My Personal Government Bailout

Well folks, in a time of economic uncertainty and government bailout, the folks at the most auspicious of all government science funding agencies (the agency-who-shall-not-be-named) decided to bail me out. Yes, the proposal I submitted on my birthday will be recommended for funding! WOOHOO! I'm gonna say it again. WOOHOO!

My advisor scared the living daylights out of me in my office, and then merely said, "So, we should do the happy dance," and started dancing. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what he was getting at, and in the meantime I looked at him like he was from another planet.

Needless to say, this feels SUPER validating, since this is the real deal. It kind of makes me feel like a real scientist! And maybe means this quarter will be the last time I TA??? Now I really AM counting my chickens....

Another political departure

Ok, I'm taking the slacker's route on posting, but unless you'd like photos of students firing projectiles into tubs of sand and flour, or of me staring at spreadsheets, I haven't got much to post. The quarter has started in earnest and I'm TA'ing, again. And unfortunately for you faithful readers (but good for my sanity), it is not a field-based class.

Anyway, to keep you entertained, I'm posting a link to a video, in anticipation of tonight's debate. I also recommend you check out other videos this group has made, especially "swing(er) states."

Sadly, I'll be teaching lab and will have to catch the debates later on the old interweb.....

Planned unplanned time. Yar.

Avast and shiver me timbers, September be slippin’ away. We be facing yet o’nother National Talk Like A Pirate Day in a few wee hours, so I thought I’d start a practicin’

The fair port ‘o Santa Cruz has seen many a visitor in the last fortnight. The scurvy knaves, Sarah and Stephanie, came down from the afar isle o’ Berkeley, and we played at the beach,

(No fun at the beach or ye'll walk the plank!)

threw the discs, (Aye, a confusing hole. No one found the refrigerator)

ate up greek food and ran obstacle courses on the playground. All trainin’ fer bein’ a buccaneer.

Q: How much does a pirate pay for corn?
A: A Buccaneer!

And the next weekend, the landlubbin’ parents (what is pirate for parent?) sailed through, and we ate,

(Yar, the mighty Cap'n Snell with his most fearsome weapon, the veggie peeler)

paddled the mighty seas in search o’ the birds,

(The swarthy birders debate)

and they went home with plenty ‘o Santa Cruz' finest booty (and a bottle of rum). Yar. Much swashbuckling done by all, and no one had to walk the plank.

Q: What does a pirate say on his 80th birthday?
A: Aye matey…..

September madness (also known as canning/harvesting/picnicking/holy-crap-I-only-have-3-weeks-to-do-everything-I-said-I’d-do-over-summer season)

(The front yard harvest)

September in Santa Cruz is a glorious thing. The weather is beautiful, the fog disappears for a bit (before the rain rolls in for winter), and the produce goes crazy, so everyone has been busy making the most of the last few weeks before students reappear and the pace of life jumps up a few notches.

(Dai captures the Dinner Harem on film. How does he do it?)

It is harvest season, and as the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But I don’t have lemons, just a whole lot of asian pears. I’ve never heard of pear-ade (I’m sure it exists by now). So instead Rachel and I made a day of canning other pear products.

(Rachel on quality control duty)(if only I knew how to juggle....)

I’ve never canned anything in my life. My only training came about a month ago, when I helped Sora can various peach foodstuffs (salsa and jam). I will admit to being very inspired by how hard it didn’t seem, and by reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I highly recommend it, but be prepared to start spending a lot more time in the kitchen. She can even inspire a person to want to make their own cheese. I’ll save that adventure for a later date however.

(the stove, hard at work)

The grand tally came to ~10 quarts of pear chunks, 6 pints of pear jam, and about 3 pints of pear puree. Oops, I think I just gave away Christmas.
Things I learned:
1: the house gets really warm when you have the stove on all day in September.
2: Hearing the POP that tells you the cans sealed is very satisfying.
3: Having a few cans that DON’T pop is even more satisfying because then you get to quality-control the goods (pear jam is really good on waffles).
4: Pear puree tastes just like applesauce, but you don’t have to add any sugar.
5: And last but not least, you sleep really well after a day of canning, assuming you left the skylight open to let out all the warm air.

Good? Or Good Enough?

(Glimpse of a rare sunset while at the lab)

I spent last weekend and week back in the lab down south. After comparing notes on the state of our studies with a student I once crashed with, I’ve come up with a new way of thinking about finishing projects. Research is kind of like limits; I mean the math kind (I know, I know, bear with the geeky analogy). When I learned about them, I was told to imagine standing a few feet from the wall. Go half the distance between you and the wall. Then go half the remaining distance. Repeat until you finally – oh, nope, you won’t reach the wall that way.

