Commuting sucks

I really don’t like having to drive so far to work every day. Not so much because of the price of filling up the car, but I don’t like my carbon foot print being so large. I liked being able to bike to the lab when I was both a grad student and a post doc. I didn’t bike that often when I was in MI, but I did it! It’s gotten better now that I am driving with someone down to work a few days a work, but sometimes I miss driving alone. I like having some time to listen to my books on CD and to practice my French with the Pimsleur CDs.

It is also difficult because we are both in a similar point in our careers, but it seems like we have completely different motivations for what we do. It is good to rehash the day’s goings on and to complain about our chairs and higher ups, but what I really want to talk about is science and cool new stuff that is happening in our respective areas.

I used to think I wanted to go into administration. I remember my first on-campus job in the office of one of the Vice Presidents. I thought it was such a cool job. I remember thinking that THIS was what I ultimately wanted to do.

HAH!

Now, all I’d really like to do is find the time to sit down and read a few papers. I just found a new one that might be relevant to what I am trying to do…

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja900909u

Look familiar anyone? (Curses! I have to wait until I get to work to access the journal!)

playin’ hooky

Mental health day!! Woo hoo!!

This is what I planned to do with my day:

• Wake up at about 10AM.
• Watch TV/read until about noon.
• Meet Husband for lunch.
• Garden/play in the yard.
• Watch TV/read until husband got home.
• Dinner and wine.

But this is what I actually did with my day:

I slept until 7:30. I was kind of pissed. Where was the whole sleep until noon thing? I really miss being in college sometimes. I could sleep until 4 or 5PM. Of course, that was usually after a really late night, but that’s not the point. The whole point of the day was to get some rest. But it wasn’t to be.

I had a nice breakfast. Cream cheese and lox and a homemade cappucino. And a book. I didn’t eat the book, just finished reading it.

I stalked the cats a little bit. Only Caymus would be still long enough for the photo shoot:

Can’t you just imaging him saying: “Out of my face. NOW.”

I waited around until the library opened and then ran some errands. One of the major tasks of the day was to finish putting up the deer fencing around the major garden areas but I was out of fencing. A few errands, a couple of French lessons in the car.

Before lunch with Hubby, there was enough time to take care of some long put off chores:

I polished my shoes. WOO HOO!!

After lunch, there was time for a quick stop at Home Depot for:

Seed shopping!! I decided to try to start some of my own plants this year. It was a pretty hard choice. But I settled on the boring:

Basil and sea lavender. I’m really excited about my cool new trays, but I think that I may be able to fake the planters next year. My eggs come in plastic trays about that size, with a cover and everything. If I can only remember to save a few of them.

At first, I thought that there was some fertilizer in the little pods:

But they were only in the basil pods. Basil seeds are black but when they get wet, they turn white. Either this is a good thing and I’m going to have a zillion little basil babies, or my basil seeds are moldy and we’re all going to die.

It’s a toss up.

At this point, I’d had enough of playing in little piles of dirt inside. The great outdoors was calling me.

I put up the deer fencing:

And installed the anti bird devices around the trees:

You can see the SNOW that we had last weekend. About six inches. I can’t wait for it to be gone.

Then came the really exciting part of the day. I cleaned and vacuumed my office.

WOO BOY. Hold on to your seats and call the press. The sad thing is that that little bit of work completely tired me out. I honestly thought I was going to have to take a nap. Instead, I played Word Racer and waited for Husband to come home and make me dinner.

With some wine:

And a(nother) book. And a cat.

I wish I could take another day off. Husband already made me promise that I wouldn’t work this weekend and I might actually honor that promise. I think some of my stress issues have been due to the fact that I’ve had to put off so much stuff at home. It was nice to get most of my “Mental Health Day Wish List” done, but there is still so much that I would like to do. Some are small things, some are large but when I started thinking about it, I would need a Mental Health Month to even come close to finishing it all off.

I delude myself and say “After tenure. I’ll have time after tenure.” But I know that it’s not true. AT just means more committees, more responsibility, more students, more more more. I love my job and I enjoy what I do, but I don’t like that I always need to give just a little bit more. I’m not content with the status quo. I am always tweaking things and looking for something that is just a little bit better.

I am torn. I want them to learn but I need to find a way to deal with the fact that if they don’t, IT ISN’T MY FAULT. Mental health days are fun, but I shouldn’t be driven to them because students don’t do well on an exam. Or because they don’t like chemistry. I do. Shouldn’t that be enough?

No trust in hermit crabs

The first week of classes is almost done. This is an odd semester for me. It’s the first time I’m not teaching organic chemistry. Weird. I’m teaching one of the lab sections though. I made a lot of changes to the lab schedule and I’m excited to see if they are going to work. The iodolactonization seemed to go OK. I saw a few of the NMR spectra and they looked sweet. Lots of splitting, beautiful integrations, and no impurities. It’s gonna be fun to try to interpret these!!

I am teaching two sections of general chemistry instead of my usual one. It’s kind of strange because I’m teaching them back to back. It’s funny to me to hear myself tell the same jokes right after each other. They didn’t laugh in either section. You think I’d learn my lesson the first time around.

I’ve already screwed up though. Twice.

I misspelled my name in my email address.

Not a bad thing really. Maybe it’ll mean less email…. But I doubt it.

I scared them to death on day one. I gave a “pretest” to see what they know about chemistry, if anything. Come to find out, they really don’t remember much from HS. I already had to talk someone down from the window ledge because of the test. (Figuratively speaking, of course!)

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I’ve been taking photos, but haven’t felt like uploading them from the camera. For some reason, attaching the cord has a huge activation energy right now. So for now, enjoy this photo of the a cat in a box:

I call it “Crabby in a Box.”

Get off my lawn, you whipper snappers!

I probably now have a reputation in the neighborhood as the crabby, crazy, cat lady.

There were some kids this morning who were playing in the snow in front of the house. I wouldn’t have minded too much if they were in the yard. But instead they were screwing around in the piles of snow around the edge of the driveway. When I looked out, they were throwing big chunks of it into the driveway. That, I couldn’t take.

I opened the door and didn’t quite yell at them, but asked them if I could help them with anything. They were very polite and said they were just playing in the snow, was that alright? Nope.

That’s right, folks. I told two boys that they couldn’t play in the snow in the front of my house.

I’m such a scrooge.