Obviously, I like writing. If I didn't like writing, I certainly wouldn't keep a blog. But I thought that "writing I like doing" and "writing you do under duress to get a PhD" would not overlap. This is in part because my efforts to write Manuscript 1 and get Dr. Boss to read it were so frustrating. Yet here I am, happily writing my dissertation. Sure, my interest/motivation ebbs and flows a bit, but I haven't hit any major blocks yet.
This is probably because there are so many different things to do, update references, make figures (find figures), create tables, read loads, about LOADS of really different but interesting things... all of which are at this stage equally productive.
I couldn't sleep this morning (it is so humid out, my sleepy brain thought we were at a lake or something), so I popped up around 5:30 this morning to write in a bit more about how cool Table #2 is, and add in that my perspective on this whole field is pretty unique... and then I added some figures to the second chapter (which I mostly loaded yesterday- this is manuscript 1 + whatever negative results I feel like adding).
There are also way more read-outs for progress than I would have thought, and it is really gratifying. For example, this morning I crossed the 100 page mark (23 of which are references- and yes it's double spaced, but still!). I am at 257 references, which makes me feel well read. I've got 10 figures and 5 tables. I want to make progress bars for all these things! I also think I am about at the halfway mark of getting it written, which is actually a bit ahead of schedule. That makes me feel really good about it. Today I am going back to work, to split my time between some experiments and making some figures. With luck this experiment will be done next week (and then it will go into my manuscript AND dissertation- more progress!), and I can focus full time on writing really.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Killing all the bugs
Man, what a day! We spent much of yesterday and the day before getting ready to have the house fumigated. This meant a lot of placing food items in gas-proof bags, double-bagging them, and then putting them back in the freezer. Those things get *heavy* when full. Lots of lifting. Then Jess decided that *despite* all the assurances offered by the exterminators, that all the baby stuff needed to get out of the house, too, so that’s another many, many, boxes of stuff for me to haul around. Both cars are currently full of stuff, both food-and-baby related.
And who did all the heavy lifting? The post-pregnancy lady with a whole in her abdomen, or the big, manly dude with huge arms. Yep. Lots of lifting and carrying and packing and taking care of a baby, too.
So we spent last night at the house, and in the morning I got the last few things packed up, watered around the house, got some baby supplies together, and then Jess went off to the hotel with Tyler while I waited for the exterminators to show up (and played video games).
So right before the exterminators showed up, I got a call from Jessie. She had found bugs in the hotel room. Bugs! Two of them! One of them was in the bed. Using her degree in entomology she determined that they were deadly ticks (that is a joke Jessie doesn’t have a degree in entomology) and asked to be moved to another room. I got a call a few minutes later that despite the fact that she couldn’t find any more bugs, she was sure they were there. So right when the exterminators showed up, I gave them the go-ahead to start tenting the house and then hoofed it off to meet up with Jessie.
Using her super-mother powers and her adorable face, she convinced me to move everything out of the hotel room and back into the cars so we could go to a nicer hotel. I allowed her ridiculous paranoia *this time*, but I maintain that getting all that worked up about unidentified bugs in a room we aren’t even *in* anymore is silly, especially when I was going to have to do all the lifting again, but she has a new baby, so she has the trump card.
So we moved down the street to a more expensive but much nicer hotel, which probably still has bugs in it because bugs are everywhere but whatever, the room is nice and they gave us free dinner and breakfast, which might actually pay for itself, considering we were going to have to eat out, otherwise. Most of our stuff is still in the car (including our chocolate...oops, it’s hot out there) and I took the rest of the day off after doing all the moving and running around and general baby-wrangling. (It wasn’t that much moving, but it felt like more.)
Tomorrow I’m planning to go into work, unless we find any more bugs in this room, though I’ll have to leave early in order to help Jess move out of the hotel in the afternoon. We’re supposed to be able to go back into the house around 3:00, so we’ll see how it all works out. DIE, TERMITES, DIE!
Also, here are some pictures of my house covered with tarps and my adorable son.
-N
And who did all the heavy lifting? The post-pregnancy lady with a whole in her abdomen, or the big, manly dude with huge arms. Yep. Lots of lifting and carrying and packing and taking care of a baby, too.
So we spent last night at the house, and in the morning I got the last few things packed up, watered around the house, got some baby supplies together, and then Jess went off to the hotel with Tyler while I waited for the exterminators to show up (and played video games).
