Pipes and Platforms

One year

2012-01-03T17:13:00.003-05:00

Today is the first anniversary of my "new" job. It's been a crazy day. Everyone is back from vacation and catching up with everything, and my inbox has been buzzing all day. I'm thinking back to my first day last year and wondering how the heck people could have possibly managed to orient me and take me to lunch and stuff, because we had a lot more projects going on then than we do now (although all of them seem to be at full throttle).

Somehow in the past year I've become one of the "old guard." A lot of people were hired after me, but I think I also acclimated fairly quickly to this place. The boss was always surprised when I reminded him how short a time I'd really been here.

I speak in the past tense about the boss because right before we all left for vacation, we found out that he was leaving us for my husband's company. Everyone who was not aware he'd been thinking about it for the past month was thrown for a huge loop. People are already nervous about the amount of work we have going on right now, and his departure added uncertainty to the mix. I really enjoyed having him as a boss because he threw a lot of opportunity my way -- we were really busy last year, and he wasn't hesitant to ask me to do stuff, particularly when he tried it a few times and got good outcomes. As a result, I am taking over project management on one of his projects, based on his suggestion to his boss and the new group leader. It's a great opportunity, because it's a fairly open project with a decent budget but no clear plan just yet.

So things are crazy. But even though I'll miss my boss, there will be opportunity as a result of his departure. Every leader provides opportunity but also constraints. With his departure, certain constraints are released. While the new boss will put new ones in place -- quickly and directly, given his style -- there will be a bit of a vacuum to fill. I'm ready to help fill it.

So work was on my mind today, but it's been quite a year otherwise too. I spent the last week plus goofing off with my husband, which is somehow nicer than just goofing off with a boyfriend. We spent most of the time at home, which is so much cozier than it was a year ago. This year should be calmer, although I'd like to acquire a dog if I can just convince somebody... I'm not having much luck.

New job

2011-01-17T12:28:00.003-05:00

So, I've only been at the new job a couple of weeks, but so far I like it a lot. It's very busy. People are asking me to do legit stuff right off the bat, and there are DEADLINES! Things don't drag out endlessly. Grants and proposals get written and sent off. Stuff moves along. There are fun surveys. I love it.

The commute has also not been so bad, and last week I started with my schedule of working from home twice a week. I leave pretty early when I go in, so the commute inbound has been around 45 minutes. Coming home there was one random day where it took only 45 minutes, but mostly it's been more like an hour+. I listen to CDs and try to drive in a relaxed manner.

Working from home has also been good. I generally get up and start working right away, and then at some point I exercise (or not) and shower and get back to work. Although Thursday our router died and it was distracting not to have internet. I went to the library for a while.

The main thing about the new job is that the busyness keeps from from wandering off on the internet. I had a headache every day my first week from not sleeping as much and I just didn't care (until I got home). I work so well when there is a list of concrete tasks with deadlines.

I even managed to get my dissertation manuscript back out the door. I just sat down one night and did it. Productivity spreads out everywhere. Except maybe to cleaning...

Work before work

2011-01-02T12:02:00.003-05:00

There are two things I would like to get done today:

1) A manuscript review that is due today.

2) A good first stab at dealing with the few little comments remaining on my dissertation manuscript. It would be nice to resubmit, but one thing at a time.

2010 in review!

2011-01-01T11:15:00.008-05:00

2010 was the year I turned 30, which I deemed "a very adult age." And I was right! This year, many adult-like life events occurred, and it was a good year overall.

The best thing health-wise about this year was starting thyroid medication. Now I know where the fogginess comes from and how to make it go away! I hope with the new health insurance with the new job I can find a doc who is with it about when to up meds -- I thought my current doctor fell in that category, until she suddenly stopped. And I'd really prefer my prescription to match what I'm taking.

I couldn't talk about this year without mentioning the SNOW. It was so much snow. I would be totally happy to have a dry winter, especially since I'm no longer a fed and no longer have the excitement of OPM watch. December was extra cold, so I'm hoping the rest of the winter is mild.

My creative endeavor of the year was to make a Christmas stocking for Joe to match all the ones my mom made for us. Mine is still somewhere in Albuquerque, but Joe's is up on the fireplace!

Speaking of the fireplace, it's part of our house.

Buying a house was the surprise adult event of the year. We had been planning to wait until this year to buy. We had identified a neighborhood that we liked that had nice but not-too-expensive houses close enough in that we could still access Metro. At the end of April, we decided one Sunday to check out some open houses in the neighborhood, just for fun. I had seen some online that were interesting, and we followed signs to this one, which had not been on my list.

We liked it! It had the sort of quirks we would like but that other people might not like. It's not very trendy and pretty traditional, which we like.

While there was an appealing tax credit hanging in the balance, we decided it was too much and we weren't ready yet. We didn't even have a realtor!

Everytime we didn't have a place to put something, or the annoying dogs next door were barking, or the drug dealer people across the street were doing something sketchy, we would turn to each other and say "Janice Drive!" The house was on our mind as the weeks went by. We went to more open houses in the neighborhood to see if we hadn't just fallen in love with the first thing we saw, and we realized that while other houses were fine, we really preferred this one. It's a colonial, for one thing, in a neighborhood with lots of split levels. We also got a good realtor, with the help of Navy Federal's RealtyPlus program (which was awesome and gave us money back at the end), figuring that we'd need one eventually so we might as well be prepared. We had also gotten preapproved for a loan back in April, mostly because it was easy and we wanted to see whether we could be approved (we were actually approved for an obscene amount given our incomes -- the approved amount would eat up like 2/3 of takehome!).

Three things converged over the next month to push us toward making an offer: 1) Interest rates kept dropping; 2) The sellers dropped the price; and 3) Joey got a grant, which meant we could do a conventional fixed loan instead of FHA or an adjusted loan, both of which made us a little uncomfortable. We actually had gone to the house again for another open house on the day the sellers dropped the price. When we walked in, the listing agent (who happens to now be our next door neighbor) laughed to see us and told us the news. I think she knew all along we would end up there.

So we made an offer and got a counteroffer and then we made a best-and-final offer which the sellers accepted. Then there was the home inspection, which was mostly fine and the sellers fixed some things and rejected a few others. Then there was the appraisal which came in low and threw everything back into negotiations again. We weren't too happy with the sellers' initial solution, but they took our counter and at the end of the day, we were very close to our original offer on the place. So I sent the bank a million pdfs and we closed at the end of July!

We moved in August, and because our rental had furniture we didn't have a lot to bring. So far we've pretty much just bought couches and living room curtains and other little odds and ends (and yard tools). We wanted to re-build our emergency fund to a sufficiently conservative level, but I think in the next year we should be able to buy furniture. For now we've been eating at a card table in canvas chairs! But we love it here. It's quiet, there's a fireplace, there's room to put all our crap, and it's free of annoyances (like, for example, a kitchen floor with no insulation under it).

Our furniture buying will be somewhat deferred by the purchase of a new car, brought on by my getting a new job. The job thing is a really big shift and a surprise to a lot of people, but it's a decision I'm very happy about.

Work was going fine. At the beginning of the year, feeling physically and mentally better, I really started mapping out some research and moving things forward. I got papers out the door and back out the door again when they got rejected or needed revising. Teaching went better than ever. I was pushing some new projects forward. But I came to realize that there were some obstacles about academia and some specific to the University that made my job a poor fit.

Really it was thinking about why I loved the teaching and mentoring part of my job that motivated me to look for something else. Also hearing about Joe's experience with his job gave me insight into another kind of work that I thought might fit me (even as it may not fit him!). I am happiest when I have a useful role, when I can give advice and use what I know for a specific purpose, when I can interact with other people, when there are things that have to be done by a certain time, and when I can pursue a broad variety of interests. Teaching the core course in my field was exhausting every year because it was every day for 6 weeks, but it was also exhilarating and productive. Papers had to be graded and turned back, lectures had to be posted, students came by to chat and I could help them improve their final papers. And the topics spanned the whole field!

The rest of the year was not so much like that. Academia rewards reputation building around a carefully-focused line of inquiry. To get tenure, people have to see that you're built a reputation for being "the person who does" something label-able. I had chosen health-related stigma as my area of interest, but I found that sometimes made it hard to incorporate the other things that interested me, and even if I stuck to just that, I often felt pushed to pick a health condition. Even if that was mental health, I felt pushed to focus on PTSD or depression. It kind of sapped my interest. I'm also not at all interested in reputation building -- I'd rather my work affect something than reflect well on me.

The University also does not quite have a critical mass of social scientists, or even people who are really public health oriented. My collaborators were great, but they were also scattered and working on their own stuff. I've always learned a lot by observing others, and it was hard to do that in this setting. For me, mentorship has to be integral what I'm already doing; it can't be some occasional advisory meetings with people. So I felt socially and intellectually isolated a lot of the time. It was too easy for me to sit in my office and putter along aimlessly.

