Actually a thing

I thought the listing of "Whack Job" for Keith Olbermann's show was Optimum Cable editorializing, but apparently it's the name of his show this week.

Academia

A lot of people in academia (medicine especially included) who are weird, off, eccentric, obsessed, and unhealthily passionate about stuff everyone else thinks is weird. Most of these folks have fairly pedestrian life outcomes. I don't think you can blame anyone for not assuming otherwise.

Framing and reframing

Vacation has been great for clearing my mind and feeling better. Sometime just before we went out of town I saw some metric that asked about energy level and mood level, and it felt like kind of a revelation that those were separate dimensions -- oh, just because I feel tired does not mean I can't feel happy, and just because I'm in a bad mood does not have to mean I can't get work done. I had been tying together mood, energy level and productivity together in a death spiral where all three were rock bottom.

So, since I've been back, I've been able to keep these metrics separate in my mind, and that has actually helped them all improve. I might be tired, but that does not mean I have to feel sad. I can poke at some work, or not, until I feel more lively, which happens inevitably, particularly if I don't get discouraged or anxious. I've also been using the end of the day more productively (and generally staying until 6), because I realized I actually do tend to perk up in late afternoon (circadian rhythms), and if I don't give up when I feel crummy in the earlier afternoon, I can actually make use of that time.

Revision

I'm going to revise my sourness between the lines on the last post. It helps to put all the data in one place to notice the real trends and not get hung up on the outliers.

What a difference a year makes

What I said about last year's class? If you give a lot, you get a lot, and everyone is happy?

Let's just leave it at how much I liked most everyone last year. I ran into a bunch of them at the conference and they were all so nice and happy! They worked hard and were on top of things and only complained a teeny bit when things were rough and they recognized that I was working hard too and made sure other people knew it. Nice, nice people who I'm grateful to know.

Yogurt

So, I bought a yogurt machine for $12 a long time ago, and then I never never used it. I finally decided it was about time to try it out. It worked great! This morning I had some delicious yogurt with NJ blueberries (which were plump and juicy). I ended up using Fage as a starter, and I processed the batch for about 5 hours, which was enough to make it solid, but not too tart (not as tart as the Fage at least). I think I'm going to look for a powder starter for future batches, because it does seem a little pointless to have to buy a yogurt to make more yogurt. Anyway, I love it when I make stuff and it's easy and turns out well.

Accord

We went to Carmax to look at an Accord we liked online, and maybe other stuff if they had it. We test drove the Accord and a Hyundai Sonata, and I liked both and Joe liked the Accord best, so we got it. It's a 2006, dark grey with black interior. It was so easy! It helped that we brought our own financing (thanks Navy Federal!). We were there less than three hours and left with a car, plates, and registration. I have to say, Carmax was awesome, esp because we could look ahead online and get a sense of which one to go to for the best chance of finding a good match.

I'm almost done finalizing my course syllabus, which is good since the class is only 2 weeks away!

We're getting a car!

Despite enjoying living without a functioning car, we came to the conclusion over the weekend that one was desirable. Neither of us was super eager to up and move to Rockville, and transit options were pretty awful for Joe staying where we are (90 minutes each way if all the connections worked out). Plus, it kind of sucks not to have a car. ZipCar has been useful, and Amtrak for NJ trips, but late night trips to the store and grabbing weekend dinner at Afghan Restaurant and lots of other little things we couldn't do made it not so fun.

I had a panic attack Sunday about the costs, but once we sat down and actually looked at the numbers, it became clear just how much better two paychecks are than one, at least in the short term. We can have our not-very-old Camry or Accord or the like, pay down debts, and build savings. We probably can't quickly build a huge house downpayment in the near term, but I hope we'll have one before the market turns back up.

Mostly, though, sitting down and talking about our money was only partly about feeling better about the money and turned out to be much more an exercise about feeling really secure about our relationship and that we were going to do things together in this life.

I hate writing

The cold I thought I was getting over a week ago came to fruition that evening and has been with me since. I stayed home from work to try to get better and felt okay this past weekend in Chicago, but since then I've felt the same cloudy tired blahness every day. My teeth hurt from the sinus pressure, I break out into coughing fits that give me headaches. The other night I went through half a box of tissues, although things seem to have dried up since. In the middle of a long cold like this I begin to wonder if I'll ever be back to normal, if maybe this cold will stick with me forever and I'll be forced to drag through all the rest of my days sniffling and coughing and holding my head.

