Désolée

I just discovered that my RSS feeds I have set up in Outlook have not been updating. The weird thing is, if I visit a blog and then go back to Outlook, then it updates. I use Firefox. Why would there be some weird cross-talk between it and Outlook? Anyhoo. I'll catch up on all y'alls blogs eventually.

In the meantime I still have some grant writing to do. I read about 12 scientific publications today. My brain is dead, but I want to do through the edits my PI gave me before bed so I can just write tomorrow. I thought I would finish all my revisions today, but alas.

Seriously though, I do not know how people can just work on a grant 16 hours a day. What about laundry? Meals? Dishes? Maybe if I had a dishwasher it would be easier, but I read for about 9 hours today. That's tiring.

Hope you enjoyed this meaningless post. It was faster than baking, which I felt like doing but know that it takes too much time and there is this grant hanging over my head....

Stormy

While I let my brain reset and jump into the next section of my grant, I thought I would share these. I heard two tornado warning alarms last week, a first for me. The northeast seemed to have an increase in tornadoes over the past several years, but I am not entirely used to living where they have enough tornadoes to necessitate a siren. Hey, the back end of tornado-producing storm systems is pretty amazing though.

Across a field

This one would have been a little nicer if I had actually stopped my car to take it...

Tri-color

I really try not to spend unnecessary money. I bought a wallet at Banana Republic maybe 6 or 7 years ago, and it just won't wear out though?! I went to a coffee shop to work on a grant today and stopped by a couple of shops on the way back to my car. One had these really cute wallets, but $23 seemed unnecessary because I did not need one. Plus, I thought, if they had a brown one I would consider that.What do I see around the corner?? This. And it was "damaged" so 50% off. There were some scratches under the flower snap, so I colored them with a brown sharpie.

Do you think I like a certain color combination? There is an awful lot of brown, maroon, and light green around...

Forever...or not

I love when Pandora reminds me about I song I love...or two.


Don't listen to this one out loud at the office - there are some profanities.

Brilliant!

I had two brilliant thoughts today (if I do say so myself). Well, maybe I had more, but these two are shareable (if I do say so myself). I am working on a grant, so I apologize for the format in advanced.

Background One: In case you missed it, another huge piece of glacier in Greenland is gone. One of the things I think I understand is that salt water can be colder. When you have increased temperatures, even if they are seasonal, and you get these huge pieces of fresh water glacial ice breaking into the salty ocean. They will melt, decrease the salt concentration, and the water temperature does not get so cold because it is less salty. Warmer water will just make the problem worse - you'll get more melting glaciers and the water will be less salty and warm up and more melting glaciers and...

Desalination is a way of taking the salt out of water so that you can drink it. This is done on a lot of small islands I think, but now they even do it in the UK! One might argue that the UK is a fairly large island that gets a fair amount of rain.

What do they do with all that salt they take out of the water?

Brilliant Idea One: I think they should put it in the water in Greenland! Now, this is sorta tongue-in-cheek, but seriously. What do they do with the salt?


Background Two: I like to read novels the old fashioned way on paper. Part of this is that I have not accumulated a ton of books because I have cut down on my books as I have moved so many times over the past ten years. There are some that are still at my parents, like Island of the Blue Dolphins and Julie of the Wolves, and some here by some favorite authors like Diana Gabaldon, Isabelle Allende (if you've read her new one, let me know if it was good!), Jane Austen and Bill Bryson. I do not anticipate myself switching to the e-book format soon. However, since I started my post-doc I avoid printing papers out. I read them, take notes in a notebook, and put all of it in my reference manager. This has the benefit of not killing so many trees and having my references all on my computer when I want them. It has the drawback of not being able to grab a folder to write about a specific topic and not seeing my notes with the text. My rotating grad student just got a tablet PC and is really using it well to transition into an electronic notebook and handwriting things to be save electronically.

