I'm totally going to get something done today

Last night we had friends over for dinner and Risk (Ukraine is weak!) . I used basil, green beans, and some spectacular heirloom tomatoes from my garden to make dinner. It was really fulfilling to serve a meal using ingredients I grew.

Today we slept in a bit, then EGM went to work. I'm staying home, but I have a ton of writing work to do. When he left, EGM was all, "so you're going to sit around and read blogs all day?" and I was all, "no" in my most indignant voice. So I guess I better get to work now so I can prove him wrong.

ETA: I totally did nothing today. I let myself rot in that place between work and relaxation. Where you keep saying you need to do some work, so you don't let yourself do anything that's actually fun, but you don't actually do any work. So you spend the day feeling bad. EGM came home early to rescue me -- we went on a walk, and now I've given up on working and I'm trying to enjoy the rest of the evening. I can't afford any more days like this before I defend!

RBOiPOD

• I haven't used my green iPod Nano all that much since I bought it a couple of months ago. I really can't handle music while I read or write, and I haven't been in the lab all that much. But it has been very nice when I have been in the lab. Now that the semester has started, I will likely be taking public transportation more often, and I will use it then.
  
• I have used it to motivate me to jog on a few occassions, but I need to be better about that.
  
• I like to use it while walking too, but there is a problem I need to get over. I have an uncontrollable urge to walk in step with the music, owing to marching band indoctrination Seriously, marching band ruined me for walking at my own pace when there is music. So songs that aren't the right tempo are a problem. Since a lot of my favorite songs have a danceable beat, it is a significant problem.
  
• The ear buds are uncomfortable, and they pop out of my ears. EGM finds this baffling, since he always says that I have extra large ear holes. I guess my ear holes are big compared to my head, but still smaller than most people's ear holes?
• I've only bought three songs from iTunes (Just Dance, Sexy Back, and Sufjan Stevens's Chicago). However, I'm nearly finished with lab work (woo-hoo!), so I might do like ScienceWoman and buy some songs to celebrate.
• Most of the music came from cds that I had ripped to my computer at one time or another, so there is all this weird rap and stuff from cds that my ex-boyfriend burned. Unfortunately, the titles for most of the music that came from burned cds didn't come with the songs, so I don't know which songs are which when I do the sync thing. Maybe after I defend, I will take the time to listen to each song and edit the titles. Maybe I will also upload music from more of my cds then too.
  

Don't give me shit and call it ice cream.

A friend of Eastern European origin once shared this phrase with me, and I love it.

I'm currently trying to turn shit into ice cream in the form of my next chapter/paper. It's the least interesting part of my of my Ph.D. work. The data were collected mainly to provide baseline information for another study, but it took so much effort that I wanted to get something more from it (remember the counter I had going on my sidebar a while back? it's that project). Unfortunately, some of the findings contradict one of the main conclusions from the first chapter/paper, and I think it's because the design of this second study kind of sucks. However, I can't just say that, nor can I present explicitly contradictory data. For one thing, I don't want to completely undermine the ongoing study before I even collect the data from it.

So, what to do? The design has specific weaknesses that are quite common in my field. But honestly, I think that the natural phenomenon I am trying to describe interacts with those weaknesses in a way that enhances them. When others have tried to address the same question, they sometimes find result A, occasionally find result B, and sometimes find no difference between A and B. I think I need to take a look at the experimental design that generated each result to see if there are trends. Perhaps result A is only possible to detect if you have the proper design? Maybe all the studies that find B or no difference use this common, yet crappy design? I suppose that would be sort of interesting.

Just work already

My internet connection drives me crazy. It works just fine until we get a visitor who wants to connect to our wireless network. Almost without fail, the new computer boots my computer off the network. It then takes an hour-long phone call to the router tech support in India to get it to work again. Although incredibly patient, the tech people sometimes don't know how to fix the problem and will just kind of hang up on me. Then I have to call back the next day and, hopefully, get someone who can figure out what to do. None of them seem to be able to fully explain the underlying problem, but it seems to be something to do with interference with assigning IP addresses.

We had a visitor last week from Far Off Land whose laptop stole the internet from my laptop and I only just now got it working again. However, the things the technician had me do this time seemed familiar, so maybe the next time this happens (and I'm sure it will happen again), I'll be able to do more trouble shooting on my own.

Holding my breath

When I submitted my paper earlier this year, my mom said, "I'm sure it will be accepted -- you're so smart!"

Now, I know she was trying to be positive and encourage me, and since she doesn't have any experience with science publishing, it was really the best she could come up with. But I responded, "don't say that, because by that logic if it gets rejected it will mean that I'm not so smart." She said, "oh. yeah. well, I hope it gets accepted."

It's kind of funny when people try so hard to say something really nice and it just comes out all wrong. My poor mom probably felt like there was no winning.

***************

I've already written here that the paper didn't get accepted, but I was invited to submit anew after revisions. The revisions were tricky, and then it took months for my co-authors to sign off on the revised manuscript. It's now under review again and I really hope it gets accepted. If it fails again, there is little hope that I can get it turned around and accepted elsewhere before I graduate. Plus, the journal's impact factor has risen significantly since I submitted the paper the first time such that it is now one of the highest in my field. This is the part of my PhD work with the broadest appeal, so I think it is my only chance for a paper in a high-ish IF journal for the time being. Wish me luck! In a better way than my mom.

One of the reasons I'm ready to not be a student anymore

I doubt I will go through another six-year period without finishing any project. At least I hope not.

The meeting

Thanks for all of your concern about my travel drama. I made it to the meeting the next day with a couple of hours to spare. My luggage didn't make it on my flight, but they delivered it to my hotel before I wanted to go to bed, so no harm done. That day was about as stressful as I imagined, but I got through it with no major bumps.

Our special session went much better than my travel. The speakers all basically talked about what we wanted them to cover, and we mostly stayed on time. I had the unenviable job of moderating, including cutting off famous scientists when they went on too long. I hated doing this, and won't volunteer to do it again if I can avoid it. On the other hand, we got some good feedback about the session. We have even been invited to write a couple of summary/commentary type reports for publication, which is very exciting. The due dates are really soon, and neither of us really have time for another writing project, but I think it will be quite worth it.

My poster didn't get too much traffic, but I felt fine about that. It was directly after the session and I was too worn out from the travel anxiety and stress of running the session to be interested in answering questions. What's more, it was based on the least interesting chapter of my diss. So whatev.

The social aspects of the meeting weren't as good as they have been in past years, partly due to the geography of the location, I think. Still, I got to see some old science friends, meet a few new ones, witness an ass-shaking contest (abhorrent), and I got a couple of post doc leads. We'll see what comes of those.

In all, it was a successful meeting for me. I'm glad it's over, as I always feel when I return from travel. The weeks leading up to a trip are filled with conversations ending with, "after I get back from the meeting, I'll do x". It's nice that things should settle down now so we can all get some meaty work done.