Inept

I got my haircut tonight. Yay for eliminating the cute cut that turned into a mullet as it grew out.

I am so awkward in situations like haircuts. I'm stuck with this person who wants to make small talk for 30-45 mins and I just don't have shit to say. My stylist is very nice and seems very interesting, but 30 min every 3 months is just not going to make us BFFs (of course I know that this is part of her job and she doesn't want to be my BFF either). She tried really hard to ask about my work, but I just couldn't be bothered to talk about it. What I do is just too weird to try to explain to someone with no background when I'm that distracted. Plus I'm much more interested in what it's like to do her job. So after an awkward moment after the third or fourth question about work, I giggled and joked that it was classified and said I didn't really want to talk about it. Then I asked her stuff like, "do people want to cut off all their hair this time of year?" or "Do people think their hair is so awesome that they can pull off ridiculous haircuts?" That got her telling me stories about crazy customers which was much better than me droning on about my research.

And I wonder, do stylists take notes about you after you leave? Seriously, I've been to this woman once before back in January and then took my sister to her in February. She remembered what I do, where I work, where I'm from, etc. It's impressive.

Green thumb, black thumb

Comments on my last post praising my alleged green thumb prompted me to be a little more honest about my indoor gardening skills. Many of my plants are doing really well right now but some of them, like those pictured above, are really suffering.

Last fall I moved all the plants back indoors after it got cold. Note that I said "after" not "before" it got cold. So a few of the less hardy ones were a little worse for wear after their summer growth spurt and subsequent frost damage. After they were inside, some of them thrived while others hated their new locations, plus I kind of neglected them at first.

The project efficiency NY resolution helped because I started watering really regularly. The ones that aren't mostly dead are quite happy, but there are a few with just a handful of green leaves left. I'm hoping they will hang on until May when I can move some outside and move the rest to better spots inside.

My Dracaena bloomed!

I never knew these things would flower in captivity. One day, I was watering it and noticed this huge flowering stalk. It didn't do much for over a week, then one evening we came home and noticed a strange smell. It was this plant!

A brief internet search suggests that this is Dracaena fragans; I'd say that's pretty descriptive. Over about 5-6 days, some of the florets opened each evening and were done by morning. They produced a really strong fragrance, a lilly/rose/honeysuckle blend that started out sort of musky and grew into a powerful perfume that filled our whole apartment. EGM hated it, but I thought it was lovely.

It was fun having this plant seemingly spontaneously flower. I hope it doesn't die now.

Treat

In light of yesterday's news, the wonderful email I got today from Research Advisor telling me how she nominated me for the award*, and how I rocked out at work today**, I decided I should get a little treat. In fact, I got myself the treat of all treats: I had ice cream for dinner. Actually, it was a chocolate malt from 31 Flavors. YUM.

*I feel I should seriously savor this because it's not too often that you get praise in this business. I'm sharing it with you not to brag, but because I think it's unfair when people want you to listen to all the bad things that happen but then don't share the good things. And this is "The Happy Scientist", after all :)
** I got back on track with the paper rewrite. I really focused on it this morning and made some headway reorganizing the discussion. I Then spent the afternoon in the lab and it was going so well that I decided to stay to do more samples. I feel really good about my progress today, which is much more than I can say for any other day this week.

I can't believe it!

Today I found out that I received an award. I was totally surpised and very, very pleased. The award is related to a fellowship I have from an external organization that's part of a program designed for students researching a particular problem. Each year, they give a special honor to one fellow who best utilizes the opportunities offered by the program and does good work. In addition to the honor (and the line on the CV), the honored fellow gets a little extra money. Woo-hoo!

The Economical Academic

A while back, I mentioned something about starting a blog all about money issues academics face. Well, Psycgirl and I have finally done it!

Psycgirl and I had both been noticing how frequently money issues crop up in blogs, especially ones written by grad students. We also noticed, however, that money issues aren't restricted to grad students; most academics get a late start on their financial lives after racking up student loans then deferring them while living on peanuts. That includes people who rely on unsteady adjunct gigs, have exorbitant child care costs, or spend tons of money commuting for a long distance relationship.

We modeled the new blog after the Active Academic, which is a multi-author blog for academics about health and fitness. We'd like to have lots of contributors so people can get an array of ideas for improving their financial health or just have a safe and friendly space to talk about their problems. Email Psycgirl or me if you'd like to be an author.

Go check out The Economical Academic!

History of Science

Today the department seminar was given by a historian about one of the pillars, nay, founders of (one of) my field(s). I've never listened to a history seminar before. I'm pretty sure this is the first one of its kind in my department since I've been there.

It was mildly interesting to learn about this Founding Father of my -ology and I've no doubt that the information will be useful to me someday at some level. But this kind of history is just not my cup of tea, so while a talk about something so different was refreshing, I hope seminars like this don't become too frequent. Also, the speaker handed out hard copies of his PowerPoint presentation so we could take notes. It disgusted me a little to see all that paper just destined for the trash being passed around the room.

I did find one thing really interesting in the talk: there were many women in the photos documenting field research from the 1890's - 1930's. Apparently, these women were Founding Father's students. I wonder what they did after they earned their degrees, since it doesn't seem like they went on to establish notable research careers (or maybe they did but didn't get credit for it). The speaker hypothesized that the women chose to major in -ology and to participate in Founding Father's field trips because it was one of the few opportunities for them to get outdoors and get dirty. Interesting thought.