How do I know it’s time to get an iPhone?

My cell phone battery won’t hold a charge if I’m talking on the phone. All conversations must be 20 minutes or less. Then it’s immediately time to plug it in, justin case someone else tries to call.

Oh, and I was recommended for tenure!

I got the good news on Thursday. I really wanted to go out and celebrate but I hadn’t finished writing my final. And the whole fact that the final was the next day at 8AM. It really cut down on the possibility of a late night.

But I did take the weekend off. 100% off. Friends were over for dinner on Saturday. Today, I have done nothing worthwhile, besides fix holes in socks. I didn’t even cook dinner – we ate leftovers. It has been a blissful day of nothingness and sitting by the fire.

Of course, doing nothing today means that tomorrow I have to grade ALL DAY. I have to start planning for the Christmas party and finish decorating the house. And shop for Christmas. I’m late again this year.

Oh well. It’s been worth it for a nice, leisurely, lazy day.

All that glitters

I love sparkly, glittery things. Shirts with sparkles, dangly earrings, diamonds, Kleenex, whatever. Now that I am closer to 40 than 30, I try to rein in some of the sparkles. It really isn’t appropriate for me to be shopping in the children’s section of the store anymore, even if they have the best shirts.

Back when I was in high school and wearing WAY too much makeup, I bought some powder that said “Shimmers” on the label. WELL OF COURSE! This sounded like just the product for me. It wasn’t until I put it on and went to school and was out in the morning sun, during marching band practice, that I realized that shimmers=glitter all over my face. I’m sure I tried to rub it all off, but that episode further cemented my reputation on campus.

I pretty much stayed away from the glitter powder and makeup from then on.

Fast forward twenty years.

The other day, as I was getting ready for work, I noticed that I had a faint glitter on me, especially on my chest. I immediately flashed back to my HS days but was pretty sure I hadn’t bought any new makeup lately. I dismissed it as maybe there was residue on the towels from a shirt that had perhaps snuck in in the laundry. I didn’t really worry too much about it because – hey! It’s glitter!

The towels got switched out and I still had the faint sparkle. Now I’m starting to get a little concerned. As I starting to sweat something that is reacting with my clothes? I kept meaning to ask Husband if he was noticing glitter to see if it was laundry related but how do you bring up that subject with your spouse?

“So honey, have you noticed any rashes that look suspiciously like glitter?” I can just imagine his expression. He’s already worried about my sanity at times and this might just win me a trip to the padded room.

But thankfully, I figured out the problem before I had to ask any embarrassing questions.

One of my favorite body washes is the Oil of Olay Ribbons. Especially in winter, the extra moisturizers in there really help to keep me from looking like a lizard. I was in Meijer during the summer and found two bottles on clearance AND I had major coupons. Of course those babies are going home with me. I didn’t start using them for awhile because 1 – I’m cheap and already had an open bottle of soap in the shower and 2 – I forgot that I had them.

About two weeks ago, I pulled a new bottle out from under the sink. About the same time that I noticed my unusual glow.

Yup. My body wash has glitter.

I’m now trying to think of all the times that I work a V-necked or low cut shirt. One time jumps out in particular.

It was during my tenure interview with the president.

Frequent flier miles

We all know that we are supposed to be interested and up to date on current affairs and what is going on in the rest of the world right now. It’s one of the reasons that www.cnn.com goes to the international edition when I bring it up on my computer.

I have read articles about elections in Africa and the tensions in the Middle East, but sometimes I really disappoint myself. Take Friday night. The two lead articles that came up were about the mine explosions in China and a new movie starring George Clooney that is about frequent flier miles.

Guess which one I did not read.

____________

In other news – only seven more days left in the semester and I don’t teach on two of those days! It boils down to seven hours of lecture but about a billion and six hours of grading and exam prep left. Do you think they would notice if I didn’t grade anything else in the semester? Probably.

Editor’s note – this was supposed to be posted on Sunday. Forgot to press that upload button.

My self worth is not tied to the number of students who sign up for my classes

(Originally, I wasn’t going to post this. It was a “private diary” type of post and maybe TMI. But after reading the story on CNN, I decided that it actually wasn’t that bad.)

That is my mantra this time of year – during preregistration and registration. I used to keep a close eye on the preregistration numbers and would get a secret, naughty thrill when I saw that my classes were more popular than my colleagues. No matter that physics or the genetics lab was being offered at the same time as their sections. Ask me any time during advising and I could tell you within one student what the preregistration numbers were.

I would tell my colleagues that I was just concerned about student distributions or if we had enough people to cover all of the labs or if we needed to offer an overload section. But in reality, it made me feel good to know that my classes were filling up first.

Now that I’m no longer the new kid on the block (even if the new, young prof teaches a different area of chemistry), the glamour is gone. My classes fill up at the same rate as everyone else’s. I tell myself that I check the pre-enrollment numbers only to make sure that we’ll have enough students to offer a class and keep our adjunct. But in reality it does sting a little bit.

But then I read this story on CNN about defriending and your “digital ego.”

Experts say rejection on social networks can hurt worse than an in-person snub because people are usually more polite face-to-face than they are online.

After reading this, I decided that it was OK that I feel bad about the registration numbers. I don’t have a digital ego. I don’t know how many friends I have on Facebook and if people defriended me, I would only wonder why they friended me in the first place. (Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone. If you’re reading this, then yes, I would be quite upset if you defriended me.) So my “real life” ego has to make up for the lack of digital ego.

But I’m getting over it. Now that I’m older and wiser(?), I check the numbers and actually get excited when I see that my lab has fewer people in it – LESS GRADING!

I picked the wrong branch of the sciences

I was surfing today and found a very interesting article:

30 Jobs That Pay $80,000

It was a pretty cool list. Nineteen of the thirty jobs are either science or engineering related! Of course, there were the ringers of the lot: 12 – Producers and Directors and 5 – Agents and business managers of artists, performers and athletes. But the rest of them all require at least a four year college degree.

This is the one that I found most interesting:

4. Atmospheric, earth, marine and space sciences teachers, post-secondary
Do this: Teach courses and research topics in the physical sciences, except chemistry and physics.
Get paid: $81,470

At first, I started looking forward in the list to see if Chemistry and Physics Post-Secondary teachers get their own entry with an even higher salary. Then I looked at the salary again and was a little surprised. Really? I could be making that? I’m at the wrong college… When I didn’t find a separate entry for physics and chemistry, I realized that we must be below the 80K cutoff. Bummer.

I also didn’t see “wine maker” on that list. Because that would be my second choice.