Egg pie

I love Sciencemama's idea for a weekday recipe carnival. I don't mind cooking, but it can be so hard to come up with what to make, especially through the week. I like to make meals that are very simple (i.e. complete enough in one dish that I don't need sides), inexpensive, and take <30 min.

I whipped this up last week when I had a frozen pie crust, eggs, cheese, and not much else. It's not my best work ever, but it was pretty good. One of Sciencemama's requirements is high nutrition; I'm not sure this qualifies, but it's not bacon and tator tots either. Since I don't know what defines a quiche, I'm calling this dill and asparagus egg pie. Please don't judge me for using asparagus when it's terribly out of season.

Ingredients: splash of olive oil, 2 gloves minced garlic, 1 bunch asparagus (~ 2 c after trimming?), dash of salt, 8 eggs, 0.25 c grated Parmesan, 0.5 c mozzarella, 1 T (or more) dry dill weed, 1 pie crust (I buy it prepared but you can make you own).

1. Preheat oven to 350F or so.
2. Trim asparagus and cut into ~0.5 in pieces. Saute with garlic and salt in the olive oil until not quite tender.
3. Whisk eggs, cheeses, dill, and half-cooked asparagus in a medium bowl.
4. Position the pie crust in a pie pan. Pour in the egg mixture.
5. Bake for 30-45 min, until the crust is golden and the center is set and a little puffy.

Bean-Mom interviewed me! Here are her questions and my responses.

1. If you weren't in science, what do you think you'd be doing?

It's difficult to picture myself doing something totally outside of science. However, it's possible to imagine a fulfilling career doing something besides research. For example, I could see myself working for a consulting firm or regulatory agency. In the last couple of years I've thought about having a business that provides professional development training for scientists. I envision such a business being something like the dissertation coach's job, but I'd expand beyond dissertations to time management, career strategy, and all the other things we regularly talk about on our blogs. I'm not sure what kind of training or qualifications I'd need to pull that off.

I have a list of dream jobs, but most of them are not things I think I would/could actually pursue. Maybe financial advisor.

2. What's your dream job?

Professional dancer. I imagine it every day. After that, it's voice over actor, professional development coach for scientists, and financial advisor.

3. Okay, you've just defended your thesis and as a reward your fairy science godmother is going to give you an all expenses paid month vacation to do whatever you wish. Trekking in the Himalayas, chilling on a beach, exploring Europe with ecogeoman.... whatever. Also, you can bring along whomever you want (fairy godmother will pay for them too). What would you do and who would you bring?

That's easy. I'd go to Far Off Land with EGM and whoever else wanted to come along for part of the time. In fact, we're trying to find a way to take an extended visit there in the next year. I have a major fantasy wherein we graduate, secure post docs, give up our apartment since we'd be moving for post docs anyway, and then spend 2-3 months in Far Off Land. In my fantasy we spend part of our time working on papers lingering from our dissertations and part of our time exploring the country. I'd like to get to know the place a little better and spend more time with his family and friends. I've been trying to save so we can do at least a short trip there, although it's the kind of place where you go for at least 2-3 weeks since the trip takes so much time and money.

4. Name a book that has affected you deeply.

This is tough. The Jungle really stuck with me, especially after I later read Fast Food Nation and discovered all the same hardships and injustices are still at play. For reasons unknown, I'm fascinated by stories set in the Gilded Age, especially those that focus on working class people.

5. What do you think of the city where you are now living? (I ask this because I am familiar with the place, and just curious as to what you think of it!)

I love it here! It's such an exciting place to live. A post doc in our lab once said it feels like the lid is just barely kept on this city -- that it's on the verge of chaos at any moment, but in a mostly good way. I think part of that comes from the diversity -- I can see women in burqas in the grocery store, same-sex couples walking down the street holding hands, a whole spectrum of skin colors in classes at my university -- which means there is lots of different stuff going on all the time.

Because of that (and because of the huge market here), you can find almost any activity or food you can imagine. Best of all, lots of it is in walking distance. I live smack in the middle of the kind of super livable neighborhood that Ruchi recently described. I love that there is good public transit (although I hate actually taking it). I feel like the city is very accessible -- easy to get around, hard to get lost in -- and that it was easy to find ourselves a little nest within it.