So, sometime this fall, after the class stuff had settled and I had gone through another round with my papers (two of which have now been accepted!), I started to poke around. Based on Joe's experience, I knew that the non-academic contract research world would probably be a good fit for me. You have to be versatile about the topic of research, you work in teams with people on lots of different studies, there are deadlines, and if all goes well the work has an immediate impact on policy or practice. Soon after I started searching, I got an interview with my new employer.

I made the voyage to Fairfax. I took the Metro from almost the end of the Red Line to the end of the Orange Line. It was far! I liked everyone I met, PhD social science and survey research nerds who spoke my language. A lot of their surveys focused on military health, which made it a sensible transition. I got the job offer that night, and ultimately, I decided it was going to be too stressful to make the commute every day and I should hold out for something closer to home.

A few days later they returned with an offer for me to work from home or from one of the Maryland offices twice a week, and some other sweeteners. I volleyed back with a little salary push and a start date after the holidays, so I could use my vacation days from the University. They said yes, so I said yes!

It took about a week to get the offer letter due to the Thanksgiving holidays. It was kind of nervewracking. I had to continue to interact with everyone at work as if I were staying forever. It was only a day or two of actually being at work while waiting, but it felt like decades! Once the offer letter came in, I told my boss, and she told the department chair, and then I had to tell my research associate (who fortunately has many talents and will likely find a job before her last day in February). It was sad and difficult at times, but I also know it was the right decision.

I think Joey had a hard time understanding what was happening, since he had wanted an academic job but ended up in a non-academic job. I got an academic job and ultimately rejected it! I think some folks also have a hard time understanding how I could leave a solid tenure-track job that also comes with many federal benefits, a hard salary, startup funding, etc. I think it's a great job, which is why I originally took it! But I think that fit is extremely important. I learned a lot about the skills that I do not possess! I cannot structure an amorphous blob of free time (and it's probably only because I got a job that I finished my dissertation -- it created a deadline). I cannot motivate myself. I cannot focus on a single research topic. I don't have enough experience doing research. I need direct mentorship. And I don't feel bad about any of these things. I'm hoping that this job will give me a lot of experience with way more studies than I could produce on my own and that maybe some of these deficits will be remedied. But I think that others might just be about the way I work and the way I don't work, and it's way better to recognize my skills and deficits and look for a job that matches instead of beating my head against the wall in a job that doesn't.

So that's where I am on the first of January, two days away from orientation at the new job. Life is good, and the new year promises a few more adult events that I think will make it even better.

File cleaning

2010-12-10T16:20:00.003-05:00

I started cleaning out my files as part of my effort to pack my office. I have kept very neat and organized files since high school (maybe even middle school?), but I'm always amazed on the occasions I have to sort through them just how much can be chucked. It makes me feel kind of like a hoarder.

From my extensive viewing of television programs about hoarders, I have identified several factors that often converge in hoarders:

Compulsive acquisition, from shopping, dumpster diving, or theft.
Chronic disorganization -- an inability to sort, categorize, or even identify clear and obvious trash.
Inability to get rid of stuff, either stemming from the disorganization above, tendency to assign tremendous meaning to objects, and/or paralyzing fear that the object might be useful or necessary sometime in the future.

Fortunately, I am not much of a compulsive acquirer of paper, in the sense that I don't print too many things unless the printed version will be vastly easier to use for a given task. I printed all the readings for my class because when I'm putting together a lecture from materials across articles, it's easier to have them all on the desk open to various pages. I guess it was no surprise then that these articles gave me the greatest pause -- in one sense, I didn't need them because I have them in pdf, and I'm not going to be giving lectures anytime soon. However, I had done a fair bit of underlining in them. And I might teach a class someday. But by then I will probably want new articles in a lot of cases. So I left them in folders for the next person, with a note to alert me if he or she intends to toss them, to at least give me one last opportunity to keep them (although I'll probably just say toss).

I am a bit of a compulsive filer, however, in that once a paper does exist, I'm pretty likely to file it if there's a chance I'll need it at all in the future.

I am extremely organized, as indicated by my awesome filers. I love sorting and labeling!

On the inability to get rid of stuff front, as noted above, potential usefulness can sometimes give me pause. What makes hoarding so insidious is that many of the decision processes are not wholly wrong -- they're based in something rational that just goes off the rails a bit. Usefulness is a wonderful criteria for deciding what to keep. But the line can't be drawn at "could be useful to someone at some time in the future under some kind of conditions that have more than a zero probability of existing." It has to be based on a realistic likelihood. So you have to purge the 4 sizes too small pants when it's pretty likely that even if you lose weight, it won't be until those pants are out of style. I had to purge things that I know I have on my computer, and while these copies might have notes on them (homeworks fall into this category), I'm unlikely to dig out the hard copy over firing up the electronic version.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a laptop my first year of graduate school, so I have a lot of printed articles and lectures from that year. This was useful when I was teaching, however, because I used a lot of my first year grad courses as material for my lectures.

The process of chucking stuff involves a lot of rapid decision making, which is tiring no matter what (and why Hoarders in particular evokes a lot of drama, because it's impossible to clear an entire house in two days without bypassing the main decision maker, who is at their limit. Hoarding: Buried Alive is a lot more responsible and realistic -- and boring -- because they clean over the span of months). I finished my main filing cabinet, and I have a whole nother filing cabinet to do next week. One whole drawer will be tossed because it's my dissertation data, and it's past the expiration date for that stuff to be kept. I have some limited files from grad school and even college that will be more purgeable now that a few more years have passed since my last sort.

But then all that stuff comes home, and I'm kind of wondering if I should go through my files here!

Sitting room

2010-11-29T15:01:00.003-05:00

Thanksgiving was good. Wednesday we did things around the house. We drove up Thursday morning and came back Saturday morning. Saturday we finally found a place with decent fireplace stuff and we got a hearth rug, a thing to hold wood indoors, and a tool set.

When we put it in front of the fireplace, it looked so nice and cozy! This lead to much pondering about what to do with the space. It could easily be an eat-in kitchen with just a table. But it was labeled as a "sitting room" on the real estate listing, and now we see why perhaps that was the case. It would be nice with some seating and a TV and a lamp, especially in the winter when we'd like to sit in front of the fireplace all night. But then where do we eat? Maybe a high table or island/counter to separate it more from the kitchen?

These photos from before we move in illustrate the space (currently the part in front of the fireplace has a card table and canvas folding chairs).

We are still pondering, but the fun thing about being fiscally conservative is that every new thing makes the house look more like a real person house and brings great enjoyment little by little!

Thanksgiving!

2010-11-24T12:24:00.003-05:00

My vacation started yesterday -- the only reason I went in Monday was to give a lecture. Today Joey is also at home (although not at the moment... he's gone to get a haircut with the groupon I bought him), and we're just doing stuff around the house. We contemplated going up to the Jerz today, but there's plenty to do around here and driving up tomorrow morning will be easier. This morning there would have been commuter traffic along with travel traffic and we would have had to have left very early. Last year we left at 4am or so Thursday morning, and there was no traffic at all. We might allow an hour or two more sleep this year because I think things are fine until the afternoon when people are making shorter trips for dinner.

Pretty much every retailer who sends me emails or fliers has deemed that tomorrow is a good day to be open. I predict in the next 5 years that stores will be open 24 hours starting on Wednesday on through the weekend. We'll probably hit the outlets Friday night for a few clothes, but other than that we're staying away. Although I do have to go to bridesmaid dress fitting sometime Friday in Pennsylvania. Thrills.

We'll probably come back Saturday, maybe at night. It's nice to be able to have a day at home before a big day at work on Monday.

I'm looking out my office window into the backyard, our backyard, of the house we live in together. This year I decided what I wanted and went out and got it despite all the anxieties it provoked (and provokes still). It's good to be young. It's good to eat at a card table in captain's chairs until we figure out what we want and have the money saved. It's good to take a leap. It's good to be together.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2010-11-23T14:36:00.001-05:00

I said, how about this too, and they said yes, and I said yes.

Three weeks of discomfort, two weeks of vacation, a new year with new things.

Not yet

2010-11-21T10:54:00.003-05:00

I said, I don't think I can, and they said, maybe this? And I say, hmmm, maybe.

Either way, I'm taking most of this week off to not think much about anything.

Shifts

2010-11-16T16:25:00.003-05:00

Thursday the plumber came. He said that the leak is coming through the tile, and it seems like maybe the whole shower will need to be ripped out just to figure out where the water is coming from. It's a huge pain, but I guess that's why we save our money so these things are easily paid for (although still painful). Now we just need to find someone to deal with the shower, and we are using the other one. It's like moving all over again to use a shower we never use.