So right before the exterminators showed up, I got a call from Jessie. She had found bugs in the hotel room. Bugs! Two of them! One of them was in the bed. Using her degree in entomology she determined that they were deadly ticks (that is a joke Jessie doesn’t have a degree in entomology) and asked to be moved to another room. I got a call a few minutes later that despite the fact that she couldn’t find any more bugs, she was sure they were there. So right when the exterminators showed up, I gave them the go-ahead to start tenting the house and then hoofed it off to meet up with Jessie.
Using her super-mother powers and her adorable face, she convinced me to move everything out of the hotel room and back into the cars so we could go to a nicer hotel. I allowed her ridiculous paranoia *this time*, but I maintain that getting all that worked up about unidentified bugs in a room we aren’t even *in* anymore is silly, especially when I was going to have to do all the lifting again, but she has a new baby, so she has the trump card.
So we moved down the street to a more expensive but much nicer hotel, which probably still has bugs in it because bugs are everywhere but whatever, the room is nice and they gave us free dinner and breakfast, which might actually pay for itself, considering we were going to have to eat out, otherwise. Most of our stuff is still in the car (including our chocolate...oops, it’s hot out there) and I took the rest of the day off after doing all the moving and running around and general baby-wrangling. (It wasn’t that much moving, but it felt like more.)
Tomorrow I’m planning to go into work, unless we find any more bugs in this room, though I’ll have to leave early in order to help Jess move out of the hotel in the afternoon. We’re supposed to be able to go back into the house around 3:00, so we’ll see how it all works out. DIE, TERMITES, DIE!
Also, here are some pictures of my house covered with tarps and my adorable son.
-N
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tyler is fine and Healthy
But it was kind of an open question there, for a while.
I didn’t want to get everyone worked up, but Tyler’s second round of blood tests, about two weeks ago, came back abnormal. They were worried he might have something called MCAD which would have meant, in short, that if he didn’t eat for more than about 6 hours, he could die.
It’s a genetic disease, common among ‘northern europeans’ (I’m not sure if that means Brits or Scandinavians) and according to the literature usually doesn’t have any long-term problems, it’s just the eating thing. The baby gets sick and doesn’t eat for a few hours and the prognosis can be quite bad if they don’t get on some IV nutrients very quickly, and because it’s so rare, most people don’t know their kids have it until it’s too late.
Even at first prognosis, though, we didn’t think he had it. He’s always been alert and vital when he wakes up (anyone who has heard him really get going behind a good cry will attest to that.) He’s had no problems getting up and moving even after quite long sleep sessions. Still, due to the seriousness of the disease, they wanted to be sure, and so they brought him in for another round of testing, both urine (hard to collect on a baby, let me tell you) and more blood. (He has such unhappy face when he gets needled!) We just got a call back from the doctor today that the preliminary tests looks negative, though they’ll do some more just to be extra-sure (serious disease, remember?)
That’s enough for us, though, to qualify him as totally free and clear. We’ll let him sleep as much as he wants, now.
-N
I didn’t want to get everyone worked up, but Tyler’s second round of blood tests, about two weeks ago, came back abnormal. They were worried he might have something called MCAD which would have meant, in short, that if he didn’t eat for more than about 6 hours, he could die.
It’s a genetic disease, common among ‘northern europeans’ (I’m not sure if that means Brits or Scandinavians) and according to the literature usually doesn’t have any long-term problems, it’s just the eating thing. The baby gets sick and doesn’t eat for a few hours and the prognosis can be quite bad if they don’t get on some IV nutrients very quickly, and because it’s so rare, most people don’t know their kids have it until it’s too late.
Even at first prognosis, though, we didn’t think he had it. He’s always been alert and vital when he wakes up (anyone who has heard him really get going behind a good cry will attest to that.) He’s had no problems getting up and moving even after quite long sleep sessions. Still, due to the seriousness of the disease, they wanted to be sure, and so they brought him in for another round of testing, both urine (hard to collect on a baby, let me tell you) and more blood. (He has such unhappy face when he gets needled!) We just got a call back from the doctor today that the preliminary tests looks negative, though they’ll do some more just to be extra-sure (serious disease, remember?)
That’s enough for us, though, to qualify him as totally free and clear. We’ll let him sleep as much as he wants, now.