However, I've been thinking about this question a lot lately as I start to investigate potential post doc opportunities. There are so many things I love here, but the city has major drawbacks as well and those are starting to grate on me. The winter weather blows. A little topography would be nice. It's really expensive, so I feel like a lot of the cool stuff to do is out of reach. And although I said it was easy to find a little space for us, it has been difficult to make friends here. People from the university are so spread out that it's impractical to hang out with some of the students I'd like to build relationships with. It's easy to get lost in the crowd. But mostly, I'm really sick of my commute. Furthermore, I feel like it takes forever to get anywhere. And it's so damn hard to get out of the city to natural areas. Once you do, they are crowded with everyone else from the city. It'd be really cool to live someplace where a nice hike would be a day trip instead of a long weekend with reservations required three months in advance. Thus, I'm torn about whether I'd like to stay here longer or move on for the next stage of my career. Not that I think I'll have much control over it.

Thanks to Bean-Mom for the interesting questions! Readers, if would like me to interview you, let me know in the comments.

Inspiration Award

I'd like to thank Amanda for honoring me with this lovely Inspiration Award. The rules say I should now nominate 7 bloggers who inspire me. I want to honor some bloggers who do something I find totally amazing: blog in a foreign language. These blogs are written in excellent English by people whose first language is not English. It's hard enough for me to write in a coherent way, and I'm writing in my mother tongue. Cheers to those who have interesting things to say and can say it in more than one language!


1. Amelie (who writes in not one, but two languages!)
2. Hypoglycemiagirl
3. Stepwisegirl
4. Nina
5. Saxifraga
6. Sciencegirl
7. Chall

These are the first 7 that sprang to mind. I know some of these people live (or have lived) in English-speaking places and I'm sure all do at least some of their work in English, so maybe I'm be condescending or something by saying they're amazing. Still, I can't imagine that it's not a least a little challenging to blog in something other than one's first language, especially since this king of blogging is usually a hobby. Anyway, these are terrific blogs regardless of what language their authors like to speak.

I'm sure there are many other great blogs like them (maybe some that I don't realize are written by non-native English speakers) that deserve a shout out as well.

Where I've been

visited 24 states (48%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project


I saw this at Short Geologist's place. I only counted states that were a destination, not states I only passed through or had a layover or something. I suppose if I did count drive-through states, I would only add Kansas and Alabama. I will definitely be going to one new state this year and possibly two.

100 Things I've Done

I've seen this at several different blogs and decided to do it myself.
Bold means I've done it. Italics mean it's one of the 5 on this list that I'd most like to do.

