Constantly Revising~ a life's work in progress

New Mom lessons

2011-09-04T20:14:00.000-07:00

1) When you do laundry, you now have to check the shoulders for spit up stains. Pre-treat aggressively is all I'm sayin'.
2) Do NOT under any circumstances put lotion on baby acne! They scream, you cry. It's 12 kinds of awful.
3) That adage about "sleeping when the baby sleeps" does not consider the fact that adults need to eat, and do laundry, and occasionally get work done.

This is just the beginning.

At least some things are still funny

2010-01-21T18:29:00.001-08:00

In case of hypothetical fire, this alarm will "hypothetically" sound.
From: Unnecessaryquotes.com

Last few weeks of freedom...

2009-08-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

..and boy, do I have a lot to do! Papers to submit (still), a class to wrap up, IRB's to complete. This summer has flown by too quickly and I've not been as diligent in my academic work as I should have been.
However, we've gotten a lot done on the house - the main bathroom is remodeled (well, except I need to cut and install new baseboards and buy a medicine cabinet), we removed the diseased shrubbery by the front door (yayy, electric chainsaw! Thanks Mom and Dad!), and the 2 huge trees in the backyard should be taken out this week. That last job will NOT be done by me, I know my limits.

I just got back from spending 10 days in FL with friends and family. It was way busy, but really fun. The first weekend, we had a huge shrimp boil at the parent's house. I didn't realize that many people would fit in that little house! There was Cajun music playing, margaritas, and key lime pie (my recipe) and coconut cake for dessert. A jumbly, odd mix of people and it worked out great! Side note - I really wish one of the gang was a picture-taker. We never seem to end up with documentation of these events.

Later in the week, Chel stayed the night night. She and I played video games at Aladdin's Castle, went to a Japanese restaurant for hibachi, then went to see the Harry Potter movie (v. good!). She handily kicked my tail on every game we played. Apparently you do lose some skills if you don't use them. Two nights later, Em and I went for pizza, to see G-force (cute), and more video arcading. That girl has a real thing for skee-ball :) She woke up the next morning and asked if I would take her to get her ears pierced! So we did. I'm an aunt, how could I say "no"?

In between 1) had lots of coffee and dinner outings with friends, 2) drank heavily at Josh and Trina's and played this game that had me laughing so hard tears were running down my face, 3) took my godson out for brunch and really got to talk with him, and 4) just reconnected.
I'm exhausted, but in a good way. Now, back to work - the countdown has commenced.

Torchwood is Dead

2009-07-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

There is a dearth of good sci-fi shows available, and now it seems we've lost yet another one. Torchwood just finished a 5-episode miniseries that has pretty much busted a cap in its own ass. Seriously, they knocked off more than 1/2 of the cast, a resurrection would be hard to pull off.
Shit!
Its bad enough we lost Firefly after 1 freakin' season, we had to run to the BBC to get a decent replacement. (Side note to Josh: what did you expect of a sci-fi show that had a crap-ass cowboy song in its intro? That was guaranteed doom.)
There are already rumors a-buzzing on the Interwebs that Capt. Jack will be in a spin-off series. That could be something. But the writers will be hard-pressed to find the same kind of character magic that they had in Torchwood.
So, R.I.P. Torchwood.

Summer. Finally!

2009-06-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was bad. Couldn't stop crying, even at Star Trek. (Good movie, but the opening scene was a little much for my fragile mental state.)
But today is better. It is the first day of summer and I have a ton to do. Luckily, most of it can be done from home, in my pj's.
Here is a partial list:
>Edit and upload my summer course for the distance students
>Write specific aims, hypotheses, and analyses for my Alzheimer's study
>Send a course description of my Food and Film class to my boss
>Make a remediation coursework packet to send to the poor kids that didn't pass their clinical rotations
>Finish my photo albums
>Wash the dogs
And various and sundry other housekeeping-type things.

I'm tired of feeling so anxious and thisclose to shattering. I think a quiet summer to reflect and regroup is exactly what the doctor ordered.

"It's that time of year, when the world falls in love..."

