Phew!

**It has been almost 3 years since I added to my '100 things' list! If you have an idea for a topic for the last 10 things, let me know. Sadly I have already done a 'random things' list.**

Week one of the semester:

Day 1: Can't log onto the computer before my 9 a.m. class. Restart it. Can't log in. Call help desk. Start teaching. Help desk comes and the computer isn't connected to the internet anyway. Finish class without slides. Computer works fine when I check back in the afternoon. Stay up too late after making dinner, doing laundry, watching a couple hours of TV, and deciding I should do work.

Day 2: Would have started by finding a massive water leak in my teaching lab just before my 8:30 a.m. class, but luckily a colleague found the ceiling dripping at the end of Day 1. Stay up too late because I wanted to go over my lecture again and I clearly suck at going to bed early.

Day 3: Headache all day in spite of the 2 Aleve, 2 cups of coffee, and stretching my neck and upper back throughout the day. Headache wains and I run 3 miles in the 20 degree windy weather. Headache comes back. Make dinner. Do some laundry. In bed by 11:00.

Day 4: Start the day with more Aleve, just in case. I think the rest of the day went okay. I don't remember. I still felt off and like any second that headache would come back. Happy hour with other new faculty at the end of the day. Made it to bed at a reasonable hour after texting with BIL guy about how it takes him forever to fall asleep unless I am around and how I just fall asleep because I am that lucky. I barely remember closing my eyes.

Day 5: Feel more normal than I have all week! Probably the best lecture of the week, although I am amazed at how little material I get through. I have a hard time telling if the students are keeping up, bored, and/or lost. 9 a.m. is not that early for a class, but it is if you are college students (and this group sees me at 9 a.m. 3 days a week and 8:30 another day). One of said college students missed class because her grandfather had a bad fall. Go to local meeting of those working with a similar research system. Have awkward conversation with speaker about my post-doc advisor and the speaker's collaborator with whom my post-doc advisor does not speak (long story that is not mine to tell). Feeling exhausted again. Put away all the laundry I have done in the past week, empty the dishwasher, make dinner, decide to watch the pilot episode of West Wing, write a blog post, go to bed super early.

Saturday plan: Get up. Run. Go wine tasting.

Marquee bumper

If my car's bumper were a marquee sign, these are some of the things I might type (with some hands-free device of course) when I was out driving. Not all are negative either!

• Nice blinker.

• I can only go as fast as the car in front of me. Please get off my ass.

• Just because you have a weighted-down truck with 4WD does not mean it is safe to drive fast in a snow/ice storm. (See: flipped SUVs along the road.)

• Thank you/your family member for your service to our country.

• The public safety employee ones: Driving a police car should not give you the right to weave in and out of traffic. Driving a police car should not give you the right to speed. Driving a police car should not give you right to roll through a stop sign. Driving a police car should not give you the right to hold your cell phone in a hands-free state.

• GET OFF THE PHONE and/or MOVE OVER.

• Learn to merge

• Learn to drive in a roundabout/rotary/traffic circle.

What would you add to the list?

Playlist

I have mentioned plenty now that I have been running. I only ran twice last week, but when I did I ran 4.85 and 4.5 miles, and when I have a decent run, I average 11 minute miles. The half marathon I am slowly training for must be completed in under 3 1/2 hours, which I could probably do if I was walking my fast speed. My goal is to to do it in less than 3, and if I can train to run it at 11 minute miles, I should break 2 1/2 hours. When I put it that way, I actually think I can do it. I ran for almost an hour the other day and felt like I could have pushed myself to keep going, but felt like stopping and going home. (I run on campus at work when it is night time.)

I have slowly been building an eclectic playlist to which I can run. It even includes Jim Croce. I had last thought I needed to try running without music because a couple of my runs were terrible, but I think I have realized it is not the music, but running first thing in the morning that is currently terrible for me. Here is the current line-up, clocking in at 3 hours and 4 minutes of music. A couple are better for fast walking (like Tik Tok), but I just count those as built in breaks when they come on my ipod.