This project feels a little like that. Hence the concept of Good, or Good Enough. It seems like the most successful researchers are the ones who can identify when a project is good enough, they write it up, and move on. Sounds easy enough, right? But as a project evolves and changes direction, it feels hard to just let it be finished, despite every other part of me that wants it to be done. Everything takes longer than I thought, so then the project must be extra good because it has taken so long, and then Improvement #1 returns something unexpected, and trying one more thing will make the project even better… Devilish logic.

(the science magic in action in the windowless basement lab)

At any rate, the week in the lab went quite well, in fact it was probably the best trip I’ve ever had. Data looked good, my samples were clean, and my pseudo-advisor encouraged me to apply for one of the postdoc fellowships they offer! Yay! That brings the tally of applications/proposals for the fall up to two, and I need to finish off this dataset and paper (I’m starting to sound like a broken record with that goal). And see how much I can get done before fall quarter starts and TA’ing begins again. But having things at the next step to apply for does a lot for helping with the feeling of Good Enough.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

(Sarah shows us how relaxfest is done)

Finally took a REAL vacation. You know, the kind that doesn’t involve so much activity that you need another vacation to recover from the vacation. And the kind that wasn’t attached to a work trip. It was great. Sleeping, walking around seeing things but not too many things, reading books, swimming, thinking about running and mostly not actually going (excuse: too humid. reality: too lazy), watching other people be active (ie, watching the olympics), cooking dinner with friends and catching up, hearing grandparent’s stories, enjoying grandparent happy hour on the back patio.

And just long enough in each place to not get antsy, and just long enough away from home to be happy to be back and ready to be busy again.

Spent the first weekend of vacation in northern Pennsylvania at Sarah’s family cabin on a lake. The weekend was complete with a New York excursion to see Ithaca and its gorges and learn new car games (silos and graveyards, anyone?),

(Dai, Kate and Calla for scale)

(more, beautiful shallow marine shelf rocks, apparently Devonian aged. I saw HCS!)

plenty of lake time with Frisbee diving,

(click on the picture if you want to see Calla and Sarah's game faces...)

(good thing that wasn't on land. Something would have snapped.)

Mid-week I spent with the grandparents in the DC area and enjoyed having time to read the paper, read my books, go for a couple of half-hearted runs in the neighborhood and catching up on the old stories. We also went out to Great Falls on the Potomac and saw the obstacles that prompted the original GW to build canals.

(Grandmama and Granddad check out the falls.)

(Great Falls)(Canal remnants)(Beautiful heirloom tomatoes at the Fairfax farmer's market. Couldn't resist since I was reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracal at the same time and had just gotten through the description of the Virginia farm produce)

The following weekend I spent in Durham, North Carolina with Nate and Chrissy and the newest Williams: Gwyn. She’s cute, she’s “dangerous” and got her parents solidly wrapped around her finger. She’s got a little work to do on the cats, however. I got to help start a Porter brewing at Nate’s work

(Brewer Nate and his machines)

and spend time in thick, green vegetation. Nice change of pace from Brown California in August.

(BIG lily pads in the Duke botanical gardens. Only missing a giant bullfrog)

(VERY old type of metasequoia. Apparently typical from 70 to 15 million years ago. This one was grown from fossil seeds!)

(Chrissy and her dangerous progeny, Gwyn)

Meanwhile, back at headquarters….

(Our asian pears)

While I was away, the garden grew; some parts better than other. The basil and tomatoes look great, and I’m holding out for the day when I can make a tasty pasta meal from homegrown basil and tomatoes and fresh made pasta from the Pasta Lady at the farmer’s market.

(first cherry tomatoes!)

I don’t know how long the basil will hold out, but I keep hoping if I just pluck the ends just before they blossom, I can delay the harvest. Me against nature, a battle I usually lose. The sunflowers out front are a slightly sadder story; the snails have found them, but they seem to be trying to bloom, regardless of not having any leaves anymore.

I won’t mention the peas. I don’t think they get enough sun…..

(the best of the bunch. No kidding. I replanted them in a last ditch effort to give them more sun. We'll see...)

The recently planted cucumbers and kale look promising though. Yay for the long growing season out here! Perfect for the procrastinating gardner.

Since being back, it has been a slow transition back to the research life. Lab work and outside activities have been the primary occupations. Mel and Nadine convinced me to sign up for a metric century in the Santa Cruz Mountains the other weekend. I had two weeks to get ready and Mel kindly lent me her very nice cylcocross bike. Crafty, crafty Mel; she knows the way to get someone addicted. The ride was fantastic, and other than slightly sore bits the next days, I felt remarkably ok. There were a couple of stiff climbs, though and at one point I looked at Mel and told her I was pretty sure I could run up the hill faster than I was pedaling. But beautiful views and A LOT of food made it worth the while.

Last week has been spent finally grading everything from summer field, which was a slow, painstaking and somewhat mind numbing process. I’d rather not look at a strat column again for awhile. But we’re done and it is back to lab work, paper writing and an upcoming vacation to the East.