Now I Know Why

I'm always tired:

Left to my own devices, I sleep 10.5 hours per night.

From the Turkey-Filled Trenches

Coming to you live from the World's Slowest Internet Connection! There has been eating of the smoked salmon, four varieties of pie, and cranberry salad; there has been staying up too late. There has been no thesis-writing or work of any persuasion. I do intend to print out my poster title (oops) and paste everything to some highly attractive posterboard. The dog is very dog-like, the cat is friendly, and the family is mildly wacky but very entertaining. We have delivered cousin J. to the wide-place-in-the-tracks train station, in my favorite small town, and soymilk pancakes have been supplied by my work-at-home father. I haven't heard him talk this much EVER. Leaving the pointy-haired boss behind has clearly been salutary.

On a less amusing note, we've decided that my cousin S. almost certainly has Asperger's/ autism spectrum. He's 16 and has the social capacity of a six-year-old. Er.

Off To See The Wizard

I am headed for points south. After that I will be at the Annual Society of Condo Builders meeting (also known as the Society of Architects, Roofers, Thatchers, Masons, Bricklayers, Electricians, Plumbers, Sheetrockers, Painters, and Allied Building Trades) in the City of Cherry Blossoms. If you will be there, drop me a line, and perhaps we can meet up.

Gem from my advisor today:

Me: Okay, bye, see you in December.
A: What?? I didn't realize you'd be gone until the meeting.
Me: No, I didn't want to come back Wednesday and leave two days later for the meeting.
A: Uh, okay.

[A little later, he walks up to me]

A: Your poster looks good. So I was thinking maybe you could start writing your thesis. While you're away.
Me: [Thinking: What part of 'VACATION' don't you get?] ...I already did. I have an outline and everything.
A: Oh.

So, on the bright side, at least a) he thinks I should be doing the thing I already realized I should be doing and b) I'm getting a lot of practice, when I hear a lame suggestion presented as if I'm brain-dead and never would have thought it up, in not taking it personally.

You Know Your Brain is Full When

You reach for a cracker and put the cap of your flash drive in your mouth instead.

Advisory to Universe

Dear Management,

Kindly insert several more hours in each day. Also, we would greatly appreciate if time would stop for the rest of the world for approximately 24 hours, so that we can accomplish various essential tasks, to wit: laundry, one last experiment, packing, etc.

Sincerely yours,

Jenny F. Scientist

P.S. You may deliver my strong admonishments to Daylight 'Savings' Time. Boo.

Failure To Be Profound

I started to write about acceptable risks as a lead-in to talking about science grants, but I suddenly ran out of steam.

• Thank you for all the weighing in. :) Consensus: Six of one, half dozen...
  
• I was mostly joking about the cold.
• But not about family.
  
• Mmm, beer.
• Canadian cold gear! Now there's a country that knows how to dress for cold.
  
• Did you know that 50 blocks right around Blighted Med appear to all be for sale? But there are plenty of nice houses nearby; really I had no idea. Thanks, y'all.
  
• In MWUC we could buy an incredibly nice house for a fraction of our current rent.
  
• I must stop looking at real estate.

On jobs:

• Dr. S would work at Blighted Med. Alas.
• We would not live near the med school.
• He doesn't have an offer yet so maybe it'll be an easy choice.
  
• If I had any firm idea what I want to do with my life, looking for a job/ weighing the possibilities would be easier.
• But more research is Dead Out.
• Current plan: bake cookies for a few months while looking for jobs.
• So overall Dr. S's scientific preference mostly wins out and I trail along like a good little housewife.
• But currently I lack all ambition except to be done.
  
• I have a LOT of that though.

Life: Interfers With Blogging

Inability to stay awake: I slept for 15 hours last night, and could have slept more, but the Protestant guilt kicked in about 11:30.

Boredom coupled to stress: Must have experiments work. Long list. People keep harassing me (committee, grad director, advisor, the usual). Do experiments over and over. Boring. Stressful.

Major decisions: We have four weeks to decide where we'll spend the next 4 or 5 years. Except we can't leave until I finish; see above. And we only have half the data. Eeek.