Thursday I got a paper accepted. I got phone call about people liking me, but the people are far away. I went to work Friday. I took off yesterday. I visited the people, but they are too far away to visit regularly. Transit is meant to move people from the suburbs to downtown and back, not from suburb to suburb. That task is left to the roads, which are parking lots.

On my way home I stopped at Metro Center (Metro Center! All the way downtown and only halfway home!) for Five Guys. My head hurt. It was too full.

I had to sleep. I was aflurry this morning. I wrote it out. I realized about the farness. I wrote to people who were closer who I hope will like me. I have to call the faraway people back, but it's hard to tell people you like them too but they are just very far away. It's hard to say no to people who like you. It's hard to wait for closer people to like you. It's hard to wait when you're ready.

Ups

2010-11-10T13:21:00.002-05:00

Last week: minor headaches pretty much all the time. This week: inattentive, unmotivated, foggy. Time to get another thyroid update.

Last night we watched "Dogs Decoded" on NOVA. It was awesome, but it made me want a doggie sooooo much and I bothered Joey like a little kid. We're probably too busy to have a dog right now, since we just got this house, but this does not prevent me from wanting a furry creature.

Feds have tomorrow off for Veterans Day, and I'm also taking Friday off. We have plumbers coming tomorrow because there is a leak somewhere above the living room that dripped through Sunday, but has shown no more dripping since. It will probably be a small issue, but better to deal with it before it becomes a huge issue. I think two four-day weekends in a month is about 50% correct.

Joey and I went on our first date four years ago today!

Checking things off the list

2010-11-05T09:42:00.002-05:00

1) Got a flu shot.

2) Resubmitted paper (2 weeks after I would have if it were only up to me, but things have to go through the co-author carousel).

Something I failed to check off the list was refilling my mini bottle of Advil that I keep in my bag, which was a mistake.

Friend of the project

2010-10-25T10:38:00.003-05:00

A while ago I read the obituary of a communication professor in which the author recounts a story from "a talk we had early in my doctoral student career after his work had been publicly criticized in one of our journals. I asked him how a scholar handles harsh criticism. Dr. Bormann 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 notion encapsulated for me both what was so helpful about good reviews and so noxious about bad ones. Since then I've definitely tried to incorporate this principle in my reviewing and grading, with what I perceive to be success. But it recently occurs to me that this is a principle that is worth extending to other aspects of life as a sort of test. My friend Storey has written extensively in the past about writing openly about his life, which includes his interactions with other people. Over time in my own public writing, as I think happens to a lot of bloggers, I've excised a lot of personal stuff as the audience has gotten more potentially diffuse. But I also edit in memory of a cringeworthy episode of internet sniping that I ended up excising because I was just angry. Although, oddly enough, that whole episode was about failure of openness and honesty that instead left me feeling helpless and that completely resolved once honesty was restored (in ways I hadn't even anticipated).

So I guess I'm pondering where the line should be for openness and honesty with other people in our lives, particularly when there is a public aspect that is not mutually consensual. Storey's probably not surprised to hear I'm not sure which side of the line he falls on -- from the viewer's perspective, I think it's obvious that details are more interesting than "keepin' it cryptic," but that's only tangential to the question. So I guess I return to the standard of "friend of the project" -- is the openness and honesty serving to move people and relationships forward? Sort of like, I like or love you enough to be honest with you and about you. Or is it serving some internal emotional need or some need to score points? In my cringeworthy episode, I settled on the latter assessment -- I wasn't doing anyone any favors by sniping on my webpage, and the result was unkind. I don't think I was exactly enlightening the reader either.

And I'm not sure these motivations are mutually exclusive, just as I don't think there is a bright line between helping someone with their writing or research and tooting your own horn a bit. I have to think I'm awesome enough to give you suggestions about what to do with your project that you've been working on and I'm just dabbling in long enough to critique you. Talking openly about one's life is vastly less compelling when life is boring and peachy and your mind is not in a whirl. It's possible to be open and honest in a way that accomplishes noble goals while fulfilling internal needs. Which I guess is what makes the line so blurry.

Taking a step in a related direction, I think this is a good standard for daily communication, and it's a standard I fail at far too often. It's so easy to get to point counting and feeling wounded. It's hard to focus on the project -- which I guess is how we got to this discussion in the first place.

Managing pain

2010-10-21T15:45:00.003-05:00

Working from home is the only way to deal with having a mild cold and trying to respond to comments... I manage to make a few edits, and then I have to clean the toilet or some other less noxious task.

Also, no one ever suggests cuts, just additions, leaving it to you to divine what you can trim to get the paper back to the word limit.

R&R

2010-10-19T10:38:00.002-05:00

Finally got the review! I got the much heralded revise and resubmit decision, and reviews ranging from enthusiastic to grumpy. But grumpy comments are so much less annoying when they accompany and R&R instead of a rejection!

It is kind of amazing how I got three very detailed reviews on my previous rejection, and yet the new reviews have new issues! That are valid issues, but, damn.

Last squeeze

2010-10-14T16:07:00.001-05:00

Only 27 words! Editing kills passive voice, but also a few points I wanted to make,

The other paper

2010-10-13T09:27:00.002-05:00

The good: They are interested in publishing it as a short report.

The less good: This requires cutting 1200 words to get it to 2000 words.

The even less good: That probably means cutting a lot of stuff I added on the revision, which means it would have been nice to have been given this option before then!

Back to the good: This paper has a high likelihood of finally getting into print after appearing at a conference, oh, five years ago.

Lesson: Work faster, kids. Don't let things sit on anyone's desk.

Waiting

2010-10-12T11:35:00.001-05:00

Dear third reviewer,

Please submit your review. Two others have already submitted their reviews, and you are holding up the process. YOU ARE MAKING LIFE MISERABLE FOR OTHER PEOPLE.

Thanks,

Weekend plans

2010-09-24T12:07:00.002-05:00

On the docket (although not entirely on my docket):

Kitchen: Dishes, counters, sweep floor

Clean master bath sink/counters

Change sheets

Laundry

Farmstand/Groceries

Update finances in Quicken

Garage trim: scrape/strip, caulk, paint

Hang curtains in the living room

Catch up DVR, watch football

Work on Joey's Xmas stocking

500 a day

2010-09-23T11:26:00.003-05:00

So, I'm in this class on multiple imputation in Stata today (yesterday was part I), and it's a little slow. I have a hard time with these computer-based classes because I'm always fast to catch on, but I still take them because I need that initial information on how to get started. So now I feel like I know how to use these commands, but I'm also more convinced than ever that they're more trouble than they're worth and that it's just better to do complete cases analysis.

Anyway...

Recently I had the humiliating experience of applying for life insurance. It wouldn't have been so bad, but it forced me to deal with the fact that I am TOO FAT, and it also maybe let someone else in on that secret, and I had managed for a while to keep that person in the dark much to his ongoing unfulfilled curiosity. So the current goal is to reverse the curse and lose a pound a week, which works out to a 500 calorie deficit a day, which is actually fairly decent.

Mapping out how long it will take me to reach certain goals is a little disheartening, but I'm just trying to think about it like I think about money. It's also a little disheartening to see how long it will take to get to our liquid savings goals, pay off students loans, be able to deck out the house the way we want while keeping up with maintenance, etc., but it's not like there is a realistically faster way to do it, and giving up because of that won't get you there any faster. Having some discipline makes a notable dent in these goals.

Likewise, the last week or so, having some discipline to get to 500 has made a measurable dent. 500 is a very manageable amount. It's pretty easy to get 250 calories worth of exercise in, and it's pretty trivial to cut 250 calories out of food intake. It's also small enough that considering temptations provide a very clear visual of a huge chunk of that 500 getting knocked out.

In terms of exercise, I generally manage to get up early 2-3 times per week to sleepwalk on the elliptical bike. I got a power adapter for it so that it can kick my ass in a variety of exciting ways, and now it also plays my iPod. I turn out the lights and drowse out to whatever music floats my boat that particular day, and as the resistance increases, I just go slower and pretend that I'm swimming through increasingly-dense goo. I probably look insane, which is why I need an elliptical in the safety of my home. Once the half hour is over, I'm relatively awake. It's light outside by the time I'm done, although that will be decreasingly the case. It's not a bad start to the day, but I don't think it provides me with a notable boost of energy throughout the day.

But I only get up early if I get to bed early enough (and don't have to leave early to go downtown, like I had to today and yesterday) because, let's face it, sleep is more important than exercise in the morning. There is a clear dose-response relationship between sleep and energy/happiness for me.

On the weekend, there is lots to do around the house. Two weekends ago I sawed a tree branch into firewood, clipped some bushes, and weeded a flower bed. Last weekend I scraped paint. I find this sort of physical activity to be very pleasing because there is obvious visual accomplishment.

