Worn out

In the past 6 weeks I have

• Convened the 150-person conference for which I was the lead organizer.
• Hosted Ecogeoman's parents for a month. In our one-bedroom apartment.
• Coordinated the local travel of EGM's friends and family who were all visiting from overseas, including three of his friends (one with his baby), his brother + wife (who had different itineraries), his sister + wife + toddler.
• Traveled to my hometown.
• Had my car break down as soon as we got there.
• Bought a new car the next day.
• Had our wedding.

EGM's parents just left yesterday. It was an awful goodbye, despite the fact that we were all more than ready for some elbow room. Now I'm feeling guilty for being so terribly distracted from work.

Today I went to a seminar, had lunch with the speaker, read part of a paper that I am refereeing, downloaded the guide to authors for a journal we are targeting for a paper that's already been reviewed at two other journals, and read a few of the autism-related articles in the special feature of Nature (or was it Science? Doesn't matter, this is utterly unrelated to anything at all that I do). And looked at Facebook a whole lot.

I have something due-ish tomorrow, so hopefully that will spur greater productivity than today.

Hey

I haven't posted in a long time.

But the blog hasn't died. Although I haven't had much motivation to write, I've been keeping up on lots of other blogs and held this one in the back of my mind. I've wanted to write about many things about my postdoc that were puzzling or interesting, but I felt weird about sharing that stuff here for whatever reasons. Furthermore, I don't think I've needed this as an outlet in quite the same way since I defended.

However, I've been missing the blog lately. I have been pining for the intense period of productivity I had in the months before I defended. Obviously that was largely motivated by the looming deadline of my defense, but the accountability and support I got from blogging was really helpful.

So I think I'm going to make an effort to post somewhat regularly again. But instead of writing essays on how I think life as a scientist should be, I'm just going to write short updates about what I've been up to at work. We'll see how that goes.

Bad boys

Ecogeoman and I have been watching The X-Files from the beginning on Netflix. Tonight we got to the episode in season 7 where it's like an episode of the show Cops. I asked EGM if they had Cops in Far Off Land, wondering if he would get the comedy of the X-Files episode. To my mild surprise, he said yes. I asked if they had a Far Off Land version or if they just got the regular American version. "Ha!" he said. "There isn't enough crime in Far Off Land to have a whole show about it!"

Why do we live here again?  Oh yeah, 'cause there's no jobs in Far Off Land either.

One dot

I'm trying to switch from using two periods between sentences to just one. I prefer the look of two, but I know the world is switching, and I know my OCD boss uses one (although I haven't noticed him deleting periods from my documents, which wouldn't necessarily be out of character).

To facilitate this change and to help with other issues, I've starting writing with the formatting showing in Word. Research Advisor does that, and I always thought it was super distracting. Now I'm not only turning into my mother, but also my advisor.

Can you tell I'm in writing jail?

Montage mode

Sometimes when I have a lot of work to do, I try to imagine myself doing it like a movie montage. People in movies always seem to be able to get so much done with such joy when their work is overdubbed with upbeat music and they flip from one scene to the next. Dontcha wish you could go into montage mode sometimes?

Have I shared this here before?

Quality of life

Quite a long time ago, Karina asked her readers to imagine what could improve the quality of their lives.  I don't remember exactly what I said -- I think it was about job opportunities and health insurance or something. Well, I have better health insurance now with my postdoc and it's great. However, I think moving to our new place a year ago had an even greater impact on my quality of life.

• First and foremost, my commute is dramatically reduced compared to what it was.  It used to take me a minimum of 45 min and up to 2.5 hours to get to/from work. Now it's a reliable 30 min. On top of that, the more central location of the new place makes it easier to get out of town on weekends and to get to most of our friends. 

• I used to give EGM a ride most days and we would bicker about it each and every day (I need to go. But I haven't finished my coffee. I'm ready. Let me just put on my shoes. Come on!). Now he walks to work, so that tension is gone. 

• Due to poor security in the lobby at the old place, mail would regularly get lost and packages would get ripped off. Now there's a secure place for packages and we have an outgoing mail drop.  

• We used to hike three flights of outdoor stairs to coin-operated laundry that was often broken (I once fell on icy steps with a full basket of laundry). Now we have laundry in unit, which is just about the best thing evah. 

Our building has a number of other lovely amenities that are pretty damn nice. There are tradeoffs, of course. The most notable being that the new place is much smaller -- a one bedroom -- and we're having EGM's parents for a month in the fall. I have no idea how that's going to go.

How this situation happens again

So, we're hosting this meeting again and it's up to me to get invited speakers. Last year, we worked together to figure out who to invite and I sent the emails and stuff. This year, I'm getting input from others, but in the end it's pretty much up to me. The big boss had some suggestions, but he doesn't really know all that many people in the field.  My direct boss is much better acquainted with the field, but there are big gaps in his knowledge. I have different gaps. This is how it works when you're involved in interdisciplinary research.

Anyway. I'm disappointed in myself/us, because at this point we only have one woman lined up out of seven speaking slots so far. We asked one who said no.  Some of the other usual suspects spoke last year and we don't want to overuse them (we are passing on some men for the same reason).  In some cases there is a man we needed to invite for complicated political reasons, which means we passed on a woman who works on a similar topic.  I think we'll be inviting on the order of six additional people, and hopefully we find some women in that round of invites.  Of course it would be fantastic to get some people from other underrepresented groups too, but I don't even know where to begin with that.

So that's how it comes to pass that even a meeting with a woman in charge can be dominated by men.