2009-05-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

But every song you here seems to say "Spring!".
This was the opening morning of the Pepper Place Farmer's Market. To give you an idea of how exciting that is, C and I hauled our selves out of bed at an unheard of 7:30 a.m. to go buy local produce.
Usually we take Harry (it is a very dog-friendly scene) but he's been really sick lately, so he had to stay home. He was devastated.
We strolled around the market listening to banjos and fiddles being played, sipped our coffee, and made our purchases. Radishes, tomatoes (of course!), and white turnips. I've never had turnips, so this was a a "food adventure" purchase. They are so pretty, ~ the size of quarters, and pure white. I am going to have to do some Googling to find the best way to prepare them.
We also found our favorite jam sellers there. There is a local company called "Not Yo Mama's" that makes the BEST habanero pepper marmalade EVER! A cracker, a smear of cream cheese, and a dollop of this marmalade = heaven. Here is their website: http://www.notyomamasgourmet.com/
Don't be surprised if we hand this out as Christmas presents, its just that good.
And now I am going to work on my class. I am teaching an Interim class called "Food, Nutrition, & Film". Its fun, but a lot of prep work.
Peace.
Image from the Pepper Place website.

It takes a village...

2009-04-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

Prior to entering the teaching side of academia, I spent a looooong time as a student. We (students) would have deep, "enlightened" conversations about how the professors were getting stale and inflexible compared to "a few years ago". (Yes, it's a lot of quotes already, but I haven't mastered the art of conveying sarcasm via blog without using quotes.) Now, on the other side, I see that my old student-self was partially right. Professors do change over time. But we do it in response to the increased immaturity of a few chosen students. These bad apples, if you will, force us to make syllabi 7 pages long just to cover every possible academic contingency. Truly, I just added a full page of consequences for various academic dishonesty/fraud possibilities in response to the shenanigans I've witnessed this past semester.
I refuse to become bitter, I love teaching just as much as ever. But I am rapidly losing my former naivete. In response to my former student-self, I say I am not getting "inflexible". I am getting wiser.
Yep, forget that whole "It takes a village to raise a child" crap. Hillary was misquoted! It actually "takes a cudgel"!

Nuke the village

2009-03-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

The funniest thing I've read recently was from bitchypoo.com She blogs about her husband who complained about the almond flavoring in the cupcakes she'd just backed:
"So he had a small temper tantrum, and as my belief is that you should respond to an uprising by nuking the village, I had a SUPER temper tantrum and told him I was never baking anything for him again EVER DO YOU HEAR ME YOU GODDAMN M0THERFUCKER?! (I’m not sure that two days before your wife’s period is due is really the time to get pissy with her.)"
It's not really PC, but that may be my new (unposted) teaching philosophy:
Nuke the village to quash the uprising!
I like it!

Tiny money hurdle squashed

2009-03-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

I just sent the final payment to my only Perkins loan. WooHooo! Let's have a moment of satisfaction before reality re-enters the room.
In the big scheme of things,that debt was infinitesimal. Miniscule even. My other remaining student loans are monsters by comparison. I will be paying on them for the next 25 years. But, for now, it feels good to knock one down.
After flunking out of my undergrad, I swore I would never waste my parents' money again. So I took out student loans to go back to school. My intentions were good, and I am proud of where I am at now. That experience helped make me the person I am today. But the burden of having so much debt is huge. It affects every daily decision Christopher and I make. We would have been able to move to Tuscaloosa 2 years ago, if it weren't for my student loans.
If we have kids, I will do everything I can to keep them from making the same mistakes I did. We will help them out with college (notice - I don't mean give them a free ride. I think working for it is important in the growing-up process), but we will also make sure they are financially savvy and are saving to help themselves.
Lesson learned on this end.

The waitng is the hardest part...

2009-03-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

If only I could insert little "song notes" to indicate that the title of this post was from a lyric. That song by Tom Petty has been running through my head today. The thing about trying to conceive is that is runs in 2 week patterns. The first 2 weeks of my month, I am free. To drink alcohol, to renovate the House (i.e. be exposed to paint fumes, etc), and to use facial products containing benzoyl peroxide/salycylic acid/retinol. However, the second 2 weeks are sacrosanct. It's the behave "as if" you were pregnant time of each month. Goddess forbis that I unwittingly expose a potential, fragile blastocyst to environmental toxins.
Weird. After miscarriage number 2, I am more in tune with my cycle and the passing months than I EVER wanted to be.
In other, more pleasant, news: I received my first grant. It is small in dollars, but large in potential. My reproductive life is challenged, but my work life is golden.
I guess you can't have it perfect.
Peace.

Putting it in Writing

2008-07-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

This is f-ing ridiculous.
I WILL finish this online class and send it to the web developer! TODAY!!
There, it's out there, so y'all hold me to it.

