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.

What should an intern do?

We've got lots of interns this summer. We're required to give them each a meaningful project to which they can make a significant contribution. It can be a piece of something larger, but it has to make sense as a project. At the end of the summer, the students have to give a presentation about their work which creates some accountability for project selection on our part.


We really like to create mutual benefit with these internships. The students aren't free, so we want to get some actual necessary labor out of them. On the other hand, we want to turn them on to our branch of science. Most undergrads aren't exposed to the work we do, even in the broadest sense, so we feel it's really important to show them some cool stuff to make their experience good.

But. Research isn't fun most all of the time. There are many, many boring/tedious/difficult/lame things that need to be done and we need the interns to do some of them. I sometimes feel bad when we assign really boring tasks to interns, but Awesome Technician always reminds me that we all have to do crappy stuff sometimes (see sidebar counter).

It gets tricky to design a good experience for undergraduate research participants. We want to get a bunch of work done while exposing people to the things we find so exciting and at the same time, not create unrealistic expectations for their futures should they decide to pursue research careers. I have seen several bloggers (but now I can't remember which ones) write about how they had a cool undergrad research experience but were then somewhat disillusioned by the bullshit when they got to grad school. I can see how it happens, since it's pretty easy to shelter an intern from the bullshit for 10 weeks and an internship can have a huge impact on a student's career choices.

So: handling interns is tricky. Our ethical consideration is usually we can't have them just wash dishes. But maybe there is also an ethical issue with making an internship too good for the intern. Wouldn't want to give anyone false hope, now would we?

Saturday in the lab

I went to work today and got a ton of stuff done. Before gas got so expensive, when I went to the lab on weekends, I used to vacillate between thinking "it's Saturday, I can take lots of breaks" and "I'm spending my Saturday here, I better have something to show for it when I leave". Now when I drive the 35 miles each way to go the lab on weekends, I think, "I better get a shit ton of work done since I'm spending so much money to get here."

Almost no one else in my lab works on weekends. It's nice to be alone there on occasion. I can listen to whatever music I want without offending anyone. Plus I can sing along! And dance a little! I can use all the space and equipment I want without getting in anyone else's way. I can fart. And bonus: I can get away with not wearing my safety glasses when I'm doing stuff that's really, really low risk (but dont' tell anyone).

The only bad thing today was that I got this really weird pain in my foot, like a cramp or pulled muscle or something. It feels like there's a nail being driven into the arch just next to the heel. By the end of the day I couldn't put weight on my heel -- I had to walk on my tip-toes on that foot. I put one of those rice filled heat packs on it when I got home but it still hurts. I'm hoping that a good night's sleep will take care of it.

RBO frustration

Today was a moderately crappy day. Here's why:

• My friends asked me to pick up their mail while they're on vacation. They left on Tuesday and will return on Saturday, so they said it was only necessary for me to go on Thursday. I fought annoying traffic only to find a note saying their mailbox was full and no more would be delivered. How is it full after only two days? What kind of mail do these people get?
• I was clumsy in the lab today. No major incidents, but a bunch of little oopses that I had to recover from and makes notes of.
• My tv wasn't working when I got home! O nos! Sound but no picture except for a blinky line of green light. I checked all the cables and stuff, which didn't help. So I slapped it and the picture returned for a second. After a bunch of tries, ending with me slapping it really hard, the picture came back. I guess we should start saving for a new one.
• It's humid as all get out here and the lab was swampy. yuck.
• Carpool Buddy was supposed to drive two weeks in a row to make up for lots of extra driving I've been doing. He ended up driving me one day this week.
• RA still has not done this 2-4 hour task that she needs to do before I can finish up the project I'm working on. I've been waiting since April. I desperately want to finish the lab parts of the project before I go on vacation in a week, partly so I can feel good about going away, but MOSTLY because I want the data in time to incorporate it into my August conference talk. RA knows this. Yet she keeps blowing me off, promising to do it every day and then not doing it. If she hasn't done it by 1pm tomorrow, I'm going to present some less desirable ultimatums alternatives, like me doing it myself or getting new material to do it later. Both involve more work for me, but if it doesn't get done tomorrow, the timing won't work out for me to finish next week. To be clear, this is something RA is piggybacking off my project to get something she wants for herself (that I might be a coauthor on if it pans out), not something I wanted her to do for me. Also, she has not read the manuscript I gave her in March, April, and May (increasingly polished drafts).

On the bright side, I exercised yesterday and today. This is good because I'm trying to lose some inches and because it means I'm not lounging like a baby seal all alone in my hot and stuffy apartment. Also, I already have my lunch packed, go cup washed, and coffee maker programmed for tomorrow. And as frustrated as I am with RA right now, I'm extremely fond of her and overall am very happy in her lab.

UPDATE: RA did it! Early this afternoon, I went into her office and told her I was moving on at the end of the day no matter what and that if she didnt' have time to do the Thing with the Thing, we'd find a way to work it out later. I told her why -- that if I got moving again tomorrow I'd be able to finish most of it before I go away and I would be cleared out of the space to Awesome Technician and an intern could work there while I'm gone, but if I don't get started tomorrow morning, the timing will be all screwed up and I won't be able to do much at all next week. So she did it. It took her longer than I thought it would so I had to stay really late to do my part afterward. But she did it!

Am I too old for Cosmo?

I almost never buy women’s magazines because they usually leave me feeling ugly and poor. However, I like to read them when I’m traveling, particularly when I'm going by plane. It’s so distracting in airports that the short, easy to comprehend articles are nice. But the last time I flew, I had a little realization.

The airport bookshop had a paltry selection of magazines. I wanted a Marie Claire, but they didn’t have that. I could have picked Cosmo or Glamour, but those are mostly about clothes I can’t afford (and wouldn’t wear anyway) and how to bag a man and then sneak out of his apartment in the morning. Just not me. I thought about People, but I dislike the culture of celebrity worship and I don’t want to endorse tabloids paying paparazzi to chase down celebrities even when they’re dressed up sorta classy like People. So what did I end up with? Redbook. What am I, 45? At least it wasn’t Ladies Home Journal. Or worse, Reader’s Digest.

Women’s magazines seem to be marketed to an older audience than they are actually written for. Like, 17-year-old girls don’t read Seventeen, 13-year-olds do. It’s the 17-year-olds who are reading Cosmo (let’s not even think about the twisted impression of adult life they get from that). Those in their mid-twenties are passing Cosmo for Marie Claire or Jane. Apparently by the time you’re 29, you’ve graduated to Redbook.

Redbook still has some articles about sex, but the descriptions are vague (touch him someplace unexpected to spice things up). In contrast, Comso and Glamour are all about sex and it’s explicit (wow him in bed! Stick a carrot in his butt!). I guess Ladies Home Journal probably alludes to the fact that married people are intimate, but doesn’t provide tips.

I apologize to any readers I might have who love Redbook and Ladies Home Journal and don’t think you have to be 45 to enjoy them. It was just a shock that I’d rather read magazines marketed to my mom than to me. I’m getting more like her every day.

All alone

Ecogeoman left for Far Off Land this morning. He'll be gone for three weeks, then back for one week, then off to British Columbia for another two weeks (where he'll be in the forest alone. can he not get eaten by a grizzly bear?). He'll be participating in his high school best friend's wedding, renewing his visa, visiting family, and working.

I just hate it when he's gone. I miss him a lot, plus I'm such a homebody. Without someone around, it's possible for me to stay inside all by myself and do nothing for way too long.

Expect lots of blogging, I guess.