Wiiiiiiiiiii!

Instead of buying each other Christmas presents, Ecogeoman and I decided to get a Wii.  We'd been wanting one for quite a while -- I wanted it to play games and EGM wanted it to watch instant Netflix movies.  I love it!

We've already watched a bunch of movies.  That's great because we've been paying for Netflix for ages without actually exchanging many movies.  The selection of instant movies is disappointing, but I'm confident that they will be adding lots more soon since they seem to be really pushing the streaming format.

Playing games is fantastic too!  We got Just Dance 2 for Christmas from my mom and it is fun fun fun!  There's a really diverse selection of good songs and the choreography is mostly pretty easy to follow, plus it's a great workout.  We got a Zumba game as well, but I haven't tried that for more than a few minutes yet (Just Dance is too much fun).  EGM and I have also had fun playing the basic sports games too. 

I'm so glad we got the Wii instead of stressing about shopping for surprise gifts.  I really hope we continue to use it as much as we have been this last week.

Vacay

I'm going on vacation next week!

My parents' 50th wedding anniversary is coming up and they are having a big party.  Everyone is coming.  It's going to be a full chaotic week of family, family, family.  It will be intense, but I'm really looking forward to it.  I haven't been to visit since New Year's, which is the longest I've ever gone without a trip home.  I'm especially looking forward to seeing my nieces and nephews who live far away and I rarely see.

Extra fun: we're going wedding/bridesmaids' dress shopping!  It's going to be so fun.  We've gone shopping together for each of my sisters' weddings so it's something of a tradition.  Except the family has grown, so this time there will be at least 10 of us.  Can you say cluster fuck?

Bonus: I get to spend the weekend with my BFF.  Maybe we'll go to the pool.  :)

Moving

We're moving on Monday!

A list of things I will miss about our current place, in no particular order:

• Lots of space, including plenty of closet space and beds to accommodate a visiting family of 5
• Beautiful original woodwork
• Tree-lined streets, including big trees right outside the window that make it feel like we live in a treehouse
• Relatively inexpensive rent
• Wonderful neighborhood -- very safe and quiet-ish yet very interesting with lots to do
• Excellent natural light

A list of things I'm super excited about in our new place:

• Shorter commute!!!!!
• Dishwasher!
• Laundry in unit!
• Elevator
• Pool and sundeck
• Pool table room in the building
• Gym, with a view, in the building
• Party room, with a view, in the building
• Garage parking space
• Lots of kitchen counter space
• Decent water pressure
• A toilet that flushes properly
• Bathroom door that latches and locks
• Busy, super-hot neighborhood
• Incredibly convenient access to public transit
• Closer proximity to many of our friends
• Shorter commute!!!

Life has been really out-of-whack for us lately.  I really thrive on a solid daily routine.  I'm hoping that the move, with its resultant shorter commute, will offer a clean slate for getting myself back into a comfortable schedule.  I'm surprisingly stressed about the move itself, but so excited to do it.

wowed

We saw Avatar this weekend and it pretty much met my expectations. I agreed with most of the reviews I've seen -- the story was hackneyed but the movie was visually stunning. Really worth seeing in the cinema.

I might have mentioned this before, but one of Ecogeoman's favorite things in the world is going to the movies. I could take it or leave it. Like many people, he tends to prefer action movies based on the argument that those really need to be seen on the big screen, whereas dramas are just as good on dvd. Unfortunately, I hate movies that have significant time devoted to chase scenes (too stressful!). Which means that I often dislike the movies we see.

I really wanted to see Avatar in the theater, however, because I was curious about the 3-D. I remember when 3-D movies were popular for a short time when I was a kid, but they used those crappy red-blue glasses that distorted everything. The modern 3-D is amazing. It was seamless; most of the time it simply enhanced the visual impact of the movie rather than being an intrusive, noticeable special effect. There were a few points when I became aware of the 3-D but it was really cool. I'm glad we saw this movie in the cinema despite the $14 ticket price (!) because I don't think it would have anywhere near as much impact on a tv.

RBOiPOD

• I haven't used my green iPod Nano all that much since I bought it a couple of months ago. I really can't handle music while I read or write, and I haven't been in the lab all that much. But it has been very nice when I have been in the lab. Now that the semester has started, I will likely be taking public transportation more often, and I will use it then.
  