I also like walking with Joey after dinner, although this only seems to happen in fits and starts when the weather is nice. There is the complication of dinner digestion that makes the timing less than optimal, but moving around in the evening is easiest because body temperature is highest that time of day.

Foodwise I'm just trying to 1) bring lunch and not be an idiot if I happen to get lunch from the cafeteria; 2) reduce alcohol consumption; 3) reduce nighttime chocolate milk consumption to not every night; 4) not eat things that don't excite me just because they're in front of me, especially lousy bread products.

We'll see how it goes.

Conditions

2010-06-20T16:56:00.003-05:00

When it's all said and done, maybe I'll post about our house saga, although it occurred to me that talking about house stuff is kind of like talking about medical stuff -- it's only really interesting to the person going through it and possibly to others going through the same thing who want to commiserate.

Denver

2010-05-04T15:40:00.002-05:00

What a blah place! All this time I was so not missing out.

This is not a commentary on the rest of Colorado, which seems to be mountainous and lovely. Although this weekend it was damn cold and dry.

The cold and dry contrasted quite shockingly with the hot mugginess still present last night when we returned at midnight.

****

I'm thinking about the Bandquet, since it's tonight and the kids are excited. Ten thousand stories beginning and ending.

Exposure therapy

2010-04-14T09:29:00.002-05:00

At the grant workshop I went to a few weeks ago, the instructor said that when you get a grant review back and have to rewrite it, to read it, put it the drawer, read it the next day, put it back, and repeat until you stop having noxious feelings about reading the comments.

I'm not quite there yet.

I started today by making an Excel spreadsheet to put the comments and my thoughts. I got through the first reviewer's comments before I had to stop. There are a lot of different kinds of audiences in the social sciences, especially around the issue of stigma, and the first reviewer was in a different audience than I'm generally part of.

Rejection!

2010-04-13T13:33:00.003-05:00

Aargh, getting manuscripts is soooo depressing and I'm just going to go aaaaarrrrrrgh for a little while until I get it all out and get over it and send it somewhere else. Aaaaaaarrrrrrgh.

Actually, the process for this particular journal was very efficient. The assigned editor sent a few questions for me to resolve before she sent it out for review (and even getting to review is a good sign from this journal -- they do a quick reject on stuff they're sure they don't want). From the time she sent the paper out, it only took 8 weeks for 3 reviews to come back and get assembled and sent to me. That's pretty good.

The reviews fell into 3 categories, in descending usefulness: 1) Suggestions for reorganization or clarification; 2) Comments about flaws in the study design; and 3) Suggestions for lengthy additions, even though the paper was already right at the word limit (and it's not really that kind of paper).

In the first category, it's always useful to know what doesn't make sense to other people or what is incompletely described, even if it sometimes seems like maybe people didn't read closely. If people are missing something important, it usually means the presentation can be better.

The second category is difficult, because you can't change the study design once it's done, but reviewers ought to keep deficient studies out of the literature, but not every study can be perfect. I can try to do the best job possible of hedging my conclusions and implications with a nod to the study flaws.

The third category just annoys me. Are you really asking for the intro to be as long as a dissertation chapter? Because maybe you should flip through the journal and notice that most intros are a few paragraphs, and refer to the author instructions for the word count. If I add that, what would you suggest I cut? Some suggestions in this category can be used, but a lot of them have to be ignored, because the reviewer is asking for a different paper from a different author with different skills.

I did not run into a major aggravation of these kinds of review processes, which is when some half of reviewers love the paper and think it's the seminal contribution to the field this decade and the other half just can't hate you and your stupid paper enough and they hope you find some other calling please. All three reviewers in this case settled on the same level of kindly phrased but significant disdain. And it was also clear that all three reviewers spent serious time on the paper, which I appreciate.

(WRT my last post, I did get the med bump [which is actually the start of another entire post about doctor-patient communication and clinical decision making], which is why I'm actually so glib and resilient about this rejection, instead of deeply depressed and funked out like I would have been 6 months ago. Although I reserve the right to moments of pouting/hedonistic release for the rest of the day).

Hypo

2010-03-30T13:09:00.002-05:00

I'm beginning to suspect that I really do need an adjustment to my meds, as I'm starting to feel that haziness again.

But I feel a lot better this afternoon now that I decided to do my work standing up. I need a treadmill desk!

NJ this weekend! I'm still lobbying the boy to take Friday off so we can have an extra day.

Madness

2010-03-16T21:30:00.002-05:00

I didn't ever get sick, but I did feel the pinnacle of a creeping crappiness that seems to be my body having adjusted to the thyroid meds and asking for seconds. We'll see what the doc says. I did manage to salvage the afternoon, but it was looking pretty dreary there for a bit. A giant coffee and chatting with a student cleared the fog enough for me to get some real work done.

Since you all provide me with ample vacation days, and the private sector so few for Joe, I have extras to take for things like HOOPS! I will be spending Thursday and Friday on an exotic vacation on my couch, with the TV and multiple computers on. Lobos don't play until 10pm Thursday, so I'll have to pace myself.

Monday at home

2010-03-08T13:04:00.002-05:00

My pumpkin is sick. He thought he was having a case of nerves yesterday, but his interpretation of a fluttery stomach and weak knees changed when chills entered the picture. He managed to eat a few things today, as his knotted stomach loosens a bit.

I had a slight fever yesterday afternoon, but nothing has come of it so far. Who knows how long he was subclinical before all hell broke loose, however, so I won't feel in the clear until a few days go by. I opted to work from home, out of a desire to be able to pet him on the head and feed him applesauce, but also because of anxiety that I would suddenly want to die and have to take the bus home (I guess I could have driven today... not that driving and feeling like hell is so much better). I even had a dream that I was on my way to work on the J1 and started to feel crappy.

Better to work from home. It loosens things up. The only thing I really have available to work on happens to be the only thing I really ought to be working on, that I have been productively procrastinating for a while. At home, things feel more relaxed, which helps me overcome the anxious perfectionism I've been having about this paperwork, the human subjects forms for the study I want to do. I haven't worked out all the details, so every time I would go to fill out something, I would be paralyzed by all the things I don't know. In my big poofy sweatshirt at home, I feel free to put whatever crap I have in mind in the field, knowing I can come back to it later.

30

2010-03-06T12:16:00.003-05:00

Wednesday, I took the day off, because I had to go to the MVA and renew my driver's license, and I figured I might as well enjoy the day. It was drizzly, but not that cold out. I got my number, and as I waited, I realized my license said "Sex: M." Somehow I had missed this when it was first issued and again when I got a replacement after returning from Malawi! I chalk it up to the long wait at the Baltimore MVA, when I just would want to get through the process instead of scrutinizing the information.

Now the MVA enters your social security number, so if you don't have one and try to get a renewal, too bad! I pointed out the gender error to the clerk, and the system also popped up an alert when she entered my SSN that my sex at birth did not seem to match the sex on my license. It was a relatively easy matter to return to being female in the eyes of the motor vehicle administration.

I posted on facebook that when I turned 20, most professional athletes were older than me, and now that I'm turning 30, most are younger. I had been watching the Olympics and noticing the young ages of athletes about whom the commentators were speculating would be participating in their last Olympics or maybe eking out one more. I guess maybe it's better to be considered young for one's field.

Thirty strikes me as a very adult age, no longer part of the 20s when you can run around semi-adolescent still. I guess I've already been at that life stage somewhat, but there are a few things left to attain before I really feel age appropriate. But they'll be coming soon, little by little.

Last night we tried to go to TGIFriday's for happy hour, only to find it jam packed full of people. This was shocking, but I guess we shouldn't be shocked. Everything around here is like that. Things you think couldn't possibly be appealing are crowded, and things that you actually might think people would like are completely jammed and overflowed. Joe thought about going to the new bagel shop this morning, but the thought of driving to it and trying to park and then trying to deal with all the people that would be in there was too much. He made pancakes, and they were lovely and non-aggravating.

Finally it is sunny outside and the snow has mostly melted, so we can put some things in the shed that have been hogging space in the living room. I have kind of a long list of chores for the weekend, but it seems okay.

Oh, Canada

2010-02-28T19:03:00.002-05:00

The Dukes played in the Pacific Coast League, which, at the time, also featured teams from Edmonton and Calgary (and maybe Vancouver? says Wikipedia). As regular attenders of Duke's games in the late 1980s and 1990s, we regularly got to hear "Oh Canada" along with the US national anthem. To this day, I kind of enjoy busting it out, as it is both nostalgic and eminently more singable than our anthem.

I was hoping to catch the men's hockey final, but I promised Joe I would do the grocery shopping as he was overwhelmed with other stuff, like getting a birthday present for moi and cleaning the awful bathroom and writing a grant. I decided to go to Trader Joe's, which was a huge mistake, partly because it was so insane like everything around here, but also because they had neither appropriate linguine nor basil, making tonight's pesto dinner kind of impossible. So I also had to go to the supermarket. And I had gone to CVS beforehand to get toothpaste, because I thought that plus TJ's would be enough stops. But I could have gotten all the stuff I got there at the supermarket.