Title                                                                         Artist              

Smooth Criminal	Alien Ant Farm
Little Plastic Castle	Ani DiFranco
Long Way	Antje Duvekot
Show Me How To Live	Audioslave
What You Are	Audioslave
Like A Stone	Audioslave
Roam	The B-52's
You Lie	The Band Perry
Walk away	Ben Harper
Crazy	Britney Spears
The Distance	Cake
Last Name	Carrie Underwood
Before He Cheats	Carrie Underwood
Moonshadow	Cat Stevens
Come on Over	Christina Aguilera
A Thousand Years	Christina Perri
The Scientist	Coldplay
I'll back you up	Dave Matthews
You & Me	Dave Matthews Band
Independent Women Part 1	Destiny's Child
Survivor	Destiny's Child
Hunter	Dido
Passerby	Dispatch
My Immortal	Evanescence
Low (feat. T-Pain)	Flo Rida
Got You (Where I Want You)	The Flys
Name	Goo Goo Dolls
Acoustic #3	Goo Goo Dolls
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams	Green Day
I Won't Give Up	Jason Mraz
Time In a Bottle	Jim Croce
Sky	Joshua Radin
What Goes Around.../...Comes Around Interlude	Justin Timberlake
Tik Tok	Ke$ha
Sweet Thing	Keith Urban
I Try	Macy Gray
Girl Like That	Matchbox Twenty
Its gonna be me	N Sync
Nightingale	Norah Jones
Throw Your Arms Around me	Pearl Jam
Every Rose Has Its Thorn	Poison
Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of	U2
Leave the Pieces (Album Version)	The Wreckers
Mary	Zac Brown Band
Highway 20 Ride	Zac Brown Band

Snippets

BIL guy and I have some funny conversations. He is in white; I am in blue. This was the night before we headed out of town together for a couple of days.

I think the most memorable conversation of that weekend was (again) talking about the months and months we hung out as friends. He asked if I thought he was gay, and I told him that while I had joked about it with my aunts, I was pretty sure he was not. Later when he referred to a situation, I pointed out that it was back when he was gay and we had a good laugh.

This was after we spent the weekend together out of town.

BIL guy loves mac and cheese, and apparently is a big fan of boxed mac and cheese. We recently discussed my and my friend's use of plain Greek yogurt in Annie's mac and cheese. If you have not tried it, you must. (While he was skeptical about this combination at first, he ended up thinking it was delicious.)

BIL guy then spent the week deciding what, besides my mac and cheese, would go with the pulled pork. He thought maybe corn on the cob, but apparently I have told him about how I am a corn on the cob snob (as in I only like it fresh). Dude remembers way too much?! I asked him what else I had been snotty about, and he at least pretended not to remember anything else. (Sometimes I think I am like a stererotypical guy, because I am pretty sure I do not remember as much of our conversations. I felt better when we went to brunch and I remembered we had been there before for drinks and he did not.)

Anyway. This was his reason for cooking something that would take all day.

And he meant it. Classes start tomorrow, and he said he couldn't wait to hear how it went.

History (of science)

As I was continuing to (inefficiently) get ready this past week for the start of classes on Monday, I was adding some historical perspective to the developmental biology course I am teaching. The textbook mentions scientist names and the general time in which they made discoveries or proposed ideas about how biological systems work. I started looking up more specific information about these scientists though, and started thinking about how crazy it is that so many discoveries we/I take for granted were made relatively recently. At least it seemed that way to me when I started thinking about how the lives of my great-grandparents (who I knew), my grandparents, and my parents (sorry) overlapped with so many incredible advances. Of course I also thought about how in 30 years students will take for granted exciting discoveries that have been made in the past 10 years, and wonder how there was a time we did not know these things.

[As an aside, I think this is one of the struggles with teaching science. We know SO. MUCH. MORE. now than we did when I was in school in the 80s and 90s. We expect the students to learn these new things, but then we still need to teach them the basics and how to think. There actually are not enough hours in the day. A lot of our teaching, at least where I am, does emphasize the critical thinking and communication/writing skills, but in reality the students are not retaining even a lot of the basics as a result. And they need to at least know the basics and where to look up the more detailed information.]

My great-grandmother was born in 1898, and I think my great-grandfather was born earlier that decade. My grandparents were born in the mid-1920s. So, here are some cool things to think about.

The man, August Weismann, who proposed that we inherit characteristics from germ cells (eggs and sperm) died when my great grandmother was 16 years old.

The images of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin, that were then used by her and Watson and Crick to determine the structure of DNA, were taken in the early 1950s when my great grand-parents were in their 60s, my grand-parents in their late 20s, and my parents were born?! As an aside, Franklin also studied the polio virus.

The 4 postulates for determining if an illness is due to a disease or a microorganism (like bacteria) were developed around 1890, and have since been revised in light of more modern techniques of studying disease. Koch and Loeffler, who developed these ideas, lived until 1910 and 1915, respectively, when my great-grandmother was a teenager.

I would look up a few more, but you get the idea. Everyone hears about the big exciting things like landing on the moon, but these ideas are just as ground breaking, even if they seem less flashy in this day and age.

Snow day!