1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii (#1 dream vacation)
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world (I marched in the evening parade with my high school marching band. It was AWESOME, wasn't it BFF?)
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis (I'm not sure why this is on such a list. Is there some superstition I don't know?)
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped (not appealing. especially since EGM has inculcated me with his fear of detached retinas.)
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch (if knitting and walking on stilts count)
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked (this would be fun if it were safe enough.)
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill (well, I've definitely been inefficient when I "worked at home" but I've never truly played hookey.)
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb (again, is there something I'm missing here? why would I want to hold a lamb?)
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon (not appealing.)
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset (I frequently see the sunrise -- it's so cool when the great orange disk slides up above the horizon so quickly you can detect the movement. I've only seen a sunset like that once.)
31. Hit a home run (something I have certainly fantasized about, but just in the context of backyard games. I'm always last picked.)
32. Been on a cruise (would love to, but it's a low priority, vacation-wise. Although I guess I did go on a 1-night cruise on the Baltic Sea. There wasn't much beside a disco, so it's not what comes to mind when someone says "cruise".)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person (sounds like wet, short-lived excitement.)
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors (there are other places I'd rather see.)
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language (another thing I've daydreamed doing.)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (when I was in college with a part-time job, I had plenty of pocket money for beer with some left over. So not enough in the wider sense, but I was satisfied in the here-and-now sense.)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David (not especially appleaing.)
41. Sung karaoke (I'd love to do this, but EGM doesn't like me to sing. Given that he loves most everything else I do, I take his word for it that no one else would like to hear me sing, either.)
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa (I'd quite like to see Africa, but I'm not sure what the ideal circumstances would be. I'd love to do fieldwork in the Sahel, but I'm not sure I have the nerve.)
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted (Not appealing. My sister's kids had this done. Apparently it's not all it's cracked up to be.)
48. Gone deep sea fishing (I'm not sure what qualifies, but I've fished just far enough out that I couldn't see the shore.)
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business (I'm counting the hard core lemonade stand business al a Babysitter's Club I had when I was a kid)
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching (I've wanted to do this ever since I saw "Castaway" even though I know it wouldn't be like that.
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving (not appealing)
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt (not appealing.)
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades (another trip I'd love to make)
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person (This is one of my dream vacations. I WILL do it someday soon enough that I'm fit enough to enjoy it. I was seriously envious of Rebecca's recent trip.)
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car (shortly after I graduated college and started my tech job. It was so exciting! Until I went back to school and still had to make payments.)
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible (not appealing)
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (just fish)
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury (it was just like Law & Order)
91. Met someone famous (I fantasize about this occasionally. In a "Notting Hill" kind of way. I'm sure Brad Pitt would LOVE to play Cranium with me and my friends.)
92. Joined a book club (haven't do this, although I would like to.)
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Ridden an elephant (at the zoo)

Five Things Meme

Sciencewoman tagged me for this meme. Here we go.

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago

1. Applying to spend a semester studying in a Scandinavian country (and convincing my parents it could be possible)
2. Discovering ecology
3. Wishing I had more female friends (a perennial problem)
4. Wishing I could buy beer
5. Watching Austin Powers at least once a week

5 Things on my to do list today

1. Work on the results section of Chapter 2
2. Outline the intro and discussion sections of Chapter 2
3. Transfer some money around so EGM can take advantage of the currently awesome exchange rate
4. Watch Dancing with the Stars and Boston Legal, two of my favorite shows (if the t.v. actually works)
5. Hang out with EGM

5 snacks I love

1. Ice cream
2. Chocolate malts
3. Cheese
4. Cheesy potato chips
5. pistachios

5 things I would do if I were a millionaire (this means many millions, right?)

1. Fund my lab's research
2. Give to established charities and endow a fund for small research grants for scientists in my field to work in developing countries
3. Set aside money for more frequent trips to Far Off Land
4. Have a big fancy wedding, including flying family and friends from FOL to my home town in the US.
5. Buy a house or condo

5 places I've lived

1. Large Midwest City
2. Medium Midwest City
3. Small Midwest City
4. Scandinavian country for a semester (see above)
5. Far Off Land, briefly

5 jobs I've had

1. One-hour photo technician
2. Restaurant server
3. Lab technician
4. Grad student
5. Unsolicited advice giver

5 people I'd like to share this meme with

1. Kate
2. Liberal Arts Lady
3. Fia
4. Unbalanced Reaction
5. Ambivalent Academic

Me-meme

Karina, Sciencegirl, and almost Acmegirl tagged me for this meme.

1.Link to the person who tagged you.
2.Post the rules on your blog.
3.Write six random things about yourself.
4.Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5.Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6.Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

My version will be 6 things I've never done.

I've never...
1. learned to drive a manual transmission car.
2. had a proper job interview. or a formal performance evaluation.
3. been responsible for children overnight.
4. voted for a republican.
5. lived in the same home as my oldest brother for more than ~3 months.
6. met either of my grandmothers.

I'm so behind on blog reading that I have no idea who's left to tag for this so I'm not going to tag anyone. But if you'd like to do it, go for it and you can say I tagged you.