• I have used it to motivate me to jog on a few occassions, but I need to be better about that.
  
• I like to use it while walking too, but there is a problem I need to get over. I have an uncontrollable urge to walk in step with the music, owing to marching band indoctrination Seriously, marching band ruined me for walking at my own pace when there is music. So songs that aren't the right tempo are a problem. Since a lot of my favorite songs have a danceable beat, it is a significant problem.
  
• The ear buds are uncomfortable, and they pop out of my ears. EGM finds this baffling, since he always says that I have extra large ear holes. I guess my ear holes are big compared to my head, but still smaller than most people's ear holes?
• I've only bought three songs from iTunes (Just Dance, Sexy Back, and Sufjan Stevens's Chicago). However, I'm nearly finished with lab work (woo-hoo!), so I might do like ScienceWoman and buy some songs to celebrate.
• Most of the music came from cds that I had ripped to my computer at one time or another, so there is all this weird rap and stuff from cds that my ex-boyfriend burned. Unfortunately, the titles for most of the music that came from burned cds didn't come with the songs, so I don't know which songs are which when I do the sync thing. Maybe after I defend, I will take the time to listen to each song and edit the titles. Maybe I will also upload music from more of my cds then too.
  

I finally cracked

This weekend I bought new athletic shoes, thicker socks, a sports bra, and AN IPOD.

iTunes is currently converting the songs that were on my computer into iSongs or whatever.

The iPod is green. LOVE.

I am now prepared for exercise. Lab work used to keep me moving. However, since I don't do lab work frequently or regularly (is that okay, Cath) anymore, I need to get my ass doing something else. Perhaps the iPod will motivate me. I'll let you know.

In which I make friends

I've complained here before about how I seem to have trouble making friends, especially independent of EGM, especially people who aren't from work, especially women. So I jumped at the chance to join a book club a few months ago, despite a somewhat awkward invitation.

I was at the birthday dinner for the female member of our only-friends-who-are-not-scientists couple along with another of her friends. We'll call this other friend Bookworm. I had met Bookworm several times before at other events hosted by this couple. Anyway, Bookworm invited my friend to join her new book club, but my friend declined because she doesn't like to read much. Awkward pause, then Bookworm said, well, um, would you like to come to my book club, Ecogeofemme? My natural inclination would have been to say no because it would be all people I didn't know and I felt like I was getting invited just because she felt rude leaving me out at that point. But, I'm always saying how I want more friends and I've been mildly interested in a book club for a long time. So I said yes.

That was right at the end of last year, so they skipped a couple of months around the holidays, and then I didn't make the next one. Then after all that time, I waffled about going. But I'm so glad I finally put on my big girl panties and went. The group is so great. They are a bunch of really intelligent, interesting women. They have different backgrounds from me, which is so cool. One is almost finished with a Ph.D. in English literature, so she always has great insights, but (thankfully) is never condescending. Several others have theater backgrounds, which adds a lot too. They seem to like my perspective as well. The discussions really add to my appreciation of the books because the others point out and explain allusions that I miss since I read way more science than literature.

Bookworm moved away a couple of months ago, and it was unclear if the group would continue without her leadership. So far, so good. I was a little worried personally, since I didn't know any of the other women before. But they seem to have accepted me as a regular member. I think it would take a long time for me to become actual friends with any of these people, but it's still really wonderful to have a standing engagement once a month where I feel like I belong. It has been a lot of fun so far.

Solo show

I went to the concert alone and survived and even had a good time. I'm so glad that being by myself didn't stop me from going. It did stop me from drinking, however, because I wanted be clear-headed for 1) the bus ride home 2) navigating the crowd -- I almost took several elbows to the head as it was, and it was a very tame crowd and 3) talking to strangers.

In honor of Repeal Day, there was 1920's themed burlesque show instead of an opening band. They passed out feather boas at the door -- to get people in the mood, I guess. There was an MC who sang a number with a ukulele and then told jokes and facts about Repeal Day between dancing acts. Oh the dancing acts. I was really not expecting to see 1920's themed strippers when I went to this show. It was bizarre. But also kind of fun because it was so different.

