhere. I can't wait to see what happends next!

They best not end the series by revealing that the whole thing was someone's dream.

Double whammy weekend

This year, I share my birthday with Jesus' resurrection (zombie day?), so Ecogeoman and I are dutifully off to my hometown for the weekend. I think we'll have fun. We're going to spend Saturday evening with my BFF and some other friends and then Sunday will be a family Easter extravaganza, complete with an egg hunt and many arguments over peanut butter eggs which are the centerpiece of our candy cap-and-trade system. We're taking Monday off to drive back home at a leisurely pace.

I'm really excited about going away for the weekend. EGM has been so stressed and busy with work and I could use a break as well. I am not, however, too excited about this birthday, 29. I have clear childhood memories of my mom teasing my sister-in-law about aging, saying she should say she was 29 when she was well past 30. Not an novel joke, but one I heard so young that it stuck with me. It makes me feel now that I have only the last crumb of my youth left to savor. But, I can take heart that no matter now old I get, I will always be fresh compared to my siblings!

Medium and Good

The Medium:

1. We discussed the first draft of my manuscript at lab meeting (led by Academic Advisor, not Research Advisor). It was a good experience; I got lots of constructive comments. I had asked them to focus on big picture issues, like organization, consistency, data interpretation, main themes, etc., rather than details since the paper is at an early stage (I don’t want to polish sentences that might just get deleted). Some people marked up stupid style and formatting stuff anyway, but at least they read it. We haven’t discussed many working drafts in our lab meetings, so AA used my manuscript as a tool to teach everyone some broad writing lessons. Some examples:

• Title, abstract, first pragraph of intro, first paragraph of results, first and last paragraphs of discussion, and conclusion should all match and contain the same point(s).
• Avoid starting major sections with “negative” statements. For instance, “this bad disease disfigures hundreds of people every year” is not positive. AA claims that the papers that come off as most exciting and interesting phrase things in a positive way.
• This one is more obvious, but apparently I had trouble with it: determine your audience and write with the appropriate degree of detail. I guess I mixed general ideas that would appeal to a broad audience with finer points that would bore everyone but specialists in my subdiscipline.

So the lab meeting was mostly good, but today I felt a little overwhelmed when I started to attack the problems. I will basically have to rewrite the paper, which is fine because it will get so much better, but I need to develop a strategy. AA said he would email me his specific comments – they might help me figure out where to start. I currently feel frustrated.

2. I have been making slow progress on the crummy, tedious, boring, dirty project (see progress meter at sidebar). Today I worked on the Worst Samples Ever. My plan was to chip away on this project while working on manuscript revisions. It’s bench work that I usually sort of enjoy and that a trained monkey could do, so I figured it would be a good way to spread out the difficult rewriting while still moving forward on something. But today’s samples were so crappy that it only added to my overall frustration. I really want to finish with these fuckers.

The Good:

1. My fellowship got renewed for one more year. Yay! This is a big relief.
2. My BFF invited me to go on vacation with her and her parents this summer, at the same time that Ecogeoman is going to Far Off Land. I’d only have to pay for myself to get there and maybe chip in for food. EGM and I had basically decided that I should not go to Far Off Land with him (too expensive) so I’m excited to go to Florida instead. :)
3. I was in a really sour mood when I got home today, so EGM and I got beer and dinner at our favorite neighborhood bar. Then we got ice cream -- yum. I feel much better now.

love at first sight

Ecogeoman has discovered Google Earth. He has been saying things like, "I just can't believe how high tech this seems!" and "This program is awesome!" I agree, Ecogeoman.

Last night, he said, "so, is there some website or something where I can put in two cities, and it will tell me how far apart they are? Or maybe give me directions and the travel time?"

While living under his rock, EGM independently invented Mapquest.

I responded, "yeah, and wouldn't it be cool if there was a website where you could type in words and it would tell you all the websites that are related to those words?"
EGM said, "I know about Google, thanks."

So tonight, he downloaded Google Earth and is still discovering its treasures.

Sometimes it's pretty fun at our place.

Pour out that beer if you want to publish

I thought “networking” was good for my career.

Alas, a Czech researcher has found that beer consumption is negatively related to number of publications and their citation rate (Grim 2008). Grim, an avian ecologist rather than a social scientist, surveyed the beer consumption habits of other avian ecologists working in Czech Republic, a country with very high per capita beer consumption, in 2002 and 2006. Controlling for both age and years since first publication, he found that the more beer the scientists reported drinking, the fewer publications they had. Furthermore, the survey results from 2002 predicted results in 2006 (r2=0.90, F1,9 =6.15, p<0.0001). Thus, he couldn’t test how changes in beer use influenced publication rate (i.e. he couldn’t address the hypothesis that drinking decreases with age with a concomitant increase in publishing). The study also compared a high-consumption region with a lower-consumption region and found a similar relationship; scientists in the high-consumption region published less and had fewer citations. This was not related to age, time since first publication, or funding biases among regions.

The median beer consumption among one study group was 200 liters per year. That’s eight pints per week, every week. That’s way more than I drink. So maybe my beer drinking still falls within the good-for-your-career, networking-over-drinks, helping-relax-among-colleagues-and-superiors-so-as-to-not-feel-intimidated-and-inhibited variety. Let’s hope. Because I am not about to give up beer in the name of science!

Cheers!

