How sweet.

CF keeps leaving sweet links to songs on my Facebook page. For all the songs and lyrics I know, I can not conjure up the appropriate sentiment. This one is quite nice though.

Stay with me till time turns over
I want to feel my feet leave the ground
Take me where the whispering breezes
Can lift me up and spin me around

If I could I would...
Hear you laughing as we go
Flipping backward through the doors and through the windows...
I'm melting into nothing

Changes

One of the biggest changes going on in many people's lives involves jobs. I know people who have lost their jobs, who have turned down department changes to stay home (i.e. lost their job in a less conspicuous way), who have chosen to find new jobs, and who are looking for new jobs while still in jobs. I guess one benefit of graduate school is a type of job security. In some cases, people LOVE graduate school - its flexible schedule, level of intellectual freedom with relative lack of responsibility that comes with running your own lab, and job security. At the same time, graduate school is this amorphous thing that has a beginning and no clear end. How do you figure out when you are done? Is job security the same as working towards no defined end? This part of graduate school drives me CRAZY.

In reality though, I do not anticipate having a tremendously difficult time finding job opportunities following my PhD, as post-docs research move forward just like graduate students. It did occur to me that in two to three years, there could be a back-up of post-docs who have been trying to find academic positions during this whole economic crisis. Oh well...I would rather graduate and search for jobs desperately three years from now than not graduate. :-)

I should probably also put my money where my mouth is and finish that cover letter and CV and send 'em off.

A yearly tradition

Someone always gives me an amaryllis for Christmas. It has been my grandmother, my sister, my parents, and my cousin in the past. Every year the flower is a little different. I do not have pictures from 4 years ago or before because I did not have a digital camera. Here are some mediocre pictures of the past few years though.
I like this year's. It is not quite as bright as the past years.

Moving up in the world

I moved the office that my desk is in at work(/school)! Literally, I have moved up two floors.

I try not to be too down about grad school here, but obviously fail miserably. I keep trying to think of ways to reduce the anxiety and stress I associate with grad school. I was previously in an office with 12 other graduate students. We fed off each other and gossiped, and sometimes it was hard to stay happy on a good day. My friend in my lab who is a year ahead of me will be finishing in the relatively near future (fingers crossed), and I am now one of the senior graduate students. It is not fair to the first years that I (not alone, mind you) have already tainted their experience. I feel bad about that. I am beginning to think that only pre-qualifying exam students (first, second, maybe third years) should be in that huge office.

Now I will be in an office with one other graduate student who is also my year. He and I get along well and are in a similar boat - we see the light at the end of the tunnel but are a little unsure of exactly how fast we are getting there. Two others in our year will be defending their dissertations in March, and that has been tough for me to deal with. Now he and I can motivate each other to keep working and finish.

Plus, there is natural light (although no windows directly in the office, the door between our office and the adjacent faculty office is always open), I will get a bit of exercise going up and down the two flights of stairs, there is lots of desk space where I can spread out and do work, and it will be difficult for my advisor to look over my shoulder (figuratively speaking) when I am at my desk doing work (even if it is all in my head).

Random thoughts

If you add me as a friend on Facebook, but have changed your name since the last time we may have spoken 12+ years ago, a reminder of your maiden name would be appreciated.

I wonder how many days in a row I can leave the recycle bin in my parking spot on the street to save it.

I wonder if my cat will ever stop shedding. I brush her and pet her and still, white hair EVERYWHERE. Why didn't our cats seem to shed so much when I was growing up? Do outdoor cats shed less?

I wonder when I will really finish my PhD. If there was one thing I would want to know about the future, it is that. Seriously.

I hope my experiments work the next couple of months so I can finish this summer. I also hope I can get a post-doc. That would be swell.

I miss my college friends. I saw a lot of them this weekend. It was wonderful.

I miss the boy. The next few months may suck with research on both ends. Not looking forward to that already.

I really wish I could catch up on my sleep so I would not get teary so easily. I never used to come so close to crying so frequently. NOT cool. We will blame on the lack of sleep. Yes.

I am getting my PhD for ME, NOT my advisor.

It is weird thinking that my parents are moving from my hometown. I guess I have to get a hotel room if I go back for high school reunions. They have lived there for almost 22 years. Even though I love and also miss the town we moved from when we moved there 22 years ago, I really did all my growing up there.

So little time

So much to write...

I got finished with meetings on campus at 8:00, raced home, and rushed out again to do laundry because tomorrow morning I have to drop my car off for some body work and I leave Friday to visit the boy. Only my laundry was not fully dry because I should have split it up in dryers but did not. So then I got home at 10:30 and was starving and ate a bunch of crap as I hung my dampish clothes up to dry. My cat just wants me to sit down and pet her.

I guess I do not have to turn on my humidifier tonight with all that dampness drying in my apartment. I also talked with my parents and one of my best friends (for the first time since October), so that was productive. Plus, the next few nights I do not have a car so I really can not do anything but stay home, clean up some cat hair, and pack for the weekend.