-N
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Knowing things seems to make a difference
Two interesting things happened this week that made me feel like spending 3 weeks cloistered and learning some science were not a waste of time. First of all, this scientist came to visit Dr. Rockstar, and he wanted people to talk with her. We talked a little bit about my work, and how that might intersect with her work (on how viruses assemble), and we agreed that she would send me reagents to do an experiment that would be interesting to both of us. I felt really capable of talking about, not just my own work, but also how that intersects with fields, and was able to reference specifics. We actually got into this 3 way discussion about... well it doesn't really matter what, but I felt pretty awesome reminding Dr. Rockstar about the evidence from the mid-80's that showed that these late 90's hypotheses were well founded, even if they still haven't been thoroughly tested. Yeah- my dissertation has some 200 references right now- so I've been doing a LOT of reading.
The other kinda cool thing was I gave a seminar this week. Just my usual, annual seminar for the department. I barely spent an hour putting the slides in place, gave a pretty scattered practice talk for the Dr. Rockstar's lab, who gave me really helpful comments, which I didn't have time to deal with until the morning of the talk. I spent another hour and a half on the talk (which, since it was 30 min- means flipping through it twice). I felt a little nervous giving a talk I spent so little time preparing, but I think it was perhaps one of my more interesting talks. Part of my nervousness was talking about a project that didn't exactly fail, but surely gave us disappointing results. How do you say that without opening yourself up to being eaten alive by criticism? With some help, I decided to go the open and honest approach, which was really well received. But more than that, I felt like I had a lot of context to add. After all this reading and thinking, I am starting to understand that what we undertook in the project is not straightforward. That is why I felt like the seminar was quite successful, even though I talked about a project that was basically an epic failure. Lots of positive feedback after that.
I am still stymied with my one "easy" experiment, so I'll be doing bench work for at least a few more days. Today, I am going to try and incorporate some of the comments from my coworkers on the introduction to my dissertation. Dr. Boss wants to see that on May 1, although there is lots more work to be done (figures? tables?), I feel like that is pretty do-able. Next weekend is also the wood-firing, so I am trying to get work done ahead of that so I can really enjoy it.
The other kinda cool thing was I gave a seminar this week. Just my usual, annual seminar for the department. I barely spent an hour putting the slides in place, gave a pretty scattered practice talk for the Dr. Rockstar's lab, who gave me really helpful comments, which I didn't have time to deal with until the morning of the talk. I spent another hour and a half on the talk (which, since it was 30 min- means flipping through it twice). I felt a little nervous giving a talk I spent so little time preparing, but I think it was perhaps one of my more interesting talks. Part of my nervousness was talking about a project that didn't exactly fail, but surely gave us disappointing results. How do you say that without opening yourself up to being eaten alive by criticism? With some help, I decided to go the open and honest approach, which was really well received. But more than that, I felt like I had a lot of context to add. After all this reading and thinking, I am starting to understand that what we undertook in the project is not straightforward. That is why I felt like the seminar was quite successful, even though I talked about a project that was basically an epic failure. Lots of positive feedback after that.
I am still stymied with my one "easy" experiment, so I'll be doing bench work for at least a few more days. Today, I am going to try and incorporate some of the comments from my coworkers on the introduction to my dissertation. Dr. Boss wants to see that on May 1, although there is lots more work to be done (figures? tables?), I feel like that is pretty do-able. Next weekend is also the wood-firing, so I am trying to get work done ahead of that so I can really enjoy it.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Short one
I’m back at work now, striving away to find something productive to do. Jess has been the best mother in the world, taking care of Tyler not only all night but also all day. I do my best when I get home, but I can’t always manage the energy to do all that I’d like, which is to do everything and let Jess get some rest. I do what I can, though.
I like our neighborhood more and more. We have lots of people dropping by to say hi and check up on the baby. Our neighbors down the street with the boy around Tyler’s age have come by a few times just to say hi, and it’s nice to think we have neighbors that might just come by and check on us, maybe come have dinner with us sometime. It makes me feel like I’m in a real place. I want to have another neighborhood BBQ . Maybe this time indoors, though. It was pretty hot last time.
Um...actually, I’m just pretty tired, and Tyler is asleep, so I’ll cut this one short. Goodnight.