Everything is way too difficult around here. There are too many people for not enough good things.

Christmas

2010-02-19T20:48:00.002-05:00

You know, I have heard it said that in New Mexico, if you want both red and green chile on your food, you can say "Christmas," but I'm pretty sure everyone I knew growing up would just say "both."

It has also come to my attention that people might not know you can order jarred goodness from El Pinto's website. Recently I procured the medium mix box which has red chile sauce, green chile, green chile sauce, salsa, chipotle salsa, and taco salsa. All delicious. The gringos can get most of these in mild, the brave in hot. I had never had the red chile before -- it's really good. Put it on eggs or pork or a spoon!

I'm feeling a ton better today, and since I feel so much better relative to yesterday, I FEEL GREAT! even though I probably feel worse than your average day. It's all relative. Like all the weather folks around here talking about the balmy weekend we'll have in the low 40s, even though the average this time of year is closer to 50. It's just been a lot colder out this week. Like Christmas!

Sick at home

2010-02-18T16:55:00.002-05:00

The commute home Tuesday was hellish, leaving me standing out in the cold in Silver Spring for about 45 minutes just to get the last mile home. Yesterday and today I've been sleeping and vegging -- I wish I had this cold last week while I was already home, because I could really stand to get some work done. Joe is bringing me soup tonight. I hope I can get in tomorrow.

Discipline

2010-02-16T15:59:00.002-05:00

I feel a cold abrewin', and my head is pretty foggy. But unlike in the past, I have gotten quite a lot done today. Both the physiological and behavioral changes I've made have given me a lot more discipline and focus to stick to the task at hand, even if I feel a little slow.

I'm now trying to apply discipline elsewhere, like to food consumption and energy expenditure. And flossing.

OPM FAIL: Commuter hell

2010-02-12T10:40:00.003-05:00

I don't ride Metrorail, but by all accounts, it was not really ready to take hundreds of thousands of Feds and others who follow OPM snow rulings to work this morning. I got to my bus stop (sidewalks in Downtown Silver Spring were pretty good), and the J3 pulled up, which was surprising since they were only supposed to be running J2. NextBus said the J1 (much faster route to work) was coming in 8 minutes, so I decided not to take the J3.

NextBus then proceeded to show the wackiest series of arrival times for the next 40 minutes or so. 8 minutes, then 6, back to 8, 7, 6, 8, 6, 9, 7, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... and then the bus (which approaches as a Z9 at the end of its run) zipped on by. Despair. But it came back around 5 minutes later. I could have ridden the long bus and gotten in around the same time (and been warmer). The bus was pretty jammed the whole way to work. Where nothing was really shoveled. The base almost never gets around to shoveling the outside sidewalk for days (good neighbors). There was a path shoveled, except there was a huge mound of snow right in the middle. Mostly I had to walk in the road. If the base can't get its act together and clear the sidewalks they should close or at least email everyone so we can opt to work from home.

After all that, I needed second breakfast, a blueberry muffin and more coffee.

It's not easy to focus this morning, but I'm sure I'll get in the swing of things. Usually we get 59 minutes off at the end of the day before a 3-day weekend, but I have a feeling that is not going to happen today. The only reason I came in was for a seminar on the new NIH grant format given by our esteemed VP for research -- it hasn't been cancelled, which is a good thing.

I wish I could be somewhere warm.

Away from work

2010-02-11T17:02:00.002-05:00

What have I done for four days since I haven't been to work? I did do a little work, but only very little. Monday I caught up on TV (LOST!), Tuesday I cleaned, yesterday I talked on the phone to my dad and a colleague and watched LOST, and today I went grocery shopping and helped with shoveling a little. I poked around the internet for as long as I wanted. It doesn't seem like very much.

It seems like kind of a waste. I'd like to be on a beach somewhere. Hell, at this point, I'd like to sit in a restaurant somewhere. Grocery shopping didn't really cure the cabin fever.

A whole lotta snow

2010-02-06T10:13:00.003-05:00

These are from inside this morning... with 8 hours to go on the snowstorm.

The power didn't go out all night, but right when we got up it went off for several minutes. Pepco is reporting 89K+ customers without power, and over in the Potomac zip codes there are more people without power than with it right now.

I'm concerned about the way that tree is hugging our car.

Even though it's still snowing, I'm going to head out after coffee and shovel, shovel, shovel. And try to get the snow off that tree.

Snowy snow, more than the other snows

2010-02-05T10:34:00.002-05:00

Things in the DC area have been pretty crazy this year.

The weekend before Christmas it snowed around 16-18 inches, which was a lot. The feds shut down on the Monday, and I worked from home the Tuesday and Wednesday because I knew the sidewalks would be terrible (they were -- one friend broke his leg and a coworker broke her wrist trying to get around). Then we went off for the holiday.

Last Saturday it snowed a big fluffy icy snow that you could just push with the shovel, and Tuesday night a warmer wetter snow that melted quickly off the roads and sidewalks. But this weekend, we're in for a predicted 16-26 inches of heavy wet snow.

It hasn't arrived just yet, but we're all waiting at home or on the way home.

I have a half day today, which I'm spending at home. I haven't started it quite yet, but I have two things to do: look over a grant application for a doctoral student and submit my dissertation paper to a big name journal in my field, who I hope will not kick it back to me immediately. Although that's better than the journals that hang onto it for months before saying no.

Life has been a lot better since I had my thyroid problem identified and fixed. Days I used to spend trying to read, trying to poke at writing that needed to get done, trying to edit, I now spend pushing different projects forward. I didn't used to be able to turn to a task and spend half and hour or an hour making progress. It would take half an hour to even figure out what I was doing, and by then I was too tired to do it. You never really understand just how bad you were feeling until you feel better, and the contrast is complete.

Today I'll do those two things, and maybe by then there will be snow to shovel. Joe wants a snowblower, for his collection of outdoor toys, but I like to shovel snow, to clear the path.

Working from home

2010-01-14T18:42:00.003-05:00

Is bad, because I spend too much of the day doing the dishes and exercising and futzing around.

Is great, because once I actually get down to business, I complete things I haven't been able to make myself focus on for months.

Home wins!

I-tee

2010-01-13T22:00:00.002-05:00

I wish I could hug the whole country and make it better. It's not fair at all. Tragedy should spread itself out at least a little, but it always seems to strike hardest in the same places. What an awful nightmare.

I sent money to Partners in Health. It feels like so little. I wish I had a hospital boat.

Thyroxine

2010-01-09T11:08:00.003-05:00

For a while now I had been having problems focusing on work. The structure of the end of grad school was partly to blame -- with a whole unstructured day in front of you, it's pretty easy to watch 4 West Wing episodes and think you'll still have time to work later in the day. But it became increasingly difficult to concentrate even if I was really trying. I felt foggy and stupid and lethargic, and I began to wonder if I was depressed.

I was depressed, and stupid, and lethargic, and so I went to the doc. She ordered a thyroid test, which came back borderline high on the TSH and normal on the thyroxine levels, but also a thyroid antibody test that came back positive, meaning my body is trying to take out my thyroid. I started up on thyroxine pills in mid-December and immediately felt better. It was probably a placebo effect at first, relief to know why I'd been feeling so bad. But I've continued to feel a lot clearer in the head since then.

I'd had a thyroid test years ago, but I think stupid Hopkins didn't order the antibody test. Who knows how much earlier I could have staved off these symptoms if the full round of tests had been ordered.

A

2010-01-05T12:12:00.003-05:00

I started signing my emails as just "A" in college. It probably seemed to have some kind of stylistic motivation, but, honestly, I have the worst time typing my name. It's qwerty unfriendly. I often capitalize the second letter. For something that should have a lot of muscle memory attached to it, I sure screw it up in a lot of new ways.

Back in MD

2010-01-03T15:30:00.002-05:00

The house is cold, but the TV is big and has football on it.

Work is tomorrow.

Also, my knees are way sore today after doing squats yesterday. Like, I can't even walk.

Worst paper ever

2010-01-02T11:41:00.002-05:00

Every time I flip through The Trentonian I feel brain cells dying.

Once there was a way

2010-01-01T16:07:00.002-05:00

Last year, I didn't mind so much being up in NJ for the holidays. But this year I've missed home a lot more. Even though I've had fun here.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T11:58:00.006-05:00

Happy New Year! I'm resolving to post more and play a lot more video games in 2010.

Yesterday we trekked over to Halo Farms for ice cream and came back through the rougher parts of Trenton, accidentally. We had delicious dinner at Villa Mannino, and later on proceeded to gobble up almost a whole pint of ice cream. When midnight rolled around, Joe didn't want to crack open the champagne, so we had ginger ale in champagne glasses instead. I also watched more Three Stooges yesterday than I ever had previously, and it turns out I didn't hate them!