Books I Never Finished

2008-07-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

Usually when I get I book I cannot put it down. I read it cover to cover, until it is finished, or my eyes fall out. Whichever comes first. SO the list of books I've never finished is pretty short, but here goes:
Stephen Covey "First Things First". From Amazon's website "Using this book will help you create balance between your personal and professional responsibilities by putting first things first and acting on them.". It seems like a great fit, I love organizers, I need balance, and Stephen is the Master Organizer. So why didn't I finish it? The man cannot write! Hell, I couldn't make it through chapter 1! And I tried twice! He should take some lessons from Suze Ormon. I don't always agree with her methods, but her writing style is engaging,
So, I struggle on without personal and worklife balance....Sigh.

"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood.

Another strange one for me. Ms. Atwood is one of my favorite writers. "The Handmaid's Tale" is in my top 5 favorite novels! (And I've read hundreds, if not thousands, of them, so that is no small feat.) But O&C didn't engage me like her usual novels. Maybe it was the gloom and doom? No, probably not. She has a lot of that in her other books and it never really bothered me. I dunno, I just couldn't seem to connect with any of the characters. And it jumped around too much for me to feel invested in the story line. It was just kinda "Meh" for me.

I think that's it. Short list, right? I may add to it if I can think of anything else.
What got me to thinking about this was reading another blogger's post about having read "Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell". She LOVED it (as did I). But I didn't at first. I actually put it down after the first 100 pages or so. It was just a lot of boring background to me. A few weeks later, I took another running start at it and this time it captured me. Like the other reader, I couldn't put it down (and it's a BIG book). So, maybe one day I should give Mr. Covey or Ms. Atwood another chance. To paraphrase the often tossed-around break-up line "Maybe it's me, not the book, that is the problem".

Thankful

2008-07-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

What a strange day. One the one hand, I am baffled by one of my former colleagues. She and I have some research projects that we are collaborating on but are winding up. I have long considered her a mentor and a valued associate. Yet she has (twice now) been untrustworthy and downright dispicable. I realize she is under a lot of pressure, the research arena is suffering for funding with the Big Monkey in Charge's wacked-out financial priorities. Therefore everyone is scrambling to not go under. But STILL! That is no reason to backstab someone else.
On the other hand, it is pouring rain, rumbling thunder that takes forever to fade away, and is darkly beautiful. I am thankful that my husband drove my car to work this morning, instead of riding his motorcycle. He will remain warm and dry when he comes home (in ~30 minutes).
It's a small amount of gratitude facing off against a large amount of stress. But I am grabbing onto the positive with both hands.

Too much, too soon

2008-05-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

At 6.5 weeks pregnant, we (I) had a miscarriage. At motherfuckingDisneyWorld. Talk about a Karmic bitchslap.
I just took the baby ticker down from my blog sidebar. The same baby ticker I had only put up 1 week earlier. Did we announce our pregnancy too soon? Telling family and friends so soon that it was not going to happen was so much worse. I actually chickened-out and made my husband tell my parents. I just couldn't say the words. Hell, it hadn't even been a week earlier that we'd told them they were going to have another grandchild. From High to Low in 5 days flat.
Still cramping, still hurting. But I don't mind so much. Because once it's gone then that's it. Aside from the "What to Expect" book that I've shoved into the top drawer of my bureau and the booties that we bought for the grandparents, it's like it didn't happen. Like the projected due date of January 4th, 2009 is now just another day in the world.

Here we go

2008-05-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

It's that feeling like when you are sitting in the front seat of roller coaster climbing slowly to reach the tippy-top of the first gut-wrenching plunge.
That "butterflies (piranhas) in your stomach/giddy anticipation/Dear God what have we gotten ourselves into?!?" feeling.
Yeah, that one.
I can't wait.

Mmmmm....fooooood

2008-04-27T15:12:00.001-07:00

I want this:

And a few of these:

And several of these:

NOW!!!!!
Grrrr.....