Maybe I need to be hitting the whiskey -- I seem to recall that working when I was younger, and in my prime.

Anyway, in the midst of this illness I had grantwriting group, where I was simultaneously slammed and complimented almost to an embarrassing level. Slam: Your sentences are hard to read because they have too many words and clauses and subclauses (this is what happens when I have to cram 10 arguments into a single page). Compliment: This problem may stem from your extreme thoughtfulness as manifested in the fact that you are the best reviewer here and your comments are always wildly helpful. I was a little stung by the writing comment, as I've always considered myself a good writer, but I have always tended toward sentences that require a diagrammer's mind (like mine) to fully grasp in one read. But I was pleased with the reviewing comment because if there's one thing I think I'm actually good at in this world it is editing and, more broadly, figuring out how a piece of writing could be more compelling. I get to do some of that in teaching and advising and working with other colleagues, and those are the times I feel most useful as a human being.

Going down the spectrum of feeling useful is when I have to do any of my own writing. This week's task was to fix those Specific Aims we tore up last week and add a whole Research Design section. Fortunately the National Institutes of Health are soon moving to a shorter application length, meaning I only have to crank out 6-8 pages instead of 14. But the first thing I did yesterday when I finally got going was to completely re-write the Specific Aims page, by which I mean I wrote up Specific Aims for an entirely different study. I think it's a more interesting study (writing up the research design for the prior study sounded so boring I just couldn't do it), but it didn't move me forward terribly well. I need to write up some semblance of a Research Design to turn in tomorrow at group. I'm procrastinating, and my teeth hurt.

Because even further down the spectrum of feeling useful? Planning actual research. I know I managed once upon a time to pull it off, but often I have no confidence that I can do it again. It involves talking to people, building connections, relying on others, filling out paperwork. Everything that makes my stomach churn with anxiety.

Goodbye old car

My Buick had been sitting in my driveway since October when I decided I couldn't put any more money into repairs after I had just put a lot of money into repairs -- I decided to quit while I was ahead. I subsequently discovered that between walking, public transit, and ZipCar, life was manageable without a car. But the car sat in the driveway. We made some motions toward maybe getting it repaired, but the battery died over the cold winter and wouldn't recharge easily, and so it was too big a pain to do. Finally last week, prompted by pending registration fees, I set up a donation with Habitat for Humanity, which is where the prior owner got the car. We did a last few car-related tasks (changing the flat front tire, cleaning it out, removing a small garden that was growing in the crevice of the trunk, removing the plates), and last night (at 10:30... kinda late!) a guy came and towed it away. Today I mailed the plates to the MVA.

I'm kind of depressed about it. While it was in my driveway, I could feel like I still had my first car, even if I couldn't drive it. It's the car I would jump in dressed in pajamas to go to Joe's at night when we both lived in Baltimore. It's the car we took on vacation to the shore and drove up and down the island. It was nice inside and drove smoothly. So, it was sad to see it go off on a truck at night. But someday we'll have a car that's both of ours that's newer and nicer.

It also doesn't help that I think I'm getting a cold.

Scrivener is awesome

I don't think I've ever promoted this particular product before on this blog, but I wrote my dissertation in Scrivener and it was awesome. I never would have gotten going without it.

Of course, I opened it today to solve writers' block on the 30-page summary version of my dissertation for a contest, and the dissertation itself opened, as it was the last project I worked on using it. Meaning I probably haven't been doing enough writing.

Yay birthday

I had a really great birthday.  Monday night Joe cooked manicotti and cupcakes, and we had prosecco and bummed around.  Yesterday I got up at the luxurious hour of 9:30 (instead of my usual weekday 7am), and Joe went off to his appointment while I had an additional hour to drink my coffee and lounge before I went to meet him at Friendship Heights.  He usually takes the Metro there, but that is such an error because THE BUS IS BEST.  Those of you who remember my packet-o-schedules from my Union Sq, Somerville days know that I am a big fan of buses, and yesterday I got to ride a whole new bus, the Montgomery County Ride On #1, which is similar in direction to the J1 Metrobus I ride to work, except that it makes many thrilling diversions into the adjacent neighborhoods instead of sticking to the boring main road.  It was the best ever, and then I met Joe for lunch at Mei Wah, which was super tasty.