There is not a flake of snow in the sky or on the ground, but any minute now it's supposed to start and deliver 5 to 8 inches. There is a giant spot of blue snow heading this way on the weather map, and classes have not started yet, so my college shut down. I am under the impression that having classes in session would not have stopped the college from closing, which is a little crazy because it is not a commuter college, but whatever. When we last talked about snow days at work, I asked if I could choose to hold class even if the campus is closed because I am fine with driving carefully to work. I did not get a straight answer, except that once for intro they had an optional lab on a Sunday afternoon to try to keep students caught up with the material. Not all students showed up, but those who did benefited (obviously). I may re-ask this question if the winter continues to provide me with regular snow storms.

So far this morning I have gotten "dressed" (it is always great to work in sweats and fluffy socks), cleaned the cat pan, given the cat extra attention, taken out the trash and recycling, had some coffee, set up work space on my dining table, checked FB obsessively, and now wrote a random blog post. Now to motivate to do some work. My reward is a walk to Dunkin' Donuts later if I get a lecture done.

Speaking of cats. It is amazing how starving mine seems to be when I am home for a day. The incessant meowing and begging.

UPDATE: It started snowing right on time at ~9:00. Who's excited??????

The count-down

I am lucky. I still have another week before classes start. I have been relatively productive during break, but could have done more planning and prep before now if I had cared to. At the same time, I am definitely not going into the semester exhausted, which is a good thing.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it, but I am teaching a lecture/lab course plus one intro lab this semester. In the sciences we figure out staffing by contact hours, so I will be in the classroom teaching for 9 hours a week. The intro lab is no big deal - there is a person who preps the labs - but I will also be sitting in on the lecture so I know what the students are learning and also sitting in on a lab before mine so I know what to teach - that will add another 6 hours to my in-class time each week. The other class I am teaching I have decided to do from scratch even though I have my predecessor's materials, so it will be fairly time consuming to generate the course material. My knowledge is different from my predecessors, so it was either learn what she had taught and teach it, or draw on what I know and make up new labs. So I went with the latter.

Unfortunately I will not have my research set up before the start of classes, so I am not sure if I will be able to use my research in my teaching lab this year, but will down the road!

I realized last week that I actually have to be putting together lectures for the semester. Tomorrow, I start my one-lecture-prep-a-day plan. Over the course of the week, I need to outline the first few labs too. I am excited about the course, as it is upper level, and am trying to hold the self-doubt at bay. I know I can do it, I just need to do it.

In other news, I painted this. It will be fired and ready to pick up this week. I picked it as a pet dish, but we will see if she gets to use it or not. I painted the flower on the inside figuring it could be a water dish, and then I could still see my handy work. A few of us went for a ladies' night at one of those paint-your-own studios, and we all did completely different designs. It will be fun to see how they look after being glazed and fired!

In other-other news, I spent a fun couple of days in Philadelphia this weekend.

 The stairs Rocky runs on.

 The Liberty Bell, which I learned was cracked from day 1.

 Independence hall.

 The room in which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. George Washington sat in the chair in the front!

 Random alley...

I have also managed to run 3- 4 times per week, thanks to some friendly motivation. For some reason I don't feel like I am getting any faster or that it is getting any easier. I think I need to try running without music, as boring as that sounds, to figure out what my natural pace is. It is on my To Do list for tomorrow.

My motivation to keep on top of my work this semester is going to be more short trips like this. 7 days to the new semester and counting...

Expensive tastes

One of the stories my Mom has told goes something like this: at an early age, my parents opened a nice bottle of wine. This was before they regularly drank decent wine like they do now. I was probably 10 or so. I took a sip and said, "Oh, that's good." My mom jokes about how I had expensive tastes as a kid.

Recently, BIL guy invited me to tag along for some wine tasting with his friends for a restaurant/selling wine to make money deal with the sales guy. All the wines tasted completely different, but there was one in particular that I loved and was popular across the group. If I remember correctly it was a Cabernet. Not too dry. Had a caramel taste. Smooth. I wanted a brownie to eat with it.

It was the most expensive one there.

BUT, if they bought 10 cases they would get an AMAZING deal on it. BIL guy said he would buy one of the cases, then looked at me and asked if that was okay.

Um. Yeah.

Sciency office decor

I wanted a book stand for my office, but the only one I could find was this dark one at Target. The front tab used to be taller, but I had my dad trim it down.

I thought I took other photos along the way, and maybe they are on my camera, but I wanted to make the book stand more fun. I painted the outside sides red, and the front side white. Then I cut out a bunch of images from an old intro biology text book. Here is my cat after she made the final decision about what images I should use. She is always super helpful.

I did a layout to see what would fit on the book stand.

Then I decoupaged it all on there. Let me tell you, decoupaging textbook images is not a good idea. The paper is SUPER SUPER thing and becomes easy to tear and gets wrinkly. You can see the wrinkles in this image I think.

Yesterday, I finally put a clear coat on it so I could bring it in to work. It's super science dorky and great for my office!

