Departmental Retreat

Every year my department has a retreat- this is a common thing in academia. We all hang out, listen to talks, and share some meals. I'll be presenting an old poster, and leading a Q&A for the first year grad students (on surviving your first year). It's a good opportunity to rub elbows with people we don't normally see, and a casual atmosphere to share science. This part of the retreat, I totally get. It's kinda an imposition on my weekend, but I understand why we do it.

The part of the retreat I don't get is that everyone thinks we are 'camping.' Yes, we are bringing sleeping bags to sleep in, but in this sense, it is much more like a slumber party. True, there will be a bonfire, and the forecast calls for rain, but let's be straight- this is where the ecologists in the department LIVE all summer. It's not plush, but we are going to the departments ecology station. It's more like "going to camp." There are big dorm rooms fills with bunk beds, lights, hot running water, a ping pong and a cafeteria. And, let's not forget this major point- we are going to be talking about science. Drinking beer from kegs, and talking about science. It's just not camping.

I don't want to come off as more-outdoorsier-than-thou, but this kinda brings up a key point of division between me and the locals. I'm bringing clothes I intend to get plenty muddy, and I haven't made up my mind on the shower issue, but if you can hear highway traffic, and there is an official lights out (cuz, y'know, there are lights), it's not exactly getting away from it all. And yet my classmates are baking camping food and preparing the traditional camping Jell-o shots. I should just accept that this is as rural as people from New Jersey have ever been, and accept that is makes them happy.

This is part of the reason I haven't participated since my first year. First, I was totally jilted by the camp atmosphere, and that completely destroyed any possibility I would want to talk about science. I was just too shell shocked to imagine going back and enjoying it. Now I am trying to imagine this more like going on a grubby vacation, or an open air conference. I'm not really convinced that these two worlds can or should co-exist well, but I'm willing to give Sleep-away Camp with the Whole Department another shot.

Better living with old Bananas

Matt and I buy a lot of bananas. It's a good serving of fruit, makes a tidy snack and is dependably delicious. Matt likes to eat one (drowning the vitamins in Peanut Butter) before a ride, so we've been optimistically buying a dozen bananas at the start of every week. And because I am super picky about when bananas are too ripe to eat, we've been perfecting the art of things to do with a spare old banana. I know, banana bread is a classic, but I felt the need to innovate.

After we tried the cook's illustrated Banana Bread recipe (6 bananas in 1 loaf!), with its caramel-y banana slices on top, I did find a recipe for banana candy (Doce do Banana). It took ages, but was pretty fantastic. I've still got a bunch which we've been spreading on waffles, and eating with sorbet.

And speaking of waffles, I got a yen to make waffles this morning while Matt tried to sleep off the rest of his cough. At the fantastic waffle place where I used to go to write, they will throw banana slices into your waffles, so I thought I'd try it with a tired looking one. This was an awesome idea. The sugars caramelized, and the banana got all soft- perfect! If only we'd had nutella on hand.

Matt is mostly better- sleeping through the night, and more manageable congestion and cough. Probably this was the healing power of waffles.

This is why I'm a late adopter

The latest version of Office for Mac came out in 2008. I resisted using it for compatibility reasons- those .docx files can't be opened by everyone! - and then for laziness- the menus look different and I don't want to have to learn where stuff is again! As a compromise, I installed the xml converter last spring, that lets my antique version of office read files from the newer version. And wouldn't you know it, that cause my citation manager, Endnote, to loose touch with Word rendering it 100% useless. After some half-hearted attempts to fix it, I decided that best solution would be to upgrade both. Clean slate, and all that.

Office discretely installed itself while removing the old version, how polite. Endnote on the other hand, installs itself AND fails to work. It should keep a library of my references, which are seamlessly imported to Word as I write long, dry sentences that need copious citation. Instead, every time I open Word, it just provides an error that it can't "do the Endnote thing," and changes the subject. The FAQ and support online for Endnote are minimal, in part because it is kinda a one-trick pony. And generally "Working" is the only thing it can do.

While my current status is technically the same as it was before the install (Office works, Endnote doesn't). I'm slightly worried that there is some other reason for the glitch, and also on the verge of losing my patience with the computer, for being so obtuse. I'll update is this ever gets working, but don't hold your breath.

Totally Grown-up Blogging

You would not believe how mature and grown up I am now. Seriously.

We’re doing all sorts of grown-up stuff. Last weekend we went to babies-r-us to look at things for our BABY that we will be having soon, and having a child is pretty much the most grown-up thing in the world. We didn’t get anything in particular, but we did take the opportunity to look at all the stuff that it is possible to acquire for a baby and think about which of those things we would buy. We didn’t make any solid decisions, save for one. Jess sat in one of their nursing chairs, one of the gentle sliding ones with the sliding ottoman and pretty much melted on the spot. I decided we needed to get two. One for upstairs and one for down.