After lunch we went down to Union Station and walked over to the new Capitol Visitors Center, where we had a tour of the Capitol (fun, but I need to get on a staff tour because only on those is there the possibility of riding the Capitol Subway), followed by a quick browse of the little museum.  Joe was pretty worn out after all that being out of the house, so we went home and vegged for the rest of the evening.  It was fun to have the day off work; sadly, I only won $2 in last night's Mega Millions drawing instead of the $212 million someone in Ocean County, NJ won, so I can't play hooky for the rest of my life and will have to continue working.

A great day for Metro

I was very bummed about having to trek out to use the bus, but I became less bummed as I realized that the little bit of deck and walk I had to shovel to get to the street was far less work than shoveling the whole driveway and cleaning off my car, as I'd have to do if I were driving.  It was also not that bad a walk, whereas it would have been a very stressful drive, since the streets were pretty slushy.  The bus I caught was on schedule (later than the bus I would normally catch, but just fine for today).

Sadly, we care a lot more as a society about clearing roads than sidewalks.  We leave it up to businesses and residences to clear sidewalks (where they exist... there aren't any sidewalks on my street), but we expect that our government will clear the roads.  I kinda want to boycott work whenever it snows as a protest.  Despite the University being open today, most of the sidewalks were not cleared when I arrived around 10, which is lame.

I wish I had been able to stay home today (I had to come in for something that we ended up cancelling and rescheduling anyway), but tomorrow I'm off for my birthday, which I will spend with my sweetie.

Werk

I opted to work from home today, since it was snowing, and it was an open day sandwiched between days full of meetings. I managed to finish this paper that has been plaguing me lightly for years and heavily for a couple of months, and I was feeling good, and then I checked my messages and I was immediately depressed under the suffocating weight of everything that dissatisfies me right now. Home life is good, students brighten my day and make me feel like I know stuff... and the rest puts me in a funk. If change is coming, I'm inclined to resist it less and less.

I need to write papers and get them on my CV as fast as possible.

Waves tiny US flag

Metaphorically, since I don't have one here on my warm couch.

With the crowd practically up to my porch in Silver Spring, I opted to stay at home where Joe made me waffles and there was heat and no wind chill and only two people were using the bathroom the last four days. It was a good call.

We got our taste of Inaugural fever by braving the Metro Sunday for football first before heading to Dupont Circle for dinner. It was busy for a Sunday, and people from all over were being cute and asking everyone else where they were from.

I overheard someone talking about seeing Barack Obama, and it reminded me of the DNC in Boston in 2004 when a couple of friends and I went celebrity-hunting all day. We ended up in front of the Fleet Center where people were getting dropped off to go in. Barack Obama walked right by and waved to us, and we were probably just as excited to see him them as we would be today because we knew what was what.

Time for work -- watching whitehouse.gov for executive orders and proclamations while editing Joe's dissertation.

Gnocchi

In the past, Joe and I have purchased frozen or dried potato gnocchi from Italian food stores, and they've been tasty enough (they cook very fast too once the water is boiling).  Joe ordered some at Roman Hall over break, however, and it was clear they were in a completely different league -- soft, and not gummy or tough like the packaged kinds.

I procured Lidia Bastianich's big cookbook (we've been making her vodka sauce recipe from the web forever), and we decided that since we had all the ingredients, we'd make gnocchi.  I did the majority of it, grating the potatoes, mixing the dough, rolling and cutting and shaping.  And they turned out.  So. Damn.  Good.  Very similar to Roman Hall's.  It was kind of time consuming, but there's no way we're eating packaged gnocchi ever again.

Joe made a tomato sauce to go with it (the classic gravy), but as per Lidia'a suggestion, he added some cabernet, and it made the gravy ever so much richer.  I just had the leftovers, and they were delicious.

We also made stuffed mushrooms from the book last night... we could have made double, they were so tasty.

Going out to dinner is fun, but cooking together is romantic and hot.

Manuscripts

Making tables is fun.  Writing the text of the results section is boring.

Just read my tables.

The conundrums caused by doublespeak

The Pentagon has ruled that Purple Hearts won't be given to those suffering from PTSD because it's not an injury intentionally caused by the enemy. What are we supposedly doing again? Fighting a war on terror? A tactic used to intentionally produce... psychological harms? Decide whether the people we're fighting against are intentionally trying to cause harms or not and get back to me.