Major decisions which are good and bad at the same time: We have, presently, two choices.

1) Midwestern Utopian City

Pros: One of the best US cities to live in. Farmers' market. Public transportation. Bike trails. Joy, harmony, peace on earth. Could afford a house. Lab wants Dr. S very badly; gave him ten people for me to call about jobs, and the PI also called HHMI and hit them up for soft money to change his 'contingent on fellowship' offer to 'we'll fund you no matter what, please come.' Closer to the in-laws. Good day-care (which will eventually matter).

Cons: Cold. Very cold. Far from my momma. I don't have a job. Did I mention cold?

2) Blighted East Coast City

Pros: Excellent campus. Good lab. Close to my momma. Warm. Further pros to be investigated at the end of the month.

Cons: Didn't interview there yet; no data. Cars on fire. Crack houses next to campus. Armed guards and razor wire. Still no job. Suburban life with commuting.

So except for the near-my-family thing, it would be an easy choice. I suspect the razor-wired campus will lose out, and I'll see my momma once a year. Good and bad all at once.

Characteristically Mayfly-Like

I was talking to my mom about how to inform the advisor that research science is not in my future. 'I'll tell him the truth,' I said. 'I love research, and I'll be very sad to leave the bench, but I truly feel the need to work in science education, because I want to do something that can more directly benefit people's lives.'

'That's the truth?' she asked.

'Well, mostly.'
***

One of the things I loathe about science is this: if you let your attention wander for two seconds, you'll screw up days of work. There you are, thinking idly of Senate votes, when suddenly you've poured Sample A into Sample B and poof! There goes a week. Or you're loading bricks onto a barrow when you see something fly by the window and next thing you know, half the bricks are broken to shards all over the floor and you have to start again.

It's a great deal easier to pay attention to interesting tasks. Sadly, much of science is very repetitive. Either there are multiple samples or multiple conditions, or the same movement over and over again... which is why, yesterday, I poured the wrong buffer in and my samples levitated out.

I need to reset my attention span.

Weekend Featherwittedness; Gifts

This past weekend I had the pleasure of meeting the lovely and talented Flicka Mawa. She is even more charming in person than online, and was, in addition, tolerant of my feather-witted failure to have my stuff together. We met up nonetheless, for the gods of conferences were with us. :)

My nephew, as some of you know, visited recently. (Recap: right-wing Orthodox sister.) I got him another baby present:

Oink.

Overflowing of Prepositions In Writing of Grants: or, Why Grant Consulting Is Profitable

This past year, my sister sent me a draft of her advisor's grant.

It was terrible.

Maybe he didn't read the instructions; maybe he was a bad writer. It was disorganized; there were no preliminary results; there were no headings; it repeated itself. Those of you who've seen grants know that these are cardinal sins.

I gave it a complete overhaul and sent it back with strongly worded recommendations on the line of 'do this or you'll never get any money.'

They got the grant. And it occured to me that people get paid for this stuff, and I'm good at it. Ruthless, but good.

Do I happen to have any freelance writers/ grant editors among my readers?

****
A propos of this, some excerpts from my lab's recent Huge Government Grant Renewal #35. They suffer from a great excess of prepositions. Yaaaaargh.

The objective of trying some physical models will be to study how forces produced by girder assembly might contribute to shedding of façade pieces from the exterior and moving foundations away from the original locations.

[What I would say: Physical models will be used to study effects of girder assembly forces on facade shedding and foundation shifting. Yo: brevity, wit, etc.]

Even if a mathematical model can account for the behavior of I-beams in modern structures, a better test of the mechanical effects will be the ability of the model to predict the consequences of altering conditions in high-rises.

We will use voltmeters to measure timecourses of accumulation and degradation of charge in brick walls, as well as movements of current at both room and elevated temperatures.

[Again, aaaaah, the prepositions. 'We will measure timecourses of charge accumulation and degradation in brick walls with voltmeters, as well as current movements at room and elevated temperatures.' Why is this so hard for scientists? I ask you.]