Exhaustion (still)

Apparently, I've been exhausted for a while.

When I get home, I get my lunch together for the next day, pack a bag for the gym (and about half the time I actually get out of bed to go in the morning), and try to get to bed before 10:30. When I really need to be working on a paper, I'm obsessively checking Facebook; when I should be writing letters to the labs where I interviewed, I'm obsessively checking my email; when I should be doing my laundry, I'm, well, just not. While I could be checking stuff off my To Do list, I'm burning CDs onto my computer and lamenting the lack of The Beatles in the iTunes store. What's up with that?

I usually don't end up in bed until 11:00. Even though I have my alarm set for the gym, I usually reset it. Then I go to work and work, work, work, work, work in lab for 9-11 hours with a 20 minute lunch and not drinking enough water or seeing enough sunlight (although it's been raining here for WEEEEEKS), and I get home and my night is shot again.

Anyone want to write my paper manuscripts or my dissertation for me???

I'm going to go try to get to sleep before 10:30 again. Wish me luck.

Buttermilk and berries

I found myself with a quart of buttermilk after making sweet potato biscuits.

Then I had a lot of strawberries. Oh, and blueberries were on sale at the grocery store.

So after my intense use of rhubarb (coffee cake recipe from Good Housekeeping cookbook), I figured I could find enough to cook to use up the buttermilk and the strawberries.

I made buttermilk biscuits to go with the strawberries, of course.

Then I made a buttermilk cake with strawberries in place of the raspberries. This was a good quick simple delicious cake.

Then I made buttermilk berry muffins with the last of the strawberries and blueberries.

I froze some of the rhubarb, strawberries, and blueberries. Who knows what I'll do with the left-overs!

Three course meal

I went to pick strawberries yesterday morning and may have picked up a couple other things at the farm. In order of my consumption this evening for dinner...

Sourdough bread with herbed goat cheese and cherry tomatoes.
Asparagus with soy sauce, sesame oil, and red pepper flakes.
Strawberry shortcake with my own home-made buttermilk biscuits.

Back in the kitchen!

Since I got back from my trip, I have cooked quite a bit. It is nice - although I do miss having a dishwasher!

I had a LOT of rhubarb from my sister. So far I have made strawberry-rhubarb squares, strawberry-rhubarb sauce for grilled pound cake (yes, on the grill - thanks, Aim!), strawberry-rhubarb lemonade, and blueberry-rhubarb coffee cake:
I still have a bit of rhubarb left and will probably take another friend's suggestion: pizza with rhubarb, goat cheese, and nuts. I might add some caramelized onions too. YUM.

I am also having a couple of friends over for dinner tomorrow night and am making quinoa-stuffed zucchini, sweet potato biscuits, and chicken with bulgar wheat.

Chewing gum

While I should be working (and I was, but it wasn't going well, so I stopped), I am visiting around the internets. I was over at Spark's, and she had a post about interviewees. It reminded me of something that confuses me every once in a while: chewing gum etiquette.

A quick recap of the relevant part of her post: One interviewee was chewing gum, and that is bad manners.

I am a gum chewer. I make a point of not chewing gum in professional settings (meetings, interviews, teaching) or when I meet someone new. I do chew it fairly regularly though, and, just as when I eat, chew it with my mouth shut. I used to forget to get rid of my gum a lot when I would teach right after lunch, and one of my older students commented on it in her evaluation instead of just mentioning it to me. I have never forgotten since I read that evaluation!

I actually do not really understand how it is bad manners to chew gum. I would not chew it in the situations I mentioned above, because it is distracting and can make you difficult to understand. I guess in those cases, I think it would be like eating food out of your purse during an interview, and that would be weird. Chewing with your mouth open, gum or food, is always bad manners.

Some people will say to use breath mints, but I find that they only work for about as long as they are in your mouth. Plus, my teeth always feel nasty afterward, even if they are sugar-free. I will chew gum after my morning cup of coffee or lunch to clean my teeth and freshen my breath. I suppose I could be better about brushing my teeth after lunch. Realistically I would not start carrying a tooth brush around with me outside of work just to avoid chewing gum.

Any input? I do think that chewing in a professional or new situation, or chewing gum with your mouth open, are all bad ideas. But when is chewing gum okay?

Who's inadequate?

Alright. That is a rhetorical question that need not answering at any point. (Is that redundant?)

Argh. I am trying to sit here and work on figures for my next paper, the easy part really (for me), because my advisor needs the photographs for a grant. I can not keep focusing though because I keep feeling inadequate.

I ask my advisor today if she has an idea of what she would like from me in two and a half weeks to submit this grant, as I had been gone for a week. She says, "Oh. Nothing you do not have already." I got a little more specific and asked what pictures she would want or what preliminary data she was including. "Oh. Why don't you just send me your job talk."

Only I do not trust her. So I took out all the whistles and bells and left in the figures and told her if she wanted the originals, to let me know because these were all compressed for powerpoint. She sends me some weird email back about the content, and I point out to her that what she seems to want IS IN THE PRESENTATION. So then she makes up more excuses. I am just trying to plan ahead so she does not ask things of me last minute that I could have done ahead of time?!

I just got an email from someone I used to be really interested in working for when I am done. His past couple of emails have been strange (granted I do not know the man at all). He came to one of the job talks I gave because he is in that department, and gave great feedback as someone who is very familiar with some of the things I work with. Honestly, I was scared of making a fool of myself and tried to explain where I am coming from without getting defensive. It is difficult to explain, but he is familiar with both sides of a controversial topic, and I am only familiar with the more vocal side, and he clarified a couple of things "for" me. So I try not to feel inadequate. I sent him a thank you email for taking time to listen to my talk, and the response he sent was somewhat dismissive. I just hope it is not because he thinks I am stupid. I hope it is because, as I have heard from several people in the department who know him, that it is because he is a nice guy and does not just want to say in an email, "leave me the f*&^ alone." I will have to get over this though, if I end up working in his department.

I may have posted about this before, but I remember reading that women in grad school will blame failure on their own inadequecies (however real or not), and men will blame it on the experimental design, saying it is too difficult (again, however real or not). Similar to something else I heard/read once about how men tend to walk over something in their way and women tend to walk around it. Who knows where exactly I heard these or if I am making them up. I always make a point of walking over things though, and I am trying hard to blame experimental failure on the experiment and not my own incompetence.

I am trying not to get angry that my advisor keeps coming up with ideas about potential experiments. Partly because some are valid, and partly because I recognize she is flailing around in deep water trying not to drown in literature she has not kept up with for the past three years. I REALLY need her to just focus and think about me finishing though. When she emailed with some vague experiment today, I emailed her back the experiment I did. Then she emailed me AGAIN saying that experiment is fine, but with "more" (VAGUE) information. So I emailed her back with specific questions, because really, who knows if what these people did is even relevent to what I am trying to do. My advisor likes to make crap up and I am resisting wasting time thinking about said crap.

I think my advisor and I need another heart-to-heart. It has been two weeks, after all, since I had my break-down in her office. Why not another?

[See this post for any thing that may seem confusing or need a reference above.]
[Also, I would come up with a nickname for my advisor, but the ones currently in use are not appropriate to be spreading on the internets.]