Damn tree

There are many holiday traditions around our house:

• Cooking a thanksgiving turkey that can feed 20 even though only five or six are coming to dinner
• Preparing holiday cards on iPhoto that never get ordered (two years in a row now!!)
• Grading
• Getting a 12 foot christmas tree

Yup, it’s that time again – getting a tree that is too big to fit in our car! We always have to borrow a friend’s truck to get it home and this year was no different.

What was different this year was bringing strong friends to “help” us cut down the tree and get it set up in the house. (Yes, Gavin actually did 90% of the cutting. Husband and I helped to push the tree over though! Claire – can you send me those photos?)

What was also different this year was the strained back muscle. I’ve been sitting on the couch for the past two evening trying not to move too much. It didn’t hurt too much on Friday, but Saturday afternoon I was in serious pain. I was very excited to read that you get to use heat for this type of injury. Most of the time, I “get” to use ice on my aches and pains – not fun.

Yesterday, I could sit and read without too much guilt because there was still Sunday left in the break. But today, I couldn’t put it off any longer – I had to grade presentations. It wasn’t that hard, but I have been ignoring it for about a month. That worked for a little bit because I didn’t want to change my grading scheme while there were still presentations to go. I need to be consistent! But not any longer. Monday is the last two presentations and I’ve already had students bugging me about their grade. It’s finally done and didn’t take me as long as I though – 3 hours instead of 4!

It’s almost 7PM and I think I’m done for the evening. There are still things to do, but I think I can get everything done tomorrow at work in plenty of time.

I should just push through and get it done, but I’m still fighting the post-tenure interview blues. Pretty much as soon as my first interview was over, I have been fighting the “why bother?” bug. I used to do lots of work on the weekends and evenings but not this semester. I don’t think I’ve done work during the week after 7PM (lots of caveats there…) since the beginning of September. I also haven’t done much cooking or work around the house either. I’m blaming it all on the stress of waiting for the tenure decision.

I’m getting a little better though. Instead of doing nothing during “Six Days of Sweats”, which I had originally planned, I did a little bit. I got the kitchen clean for Thanksgiving, hung some photos and some laundry done. I shopped for chemistry department’s “Adopt a Family” family and played with Max. I even multitasked and did a few of the things at once!

Max approves of the boy’s gifts.

“I checked in the bag – you need to go back to Target. You forgot MY gift!!” (Silly kitty – the gift is the bag!)

Hubris, what a harsh mistress you are

I was just telling someone the other day that I NEVER get sick. Never. Left and right, people are stricken with plague but I stand tall.

(Can you see where this story is going?)

Yup. I have a cold. Not a bad one, but I’m definitely feeling it. I still had class and group meeting with all of the research kids, but it was an interesting evening. It started out with a scratchy throat last night, but has developed into a running nose and Katharine Hepburn-voice. I’m more concerned about the voice than the cold.

When I get a sore throat, it’s even odds that I am going to lose my voice. I’ve only cancelled class for two reasons. First – I was in CA winetasting. But I gave them a handout and asked them to do some reading! Two – I lost my voice. I had a colleague interpret for me, but gave up after 10 minutes.

So tonight, I’m sitting on the couch, drinking throat-coat tea and thinking about heading to bed even though I only got home about a hour ago. The cats are starting to think I don’t love them anymore, what with Husband in Sweden (With a cold. Guess where I got this one?) and me not moving off the couch for the past two nights.

Worst Title Evar

In the academic world, it’s all “publish or perish.” When we get a publication in a good, peer-reviewed journal, it’s definitely a party. Picking a good title is a hard thing to do.

Just take a look at this title:

Degradation of Anthocyanins and Anthocyanidins in Blueberry Jams/Stuffed Fish

Huh? Believe it or not, I got the anthocyanins and anthocyanidins part (those are the good things that soak up free radicals and keep you young), but Blueberry Jams/Stuffed Fish?

I couldn’t image that they meant they were stuffing fish with the jam, but then I looked at the abstract:

“Fruits were used to prepare jams with different °Brix and stuffed fish.”

All I’m gonna say is yuck.

Just relax!

I’ve cut down on my caffeine. I had to do it because I found that I was too jittery and hyper in my classes in the morning. I was making way too many mistakes on the board and not catching them. Students were having to point them out to me. I had to keep making corrections and that’s not good. It makes you seem unprepared and not a good teacher.

So instead of a huge mug of coffee on my drive in, I now do half caff-half decaf or a weak cup of tea. I’m trying to cut out sodas entirely and just go with water and Crystal Light.

I think it’s been working but I still feel like I’m frazzled all of the time! I am continually forgetting things that people tell me. My carpool buddy asked me to bring her a cone to slip over her kitten’s head to keep her from licking and I completely forgot about it. I didn’t even remember that she had asked me. I will read something and then ten minutes later, I will have completely forgotten about it or changed the message around to something else. I missed a meeting on Monday because I thought it was on Wednesday.

What can I do to change this?!? I used to make lists in undergrad and grad school. I LIVED by my lists. I had lists that were two and three pages long. I was busy all the time and loved it. I would occasionally forget things, but because I had a list with me all the time, I could easily add another thing as soon as I remembered it.

I used my iCal for awhile but I haven’t kept up with it. I have my Mac laptop but I use a PC desktop at work too. I usually have both of my computers going at work but I usually have the Mac way over on the side and can’t reach it easily.

I’ve starting telling myself that an iPhone would solve all of my problems. I could carry it around and use it as a pocket organizer, but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m just deluding myself.

What do you do to relax and keep it all together? I need some ideas here!

Max says “NO RELAXING! Play with me!!”

The difference between biologists and chemists

Well, there are lots of them. But the one that I’ve noticed most on this trip is the willingness of biologists to touch just about anything.

Personally, I like to follow the “see if the person dies” rule about touching things. I’ll let someone else touch all the nastiness and then follow them around for a couple of days. If their fingers don’t fall off or develop blisters, then maybe I’ll think about poking things.

Urchins for example. I finally went to the “touchy feely” tank today and pet an urchin. I had to wait a couple of days to make sure that everything was OK, but I finally did it.

But take for example this:

What does that look like to you? To me, it looks like someone blew their nose.

Would a self respecting chemist reach down and pick up something that looks like a ball of snot? No. But the biologists on this trip will pick up anything. Pinching crabs, globs of snot, balls of alga. They even started having alga fights.

Just so ya know, it’s called a nudibranch, or a sea hare. They’re harmless, but don’t they look gross? If I saw this sitting in a tide pool, I would thing something had died!

Anyway.

The weather’s taken a turn for the worse here in sunny FL:

But I have to admit that this is my favorite kind of ocean weather. I like it when it is cold and windy and the seas are choppy. There’s no expectation that you have to get in. You can just sit, bundled up, and stare at the waves. I’m a fairly strong swimmer and I like the water, but I don’t naturally gravitate to the water anymore. Twenty years ago, that was different. I was a water baby. I could play in the water all day but not anymore.

I don’t know what happened. I like to be by the ocean. I like to hear the waves and watch the tide roll in and out, but I don’t feel the need to jump in and swim. I have a healthy respect for the sea and everything in it. I don’t want to disturb the balance and have something eat me or sting me.

Later in the day, we went to the tide pools and it was pretty sunny and the wind had died down. The sediment was all stirred up so there was no danger of having to get in the water again.