Friend of the Project

I just read something on the national communication obits that I think is a really great thought. Dawn Braithwaite writes that she once asked the late Dr. Ernest Bormann how a scholar handles harsh criticism, and he replied "that he appreciated criticism when it came from a "friend of the project." He went on to explain that a "friend of the project" is motivated to make the work the best it could be, rather than self-aggrandize." This is a a simple but important point, because too often people think that criticism has to be "harsh" to be criticism, which tends to bleed over into showing how smart you are compared to this poor person you're criticizing. But truely constructive criticism doesn't feel like criticism at all; it feels like scholarly dialogue. The critic for that moment becomes a partner in your project, wanting it to succeed just as much as you do. I had this experience during all of my oral exams, where people weren't trying to play gotcha because they were invested in making my project better and what I publish out of it more useful to the world. I think this notion is a good thing for all of us to keep in mind -- particularly when doing those anonymous reviews that can so easily slide into snark.

Follow-up to yesterday

I wrote a more thoughtful response on facebook:

"I get the rationale that it's mostly a spokesperson job, and Gupta has had his face on TV talking about health stuff a lot, but nothing in his training gives him any expertise in public health. His training isn't even in general or preventive medicine. Frankly I'm sick of MDs getting a pass into the public health world without the requisite training, and this is just such an egregious example."

I'm bothered by two things here, both of which converge in Sanjay Gupta. One is the tendency for cable news to rely on familiar faces to be experts in everything, instead of actually seeking out and talking to experts. While not every expert is super articulate and it may be useful in a TV format to have recognizable journalists distill expert opinion, that's not generally what I see happening. On health, education, foreign relations and almost any complicated where there do exist people who have devoted their lives to figuring out what works and what doesn't, you see talking heads yammering inexpertly like it's all just a matter of opinion. And that is so annoying. I don't want to see this tendency entrenched in government.

The second strand I refer to in my facebook comment, which is that all too often, people who are trained in the medical world are able to just dance over to the public health world, without additional training. Many docs have the sense to at least get an MPH (like my fine students), but there are a lot of folks out there who really don't have the cred. Maybe I'm extra biased because the social and behavioral sciences are a lot more essential to public health than to most areas of medicine (although medicine could use a little more understanding of people and society), but I don't think training in medicine (particularly in specialty areas) gives you any cred to talk public health.

That's all I have to say on that.

WTF

Sanjay Gupta? Are we kidding? I mean, I guess the guy's job the last few years has been to stretch beyond his narrow expertise (CNN: sure, a neuroscientist can comment on any topic in medicine or health! Who needs to call in the real experts!). But really. There has to be someone in the ranks of legitimate health-related institutions who could take this job!

I'm so disgusted.

Found!

The copy card I was convinced had fallen behind the (immovable) desk was actually holding my place in a journal I didn't finish browsing a while ago.

Yesterday I was peppy, and it was warm out, and I made it to the bus stop early, and the bus was there, and I got to work door-to-door in 45 minutes.  Today, tiredness and scratchy throat, rain, no bus (either left early or never came), much later longer bus, 90 minutes.  Boo.

So the plan is just to mope in the office, keep warm, and read journals.

2008 in review

2008 was awesome because:

1) I finished my PhD.
2) I got a job.
3) I moved away from Baltimore and in with the bestest boy ever!
4) The election season was majorly entertaining, particularly with our addition of tomato pie to all events.
5) I managed to see almost all my family and friends at least once.

2008 was lame because:

1) The lousy economy, although that will probably end up being a net plus for me going forward as I try to build retirement savings (unless the stock market just crashes entirely for the next 40 years) and think about buying a house (moving a lot more real estate into the affordable range).
2) My car got to be too expensive to fix and is thus dead, and the resulting exercise has done nothing for my waistline. And I've been missing out on social time with the TV Night crew.
3) I didn't make it to any football games this fall.
4) My bestest boy didn't immediately get a ton of job interviews, and the market sucks.
5) I didn't go home for Christmas for the first time ever, which made me sad, even though I have had fun here in NJ with my Joey.

2009 will be awesome as Joe finishes his PhD and gets a job (he'll get something, it's just a matter of time and probably more agony), and we can start making even more tangible plans about the future.