The thing about this New Year is that it marks the occasion of me being almost 30, and given that the last decade rollover feels like yesterday, the next one will be here soon enough, and I'll be almost 40! But I'll put that aside to focus on the current day.

Actually a thing

2009-12-30T22:10:00.002-05:00

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

2009-11-12T16:43:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-23T14:13:00.002-05:00

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

2009-09-02T18:39:00.001-05:00

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

2009-08-26T12:22:00.002-05:00

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

2009-06-21T11:16:00.002-05:00

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

2009-06-19T14:55:00.002-05:00

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!

2009-06-17T13:52:00.002-05:00

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

2009-06-04T12:32:00.004-05:00

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

2009-05-27T13:13:00.002-05:00

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

2009-03-16T16:08:00.002-05:00

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

2009-03-04T12:08:00.004-05:00

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

2009-03-02T11:23:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-27T18:34:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-20T12:41:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-12T13:37:00.003-05:00

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

2009-01-08T15:59:00.003-05:00

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

Just read my tables.

The conundrums caused by doublespeak

2009-01-07T16:30:00.004-05:00

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

2009-01-07T14:30:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-07T14:15:00.003-05:00

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

2009-01-06T16:37:00.003-05:00

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!

2009-01-06T11:29:00.003-05:00

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

2009-01-01T13:48:00.002-05:00

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.

Validation

2008-12-30T17:20:00.002-05:00

I like it when what I think is true about the world is corroborated by a much more systematic view of the literature. I always have this fear I'm missing some major article, and it appears I'm not when it comes to HIV-related stigma.

I took a break from data analysis (which I'm redoing in a different way) because I just hit total frustration with the way some of this data works out... there's a question on the survey about whether the respondent used a condom the last time they had sex followed very shortly by a question asking how often the person uses condoms. You would not believe the number of people who say they used a condom last time but then say they never use condoms and, worse, the number who say they didn't use a condom last time followed by saying they always use condoms. OMG, are you not listening to your own answers! Never mind the big hunk of missing data I can't account for at all, other than people didn't want to answer the question.

So instead I'm reading, because that is way less frustrating and I have a huge pile.

Vacation has been good so far. We've mostly been bumming around, eating and shopping. We've re-devoted ourselves to making our way through the Sopranos (I already watched it all, but Joey has not). We're not doing anything fancy for New Year's Eve, just going to a tasty local Italian joint and then partying at home.

The New Year will bring attempts at: 1) real weight loss; 2) getting these manuscripts out the door because they are actually going to fill some gaps in the literature; 3) writing up a real research plan for my next study instead of having some vague notions of what might be nice.

Seriously

2008-12-18T12:31:00.002-05:00

Data analysis has to be done carefully. Otherwise it has to be redone. And redone.

Chrome!

2008-12-16T15:44:00.003-05:00

Holy hell is Google Chrome so much better than the ancient broken version of IE that is installed on my work computer! It's probably also better than the newer version that ought to be on here. I'm just glad it installed without the need for admin privs... I'm just going to assume I'm not breaking any regs by using a more secure browser. Seriously, though, try it out if you haven't already. It's so fast.

I'm still working on this damn paper. Instead of writing, which is what I thought I'd be doing today, I fired up SPSS to check some things in the analysis. Oh, there are so many things in the analysis that bother me, now that I actually look at it. I'm going to try to tidy some things, but I don't think the analysis will change substantially. SPSS is extremely easy to use, but there are some places where I'm looking for functionality that exists in Stata and I'm not finding it. It may be that I just don't know what I'm doing, but it's also likely that SPSS is just not super sophisticated.

I'm glad I'm going over the paper with a fine-toothed comb, however... there are some clear wtf moments that I think reviewers might notice.

This week is going by a little too slowly for my tastes. I really can't wait to get out of town.

Buttons!

2008-12-14T16:43:00.003-05:00

One of the buttons popped off my coat late last winter season, and I just ignored it (despite how dumb it looked) until another button popped off last week (with a third button looking pretty shady). Now, it would help immensely if I hadn't gotten so, well, immense since I purchased the coat. It's now a snug fit. This morning I saw that Amazon had coats on sale, and nearly decided just to buy a new coat.

But in these internetting times there's really no excuse for not making such an easy repair -- I figured out everything I needed to know online in about 10 minutes, I dug up some sewing floss (threads wound together for things like cross-stitch so you can actually see it) and got those three buttons back on there good. Success! So now my coat works again, even though it's still a little snug, but that's a different problem.

Last night we went to Baltimore for a number of social activities. We met up at Maggie's with Joe's soc friends, and then we went to dinner for my friend's birthday (which was actually Monday, but she had horrible grant writing to do all that day). Then Joe and I went back to Maggie's before going back home. Baltimore is great when you spend 2/3 of your time there at Maggie's. Today we went grocery shopping, thus getting maximum utility out of the ZipCar. I'm kinda missing having my own car, though, and I'm pondering whether to get it fix now that it's been a few months since the last repairs, instead of an insulting three weeks. I still wouldn't drive it to work, since that commute is very hard on a car and the bus is easy enough (when it comes predictably) and gives me exercise. But it'd be nice to have it for errands and such. I dunno, we'll see.

This week is the last actually at work, and then I'm going to NJ for 2 weeks! I have to "work at home" three days in there somewhere, which should be easy enough with Joe hacking away at his dissertation. It should be otherwise relaxing.

R.I.P. H.M.

2008-12-05T10:37:00.000-05:00

Henry Gustav Molaison, thanks for the memories!

Mid-week

2008-12-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

I'm already looking forward to the next vacation! I want some more eggplant!

The ceiling has finally been fully restored to my office, so I think they must be completely done in here. Nothing is coming out of the heater despite my requests to the thermostat I now have in here, but it's not actually that cold -- I'm just a big baby. Now that I have a ceiling and no evening visitors to wreck my stuff, I reassembled my lamp (I hid it in a drawer because it was constantly being moved, including once out into the hallway). During the ceiling mess they installed a motion sensor on my light, which would be useful if I had a strong interest in using my light. Now that I have a ceiling for the lamp to reflect off of, I'd prefer to go back to that. I had to cover the sensor so that the overhead fluorescent grossness wouldn't click on everytime I wiggled in my chair. Now my office is cozy again.

Too cozy... I'm feeling sleepy.

I need to get this paper out the door. It really just needs some updates, but I'm finding myself tortured by some of the language we used in the paper, which is slowing me down some. Also the abstract is deeply flawed, and I don't understand why journals only give you 150 words. Gotta get pithy, I guess.

And I usually like red

2008-11-30T16:02:00.003-05:00

Starbucks is doing this Red campaign thing where they donate $.05 for every eligible drink you buy to combat HIV/AIDS. But they're pitching it as some reason to get more coffee than you usually would. How about you just donate your $2-4 to a decent HIV foundation or NGO instead of buying extra coffee?

I think the train is going to be nuts this evening. But I got my lecture done and mailed out for tomorrow, so I can just relax and read magazines.

Victory!

2008-11-29T14:26:00.002-05:00

Seats opened up on an early evening train tomorrow, so we get to goof off tonight as late as we want and still get home at a reasonable hour tomorrow!

This means I better work on that lecture, though...

Saturday already?

2008-11-29T12:56:00.002-05:00

Thursday was pretty much the usual family craziness. A lot of eating and drinking! We were all at Joe's parents' house for Thanksgiving, and for Christmas we'll go to the shore.

Yesterday Joe and I went out around 2:30, and it was still pretty nuts at the centers of shopping. I feel like when we went out last year to the outlets, it was dead because everyone went super early. I got some presents for the boy (which he pretty much saw/brought to my attention in the first place), but the deals weren't good enough yet for personal shopping. We came home and then went out to dinner at Villa Mannino, where we ordered our usual vodka rigatoni and eggplant parm. So delicious.

I don't know what we're up to yet today, but I'm sad we have to leave so early tomorrow morning. I checked the trains last night to see if we could switch to other options, but the entire middle of the day is booked, and everything is much more expensive than what I paid for the tickets. It's okay, I have to finish up a lecture for the proposal/project class for Monday, and it'll be easier to do it at home than on vacay.

I can't work when it feels like vacation, whereas the boy can poke at his dissertation whenever he has five minutes (which he usually stretches to ten or more, as I wait around). That's either healthy or tenure-killing.

In da Jerz for turkey day

2008-11-26T17:21:00.002-05:00

The train was pretty awful last night... we took the last one out, and it was 2 hours late into the station, but they switched engines fast so we were only ("only") an hour late out, so we got to Trenton by 2 am. We pretty much instantly collapsed upon reaching home.

Today we went to Mastoris and then did very little. I even took a nap.