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

Book Meme

Mad Hatter tagged me for this meme. I had been avoiding it because my short list of books read is embarrassing. So, the books I've read are in bold, books I started but never quite finished are italicized, and if I saw the cinematic adaptation, there is an asterisk.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (Assigned readng my last semester of high school that I didn't do. I think it's the only assigned book that I didn't read and had to fake the report.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I'm sure I started this at least three times, but just couldn't get into it. Even after reading 75% of it.)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (But I did suffer through The Brothers Karamazov in a college seminar course where that was the only topic. One bitchy student ruined it by revealing the killer way too early, since she had read it before but no one else had.)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (Loved it! Loved East of Eden more.)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden*
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne*
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Confusing, what with all those names to keep track of, but wonderful.)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan*
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Could this book have been more irritating?)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding*
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Could this book have been more boring?)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (But I did have a part in my junior high's rendition of the stage musical version. I was in the "workhouse gang". I had to play a boy. Yet another negative aspect of being short.)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (I think I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in high school. That was plenty James Joyce for me.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker*
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (I read Lady Chatterly's Lover. That's similar, right?)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (one of my two(!) copies just went to the book exchange)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl* (I read many of his other books and LOVED them. Will definitely read them to my kids if I have any.)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Lots of people have already done this one...I'll tag JaneB, Sciencemama, Silver Fox, and uh, Unbalanced Reaction. If you guys have done it, sorry. If anyone else wants to do it, GFI*!

*Go For It.

Shuffle meme

All the cool kids are doing this meme, but I've been resisting because I don't have an iPod. I broke down today when CAE specifically tagged me to do it. I figured I could make do by leafing through my old-school travel cd case to list the 25 songs I've listened to the most lately. Unfortunately, I pretty much only listen to 2 or 3 cds, so I tired to come up with songs I really like even if they're not in regular rotation. Even that didn't get me to 25, so I took a trip down memory lane to fill in the list with favorite songs from throughout my life. I think I need to cut back on the NPR.

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike through when someone gets them right.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING.


Bonus points if you can pick out the two songs from the cds I have on repeat. More bonus points if you can identify what was my first favorite song.

1. Someday mother will die and I’ll get the money
2. When you grow up livin’ like a good boy outta
3. This is the beat that make you shake your rump
That make your booty go ba-bump, ba-bump
It’s that beat that make ya bump ya bump (ohh)
4. I’m wearing
fur pajamas
5. Ground control to Major Tom
6. Drop your glasses, shake your asses
7. All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
8. Hello darkness my old friend
9. You never give me your money
10. Sunshine came softly a-through my window today
11. The queen of light took her bow and then she turned to go
12. I want you to know that I’m happy for you
13. Reluctantly crouched at the starting line
14. She keeps moet et chandon in her pretty cabinet
15. Sitting on a park bench eyeing little girls with bad intent
16. I was lying in the grass on Sunday morning of last week indulging in my self defeats
17. Alcohol on my hands I got plans to ditch myself and get outside
Dancing women
Throwing plates
Decapitating their laughing dates
Swirling chickens caught in flight
Out of focus
Much too bright
Coming down
Shiny teeth
Game show suckers trying to bleed
But I got a drug and I got the bug
And I got something better than love
18. We’ve come a long long way together
19. You’ve got to trust your instinct and let go of regret
Youve got to bet on yourself now star
cause thats your best bet
Watch me now with a wicked and wild and I said
We come with the funky style
That gets us known for the show
And well mix the hip hop reggae if we say it is so
And fuck the naysayers cause they dont mean a thingcause this is what style we bring
20. Good mornin’ ladies and gentlemen, boys and motherfuckin’ girls
21. Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise
22. At home, drawing pictures of mountain tops
23. 6 o’clock already? I was just in the middle of a dream
24. On the first part of the journey I was looking at all the life
25. Early in the mornin’. risin’ to the street. Light me up that cigarette and I’ll strap shoes on my feet

Six Word meme

ScienceGirl tagged me for this cool meme:

Here are the instructions:1. Write your own six word memoir 2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like 3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere 4. Tag five more blogs with links 5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play


My path is guided by opportunity.


I tag Alice, Stepwise Girl, AcmeGirl, Karina, and Janus Professor.

Archive Meme

Arduous tagged me for a meme!