Brilliant Idea Two: What I would totally invest in is an e-journal reader. Not a kindle or something like that, but something that is geared towards pdf reading, annotating, and reference management. I think a lot of scientists would. How great if you had your whole file cabinet in a handy tablet to take on planes, to meetings, to read on the beach (just kidding about that last one at this stage in my career).

And there you have it. Two brilliant ideas that are now out in the public domain and no longer patentable, unlike what some yogis think is an appropriate thing to do for a practice that is thousands of years old.

So difficult

I really dislike booking plane tickets. I am always scared I will book for the wrong day. I particularly got that flippy feeling in my stomach when CF and I booked our Germany flights.

Well, I finally booked my flights for a weekend in August. I would say that the tickets were expensive because I waited so long to book them, but really they are only about $40 more than when I looked a couple of months ago. I figured I would use the 50 Euro certificate I got when CF and I missed our connection in Amsterdam to reduce the cost. Simple.

But nooooooo...Neither KLM or Delta let you use it online. And when I called the automated message actually hung up on me. No putting me on hold. Just, sorry, we're busy, call back. I don't think I have ever had that happen before.

Whatever, I will just use that for another trip in September.

I then figured I would sign up for the miles credit card because I keep meaning to cancel my second credit card (I never use it and do not get anything if I do use it...that's another story), get the $100 on this ticket, and 25,000 miles for my first purchase with it. After the first year there is a $95 annual fee though (which they tell you after you fill out all the info and just before you hit submit), and I do not trust myself to remember to cancel it. So forget that.

I did manage to book the ticket finally. I frequently find now that the airlines themselves have the same price as all those other discount sites unless the discount site is running a particular deal, but not after I checked ever site I could think of just to be sure. I feel a little more comfortable knowing my reservations do not have to keep switching electronic hands when I book through the airline too, so that is good.While I had to make these reservations sooner than later, I did manage to spend two hours of writing time doing so. I need to stop being so obsessive about checking all the sites only to book with the airline everytime.

Anyone have a suggestion when an airline's reservation phone number isn't busy so I can call back and not have the automated dude hang up on me?

Gettin' stuff done (sorta)

I am submitting a training grant in three and a half weeks and originally intended to have a draft done by now. My PI is not too worried about it, as I bring it up when we meet and she says, "Oh, there's plenty of time." I take this to mean the things that I have written so far lead her to not worry about major revisions; she is also really good about turning things around. Today I managed to get two more parts (1-2 pages each) done. Because it is a training grant, they have your write little bits about all sorts of stuff like your research experience, any instruction in responsible conduct of research, your career goals, a training plan, etc. Although the research plan is about half the length of a real PI grant, so I guess that makes up for it.

Anyhoo. While two more parts drafted is great, I still have not started to tackle the 6-page research plan, and I did only start working on this new-to-me research topic 7 months ago. I should have read a lot more in the past few weeks to get ready for writing. Instead I procrastinate.

This morning I made rhubarb yogurt muffins (delicious...I don't really have a recipe...I combined a couple plus just added rhubarb instead of berries), went for a run (you know I am seriously procrastinating if I run), did a load of laundry, made out the cars for weddings this month, bought stuff for my car, took a time point at lab, listened to the World Cup game while I "wrote", went shopping (Ann Taylor Loft is having a great sale, FYI), and came home and made a squash and chicken enchilada casserole (another recipe combination that turned out well). When I stopped at the grocery store, I even checked to see if there were any red box movies I wanted to rent, but alas. And the TV stinks tonight. So you get a blog post. :-)

Now it is 10:00 and I want to go to bed so I can get up early to start my day: a run, farmer's market, cherry farm if there aren't any at the market, Sunday paper, another load of laundry, take a time point at lab, listen to the World Cup game, convince myself I have enough left-overs in the fridge and do not need to cook, and WRITE. I think I should work on one more part so I do not have bad dreams about it and get a good night's sleep.

If I owe you an email and/or a phone call, am supposed to get plane tickets/a wet suit/make plans with you/set up skype and let you know the details of any of that, or something else, I have it on my list and just might get to it before I finish my draft of my grant bits.