This stuff in India is very bad.

I think tomato pie is on the roster for tonight.

Counting down

2008-11-24T21:35:00.002-05:00

I can't wait to go to NJ tomorrow night and have some vacay!

Today went by fast, since I had meetings straight through until 2:30. We're searching for a new chair (maybe... the search includes the current chair, who retired from the PHS, triggering a new chair search, because bureaucracy is awesome), so today and tomorrow there are meetings with the candidates and their job talks. Today I also gave the first half of my scintillating wisdom on survey design and implementation. Busy days are good because they move me quickly to vacay!

Tomorrow I'm going to try to shlep to the Comcast place up in Rockville so they stop charging me for the cable box I'm not using. It requires all sorts of transit.

I had to stop watching Hardball tonight because it's become all about the depressing economic situation. The election was way more fun!

Go Harvard! Beat yale!

2008-11-22T11:40:00.003-05:00

1) I'm sad to miss the H-y game. This is the first season I didn't make it to a football game.

2) Then again, 23F feels like 14F? Maybe I'm not that sad to miss it. Jameson can only do so much.

It's cold here in the DC area too (although still about 10 degrees warmer). I think today is going to involve staying inside under the electric blanket and tomorrow I'll go out shopping when it's warmer.

I guess I should also finish my slides on survey methods.

Today is annoying

2008-11-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

My bus never came, as far as I can tell (I was late, but there were people waiting there when I arrived). The long bus came and promptly ate my $5 that I tried to add to my SmarTrip card that will have $30 whenever the transfer from my old broken card happens (after which I have to do some magic incantation at a Metro stop machine to get it into the card). Then the bus sat at the stop for ages.

Comcast raised the DVR price just a month or so after I ordered it. They also started charging all kinds of crazy fees that I think must be because I haven't returned the old box because I don't have an easy way to get all the way out to far out Rockville (public transit take like a half hour from work, I just discovered). They're charging me like $6/month for the box to sit in a corner collecting dust.

It's effing cold out and I'm tired.

Shows

2008-11-20T22:55:00.002-05:00

Pushing Daisies is great and I really don't want it to get cancelled.

The Office... oh! So cute! I have such life stage congruence with that show right now.

Fixed my chair!

2008-11-20T13:58:00.000-05:00

A week or so ago, I set out to determine why my office chair was so damn uncomfortable. The seat was all pitched forward, and I couldn't get it to move. Today I opted for the brute force step-on method, and it worked! Now I don't have to scheme how to make this chair blend into a conference room when I swap it for one of the nice chairs there.

Bureaucracy

2008-11-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

I need a computer that is not only way more functional than this clunker on my desk but that is also filled with delicious statistical software, so I can, like, do stuff. Research office folks say that comes from finance; department chair says it comes out of my startup funds, which research office is currently holding in an unknowable status.

I'm determined to push this paperwork through the system! I finished it a long time ago!

In other news, my office still has no ceilings, but I've started to be able to tune out much of the surrounding office chatter. It remains absolutely freezing, however. I hope today's faculty meeting is in a warmer room. I'm going to have to bring my new electric blanket into work.

I got my blood drawn Tuesday for a variety of tests, and all was normal except that I have high total cholesterol. Five years ago when I was participating in the diet study, I had totally low cholesterol. It's gone up like 70 points! Then again, I am a lot fatter. But I've lost weight since I started incorporating like 3 miles of walking into my commute, right? False. I'm not eating any more than I was, as far as I can tell. It's bs.

I just found out today that the Prez might possibly maybe give us feds the day after Christmas off. This would help a lot in my pusuit of 2 weeks away from the office with only 4 accrued vacation days. I'm excited to go to the Jerz for Thanksgiving next week, despite my disbelief that it's already next week!

This just in: As of tonight, all USB storage devices aren't going to work on any of our computers. Awkward. I don't know why DOD cna't put us on our own network so we can act like a University.

Ask a lot, give a lot, get a lot

2008-08-13T11:11:00.006-05:00

Today was the last day of class, and I've gotten some really nice comments from people about the course and my work. Most of them include some version of "it was hard," but that this was not necessarily a downside. I got a little feedback before the class suggesting that I may want to dampen my expectations of the class, that I might be demanding too much. But this experience, building on my prior experience, is that high expectations -- not just asking for a lot but also communicating the expectation that the students are capable of pushing themselves to achieve a lot -- are generally more associated with good classes than setting an expectation of easiness. A key element to making that equation work, however, is giving a lot: I worked my ass off to get this course together, and it showed.

I hated in grad school when the professor would say, "Oh, I fully expect everyone to get an A in this course if they work hard" or "Oh, this class is pretty low-key." Maybe there was some social desirability issue there (like me! like me!) or some attempt not to scare off people from other departments. I hated even more the courses where the professor didn't seem prepared or didn't seem to care about getting the syllabus up on the web by the first day or about providing extra help to students who wanted it.

The best courses were those in which the professor was prepared -- or at least apologetic when things weren't quite up to speed, which happens -- and in which the bar was set high. My advisor's class is a great example of this, and I completely stole his grading philosophy: A perfectly competent job will get you a B. To get an A, you have to show innovation, mastery, and a strong sense of having pushed yourself to think things through. Instead of wondering and whining about points getting taken off from 100, people worried instead about how to add points to the defaul tof 85, how to go above and beyond. The grade distributions ended up pretty similar in the end, but the actual product and process of creating it was vastly different.

I think another characteristic that comes from giving a lot and asking a lot is that it engenders a lot of mutual respect. You don't ask a lot out of people when you don't have a lot of respect for them. Students know that, and they reflect back the respect they intuitively feel themselves receiving.

So, I'm sure not all the evaluations will be glowing, but I'm certain that the criticisms will reflect a norm of high expectations (you've done a lot and we know you can do more) and a tone of respect.

Teaching is hard, but fun

2008-07-22T19:58:00.002-05:00

Teaching is going well, all things considered. The class is really working hard. This first go feels like a rough draft, though: everyday I think of a ton of ways to improve it for next year. More when I'm not buried under grading (note to self: next year, halve the homework assignments).

Busy bees

2008-07-02T15:12:00.002-05:00

Things have been busy, with moving and planning my class and all. Moving is always painful; combining households into a place with no storage is doubly so; not getting all your friends to help shlep boxes is triply so. But the commute to work is greatly reduced and much more pleasant. It's good to get out of Baltimore.

Today I had lunch with the boss. She liked my syllabus a lot and said she could tell it was a lot of work, which made me feel happy, because it was a lot of work, and I really think it's pretty good. I borrowed a lot of readings and will borrow a lot of lecture points from the classes I took at JHSPH (particularly my advisor's class in terms of grading philosophy and the final paper), but I think I managed to synthesize a wide range of important stuff. It's been a fun exercise, because working on the dissertation gets you so drilled down into one topic, it's nice to have to go back and think about the entire field again with a more experienced eye.

Making lectures is hard, though.

Submitted!

2008-06-20T16:24:00.002-05:00

I ran around like a crazy person today trying to get my dissertation submitted. First I had to make some last-minute updates to the Table of Contents (utilizing the This Page Left Unintentionally Blank technique for a figure I removed so I wouldn't have to get copyright permission for it). Then I had to find acid-free paper. The campus bookstore had two sad little 100-page packs (good for one manuscript, but I needed two on acid-free), but they kindly directed me to printing services on the outskirts of campus. Paper secured I printed one copy and took it to the library, where it was deemed okay by the very nice woman in the binding office.

I came home to print the other three copies, with time running short on the 4pm deadline to get it in to the registrar. So, of course, right at the beginning of the last on the toner started going on the printer. I zoomed to Staples and back, printed the last copy, and jetted over to school, raging at traffic. But I got to the office at a quarter to four... and they asked if I could come back Monday, because the grad records person wasn't in. Which I knew, but I figured I could still drop it off. The other woman at the desk said, oh, write the check and we'll just put it on her desk and she'll send you a receipt later. Yay!

I went to the department to turn in a bunch of receipts and stuff. It was sort of sad because I won't be seeing people as often.

Then I got ice cream! Good thing they got an ice cream cart at school after I leave! I don't need it!

Happy Birthday, Army

2008-06-13T12:23:00.003-05:00

Today is the Army's birthday. I somehow got caught in the lobby where the cake was en route to the MPH graduation foodstuffs, and there was singing of Happy Birthday to the Army, and then the oldest and youngest members of the unit cut the cake with a big sword!

Dr. C in da hizzle

2008-06-09T18:14:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I passed. Defense went great; no committee members succumbed to stuffy hot sleepiness.

PhD!!!

25 minutes

2008-06-08T22:58:00.003-05:00

Okay, we're going for 25, and I feel fine with that. The confirmatory factor analysis results were a mess to try to present anyway, and I cut my interactions in half to the really interesting ones, so I probably have a better talk at the end of the day than when I thought I had 40 minutes.

