Neato

A word cloud representation of my last six weeks in the field:



(seen at Musey Me's)

Departure date set

Damn, I am so ready to go home. Today, I officially moved my departure date up to next Monday, a week from tomorrow. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I have been here for a full two months. And yes, it is a great place to do field work but I WANT TO GO HOME. I miss my husband and my cats and my dog and my tortoise and my bed and my kitchen and wearing shoes that aren't hiking boots and not smelling bad and my bathtub and not driving on gravel roads and not dreaming about field work (I think I even miss the DNA sequence dreams) and restaurants and bookstores and not working seven days a week and not being involved in all the dramas that inevitably happen on a research station with 30-50 people, most of them under 25 and single. Sigh. Soon, soon...

Woooo!

Back in March I applied for a $75K internal grant.

And today I found out I got it.

This is so damn awesome. I am hiring a lab technician and never doing my own lab work again.

A Poll

My university recently announced that they will be opening a new Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. Do I want to volunteer to be on the advisory board?

Pros:
Well, having a say, I suppose. And I guess it would look good on the old CV.

Cons:
I don't have any fucking time. And I'm sure the meetings will be horrible.

Thoughts?

UPDATED: Thanks for the input, everybody! I'm not gonna do it.

Ha!

-16 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Saw this at Seeking Solace's, who doesn't suck as much as me.

Things I like about the field

1. The barn swallows nesting on the light fixture just outside my room. Barn swallows are awesome. And although I know the parents will dive bomb me every time I try to enter and exit my room, I can't wait for those eggs to hatch.
2. Baby fawns. Their first few days of life, their primary defense mechanism is camouflage. I was setting up a video camera to tape one of my bird nests, and I almost set the tripod on top of a fawn. It didn't even twitch. I so desperately wanted to pet it, but I sternly lectured myself: "NO. You are a BIOLOGIST. You do not do dumb things like pet wild animals." But I did talk some baby talk to it. (No one else was around.) It was still there 5 hours later when I picked up my camera, but it was probably twice as old as the first time I saw it and this time it was alert. Still didn't move, though. I saw it today in the same area with its mommy. So damn cute.
3. The smell of the forest. I wish they could bottle that stuff.
   

Don't gloat at me

Yeah, I know that most people in my demographic are Obama supporters. And that's fine. He's a great guy. I always said that I'd happily vote for him in the general election.

I thought I'd take this outcome with a stiff upper lip. I did not expect to be sobbing hysterically right now. But I am. I am so very upset.

I am so, so very sad that once again, we have to choose between two MEN. Ugh.

I had no idea they sold those

I need some dumb things, like deodorant and bug spray, and so I was checking out drugstore.com to see if I would rather order them online instead of driving down the mountain to the Target. (the short answer: no.) However, while I was on the website, I noticed a "Buy One, Get One Free" sale and I clicked on the link to learn more. And THIS was one of the items. Huh.

Balancing work and... more work

How the hell do people in the field get any work done? Last summer, when I was at West Coast Field Site, there was another postdoc on the project and he was quite inspirational. Field work all day and he worked on papers in the evenings. This summer I thought, "I have to be more like him."

But no. I can't be more like him. I am fucking tired.

In addition to being "in charge" (in name, anyway) of the field season and doing my own field project(s), I am still trying to finish up Manuscript One (which is in its final - I hope - round of co-author discussion and revision), start Manuscript Two and the related Poster that will be presented in August (at least I have THAT deadline to keep me on task), finish data analysis for Another Poster that a collaborator is presenting next month, and finalize the Edited Volume Manuscript (OMG!! It's really going to be done soon!!). I don't have TIME to be in the field. I have tons of data already and no time to write it up. ARGH. And the thought of analyzing the data I am collecting right now is a little daunting - I am doing a behavioral study and by the end of the project should have 480 hours of video. Yikes. (I am starting to analyze as I go, and I do watch the tapes on fast-forward, but still.)

So, I do fieldwork from 7:30 to 5, and then am too tired and brain dead to do anything but watch Sex and The City on DVD and drink whisky in the evenings. I do take the occasional day off to put in some time on the manuscripts, but it doesn't feel like enough. I got interested in the whole GTD thing recently, and I think it would work great and suit me very well, but it just doesn't apply when you're in the field. There's no time to get to one's to-do list when one has to go outside and search for nests and weigh nestlings and band birds every day. Every time I take an hour during the day to sit and check book chapter revisions or write an email or run an analysis, I feel like I am cheating. I can't do the "write for two hours every day" thing because there is actually no time. My best time is first thing in the morning - but that's also the best time to find birds. I can't do it at the end of a full day of work.

I am going home in exactly 30 days, and I am excited not just because I miss my husband and my cats and my dog and my tortoise and my bed and my bathtub and my couch and my tv and my kitchen, but also because I miss having time to do work. Sigh.

Ok. Enough whining. I promise to try to get back to amusing field stories soon.

Where did the time go?

Holy crap! Has it really been three weeks since I last blogged? Well, we all know what to do when that happens: a meme! I saw this one first at Ianqui's.

Your Score: The True Neurotic

You scored 59 anxiety, 62 awkwardness, and 64 neuroticism!

Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You're plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard--even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn't help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors--probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.
__

See the other results!
Well-Adjusted
The Neat Freak
The Dork
The Geek
Phobic
Obsessive-Compulsive
The Subtle Neurotic
The True Neurotic

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(littlelostsnail)

Really? Huh. I was sure I would get "well-adjusted..."