Also, if you have a blog that I read. Do post. It will give me something to do. :-)

Horses and Water

My PI meets with us each weekly, and we give her a printed research report and discuss what we have done, any results, and our plans for the coming weeks. She does not micromanage by any means, rather does this to keep up with what people are doing. I also use this time to tell her how I am approaching my supervisees.

I told her about my issues with the undergrad (in a general manner) and how he and I were going to use online document sharing to allow him more flexibility in his schedule. She said that sounded like a great idea. I also said I think I need to give him harder deadlines because when I give him two papers and say, "read these and cite them in your presentation in two weeks," he does not. (I think that is a relatively hard deadline, but maybe I am mistaken.) In comparison, when I leave for vacation, I ell him he must read those papers, write down any questions about the methods, results or discussion, but otherwise be able to state what the take-home message(s) was and how that relates to his research project. This he did.

I did a LOT of hand-holding and over-shoulder watching with him, but he does not seem to have the confidence to go out on his own or the ability to schedule non-lab but important things. I told my PI that this fall I will start off giving him a paper every week or two to discuss and then transition into him giving me a paper to discuss by the end of the semester. She liked this idea too.

"My" grad student has a fair amount of research experience, including being a full-time tech for the past six months. He is used to doing hands-on stuff full time. This is how I was when I started graduate school after being a tech for two years. So I did nearly full-time lab work on top of my classes because I needed to feel productive. (And hey, I have three papers published from my dissertation work, so maybe it paid off?) Anyway, I told my PI that I am pretty confident about his ability and knowledge, and that I gave him a fairly detailed protocol for Western blots up to a particular point. I told him (two weeks ago) that he needed to fill in the protocol with recipes and details before we got started and gave him three specific resources and his former post-doc supervisor did protein work and he was going to email said post-doc. I also forwarded him the information on the reagents I had ordered.

Up to this week, when we(/he) needed to do the protein extraction, he had not done completed the protocol. I told him that I would "recommend" doing the protein extraction, protein concentration assay, then STOP and write up the rest of the protocol and we would go through it at the end of the week before he continued. He has been sorta working on this, but started making buffers today rather than finish planning out the set-up. I did put a wrench in his initial plan when I told him a particular supply is too expensive to just run a gel for all these different conditions - I am all about efficient use of resources thanks to a mostly under-funded grad school experience. Anyway. I have to keep directing him to finish certain planning aspects before jumping in. And today he said to me that this is a different experience because he was so used to being hands-on busy all the time and not used to planning a whole experiment first and then doing it. Aha! The difference between being a competent and likely independent technician and transitioning into a graduate student. I told him that I totally agree and went through a similar transition when I became a post-doc.

My PI has agreed with the methods I have told her I am implementing. That said, I realized today that I also confirm these ideas with the lab manager in regular conversation. I explained to her today that I was not sure when we would actually run the Western blot because I keep having to reign in the grad student and get him to plan ahead in order to be able to run the experiment appropriately and have to keep stopping him to point out methodological details. She confirmed to me that historically, she usually shows grad students established techniques and explains methods, my PI teaches grad students how to think and plan scientifically, further into school the grad students figure new things out on their own, and she just shows post-docs where reagents are and they are generally able to just work on their own (although she has had to show me a bunch of microscopy stuff).

Take home message: Shove the undergrads right INTO the water or they will not drink; nudge the grad students towards the water when they get distracted; show the post-docs the "Water this way" arrow and leave them alone.

Seriously?!

This may be a TMI on the pets post, so sorry.

Having wall-to-wall carpet is not really my thing. But, my new apartment is all carpet except the eat-in kitchen and bathroom. So I put a woven rug under my cat pan in the second bedroom because the kitchen and bathroom are not big enough for a cat pan. I have soaked the rug in baking soda water and hung it in the sun a few times since the beginning of the spring to keep it clean.