The confusion is not mine

2008-06-08T22:36:00.002-05:00

My advisor was laboring under this notion that my thesis defense was not open to the public in any way (so a shorter talk would make sense, because why talk for 40 minutes to people who have read your dissertation). I feel like the department academic advisor: "Doesn't anyone read the handbook!" It's on the school calendar. I told everyone to come if they hadn't heard me blather already.

So maybe I'm talking for 40 minutes, maybe for 25, maybe for 10 if no outside people show up. Who knows! It's a mystery.

Don't bother to be prepared, kids, cuz you're just going to have to wing it anyway.

(Lest anyone think otherwise, my advisor is great... I'm just not very thrilled with this misunderstanding).

Defense tomorrow

2008-06-08T13:20:00.003-05:00

So, I was all prepared for my defense and utterly unnervous about it as a result (esp given the context of having presented most of the material already to questioning audiences and of planning 22 lectures for my class). Then my advisor told me Friday that I should really cut my talk to 25 minutes from the 40 the committee chair had suggested when I emailed about it 10 days ago (for the purposes of, you know, having my act together), and then lectured me about not coming off as too casual. You know, casual like a three day lead time on advice about important parameters for my important talk when I emailed about it 10 days ago.

Goodbye grad school. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out of my life.

Crummy IS

2008-06-05T18:20:00.001-05:00

I haven't had internet at work all week. I called Monday, bothered them in person yesterday, but when I called again this morning, the woman told me the ticket hadn't even been assigned yet! Incompetence! I need to get my class ready!

Friday, oh Friday

2008-05-30T11:42:00.002-05:00

If you're reviewing a paper, before letting forth a spew of verbal diarrhea about all the things that you find confusing or weird about the paper, maybe you should try looking back at the paper to see if what you're confused about is actually explained. Thanks. People will have a lot more respect for your comments.

Of course, I'd also have a lot more respect for the positive reviews if they bothered to make comments instead of just scores.

My NCA paper landed in kind of a random panel that I'm sure will be perfectly lovely, but I think I'm going to let my advisor cover it, since he has other stuff going on for that conference and I'm keen on only one visit to San Diego this fall (if I'm going to bother going west, I have other places I want to and ought to go).

I've been working on both my thesis defense presentation and my class this week. The presentation is supposed to be 40 minutes, which is as long as I had for my job talk, but now I have so many other things to talk about also. I'm not really sure how it's all going to fit. In terms of class stuff, I've been perusing prior years and other syllabi from up the road and realizing that I have a pretty clear notion of the range of things that should be taught in an intro to SBS class. Of course there are more things that I can really fit, so I have to weed out some stuff. But it's nice to feel authoritative enough to have an independent opinion and to be able to critique and change how it's been done before instead of just having to copy it because I don't know what else to do.

Conferencing

2008-05-28T13:16:00.003-05:00

I'm back from Montreal. ICA was really great, and it's nice to go to a conference where theory is valued. Not that I ended up going to as many sessions as I wanted... there is always something shiny to do, like sleep or venture to Chinatown for lunch. It's also hard when you're presenting every day to get to much more than your own stuff, but that's why papers are posted online!

The first presentation, a grad student panel on the crazy world of international research, was really fun even if it wasn't well-attended. Mostly the Hopkins folk really like it and want us to do the panel at school, which I think would be great (I think stuff like that would always be great for department seminar, but no one has ever listened to me when I say that outside speakers are fab, but we also have cool people here).

The second session, with ye ol' Honduras theater paper that still isn't in a journal, also went well. I got a few questions, which was cool. It was first thing in the morning, though, so also not super heavily attended.

Top paper panel? Lots of people, because it's right before the health comm business meeting and reception. I was having a bad personal day, and the crowd was huge, so I felt like I nervously rushed through the talk, but it seemed to gather the second most number of questions after (mostly stuff that I'll be answering at NCA with my dissertation work). It wasn't my best talk, though.

In other news, please don't ride Amtrak's Adirondack to Montreal. It may be cheap, but unless you're traveling alone it's probably still the same price/cheaper to drive. It took us 12 hours each way to and from New York Penn Station. Horrible. On the way up we were stuck behind a group of 20 high school girls who never shut up. On the way back the bathroom smelled. The guy in the cafe car was awesome, though, and I did get a lot of magazines read.

As for future conferences, I got emails last night from APHA that one of my abstracts (main dissertation results) got a roundtable and the other (stigma measurement stuff) got a poster. I was sort of miffed at the lack of oral presentations, but then I got an email today that the roundtable abstract won best abstract on an international HIV/AIDS topic, so that's cool. I have to see where the NCA paper lands before deciding whether I'm going to both conferences. I dunno what's up with San Diego this year, but these conferences are a month apart there.

So, I'm back at the office today, feeling kind of refreshed. Rather, I think I felt stressed about presenting before I left, so I feel comparably better today. I also got more sleep in the past week (although not last night, since boy is still in NJ). My house is disgusting, though. I need to start looking for a new place and packing. I also need to get on damn Blackboard already (well, I'm on, just not attached to my course) so I can plan my class. I also need to get my thesis defense presentation together. Fun.

Winner!

2008-05-19T18:59:00.003-05:00

I won the department poster competition (in the doctoral category) today! I got a nice Hopkins photo frame and some notecards with the pretty hospital facade on them.

Still no word from NCA -- my advisor said not to worry since they had all kinds of problems sending out acceptance emails, but I still haven't heard and I thought they were going to work those out by today.

UPDATE: I just checked the website again, and they must still be having problems because they just posted a big ol' pdf of all the accepted papers. And mine is in!!!

Friday!

2008-05-16T14:57:00.003-05:00

I'm not being very productive at the moment... I finished my IRB stuff (which I've done before over the years, but every school makes you do it again), and then I've been poking at ICA logisitics, answering emails, etc. I'm feeling bummed because I think my dissertation-based paper didn't get accepted to NCA -- I heard about a panel I'd forgotten I was sort of on (my advisor is the presenter) last night but haven't received any word on my own paper. Depressing. I thought it was much better than either paper I'm presenting at ICA -- the measures are better, it's a friggin experimental design for gods' sake! Maybe I'm just sourpussing too soon and I'll hear this weekend.

I'm also grumpy because neither my advisor nor my boyfriend are emailing me back today. It's cold and boring in here, and I need email to get through! I stayed up past my bedtime last night at TV Night, so I'm real tired.

The commute remains bad. Yesterday I tried alternate routes, which were new and fun, but no faster. Good options to break up boredom. Today I got here and the parking garage was full, so I had to go park by the Navy Lodge. I can't wait to move.

Also

2008-05-14T15:01:00.001-05:00

The commute is horrible. It takes at least an hour if things aren't awful, but usually more than that. I wish I could move sooner.

Limbo

2008-05-14T14:53:00.003-05:00

Monday and Tuesday were pretty much what I expected: getting an ID badge, parking, touring the grounds, getting small amounts of work done, etc. Today all the weirdness hits home. I'm currently a contractor until I get my PhD and I can take the official federal job, so that's causing all sorts of delay in the sense that everything including the format of my email is based on this idea that I'm a 6 week contract employee instead of a real faculty member. Also, there are just other sorts of half states I'm dealing with. The computer that was in this office turned out to have a problem, so I'm using this older computer temporarily, which means I can't set it up how I like and I'm trying not to even save much to it -- it doesn't even have the latest version of IE or anything, so it really feels temporary. And finally, my office, while vastly cleaner than when I saw it during my interview, still has a ton of other people's leftover crap in it. I don't know when it's going away. I've moved the stuff I don't want over as much as possible so I have lots of empty shelves waiting for books and things, so that makes me feel better.

Finally, I seem to be at this weird social juncture in which orientation appears to be over but I'm not really feeling like I have all I need to move forward with things like my class (it would help if my Blackboard woudl get activated). Not that I don't have three conference presentations to prepare for next week, but still.

Ugh, editing

2008-05-11T15:53:00.002-05:00

So, I got my dissertation back from my advisor on Monday, and I was pleased to see that there weren't really any major overhauls I needed to do. But that means that instead I just have a bunch of piddly shit to slog through. Of course there are a few areas where I actually had to dig up a few articles, which is such a pain because it's a ton of time for like one paragraph. I hoped to get this out Friday, but I still have a giant list of things to do.

Not to mention redoing a ton of graphs because my advisor and I have complete opposite ways of reading and interpreting graphs (there's this one graph in a paper we have coming out that I always have to redraw because it's completely backwards to me).

I start work tomorrow, which should mostly be a day of logistics, like I-9 forms and email setups and stuff. I'm pretty excited. I'm not that excited about commuting for about 6 weeks, but I'll probably try to swing it so I can come in later and leave later after the first few days.