Denver

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.