Nuggets

I bought myself a big bag of Hershey's Nuggets to use as rewards for work done. Read a paper? Get a nugget. Do a set of statistical tests? Get a nugget. Write a paragraph? Get a nugget.

One of the papers from my PhD needs to get submitted very soon. It's perhaps the most interesting of my thesis chapters, but also the most complex. My grad adviser and I sent samples from the project to one group of collaborators so they could make some measurements for an independent project and we sent data to another group so they could use it in a new model, and both groups will be ready to start writing soon. In addition, my postdoc adviser and I finally figured out how to revamp a paper that has been rejected twice, and I have substantial responsibilities for making that happen.

I don't care if I eat 25 nuggets a day if it means getting these two papers moving.

My website

Chall asked what I meant when I said I established a professional website. It's just going to be a typical university-style set of pages describing my research interests with stuff from my cv. It will also have a blog that I intend to update maybe 1-3 times a month with personal updates (e.g. when a paper gets accepted), commentary on cool papers, or observations from meetings.

The website for our recent conference was powered by Wordpress via my institution. At first I was all, "why are you giving me a blog when I asked for webpages?" But it turned out to be super easy to manage and it looked really slick. The content were all in "pages" and I used the blog part for "news". I plan to do something similar with my own site.

A cool feature of Wordpress (maybe Blogger or other platforms too) is that you can pay to have your own domain name but still use all the structure, templates, everything from Wordpress. So my page is ecogeofemme.com rather than ecogeofemme.wordpress.com which is kind of neat. Probably most of you already knew about that, but I didn't before this weekend.

I've been meaning to establish a website for my professional self for a long, long time. I simply don't have enough presence on the web, especially now that it's nearing the time when I'll be looking for jobs and I have all this exposure from the conference. I think I finally found a way to do it that's easy enough that I'll actually do it!

A bust, or just what I needed

This weekend was kind of a bust. I didn't manage to get my license plates, although I did try. I guess I need something from the dealer first. Also, there is some confusion about the sequence of events leading to me acquiring the correct permanent plates since I bought the car in a different state from where I live.

I started my own professional website using wordpress. It doesn't have a lick of content yet, but I did get the domain name and template established. I had some other light work in mind, but I didn't even touch it.

We did spend a bunch of time with friends this weekend, which was glorious. We really haven't gotten to see much of our friends for the last month+ since EGM's parents were here. I also vegged out a bunch. Although that is not so satisfying afterwards, I think I needed some intense down time. Unfortunately, I'm still feeling a little floppy today. I packed gym clothes. Maybe a workout after work will revive me.

One thing sort of off the list

Ok, so today was a little better than the past several days. I drafted a report summarizing last month's conference for our funding officers. It will need some revision, but it's close. I also made a decision about the next step in my experiment that won't work and figured out what part I need to buy for that. And...that's about it.

This weekend I need to get license plates and a parking permit for my new car. It will feel good to get those things done before the 11th hour.

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.