Archive Meme Instructions: Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you've written. ... but there is a catch:Link 1 must be about family.Link 2 must be about friends.Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are... what you're all about.Link 4 must be about something you love.Link 5 can be anything you choose.I think this is a great way to circulate some of the great older posts everyone had written, return to a few great places in our memories and also learn a little something about ourselves and each other that we may not know.Post your five links and then tag five other people. At least TWO of the people you tag must be *newer acquaintances so that you get to know each other better....and don't forget to read the archive posts and leave comments!

My blog doesn't have an extensive archive yet, but whatev. Here are my choices:

Link 1: Family
This is my favorite post so far about family, but it's recent. Since I think the point of this meme is to highlight older posts, I'll link to this one too, which is about what I usually do during Thanksgiving break.

Link 2: Friends
So far, I haven't written so much about friends. I guess this explains why (although I have had some things to say about e-friends).

Link 3: What you're all about.
This post lists my top five dreamy dream jobs.

Link 4: Something I love
Selecting a post for this one made me realize this blog is pretty negative. I like finishing things and FotC, but Ecogeoman is who I really love.

Link 5: My choice
I'd like to point to two posts that go together about why I started this blog and why I named it The Happy Scientist, which is kind of a lame title at first blush.

I guess I cheated a little by linking to multiple posts. Oh well.
I tag ScienceMama (since Arduous didn't :) ), Psycgirl, Amelie, Amanda, and DancingFish. Of course, they don't have to if they don't want to. And if anyone else wants to do the meme, they should. I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering what's in a blog's archives but not having time to sift through them.

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. :)

Privilege meme

Flicka Mawa has this interesting meme that I thought I'd do. She got it from Watershed, who asked that credit be given to the original authors:

This is based on “From What Privileges Do You Have?,” an exercise about
class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen,
Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University.

Green means I answered yes.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college She took some classes as an adult, but never enrolled in a degree program that I know of.
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor. a cousin
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. This one is borderline.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs. They helped a lot, but loans and scholarships were more than 50%.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18. The next sister up from me is 9 years older, so hand-me-downs weren't really an option. I'm sure she had lots of them.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. Not all the time, and when I did it was because my siblings were grown. There were times when three of us were in one room.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. My oldest brother moved to Texas when I was little, so we flew there from the Midwest for his wedding and for another visit or two.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. Seldom, but it did happen. However, we were always had a membership to a swimming pool.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

12 out of 34. No analysis of what that means.

Seven Random Facts

I got tagged by ScienceMama for another meme. How's that for two memes in two days?

Seven Random Facts about EcoGeoFemme

1. I am a nail biter. It started when I was around 8 years old, not too long after I stopped sucking my thumb. A lifetime of oral fixation.

2. I have not lived outside of the midwest U.S. expect for the one semester I studied abroad in Europe. I have lived in several midwest cities, though. I might have the opportunity to move to Far Off Land where Ecogeoman is from, but I'd rather not.

3. When I was very young, my much older brothers and sisters would torment me in many creative ways, such as truly convincing me that I was adopted or telling me that I was really the oldest but I had a disease that stunted my growth so our parents told me I was the youngest to spare my feelings. I believed this (almost) for some time. I have not yet concluded what this teasing has contributed to my adult personality.

4. I like beer best of all the adult beverages, but I'm learning to like wine. I made an effort to develop a palate for beer, so now I can appreciate different flavors of different styles. We have some friends who are really into wine -- I'll go so far as to say that they are wine snobs -- who serve delicious wine when we go to their place. Sampling such lovely bottles has dramatically increased my interest in and enjoyment of wine. Now I just have to get a job so I can afford to like wine. I almost never drink spirits.

5. I like working in a lab because I don't have to deal with too many people. When I worked retail in high school and college, I just couldn't stand always being nice to people I didn't know and didn't care about. I was nice, but I didn't like it and would make fun of customers when they left. It's much better now that I see only the same dozen or so people every day.

6. I super love having my hair played with or my back scratched in that tickly, caressing way that mothers and significant others do.

7. I don't really like seeing live music that much. It's usually too loud. I've been to a few shows that have been really fun, but on the whole I avoid spending my money and time seeing bands perform.