My cat goes in the pan, but frequently hits the edge, so pee goes down the edge of the pan. I bought a carpet powder and a new cat pan recently and cleaned the whole area before I went on vacation. I put a little dirty litter in with the clean so as not to change too much and started putting newspaper under the pan because it is easy to change. Now that it is so freakin' hot out, I actually clean the pan every day even though I have one cat and she only uses it for one #1 and one #2 each day.

What does she do? She pees ON TOP OF THE (plastic) CAT LITTER BUCKET. I cleaned the pan and it had a mere THREE clumps in it. Seriously? I wish someone cleaned my toilet once a day. Beeatch.

[She also puked over the weekend, so I've been giving her hairball treats. I have been making sure she's drinking enough because of the weather to avoid any urinary problems. She is acting normal otherwise. I scruffed her, rubbed her nose in it, cleaned it up, then sought her out to give her treats.]

Happy Independence Day!

This weekend I am trying not to get a sun burn and not to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. I tell you how that goes when I am back.And because I love Fenway Park...

Curious

Questions I ask myself daily (when I see my spam filter report):

Why does an email with the subject line "Sale on e rection boosters" only get a spam rating of 73%?

Why am I sending myself emails about anti-E D pharmacy products?

Phew!

I was beginning to think that I needed to seriously re-evaluate how I approach male students. I was thinking maybe I am not good at the one-on-one with them?

In grad school, I was "given" one male undergrad and two female undergrads at various times. The two female undergrads are on papers I published; the male undergrad was somewhat inept. And the situation with him was one in which my PhD advisor actually handled it in a way that benefited me by essentially pawning him off on a lecturer in the department who was doing some research in our lab at the time. [As an aside, she never talked to the lecturer or me about it, she just directed his project so that it made sense for him to go to the lecturer with questions.]

When I was a TA in a lab course, I had great teaching moments with students. In retrospect, those with the male students tended to be with the "nerdy" kids. But it is easy to be excited about science when interacting with students who are already excited about science! And I had a student in introductory lab who I later TA'ed in an upper level lab and he and I would joke around. (He was a senior and I told him it was not fair that I had him as a freshman, now he was graduating and I was not. That was a funny moment.)

So I start my post-doc and I "get" an (male) undergrad right away. We talk about the project, the mutant we need to characterize and the one technique, from start to finish, that I want the undergrad to learn. We did everything together over the semester, with him doing all of the hands-on stuff and me giving him tips from my own experience before he would start something. We talk about his results and experimental and biological explanations for what he sees. He does okay with this, but it would help if he had read the three papers I asked him to read a couple of months earlier...

Then I went away for two weeks. So that he was all set to do one complete round of the experiment that we had gone through together multiple times ("To include in a publication!!!!" I tell him), we talk about all the details like incubation temperatures (an why), how to set up the samples so that there will be sample left over when I get back for him to use with a new technique (how exciting, right!!!!), and we write it down. When I get back, none of the detailed protocol changes that we wrote down ahead of time are documented in his notebook, he has funky results, and he used the entire sample. So for a publication I would need to repeat the experiment. Seriously, I think the only thing I could have done differently was to have him write those plans down again to really get them in his head.

So I am essentially 0-2 on the male undergrads. Now, though, I am supervising one PhD rotation and half supervising a master's student research course, both male. So far so good. I gave the PhD student the start of a working protocol and asked him to fill in the rest (which he hasn't done, but with his experience and being a PhD student, I am leaving that up to him to figure out...is that wrong?); the master's student just started yesterday, but we have already had some good conversation (science and non). I have my fingers crossed.

[Now, I think I have high expectations as a teacher, but am patient unless I feel disrespected. I have good conversation moments with my undergrad now, but they are never when we are in teacher-student mode. The female undergrads I worked with both had different requirements - one was more hands-on and one more independent, but it worked out. Do I need a new frame-of-mind, and not just different managing and teaching techniques, for male undergrads?]