(pictures and recipes from orangette.blogspot.com and stevesfrozenchillers.com ....bless them for their mad skills)

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T17:44:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to comment about how long it's been since my last post. It is a non-issue. If this blog got a hit, I would fall over dead from shock. But it is a great place to compile my thoughts.
It's a nice, quiet V-day over here. Butternut squash soup for dinner and now I am working on my lecture for tomorrow. With a quick aside to fish the chewed-up paper towel out of the puppy's mouth. However I DID get up and make my lucky husband a latte and delivered it to him in bed. This is a rarity in the extreme, he is the latte-maker in this house. I was thinking as I was brewing that I probably wasn't authorized to operate that machinery. And he brought me home Godiva truffles. Yum!
I had to stop at Publix for milk and, while standing in line, noticed the wide (huge)variety of people by flowers and little red heart boxes of chocolates for their sweeties. Old, young, quietly happy, radiantly hopeful....the whole range. Even a much older woman buying a bouquet of mylar heart balloons. That one made me wonder who the lucky recipient was?
I agree that Valentine's Day is grossly cammercialized and could do with some toning down. But, sometimes people really do need the reminder to reconnect with their romantic sides. As long as they don't go crazy with the gifts, thinking that it will make up for neglecting their loved ones the remaining 364 days a year, then it's all good.
A whole day devoted to celebrating Love. What's not to like?
Happy Valentine's Day!

Snap, Crackle, Pop

2007-04-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, 2 months since my last post. Time sure does fly.
In the last week, one recently graduated post-doc cracked mentally, one postdoc decided the guilt over leaving her son in daycare (he gets sick a lot) wasn’t worth it, and a doctoral student lost his sh!t and exploded at his mentor, thereby getting himself royally kicked out of the program. In the first instance, I can see it. She’s had a rough year and, once the adrenaline of getting through the defense wore off, her life caught up with her. In the second instance I cannot imagine what makes someone decide to spend 10 years of their life preparing for a career, then decide it’s “all or nothing”. There are other options after all: part-time care, working from home, or doing “swing-shift” work schedules with your husband. And in the last instance, well I wouldn’t have guessed it. He seemed pretty stable, but then again maybe he was in the right.
I dunno. Maybe it’s something in the air. But I, for one, would love to see a survey about the number of people that start graduate school drug- and therapy-free as compared to those who graduate. At least ½ of the graduate students I know are taking some form of pill – anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, or just sleeping medication. I know I’ve had a hard time keeping myself from hiding under the desk lately.

Would you be my zombie Valentine?

2007-02-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the most recent Milla Jovovitch zombie-killer movie- Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)? It’s pretty good if you like that sort of thing.
Which I do of course.
I would watch it again and again, but with much popcorn and soda. Oh, and rapid access to the pause button on the remote to facilitate running commentary with my long-suffering husband. He only endures my love of trash horror/sci-fi movies only because he loves me more than coffee…usually…mostly.

(remember Evil Dead? Mars Attacks? Red Comet?!? I love those!!!)

Anyway – they introduce a character in that movie that I swore they were calling him Lord Jefferson (LJ for short). It immediately has become my favorite name for our as-of-yet unconceived first-born child. Can't you just imagine yelling that down the street when the little heathen doesn’t want to come home from his friend’s house?

“Lord Jefferson L***, get your butt home right this instant!’

“Good morning Lord Jefferson”

“Hello Lord”

We could even send him to boarding school in England, where he would immediately baffle the other children – Is he just a Deity? Or is he actually Titled? (I hear their priorities are a little whacked sometimes) So confusing!

Going straight to He11 – do not Pass Go, etc, etc.

My husband was somewhat amused, but I can tell the name idea wasn’t put on his “Serious Consideration For Naming A Child” list.

Then again, he likes the name Benedict. (which may indeed be a fine name for all of you Benedict-lovers out there, but it is not on MY SCFNAC list. I’m just saying that we don’t see eye to eye on the naming issue).

(Later IMDB’ing and Googling showed that the character’s actual name was Lloyd Jefferson). Somehow, it’s not quite as good that way….

Oooooh, I just noticed there’s a new Resident Evil coming out this year. Fun for the whole family!

And on a final note - it snowed this morning. Just a little, but here in the South, it counts!
Here's proof (and yes, that's snow, not salt or sand, so don't be a disbeliever.)

So Happy Valentine's Day.