-N
I like our neighborhood more and more. We have lots of people dropping by to say hi and check up on the baby. Our neighbors down the street with the boy around Tyler’s age have come by a few times just to say hi, and it’s nice to think we have neighbors that might just come by and check on us, maybe come have dinner with us sometime. It makes me feel like I’m in a real place. I want to have another neighborhood BBQ . Maybe this time indoors, though. It was pretty hot last time.
Um...actually, I’m just pretty tired, and Tyler is asleep, so I’ll cut this one short. Goodnight.
-N
I crack me up...
Writing is making headway. I've decided I can give a rough draft to a couple coworkers without the accompanying figures, so I am on track to pass that out tomorrow. There is one minor (major?) omission in my introduction though. Dr. Boss suggested I finish the introduction with what he termed "Perspectives" this is pretty common practice, you sort of sum up everything above, and use your enlightened position to suggest areas of further research and highlight the cool contributions. Even though I get it, I can't think of a single word to put here.
Yeah,... I need some perspective. Ha!
Oh man, I should get out of the house more. Actually, I went to visit a friend for dinner yesterday and was shocked to see that it has abruptly (from my perspective) become spring- flowers on the trees, people wearing shorts and skirts. Why am I still wearing sweats and a hoodie?
Yeah,... I need some perspective. Ha!
Oh man, I should get out of the house more. Actually, I went to visit a friend for dinner yesterday and was shocked to see that it has abruptly (from my perspective) become spring- flowers on the trees, people wearing shorts and skirts. Why am I still wearing sweats and a hoodie?
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Tyler on he Prowl
We haven’t had too many times taking Tyler out of the house, but here are a few.
We go walking with Tyler. We drop him in the stroller (okay, we gently place) and go out for a stroll, usually while he’s asleep. I already wrote about taking him out and feeding him and burping him while on the road. We generally try to keep him covered, but he gets a little bit of sun, which should help him keep his Vitamin D at proper levels and keep away the dreaded rickets. I don’t actually know what rickets is, but I’m told it is kept away by Vitamin D, also present in the formula he gets.
The first time we took him properly ‘out’ was actually to the store. I wanted to get a few things (we are pretty well stocked, we still have a lot of frozen dinners available) and Tyler was asleep so Jess decided we’d take him out and see how it went. It went well, he was asleep pretty much the whole time, and we just propped him up in the cart, kept our eyes (and hands) on him, and went about our business.
Jess and I had a date night last night where we left Tyler ALONE with grandma for the first time last night. We went to Cheesecake factory, which always seems to have people dressed up for prom going there, and this night was no different. Lots of prom dresses. The service was a little slow (and profusely apologized for) but I didn’t mind at all: we had plenty of time to stare at Jessie and chat about how happy I was. It was a nice outing.
Then today we went out for dinner with the whole family, Tyler included. He was asleep the whole time, but the rest of us got some burgers and fries and it was great. He really is a pretty great sleeper.
Sometimes he has difficulty eating because he tries to put his hands in his mouth.
-N
We go walking with Tyler. We drop him in the stroller (okay, we gently place) and go out for a stroll, usually while he’s asleep. I already wrote about taking him out and feeding him and burping him while on the road. We generally try to keep him covered, but he gets a little bit of sun, which should help him keep his Vitamin D at proper levels and keep away the dreaded rickets. I don’t actually know what rickets is, but I’m told it is kept away by Vitamin D, also present in the formula he gets.
The first time we took him properly ‘out’ was actually to the store. I wanted to get a few things (we are pretty well stocked, we still have a lot of frozen dinners available) and Tyler was asleep so Jess decided we’d take him out and see how it went. It went well, he was asleep pretty much the whole time, and we just propped him up in the cart, kept our eyes (and hands) on him, and went about our business.
Jess and I had a date night last night where we left Tyler ALONE with grandma for the first time last night. We went to Cheesecake factory, which always seems to have people dressed up for prom going there, and this night was no different. Lots of prom dresses. The service was a little slow (and profusely apologized for) but I didn’t mind at all: we had plenty of time to stare at Jessie and chat about how happy I was. It was a nice outing.
Then today we went out for dinner with the whole family, Tyler included. He was asleep the whole time, but the rest of us got some burgers and fries and it was great. He really is a pretty great sleeper.
Sometimes he has difficulty eating because he tries to put his hands in his mouth.
-N
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