Now I have to tag 7 people. I just tagged 8 people for yesterday's meme. I feel a little weird tagging so many people at once since I'm new to the blog game and I don't think many of these people read this blog and maybe don't do memes, but I'll suck it up and do it. I tag:

Propter Doc, Hypoglycemiagirl, Jenny F., CAE, Am I a Woman Scientist, and FemalCSgradstudent. and I'll tag Wayfarer Scientista back.

Rules:1- Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.2- Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.3- Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.4- Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Lists of 8 tag

Wayfarer Scientista tagged me for my very first meme, that requires 8 responses to several topics. Turns out, it’s a hard one. For most of these categories, I could quickly think of 4 or 5 things, but to come up with 8 was difficult. Like Wayfarer, mine are not in any order.

8 passions
1. my research subject. I believe all historical, political, and ecological phenomenon result from the thing I study.
2. my family and close friends
3. the complexity and elegance of nature
4. knitting, although my interest has waned lately
5. women-in-science issues, actually equality-for-women issues, although I have no formal training in women’s studies.
6. blogs, because of number 5 and because I like the community.
7. my relationship with ecogeoman
8. politics, especially environmental issues

8 things to do before I die
1. get married
2. have children
3. get a paper published
4. see a paper cited at least once
5. learn to enjoy a physical activity. I’d like to take up running or a sport long enough to start to like it.
6. live near my family
7. take a vacation that is not to visit anyone. To a beach. Not camping. When I have saved up for it so I’m not worried about money and will order all the pina coladas I want without feeling guilty about the credit card balance. Or taking off work.
8. take a class (like pottery or pilates) that results in new friends. This would be different for me because the friends would not be related to work in any way and would be an outcome of my initiative.

8 things I often say
1. Can you just …? For example, when ecogeoman is working later than I’d like, “can you just come home now?”
2. “Butt”, or replacing syllables in other words with “butt” as in abuttment rather than apartment. More often, butt gets inserted into people’s names.
3. b!tch a*s mother f**cker
4. dude
5. “Well” when I’m exasperated, but I pronounce it more like “wool”. Ecogeoman really makes fun of this.
6. “you’re so good” Always meant sincerely.
7. “enough is as good as a feast.” I think this more than I say it.
8. “and the other thing is…” My way of ranting or continuing a dying conversation.

8 books I recently read
1. Currently, A women of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
2. Started Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray because I promised Awesome Technician I would, against my better judgment. I didn’t get past chapter 3.
3. Started The End of Faith by Sam Harris because I told Ecogeoman I would. I didn’t get past chapter 3.
4. Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
5. The Stranger by Albert Camus
6. The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
7. The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin
8. Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng

8 songs that mean something to me
1. “Every Time You Go Away” by Paul Young because S3 and I decided it was “our song” when she was in college and I was a little kid. I would sob every time she left to go back to school after a break.
2. “No Rain” by Blind Melon because it’s my favorite song ever.
3. “You Are My Sunshine” because my mom used to sing it with my aunt when they were little kids. Since my aunt died, we all think of her when we hear that song.
4. Anything from Fashion Nugget by Cake, because for some reason I played it continuously my sophomore year of college.
5. “Manic Monday” by the Bangles because it was the first song I learned the lyrics for.
6. “Deacon Blues” by Steely Dan, because I used to argue that Steely Dan sucked with a very good friend who loved them and who died 18 months ago. Any Steely Dan song reminds me of him, but Deacon Blues is my least favorite and the one we debated most.
7. Any song on The Big Chill soundtrack, which S2 and I used to always listen and sing to, especially in the car.
8. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen because it somehow ended up on nearly every mix cd I have.

8 qualities I look for in a friend
1. trustworthiness
2. intelligence
3. silly sense of humor
4. low maintenance
5. positive
6. non judgmental
7. not too materialistic
8. common interests

8 people who's blogs I enjoy and who may consider themselves tagged if they wish
1. A Cat Nap
2. A Mad Tea-Party
3. Everything and More
4. Just a Girl
5. Mother of All Scientists
6. Rising to the Occasion
7. The Bean Chronicles
8. Unbalanced Reaction