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.

The grass is always greener

Why is it that every task looks better than the one I'm doing? I would almost always prefer to be working on something else. It happens at all scales. For example, when I'm processing a sample, I'll be itching to work on a different part of the same sample. Or I'll wish I to be processing data when I'm at the bench. Or longing to be in the lab when I'm writing. I'm never satisfied.

Currently, I'm torn between two writing projects and I fear it's developing into a log jam. I had been working on my next paper/dissertation chapter. I had gotten kind of stalled by some difficult yet very relevant papers, but I was making good progress of taking notes on them. I was just about to begin working the notes into text when I learned I should drop everything to work on a complicated fellowship application. I spent most of last week reading up on a new subfield so I could put together a proposal. Now I want to work on both. Or not on either of them. Or both.

I'm hoping that writing this post will help be refocus. I need to just decide what I'm going to do today and break it down so I get something done. Not really want I want to do on a Sunday (especially after having worked 27 hours last weekend), but I'm feeling so much anxiety right now that I think only some progress will give me any relief.

Natural deodorant sucks

One of my new year's resolutions was to conduct my daily life in a little more environmentally friendly way. One of the changes I've made is to replace personal care products with natural versions; as I run out of my preferred brand of something, I buy a greener option. For example, I bought Tom's of Maine (ToM) bar soap, Trader Joe's hand soap, and ToM deodorant. The soaps are fine, but the deodorant sucks. I will be returning to Degree when the ToM runs out or the weather gets hot, whichever comes first.

Anyway, I now need some advice, Dear Readers. I'm about out of face lotion and scrub. I've been using Aveno Positively Radiant lotion and St Ive's Apricot Scrub and I love them both. But this website (h/t Nina) tells me that they aren't such green choices. I have oily, break-out prone skin that needs to have the top 5-10 layers scrubbed off twice a day if I want any hope of keeping the acne controlled. Any recommendations?

RBOANTM

• Seriously, I think Tyra Banks' inner monologue doesn't stay in. Pretty soon she'll be singing the entire deliberation.
• Fo needs to get over it. The short hair looks awesome. Suck it up.
• Why did they make the tanned girl look just like Lindsay Lohan?
• The Girl With The Eyes looked better in her photo than real life, but it was not very nice of them to say she looks like an alien.
• Piss that there's not a new Lost tonight.
  

In other news, there is a postdoc fellowship that I really, really want. I thought the application would be due in several months, but it turns out that it's due much, much sooner. Yikes.

Whew!

I was, unfortunately, at work for ~15 hours today and have to go back for another long day tomorrow. However, the cannon is just about one of the fucking coolest things I have ever seen. The data are so awesome that it's totally worth it to spend my weekend at work. Totally HOT science, yo.

RBOGood Enough

• I have been mildly sick for the past several days, but it hasn't turned into a full-blown anything.
• I get to do some super cool science this weekend using a really cool instrument. Let's call it the cannon. We've talked about doing work with the cannon for years but never made it happen. Until now. The downside is that I have to be available to work 24/7 for the next four days.
  
• I am this close to finishing the lab work for Chapter 3. Or was I calling it chapter 2 here? This last bit has been dragging on, but it's getting close.
  
• Lost is still interesting. Will the love quadrangle be resolved?
  
• Our symposium proposal was accepted in a revised form.
  
• We still love our tv.

Log jams

As hard as I try to follow great advice to push through the tough times in my work, I still find myself periodically stalled by difficult tasks. I get in a psychological situation where I can't get myself to do the task at hand, yet I won't let myself do anything else instead. So nothing gets done. It will end when I finally force my ass to stay in the chair and just do it, and it usually ends up less painful than I anticipated. In fact, the process of dreading the task is usually worse than actually doing it.

I have various tricks to get myself to just do it. Sometimes I think of a treat that I will give myself when I finish. Or Awesome Technician and I will make a bet over who will finish what we're doing first, or issue a Twix Challenge. Sometimes it works to set a timer and decide that I can't work on anything else for a certain amount of time. Or I disable my internet for a while. These tricks have variable success.

The thing is, I always feel so good when I finally finish the thing and relieve the log jam. It's always awesome to get back to the work I'd rather do and feel like I've made progress. Why can't I just get over it and take care of these things before my anxiety expands to make a log jam? How do you get over the inertia? How do you get yourself to work on something that feels so hard?