We had a nice evening together. We went for a walk, then got groceries to make a nice dinner which we ate on the deck with some wine. After the dishes were done, I retired to the living room to blog and watch tv, while he went to the office to do EGM things.
But then later, he came to me and told me there's something he hasn't been telling me. He got all serious and made me come sit next to him. "You know I love you, right?" he asked. I got tense. After a pregnant pause, he said, "Lately I've been pooping with the bathroom door open."
We always said we would never do that. But it is hot, I guess.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Crestfallen
I thought EcoGeoMan was supposed to get home today, but he didn't give me his flight information so I wasn't exactly sure when. I wasn't too concerned since he typically arrives late evening when he travels to here from Far Off Land -- I figured I had a pretty good guess of his arrival time. I really miss him when he's away, plus I'm excited to see him because I'm so bored all by myself despite having just spent a week in FL with my BFF.
So yesterday, when I had to leave early with my carpool buddy because someone ran her car through his garage door and he decided to take today off, I figure working a long day today would be perfect: no carpool buddy, need to make up for yesterday's ditch-out, access to bench space after everyone else gone for the day, and good timing for going straight to the airport from work to retrieve EGM. I had a ton of work planned for my extended day.
Then EGM called me around 8:15 am to tell me he would be leaving home soon and to give me the details for the last leg of his trip. Although one of the flights is very long and he mentioned a couple of layovers, he said he would be arriving here at 7:05 pm. We discussed how I might be late to pick him up since I had all this work lined up for the day, but I said I'd do my best to get there. Several hours later, I got to thinking about his itinerary. There simply was not enough time for him to get here by 7:05 pm. There is a very confusing time change, so I can understand why he thought he'd be arriving today, but it just couldn't be. So I called the airline. Sure enough, he's on a flight that arrives tomorrow at 7:05. How pissed will he be when he realizes he's getting home on Wednesday, not Tuesday? And how bummed was I that I have to wait another day to see him?
The good news is that he does have a seat on tomorrow's flight. He had booked the different legs of the trip separately, so I started to get worried that he had f'd it up and would have to pay for new ticket or something, but I think it's all okay.
So yesterday, when I had to leave early with my carpool buddy because someone ran her car through his garage door and he decided to take today off, I figure working a long day today would be perfect: no carpool buddy, need to make up for yesterday's ditch-out, access to bench space after everyone else gone for the day, and good timing for going straight to the airport from work to retrieve EGM. I had a ton of work planned for my extended day.
Then EGM called me around 8:15 am to tell me he would be leaving home soon and to give me the details for the last leg of his trip. Although one of the flights is very long and he mentioned a couple of layovers, he said he would be arriving here at 7:05 pm. We discussed how I might be late to pick him up since I had all this work lined up for the day, but I said I'd do my best to get there. Several hours later, I got to thinking about his itinerary. There simply was not enough time for him to get here by 7:05 pm. There is a very confusing time change, so I can understand why he thought he'd be arriving today, but it just couldn't be. So I called the airline. Sure enough, he's on a flight that arrives tomorrow at 7:05. How pissed will he be when he realizes he's getting home on Wednesday, not Tuesday? And how bummed was I that I have to wait another day to see him?
The good news is that he does have a seat on tomorrow's flight. He had booked the different legs of the trip separately, so I started to get worried that he had f'd it up and would have to pay for new ticket or something, but I think it's all okay.
Monday, July 14, 2008
meet-up
I'll be going to the big conference convening in the Midwest in August that puts the eco in ecogeofemme. I've got a pretty busy schedule building so probably not much free time, but it would be cool to meet some bloggers. Anybody else going and want to meet up?
Sunday, July 13, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, July 4, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
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 funmost 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?
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
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?
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