We’re also looking into life insurance and refinancing our mortgage. Grown up stuff, with paperwork and everything. Over the life of the loan, we could save enough money to pay for college for the kid. Um...well, maybe just a few years, but it’s something, eh? Life insurance is important too, if I could only decide how much I want to get it for. Lots of numbers to consider.

And the other thing that grown-ups do is travel for work, and next month I ‘get’ to do just that. It’s nothing as glamorous as England, it’s actually out in the desert, and it’s for three weeks straight, no breaks or anything. Rough! The one upside is that we have to fly into Vegas to get there, so I get to go visit the Vegas family, hoorah! I’ll miss Jess, but at least I can use the fact that I did this as an excuse to not go one some ridiculous trip next time the need someone to go (and when I’ll be a dad) and I do have skype with webcams and everything to keep in touch with Jessie.

I did shave my beard back down to the goatee, though. No need to be *too* mature all at once.

-N

First note: Nana In China....

Well, we're back and jet lagged to the extreme. Just have to post a few notes and will get our pics and Nana's up somewhere soon.

Baby Pictures: Mark 2

We went to the doctor again last week and they did an (optional, but requested by us) ultrasound to screen for some birth defects, all of which came back negative, so yay on that. And as a bonus, we got some more pictures, take a look.



This ultrasound was much more interesting than the last one. The baby was twice as big as last time: about 2.5 inches from head to tail, and really moving. We could see it do BIG kicks, with its legs coming way down and its hands and body moving all over. Really neat looking.



Like I said, the tests, both blood and ultrasound, dropped our changes of down syndrome and trisomate something something *significantly*, so that's good to know.



You can see a lot more details in these pictures. I can even pretend I can see the face, until I remember that I'm looking at a cross section and those aren't cheeks, they're teeth. Tiny baby teeth! So cute!



So you see that stuff in front of the baby face? Looks like a line of something? Those are fingers, in cross-section. I think I can count five, can you?

Things I'm worried about this week:
1) Being a Good Dad
2) Not hating being a Dad
3) Organizing the House
4) Labor
5) Feeding the baby

And one more bonus picture. I call this one: "Sorry Ladies, I'm already Taken."



-N

'Westerners' Happy Hour

Our department has a tradition of Friday Afternoon social hours. Some group of people will sponsor the social hour by bringing in the beer and snacks, and everyone will come and enjoy. The group is usually a lab, but we've tried to stay creative in terms of groups- a graduate class, the 5th floor, and now the New Englanders want to host. When I heard this, my friend from a Montana ranch suggested we could host as the West. Surely there were other people from our department from the west.

After much brain wracking, we found one first year from Oregon, and one of the new faculty did his PhD and post doc in Utah and California. We thought if we defined 'West' as west of this Mississippi, we might pick up a few more- there is one faculty member from Kansas, so... A classmate from Philadelphia told me if we took West to mean Ohio and all points West, we might get a few more takers. I've often thought most people in my department were from the area, but I hadn't really tried to quantify that before.

Matt's friend is here to visit for the weekend from New York. The major plans for the weekend are a big beer tasting event today, and mountain bike riding. Very Manly. And a nice run-up to Matt's birthday.

For the record, turning 31 is WAY easier than turning 30.

2 weeks in, and still going

I've been taking it one day at a time here. I've got an ambitious To Do List most days, which are towards the long term goals of "Teach a Successful Class" and "Finish and Submit this Manuscript." This issue is that I've added a major distraction to my week at exactly the time I am supposed to knuckle down and mash out some good work. I'm trying to be as efficient as I can stand, which certainly means not wasting time doing stuff I don't have time to do well.

It also means I haven't had much time to look ahead or behind. Or blog, apparently. I had this great ambition to use this semester to really become the Wonder Woman I want to be- manage the stress of work balance issues by regular exercise and healthy meal planning. Ha! The whole plan isn't underwater yet, but this requires a LOT of leaning on Matt. To actually carry out the meal plan, and to be patient about actually seeing each other much. One insightful thing I did for this set up a 'Menu' for the house: 14 reasonably healthy meals that can be picked off the list, and assembled in about 20 minutes, which streamlines both shopping and cooking.

The semester seems to be progressing, but between staying late for office hours and getting up early to catch a bus that will stop for me (now that students are back, I can add and hour to my commute if I go in at the wrong time), I seem to spend the rest of my time trying to sleep. At some point in early graduate school, my brain lost the discipline to sleep after a long and stimulating day. If I can fall asleep, I wake up often thinking about my class, worrying about my science, and assembling the next to do list. I used to find thinking about the next day before sleep a relaxing way to end the day, but now that induces insomnia. And if I don't get enough sleep during the week, I universally get a cold- and being sick just doesn't seem to fit my schedule right now.

We did squash in some fun over the long weekend. We drove North of town, to Slippery Rock, stopped at a bunch of farm markets on the way, buying veggies and enjoying the drive. Then we had dinner at a really cool brew pub. It was a nice day out.