Busted

As I was catching a friend up this evening on my romantic life, I was recounting conversations between BIL guy and I. Over the past, well, since NYE, we have talked about how this all came to be with he and I. Admittedly, I mentioned something in a drunken state about how I had wondered what was going on because we were doing date-like things, but I could not tell if it was dating. He commented that we were more dating at that point than we had been the day before. Funny.

Fast forward a week, and he is telling me that "there was one time when we were on a date...I mean when we were hanging out...when I knew I should've made my move and I thought I had screwed it up and lost my chance."

Busted.

He could not remember when this non-date was, but clearly had hadn't lost his chance.

Lesson learned

The lesson: I know I should not put off the desire to write a post thinking I will get my work done first. What ends up happening is that I waste my day procrastinating, then write a post, then get way less work done than I intended. And I have a syllabus to try to finish, so I MUST post first so I have no excuses.

Not that you needed an explanation of that, but whatever.

Now on to the post...

One, I love Yogi tea. Particularly when the tea saying feels applicable to me. And "Happiness comes from contentment" feels true in my current life. I have been pretty content since September in work life and personal life. I ventured into the online dating thing around then just to get back into it, and just let a guy down who I had seen several times and shut down my account. I also started hanging out with someone with whom I have become friends thanks to my brother-in-law. I may eventually come up with another nickname for him, but until then he is BIL guy. It is strange to call him BIL guy, particularly because having known my BIL and sister is apparently what was keeping us in the friend zone. Past tense. It was one of the reasons I thought possible that hanging out was staying platonic, so it was good to have confirmation that it was not one of the other possibilities.

On NYE, I met the friends with whom he hangs out regularly and also briefly interacted with other friends at the restaurant where he and I had dinner. Apparently his friends like me and think I am nice. Duh. :-) He and I cooked an amazing venison tenderloin courtesy of said friends last night (with some roasted potatoes, mushrooms, and a port wine reduction). Thanks to said friends, he is in on a wine buying deal (the friends own a restaurant) that means we had some pretty darn good wine with dinner too. I am tagging along to the next tasting where other owners in the restaurant will be...apparently including one of the N F L* players here who is from the friends' same hometown. He has also been thinking of going to Philadelphia for a night for something to do, so that will probably be happening. Cooking, laughs, hanging out, good wine, flirting, someone to warm up my hands and feet, and whatever else may come from leaving the friend zone? I'm in.

In the meantime, I will try to ignore this distraction when I need to be getting work. Speaking of distractions, I FINALLY figured out how to transfer my iToons* library and keep the play counts and ratings. I spent way too much time with this, and in the end it was simpler than I thought it was, but the help posts for iThings was not that easy to find. Anyhoo...back to work now that it is is 3:00 in the afternoon. Oiy.

* Yes they are typed funny on purpose.

Let's do this

I cleaned out my email inbox at work.

I have a course syllabus to write. And a grant.

I am psyching myself up for my second semester. At the end of last semester, I jokingly wrote on the FB, "1 semester down. Approximately 59 to go," and I joked about it at work today. Two members of my parents' generation could not believe that I would count down. I guess they took it literally! Luckily I love my job and I am NOT actually counting down to retirement, I just thought it was funny to think about. I think maybe that generation is stressed out being in their late 50s to mid 60s in the current economic climate that they find it inappropriate that I might hope to retire some day, too. Hope my parents thank me for paying my taxes and supporting their fixed income post-retirement.

My student evaluations suggest that students either thought the course and my teaching were great...or not. . The large majority think there is too much material and that lectures move too quickly. They said my grading in lab was harsh, but honestly their lab reports were not great. And they certainly picked up on the fact that as the semester progressed, I was more comfortable in class. They are so unprepared for the amount of material they need to learn though. This spring I am sitting in on the intro course, so hopefully we can improve the students' appreciation of and performance in the course and not dumb it down. It is reassuring to know the woman with whom I team taught gave me feedback throughout that was positive and/or constructive. Only up to go from here!

I ran again for the first time in a couple of weeks with new running sneakers and just as it was starting to snow. Everything about it was great except the running part. (I did it, I just refuse to like it.) I have 11 months to be able to run a half marathon and MONTHS of hot and humid weather in the middle. I will have to get my butt up early this summer to keep up the running.

I have one boy to let down and one who, I am pretty sure, is not let down.

I have some gifts to sew, including a T-shirt quilt for my mom with her red and yellow t-shirts!

I have food in my freezer I need to eat up - I started with tomatoes and spinach in a delicious bacon, black bean, and veggie soup tonight (secret ingredient = ~1/2 c of beer).

I caught up on Downton Abbey and Parenthood. I am ready for the new seasons.

2014, here I come!