Defending Your Life

2007-02-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

One of my best friends is about to defend her dissertation. It’s for a PhD in Literature and, although mine was in a science, I can see that the process/hazing/trauma looks to be pretty much the same. So she calls me to ask for advice, tips, and insider tricks....and I don’t want to talk about it. My defense was almost a year ago (it was successful, thanks) and I am loathe to even think about it still. It’s sort of like PTSD- remembering the actual event brings an adrenaline rush and anxiety as if I were actually still there. As if no time has passed and “They” can still pronounce me unworthy with a resounding “NO”! It’s not called a “defense” for nothing. It would be more appropriate to be allowed to curl up into a ball to protect your vital organs, rather than have to stand up behind a podium and try to think clearly.
Good things happened that day too. It was a full house, all of my colleagues and fellow students were there. My husband sat proudly in the audience. The lights were in my eyes and the rest of the room was dark, so I couldn’t really see him. But I knew he was there and every time I tripped over a thought or phrase, (or said “um” again! I really need to quit doing that) I looked to where he was sitting. He was my mental and emotional touchstone. A really big rabbit's foot, if you will.
And boy howdy did we throw a party at graduation! All of the pictures verify that I was plastered (eyes half-closed, sh!t-eating grin on my face). Yep, it was done, the horrible experience was survived, now back to having a life with All-New Extra FUN!™ and HAPPINESS! ™
I wish her luck. She won’t need it, but it never hurts to have luck on your side. I’ve given her the only tips I know – get plenty of sleep, no distractions, stay in the mental zone, and bring snacks for the Committee. Bribery doesn’t hurt. She should be fine. She’s made it this far and, as they say, she is truly the most knowledgeable person on the topic she is about to defend.
But I neither miss, nor envy, what she has in front of her.

Road trip!

2007-02-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

Ohhh, we're going on a roadtrip and I can't WAIT! Our MINI (meet Jezebel)
needs her regular service and we don't have a dealer in this state. So we are using this as an excuse to go to Nashville. Wheeee!!!!! The last time we went out of town, when we weren't going to visit someone else, was for our honeymoon!
I have done my homework. We are staying at a nice hotel that is NOT a chain. Dinner might be room service or a fancy-schmancy dinner in the hotel restaurant. The next day we will be having breakfast at the Loveless, or the Tin Angel, or even Monell's (depending on what time we wake up). We do have to take the dog, so I specifically researched nice, outdoorsy things to do. There is a 2-mile walk that goes past a lot of "historic Nashville" types of things that looks nice if the weather holds.
La la la la....Gosh, Wednesday is so far from Friday. Why isn't it Friday yet?!?

Performance-enhancing drugs

2007-01-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

No, I am not talking about steroids or Vi@gra. I am talking about Rit@lin (i.e. methylphenid@te). During my early graduate school days (many years ago) I took several of my classes in the Medical School with the first and second year students. I learned then that many of them were taking Rit@lin to aid in concentrating for long periods of time.

Truly, I could see the allure. The amounts of information they were required to memorize was massive. Study sessions occurred every evening and lasted 4-5 hours (on top of the full day of attending classes). I counted myself lucky that I was only taking a few of the classes that they had to take.
But the question that was, and still is, being raised was “Is it ethical to take a non-medically necessary, performance-enhancing drug to perform better in school?” Proponents argued that:
1) it helped them to learn the material better and therefore would become better doctors, and
2) the side effects were minimal and unlikely to hurt them over the long term. Opponents countered with:
1) it was illegal to take unprescribed medicine, especially for an off-label use,
2) there was a “risk of developing dependence” and therefore, when they stopped taking it after medical school, they ran the risk of actually becoming “worse” doctors, and
3) taking drugs to increase study power meant that the drug-takers would make better grades, thereby driving up the grade curve for the rest of the class.
Personally, I think that the opponents viewed the skewed grade-curve effect as the most important, simply because it was the most harmful to themselves.

I didn’t take sides. But, from a purely scientific point of view, it would be interesting to see how many of the top 5% (vs. the bottom 5%) of any graduating medical class tested positive for this “performance-enhancing drug”.
And I wonder how many of those people are still having to take it during their medical practice?

Why am I thinking about this so many years later? Because I seem to have the attention span of an ADD’ed 6 year-old today. Popping a pill to gain some focus doesn’t sound so criminal right now. But don’t worry, I won’t go toodling over to the Med School across the street to try and score some Rit@lin. I have no cash and I don’t think they take credit cards.