Grim, Tomas. 2008. A possible role of social activity to explain differences in publication output among ecologists. Oikos. doi: 10.1111/j.2008.0030-1299.16551.x

Bullets

This blog has been a tad serious lately so I wanted to lighten up a little. I couldn't think of anything both chipper and coherent, so here are my disjointed thoughts for the day:

• I forgot to put on deodorant this morning. After a few hours at work, I remembered I had some in my desk and slapped it on. Unfortunately, it was like, rancid or something. At a minimum there was no fragrance left. It smelled terrible and made me feel queasy all day.
• Advisor has lots of time for lengthy impromptu conversations, but has trouble scheduling an hour to discuss my paper draft. I highly value these unarranged chats, as I learn a heck of a lot and really enjoy them. It's just a little frustrating when I want to talk about something specific. And it's all about me, right?
• Someone asked me this question as sort of a quasi- pseudo- personality test, "would you rather give up eating or sleep, knowing that you wouldn't be physically harmed by the loss?" Really, I'd like to give up pooping, but since that isn't an option, I choose eating. I *heart* sleep. However, I hate putting myself to bed, even when I'm tired. I think there are few things as decadent as falling asleep on the couch, which I've been doing pretty often lately. This question is supposed to give some insight about your personality, but I don't know what that might be.
• Do you ever listen to the radio show This American Life? I play the podcasts while I do this super tedious task at work. It makes the time fly by. The one from last week about "tough crowds" was really good and funny.
• The spellcheck in Blogger is working again!
• Lost was awesome tonight!

silly quiz

I saw this at Scattered and Random. I consider myself a morning person, but I guess that's not really the point of this. :)

I was raised by cannibals

The Bean-Mom recently wrote about how she teases her children with threats of cannibalism (you’re so cute I could eat you up. But I’m not food, Mommy!). I too, had to fear being eaten by my parents and siblings, along with many other torments. Commenting on Bean-Mom’s blog inspired me to write a post about some of the most creative teasing I endured as a child.

First a little back story: I’m the youngest of seven children (yes, my parents are Catholic). The oldest six were born over the course of just nine years. Then my parents went on a nine year child production hiatus before I was born. So my sibs range from 9 to 18 years older than me (we all have the same two parents). I would also like to say upfront that I feel I was raised in a loving and happy house and that I really think this stuff is funny rather than traumatizing.

Okay, the torture stories of my youth:

• When I was an infant who could crawl, my sisters would sit in a circle with me in the middle. They would all call my name to get me to go to one of them, which they decided would indicate who my favorite was (at six months!). The story goes that I would usually end up confused and crying in the middle.
• My mom used to sing this song to me, “found a peanut, found a peanut, found a peanut in a shell” in a way that indicated I was the peanut. I just loved that song. Of course, the lyrics go on to say that the peanut was rotten and induced vomiting.
• Both my mom and siblings often said how they intended to put me into a clothes dryer to shrink me so I would stay a cute little kid forever.
• My siblings had me actually convinced that I was adopted. They told me which house down the street I came from and how that family couldn’t take care of me so our parents took me in. They had good evidence. They cited the extreme age difference between the older kids and me and how years before, when my parents had six kids between the ages of 2 and 11, they had taken in a foster child for a year.
• My siblings told me that I was really the oldest, but that I had a disease that kept me from growing. They said that our parents had decided that everyone should act like I was the youngest so I wouldn’t feel bad about not growing.
• This one's not really teasing, but I remember going to bars and frat parties starting when I was 3, until the last sister who went to an out-of-town college graduated when I was about 12. The kids who were younger than the one at college got to go visit for “little sibs weekend”. Can you believe my mom let her 16-year-old drive her three youngest kids, including her 3-year-old the four hours to visit their college freshman sister? To be fair, my mom now can’t believe she let that happen either.

The worst part of all of this is that my sisters and brothers have produced thirteen wonderful nieces and nephews who I’m not really allowed to tease. Those diabolical teenagers grew into adults who think it’s not nice to tease their adorable children. The injustice!

Lab Conversation

Ecogeofemme: You know what I hate?
Awesome Technician: Puppies.
EGF: Well, yeah, but that's not what's on my mind now.
AT: Other people's kids.
EGF: That too, but not now.
AT: Whole Foods.
EGF: Not it.
AT: When people leave messes in the lab.
EGF: Also true, but not right now. Maybe I should just tell you. I hate when a really interesting conversation gets interrupted and you know it won't get revisited again.
AT: yeah, that sucks.

Then I went on to tell her about the aborted conversation with Research Advisor, which we discussed for at least 30 min.

This made me realize how cranky I must be. But to be fair, most of the the conversations that led to me announcing I hate something were pretty funny, i.e. I don't actally hate puppies or Whole Foods (but I don't much like them either).

Flight of the Conchords

Ecogeoman and I have been a little obsessed with Flight of the Conchords lately. They are a comedy band from New Zealand who play hilarious songs in a totally deadpan style. The did one of those long HBO specials, then they got a regular 30 min show on HBO. We don't have cable, but we got the first few episodes from Netflix. It was so funny we watched some of them twice.

This is a clip from the HBO special. It makes for a much better ear worm than Part Time Lover.

Funnies

This post at Lounge of the Lab Lemming is great!

7 more facts

• Ecogeofemme detroyed the periodic table, because Ecogeofemme only recognizes the element of surprise.
• Ecogeofemme can do a wheelie on a unicycle.
• Ecogeofemme is so bad she makes viruses sick. As such, ecogeofemme is also responsible for the eradication of smallpox.
  
• When Ecogeofemme enters a room, she doesn't turn the lights on. She turns the dark off.
  
• Ecogeofemme crossed the road. No one has ever dared question her motives.
  
• Ecogeofemme can strangle you with a cordless phone.
  
• Ecogeofemme can tie her shoes with her feet.
  

As seen at Thoughts From the Waiting Room
Get yours here.