Anyway, the show was good despite not having a brass section there. A dude standing next to me who was also there alone chatted me up between the strippers and the main act. We got into an interesting conversation about climate change and it was kind of nice to talk to someone instead of standing there like a goober. I saw another guy who I had noticed the last time I saw this band. He just stood there singing all the lyrics to all the songs. superfan!

I'm definitely glad I went but it would have been more fun with a friend. It was a little empowering to not let myself be held back by others. I bet some of you do stuff like this all the time and think I'm silly for making such a big deal about it, but seriously, I'm such a homebody that this was kind of a thing for me.

Finding your bee-people

While we're on the subject of fitting in, did you feel a little like this when you first discovered your science? When you first learned people actually devoted their lives to studying the thing that had long fascinated you but that you may not have even known had a name?




I really like this video and the song happens to be my all time favorite.

The trouble with novels

I am ashamed to admit that I am the kind of person who can abandon a novel before I reach the ending. For example, I started Catch-22 at least three times, once getting more than half-way, but never finished it. On the other hand, once I'm engaged, I have to simply give up on whatever else I have going on because I get totally enchanted by a good story.

Today I spent about 7 hours engulfed in The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which I acquired at a book exchange at work. I started it a few days ago and today I gave in to the decadence of spending the whole day curled up on the couch, not even showering until I was through. Now I'm still stuck in a fog from the story and my inner monologue has taken on the voice of the narrator, as it usually does when I read fiction.

So much for InaDWriMo progress.

There was an interview with the author at the end of the volume. Apparently she used to be an academic specializing in French literature. I thought this question/answer was particularly interesting given how much time I spend reading blogs about balance:

You were an academic before becoming an author. What promoted the change in careers?

British universities are not very happy places for their staff currently, and I gave up academic life for the same reasons as many other do and would like to do. In particular the erosion of my private reading time made me unhappy -- if I cannot escape for an hour or two every day by reading for pleasure, then small problems seem to grow large, and I begin to feel enormously burdened. After five years in the profession I was plagued by the feeling that by some absurd mistake I was leading someone else's life, and was desperate to find a path back to my own. I had always wanted to be a writer, but was impeded by the belief that to be a writer one had to extraordinary, and I knew I wasn't. By the time I was ready to give up my academic career I had realized that while books are extraordinary, writers themselves are no more or less special than anyone else.

Work hard, play hard

Blogging has been light because I've been working my butt off and then I had a hangover. A recap of last week:

My carpool buddy was at a conference so I was driving myself all week. Since he is the one who has to leave by 4pm to let the nanny go home, I took the opportunity to bust ass work long hours. Between Monday morning and Friday night, I worked about 60 hours, which is a whole lot for me in five days. I set a goal of 30 Crummy Tedious samples and decided that if I met that goal by Friday, I didn't have to go in on Saturday. What a carrot! I was in the lab until 12:15 Saturday morning, but I didn't go back until Monday. All 30 samples were completed and my counter ticked up to 88% done!

Saturday morning I slept in a little, then ran errands: I got a bang trim and dropped off sweaters at the dry cleaners. I never have my act together for these little jobs, so I was feeling very smug. So smug that I had momentum to clean the apartment, including a bathroom that I swear hadn't been scrubbed in about a million years. Later, we met some friends at one of this town's best beer gardens (walking distance from our home) where they have giant $9 pitchers of sangria. We got toasted, then went to one of this town's best venues for live jazz. The next day, I had one of this town's biggest hangovers. That didn't stop us from going to breakfast where they have some of this town's best cinnamon rolls and later to this town's best botanical garden.

In all it was a worthy week. Though I hope this next one is a little more relaxed.

Ultimate Twix Challenge

I've probably mentioned before that Awesome Technician and I frequently issue Twix Challenges for each other. If one of us is having a blah day and needs some motivation, the other will define some milestone that needs to be reached by a certain time (e.g. finish half of your samples by 2 pm) and if the goal is achieved, the person gets a Twix from the vending machine. Sometimes the challenges are small, like something that can be accomplished in a few hours, while other times they are big, like a data analysis project that might take days or weeks. The trick is that the challenges are difficult but attainable and we follow through. If you don't meet the goal, you don't get the Twix.


Recently Awesome Technician said that when I graduate, she will try to get me a Twix cake. We're not sure what that might be like, exactly, but the idea of it certainly has motivated me to work!

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!