Hurricane Gustav

I have been wanting to write a post about Hurricane Gustav, but I don't quite know what to say about it. Considering that this:



Baton Rouge neighborhood is behind the apartment complex I lived in during my graduate school days, I think I'm glad I don't live there any more. But my heart still aches for my city, and part of me wants to be there with them. You can't live in a place for seven years without developing a bond with the people who live there.

The city suffered a lot of damage in this storm. Downed trees have left many, many people (1.4 million the last I heard) without electricity. It is estimated that it will take 2 weeks to restore power to all the people in the region. Please keep the people of south-central Louisiana in your thoughts and prayers.

And if you're willing and able, please consider making a donation to the Woman's Hospital Hurricane Relief Fund to help families impacted by the storm. It is difficult enough to deal with a hurricane and its aftermath, but these families are also dealing with the trials of having a baby in the NICU. Having to deal with these two challenges at the same time is difficult at best. I know. My daughter was in the NICU at this hospital during Hurricane Katrina.

I've been wondering....

1. When the king in Sleeping Beauty has all of the spinning wheels in the country destroyed to keep his daughter from pricking her finger on a spindle, what happens to the country's economy? Where do they get their textiles for the next 16 years?
   
   
2. When Curious George swallows the puzzle piece, why does the Man in the Yellow Hat (MITYH) take George to a children's hospital instead of a veterinarian?
   
   
3. Why does the MITYH feel he can leave his monkey unattended at the zoo, candy story, ice cream shop, toy store, or any of the other locations where George gets him self in trouble? It that was a child....
   
   
4. How is it that George ends up working so many food service jobs? Would you want an ape making your pancakes or serving your ice cream?
   
   
5. Have I been reading too many children's book?

The Walrus Part 2

So my plan worked - sort of. After 2 weeks and some change, I managed to send a draft to my PhD advisor. In the end I earned about 15 downloads. There were days I worked on it with a will and other days where 30 min of each hour were spent reading blogs and other bits and pieces online. In the end, I was able to get it done. Bribing myself certainly helped me get the ball rolling, but the dangling carrot method is not what helped me to finish the albatross paper. In the end I think there were two things that helped more.

1)Deciding to do it. Sounds simple, but until I really decided to go for it, there were always other activities getting in the way. After a week of earning exactly one song, I finally just decided to do it. I cleared everything off my to do list except for this paper. No lab work. No blogging. Just writing. And now it's finished - go figure.

2)Getting an email from my PhD advisory that said, "ok where is it? We need to get it out." For me, one of the hardest thing about this whole science career is motivation. I love science, but some days it is really hard to be my own source of motivation. I've somehow managed to have fairly "hands off" advisors. And there are few deadlines. Many days it is really hard to get the ball rolling. A simple email really helped to keep up the momentum I'd managed to build up earlier in the week - go figure.

The time has come the walrus said....

to pull out the big guns. And by big guns I mean hard core bribes. I finished my PhD almost a year ago, and I still have 2 chapters that need to be turned into manuscripts and published. I'm having a really tough time getting this little job done what with a birthday party to plan and laundry to do and postdoc research to get done. I've tried gentle encouragements and I've tried threats (I may get scooped if I don't get my ass in gear), but neither of these seem to be providing the motivation I need. Therefore, I've decided to try a new approach. Bribery. For every hour I put in on said manuscripts I'm goi to give myself a credit for one music download. And for finishing the manuscripts I'm going to buy an mp3 player of some form (exact type to be determined)to play earned downloads. Think it will work?

I'm glad it's not the 1930s

37 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

I wonder if I got this score because I wear pajamas to cook breakfast or because I eat garlic before bed.

I have no response to that

My daughter, A, loves to draw and color. She recently learned to draw circles and has been using her new skill to draw balloons (she is terrified of balloons, but she loves to draw them for some reason). A few days ago I was walking up the stairs and noticed one of her characteristic balloons drawn ON THE WALL. WITH TURQUOISE CRAYON!!! "A," I yelled, "Did you draw this balloon on the wall?" To which she replied in her sweetest voice, "Yes Mommy, I drew it for you." Now tell me, how am I supposed to respond to that?

Gaining Weight

Now that my daughters are almost 3 years old, and I can fit back into most of my pre-baby clothes, its time for me to gain back some of my baby weight. Not weight as we usually think of it measured in pounds and ounces. I’m talking about mass in a more abstract sense. I used to be a bigger person, metaphorically speaking. I used to spend my free time sewing, making quilts, doing cross-stitch projects, reading novels (sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, you name it), gardening, making jam, baking bread, cooking complicated foods, canoeing, hiking, camping, going to the beach, building houses with Habitat for Humanity, hanging out with friends, going to see movies. You get the picture. And when combined with 40-80 hours of course/lab work per week (depending on the time of the semester and/or looming deadlines), I had a big, full life. Today I feel like my life is a lot smaller than it used to be. I’ve lost a lot of “weight” and I’m not as big a person as I used to be. And I miss being a larger person.

I started loosing weight when I found out I was pregnant (well actually, I gained about 20 lbs during the first month of pregnancy, but again we aren’t talking about actual real pounds here). I was less than a year away from completing my PhD, so I dropped all extra activities (except sitting on a Federal Grand Jury, which was not my decision and which is another post for another day) in order to complete my research before Baby was born. I dropped some more weight when I was put on bed rest about half way through my pregnancy. My doctor told me I need to lie around like a lazy dog, so no more research for me. And no more writing or even reading research related material for that matter. Baby B was so high up against my lungs that I could barely breathe. And sitting up for more than abut 10 minutes at a time – even in a recliner – was really uncomfortable. Plus, the preeclampsia made me very tired and foggy headed so I couldn’t concentrate on significant (i.e. science) reading long enough for it to make sense. The general discomfort also meant I couldn’t/didn’t want to spend any time cooking, quilting or sewing for my babies either. Hanging out with friends wasn’t really in the cards either. Everyone I had previously spent time with had just moved out of our hot, swampy city. I was reduced to reading mindless books, watching endless hours of bad TV (thank goodness for netflix), and going to see my OB twice a week. I felt really small, empty, and alone. I have the utmost sympathy for anyone who is put on bed rest during pregnancy (but that’s a post for another day, so back to the topic).

I started gaining some “weight” when the twins were finally born. I had two new beautiful precious people in my life who added to it in ways I’d never imagined. But two newborns are demanding (to say the least) There were days when I didn’t have time to take a shower or brush my teeth, let alone pursue any type of hobbies or get any work done. When the girls were ~ 6 months old, I started to get back part of my pre-baby life. I started teaching an introductory biology class for non-majors, and I was able to get a little research done. A year and some change later, I finished my degree and started a postdoc. And now I feel like I can really start putting some effort into combining my old life with my new life. The girls are big enough to take on picnics and short hikes. We plan to take them on their first canoe trip soon and camping will probably start in the fall. Some day I might even get back to the quilt I was making. My life is gaining weight. Now I just have to figure out how to balance it.

scientiae-carnival