How NOT to receive a gift

2007-01-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

Generally, I tend to crave the more savory foods over sweets. Give me cracked black pepper Triscuits with cream cheese and habanero marmalade (my current obsession) over cheesecake or cookies any day. But there are a few exceptions - quality dark chocolate, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, and peanut butter fudge.
Every year my mother exchanges sweets trays with the neighbor across the street, and the tray she (we!) receive has always had peanut butter fudge.
I look forward to it.
I crave it.
It is different from any other I've ever purchased, much more intensely-peanut-buttery than others I've tried. And this year there was none on the tray....and I was devastated. So much so that my dear, sweet mother snuck a jar of peanut butter into my husband's bag with instructions that he* should surprise me with peanut butter fudge when we got home.
He didn't have THE recipe, but looked online to the trusted Allrecipes.com for a popular one. For whatever the reason, it didn't work. Bless the man, he tried to salvage it by improvising, but the results were crumbly, too sweet, not very peanutty, and just not right.
And, in my disappointment, I did something I am not proud of. In front of a man who'd slaved to make something for me that he'd never made before - I cried "no, No, NO!!!!!" It would have only been more childish if I'd stomped my feet with each "no".
I hurt his feelings and all of my apologies were too late.
The next time we were visiting my parents, my mother went and got the recipe from her neighbor.
Upon investigating, we discovered that The Original Recipe does not have any milk or cream of any kind. Whereas the majority of recipes do call for evaporated milk or cream of some sort.
We now have the recipe stuck to the refrigerator. I suspect I am going to be the one to make it, because I can't bear the thought of him going through all of that work and, on a long shot, it not turning out for a second time. But, even if it NEVER turns out properly, I have learned my lesson. In these types of instances, it really is the thought that counts.

Maybe I'll make him something he likes while I'm at it.

*it should be noted that he is a far better cook than I am, so my mother's trust in his skills are never misguided.

2007-01-22T19:25:00.000-08:00

Big day.
Huge in terms of women's rights.
January 22, 2007 is the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Ladies, if ever there was a reason to vote, even when you don't think it will make a difference, this is the one. I had a long, heartfelt political argument planned, but someone else beat me to it, and she has a better voice.
Take a look: PunditMom: Keep your hands off my penumbra
My hats off to you PunditMom.
So, be informed and get out and vote! (in November, that is....)

When all else fails, write a blog entry

2007-01-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

Apparently I am constantly revising in the real world, but in the blog? Not so much.
Truly, I am actually writing like a maniac. I work in research and, as such, I am expected to publish papers in academic journals. “Publish or Perish” is the actual saying. The general routine is, you spend 1-2 years doing a research study. It takes a few months to write up the results (yes, some people are faster, shut up.) then you submit said manuscript to a journal. Here’s the first tricky part - you ALWAYS submit to the Journal of Big Impressive Research (JBIR) first. Why? Well, because you are naïve and think your paper will change the world, if only there’s a large enough readership. Or because everyone says it is stellar. Or even because you are hoping that JBIR has a dearth of submissions that month and they might be feeling kind. Heh.
Whatever. 3 months (minimum) later, you get a scathing e-mail generally saying “what a cr@p-as$ study and how dare you waste our time”. If you are lucky, they include details about which parts of your manuscript are the worst.
Move down the list of impressive journals, and repeat. Eventually, your little manuscript finds a home and all of the co-authors agree that they should have tried that journal first.
Hey Internet, hold on a moment while I roll my eyes.
It can take a year or more to get a paper published. But by then you are expected to have moved on in your research to bigger and better things. The result is that you have several papers in various stages of the revision/submission process lurking around like a fetid odor. I call them albatrosses. They hang around your neck, never truly completed, and weigh you down.
So yes, I’ve been busy revising. But no, it hasn’t been in this blog.
Sorry y’all.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

A few days late, but the sentiment is still there.
Every year on December 31st I insist that this is going to be the BEST YEAR EVER! *booming announcer-type voice*
Then, invariably, something bad happens and I wonder if I've jinxed it.
This year was no different. The bad didn't happen to me, but to someone I love. And I am left to wondering if anything great enough can happen in the upcoming year to put a dent in the cosmic balance of bad vs. good....
Which leads me to wondering what 2007 has in store.

New for this year: a blog. So where I want to go with this blog?

Constantly revising.

That applies to my life, my job (whew- especially that!), and my relationships, so be prepared for a bumpy ride. What I do know about this blog is:

This will be a forum for my rants, opinions, and musings. I will try not to cross that line into airing my personal business while still staying personal, but that's an awfully gray area.
Comments may, or may not, be enabled. Or they may be selectively enabled. (notice that I have already abandoned the "know" part of the mission statement) But I worry that I will become concerned with whether I "have comments" or not. That's too much pressure.
I will try to update on a regular basis, but I retain the right to be random about the topics. Whatever is important in my life is what going up here. Be it food, politics, music, or origami....the only continuity is that it passed through my head at some point.

That's it. New Year, new blog. Let's see how it goes.