And the rest of the birthday

We spent most of the rest of Saturday just lounging around. Jessie’s stomach-vicinity has been giving her trouble lately, and so far the best medicine has been cuddling with her husband, which is me. Not that I mind, particularly. It’s a great excuse to relax, though I’ve been trying to work on some more music and it’s hard to compose while “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” plays in the background.

So Sunday, my actual birthday, for anyone keeping track, we mostly just wanted to get out and accomplish stuff. And accomplish we did. We went to Target to pick up some random clothes, Frys to pick up a new Router, and a sport store to pick up a swim shirt so that I can go swimming in the outdoor pool without burning myself clean off. And for birthday dinner...or...more lunch, really, we went out to McCormick & Smicks. Fish! Delicious fish for me! Jess even ordered some shrimp! (It’s working! It’s slow, but it’s working!)

Then Sunday evening was relax-time again. Mostly cuddling on the couch and watching a really, really odd Korean movie called “The Good, The Bad, and the Weird”. Very cool. And on Monday we DID MORE STUFF! Mostly around the house this time. I fixed a few pickets in our fence, setup our new router, hung posters and fixed up some more of our shelves so they won’t fall over if, say, a child were to try and climb on it. It’s a good motivator, impending fatherhood. I’ll either have to get this stuff done now or later...and later I’ll have a baby to deal with, too! Good grief, get those shelves up!

We’ve started a little reorganization around the house, too. We moved our activity shelf out of the guest bedroom and that place looks *empty* now. We’ll probably get some more stuff in there for our incoming guests. TV or something, or some more storage options. We’ll have a lot of use for that room in the future. We put the activity shelf in our ‘office’, so we can go access it without disturbing guests, and there’s every likelihood that the office will turn into the play room before too long. At the moment it just houses stuff and a lot of empty space. Plus it’s nearby the main action of the living room and kitchen. So when I drill those shelves into wall studs, you had best be sure those suckers are solid.

-N

The Old Man and the Concert

This weekend I turn 30. That’s years, people. It feels...pretty much the same as 29 did. Plus it’ll be convenient shorthand for me to remember about how old our first kid is. My age minus 30, about. No specific festivities, but we do tend to spread celebration around, so I get a birthday in stages over the course of about a week, which is nice for me.

Thursday was sort of my ‘Birthday at Work (observed)’ day because Jess made me cupcakes the day before. Cupcakes are the way to go when there’s just two of you for the cake-based celebration. There’s no way for two people to eat an *entire* cake, and so you either have to stuff yourself with cake for days (tempting, but I’m trying to keep slim) or bring leftover cake to work, which is always nice, but cupcakes are pre-measured for your convenience, and very easy to distribute since we got our cupcake carrier. So I gave away cupcakes at work and got a lot of ‘happy birthdays’ for our trouble. I also ate several of them myself. Cupcakes are delicious.

Jess then organized a ‘Nerf fight’ for me. I’ve been buying and distributing Nerf guns around the office for a few years now, and there’s now enough of them that we can get a pretty good firefight going if we all show up at the same time. Jess ambushed me in my office and I retaliated with my ridiculous Nerf Machine Gun. Fun was had by all. Then my officemate got me a couple more nerf guns the next day. They’re clear! I’m hoping to get to home depot this weekend to buy some LEDs so I can make a *glowing Nerf gun*. I think home depot sells random electronic components. Where else would I go. Radio shack? Have you seen that place recently?

Friday, also ‘for my birthday’ but realistically just because the timing worked out, I got to see Rodrigo y Gabriella in concert. A blast! The wait was pretty rough, unfortunately. We got there at 7 and there was an opening act at 8:30, the concert proper didn’t start until 9:30, which is a lot of time to stand on your feet. My long-suffering wife decided to just go hang out in the back where she could sit, but I stayed up pretty close to the action for the whole concert. They were a blast to listen to. I’m not sure how they mic the guitars but every time they gave their instruments a smack it resounded through the subwoofers for a serious kick. They did a bunch of songs I’ve heard from their albums, though they tended to have neat variations in the performance. High energy and lots of fun, though I think I’ve burned Jessie out on concerts for a while. Between the close quarters, tired legs, big crowds, and smoke, tobacco and...otherwise, she was pretty worn out at the end of the night.

We got home before midnight and got to wake up early, though, to head out to the Velloway again, a paved loop in southern Austin that’s only open to bikers and skaters. Jess hung out and exercised with her derby girls while I rode around on my bike. 13 miles for me, 7 for Jess. Not bad for the start of the weekend. We stopped at a place called Moonies that we’d been meaning to try out. They’re up by us and they do a *great* hamburger and really good chicken burger, too. They may have displaced Hutts as my second favorite hamburger spot in Austin. They’re certainly closer to the house. I could walk if I want to.

Later, for my birthday again, heh, I’m going to head out to McCormick and Shmicks. I get fish on my birthday. Then we’re going to stop at Whole Foods and check out some of those pastries that always look so pretty in the display cases.

-N