Irony

I celebrated Earth Day today by ending my carpool. How lame.

I've been carpooling with the same person for about two years. It has gone pretty well overall. I have appreciated my reduced gas and car maintenance costs as well as the shared responsibility for our 35 mi one-way commute. However, my carpool buddy has to work a fairly strict schedule because of his childcare situation. The nanny for his two small children must be relieved by 5:15. That means we have to leave work by 4:00 (to give enough padding for frequent traffic jams). We're supposed to leave home at 7:00 am, which should put us at work by 7:45. But sometimes there's traffic, and dude's almost always late in the morning and on the rare days that he isn't, I am. So most days I barely get 8 hours in.

This schedule has been terrific in some ways. I sit in a lot less traffic than I used to because our schedule forces me to get up and out before the peak of rush hour and to leave work before the worst of the afternoon congestion. Also, the shorter day has made me much more efficient since I know that I can't stay late to compensate for goofing off. I'm more focused and spend much less time on the internet while at work. Those changes have been great for my quality of life.

But right now, a spare 8 hours is just not enough. I want to defend in the fall, but I still have a lot of work to do. I calculated some milestones based on a loose timeline that would get my dissertation finished by September/October. I think I'm at a point where I'll be okay if x, y, and z are done by mid-summer, but that means a big push now to get the last of my data collected and analyzed. And that means I can't carpool.

My carpool buddy seemed disappointed when I told him today, but such is life. The arrangement is more important to him than me since his family has only one car and his wife needs it sometimes. But the carpool isn't totally dead. His wife always needs the car on Fridays, so I said I'd continue to carpool two days a week so he doesn't have to drive on Fridays and I get a day in return. Plus, I only canceled through July. Who knows -- at that point, I might be burned out and welcome a return to bankers' hours.

Burrrrr!

I read Bean-mom's description of spring in the Midwest, written in her characteristically beautiful prose. She says of April, "... it is an unsettled month here in my region of the Midwest, where the weather careens wildly about, soaring into sunlight and the 70s on one day, plunging into the 30s and frost on the next." Honestly. There was hail tonight when I was driving home. There is supposed to be more fucking snow tomorrow! It's late April, dammit! I could say something nice like Bean-Mom, but really what I'm thinking is more like, "when the fuck can I finally put away my fucking sleeping bag with sleeves winter coat and be free?"

Thank god it's meant to be nearly 80 by Friday.

Fixed!

I'm back online! w00t! Evidently, the source of the problem was settings on a house guest's laptop. I couldn't fix the problem the last time I talked to tech support because the offending laptop wasn't here. But today it was, and the problem is solved. When Firefox jubilantly started google after days of failed page loads, I said, THANK YOU to the man on the phone. To which he replied "you DID it! You followed all of my instructions and now it's working!" How great is that?

More later.

Broken

My home wireless network isn't working and I'm pissed. I spent about an hour on the phone with tech support today and in the end, they just told me to call back later. Nice.

Regular blogging will resume when I don't have to sit 1 foot from the modem (I can only connect using the very short wire).

Your research sounds dumb

I was making small talk with someone at a party who asked what my research was about. I gave my one-paragraph spiel to which this person replied, "but we must already know all that." The person was also a scientist, but in a field very different from mine. I tried to explain that, no, we really don't know all the important things there are to know about the subject, and I described some of the outstanding questions. The conversation was interrupted and the person remained skeptical.

I find it rather arrogant to assume you know enough to determine that a whole field of research is stupid.

Thought

There is a fine line between self-awareness and self-centeredness. I think I prefer people who live very close to this line.

Green update

It's time for a little NYR update, folks. I had two resolutions this year: send birthday cards to my family and make my daily life a little more sustainable. I haven't done so well on number one. There have been two birthdays so far and although I didn't forget them, I didn't send cards. However, there are a whole slew of birthdays coming up, so perhaps I will go buy cards today so I can follow through.

I've been doing better on the green resolution. Things I've implemented so far:

• I got a cart thingy for groceries. Unless we go to the grocery store on our way home from somewhere, we don't drive to there anymore. I've tried to cut back on unnecessary driving, with limited success. Still, better than before.
• I have chosen "natural" versions of personal care products when my regular ones run out. Incidentally, the face scrub I ordered hasn't arrived yet.
  
• I found a place nearby that takes paper recycling, so we have been saving most of our paper.
  
• I found out about a really convenient CSA which we will be joining next week! I'm really excited about this one. You pay an annual membership fee plus $20 week-1 for a box of organic produce. Plus, it goes all year round. During the growing season the food comes from a nearby farm and during the winter they buy organic while making the best choices they can providence-wise. I've been hesitant to join a CSA in the past because they typically make you pay for the whole summer up front and I'm never sure if we'll really use the produce. This one allows you to stop at any time, so we can cancel if we find that we're throwing food away.
  
• But the very most exciting thing is that we're getting a garden at my work! It's so cool. The grounds people will till up an area of lawn for people to have vegetable gardens. The hitches are that you have to find a place with access to water and you can't use any chemicals (because of course they would have to be entered into the chemical inventory). This is a little tricky, actually, since it will likely be crappy subsoil that we'll need to amend somehow since we can't use mineral fertilizer. But, there is a good place near our building and we have an outdoor spigot, so we're in business. There are seven of us going together, so we'll share the work of watering and weeding. I've never had a garden before, so I'm happy to be doing it with others who can give me advice.