Year in review

This is the lazy woman's way to close out her year on her blog - a Facebook application summarizing her statuses. It trails off and forgets the one that says "Jenski will only be accepting mail addressed to "Dr. Jenski", FYI!"

I hope the end of the year has brought memorable moments and that everyone has a Happy New Year! I will be back in 2010.

Housewife FAIL

I like to cook, bake, and clean...and think I am alright at all of the above. Sometimes I am just off though. I have been clumsy the past few days and tonight is the epitome of doing a bad job at housekeeping stuff.

Saturday night I broke a wine glass at CF's. My excuse was that I had stopped drinking at 11 and we left his friend's party at 3:30...A.M. and it was 4:00 A.M. and I wanted a drink of water but the Britta was empty and there was stuff in the sink. When I dropped the sink sprayer I was going to use to fill the Britta it hit the wine glass. CF was drunk, rolled his eyes, turned around to go to bed, and when I brought it up the next day did not realize (or did not remember) that I had broken the glass. Of course these are (inexpensive) wine glasses he has had for 10 years and the week before the one I was using had a crack. Anyhoo, to make it up to him, I ordered some Green Bay Packers wine glasses from Tar-jay.

That is just an example of my clumsiniess. Back to my evening. Last week I had the urge to make Christmas cookies - I am 30 (and do not really know why that matters), have the time, and am settled in here and happy. I do not have any of my mother's recipes (and have since requested them from her), so somehow I got it in my head to make meringue cookies. I mean, how hard can beating some egg whites and baking them be? I know how to beat eggs and turn my oven on. Some recipes are picky about using fine sugar or heating the oven to 250, putting the meringues in, turning the oven off and letting them cook overnight. My trusty Good Housekeeping (ironic title given the evening) has a quick and easy recipe calling for regular old sugar and a short 20 minutes at 300 degrees. I had a few flavors in mind - regular with chocolate chips, peppermint, peppermint-chocolate, and mocha.

My first batch of chocolate chip was great! Eggs beat to a stiff peak quickly, only baked them an extra five minutes, and they were quite tasty.

On to the peppermint. In theory and according to the recipe, it is as easy as switching out the vanilla extract for peppermint extract. Apparently, in my case, this equals a big liquidy beaten egg slop...three times. I have decided to blame it on the old peppermint extract I used. Seriously, it was from my grandmother's kitchen and she passed away 8 years ago and certainly did not cook for the last couple of years she was alive. So I wonder if the alcohol in the extract has absorbed water from the air and just doesn't do what it's supposed to? But I am stubborn and tried a few times. I could have switched to folding in some candy cane, but I used the candy cane over the weekend for some peppermint brownies. (As an aside, going back to look at this post, I had forgotten I got the idea for crushed candy cane on brownies from Spark - THANKS! I do this ALLLLLLL the time.)

Then I decided to let go of the peppermint and move on to mocha. Only the instant espresso I bought was the kind that has the powdered milk in it too, which I obviously did not realize when I bought it. So skip the mocha flavor.

I ended up doing chocolate-chocolate. You can add cocoa powder with the sugar after the eggs are initially beaten to a soft peak. The first time I added the cocoa powder, the cocoa puffed up everywhere leaving a layer of cocoa powder on the shelf and stove top that was great fun to clean up. The eggs were still beautifully peaked though, and I figured I would give the peppermint-chocolate a shot. BIG MISTAKE. I cleaned the beaten egg liquidy slop for the fourth time and stuck with the cocoa powder and sugar on the re-do.

All in all I used about 10 eggs for about 4 eggs worth of meringue cookies. This is what I got.

In addition to this fiasco, I needed to do a load of laundry before heading to my parents' for Christmas. The washer was full. There were a few sweaters in there, so I figured when I took those out, the dryer would dry everything else just fine. I knew I was taking a chance with two sweatshirts and two pairs of jeans in the mix though. I was right. Everything came out a little damp. So it is drying in my apartment because putting slightly damp clothes through another dry cycle is a waste of quarters and my apartment could use the added humidity anyway.

I feel like I had other housewife fails...Well, I put the cookies to cool on the table and of course it left crumbs all over the table cloth (duh). Maybe that is it, it just feels so tragic given it is (in theory) out of character. Time for bed. :-)

A new leaf

It has been a while since I posted (a day shy of a month to be exact), and I am doing quite well! During that time I have walked around thinking about all the things I could and should post, and what I will post about now that I am officially no longer a miserable graduate student.

That's right, it's Dr. Jenski to you now! I moved closer to CF, then flew back for a long weekend for my defense, followed by printing my dissertation and dropping it off for binding. My PhD advisor now requires a receipt that she is getting two bound copies before she will submit the paperwork to the graduate school stating I have fulfilled my degree requirements. BUT, that was all finished as of last Friday! In the meantime, I'm sitting at my desk in my post-doc lab drafting this mediocre post (to be posted from home, I'm trying to set some boundaries), looking out the window (that's right, a big window next to my desk), with a temporary appointment (read: I'm on payroll), before the rest of my training grant paperwork goes through for my post-doc fellowship.

A while back my friend with whom I frequently walked and I talked about writing a book. She was in her first year as a post-doc; I was getting the ball rolling to finish. We had a "business dinner" and outlined ideas about which to write and a few ways to organize the book. It was looking to be a whole bunch of unsolicited advice for grad students. Problem is, then she got another appointment and started running her own lab and my ball started rolling faster and we never actually started writing. I got to stay with her a couple nights when I was back for my defense, and the book came up in conversation. She thinks she's too far removed from grad school now to do it. I think I totally feel like she did at the time when we started talking about it though. I have been pretty reflective about graduate school since I got in the car to drive 12 hours with my cat to move. The feelings of misery disappearred pretty quickly (thankfully), but it has made me think about what to use from my graduate experience and how to start developing my work habits and mentoring style. Be forwarned, in upcoming posts, you may hear about that. Now that I am basically settled in here physically, I also need to get my life going. I haven't exercised in a month, and I need to find activities outside of lab to meet people and socialize. Not that CF and his friends aren't great, but I'm a little too independent to rely on that. I've thought about trying out some churches and maybe a sewing class, but wonder if these are recipes for meeting older motherly types? We'll see - stay tuned.

Time to reflect

I am laying with my cat on an air mattress in a nearly empty apartment. Tomorrow I head out of town for an overnight at my parents and then a 12 hour drive to my new home! I am moving closer to CF and in two weeks fly back for my dissertation defense. I have been extremely eager to leave, if you hadn't guessed, and anxious to have the move work out (logistics-wise).

While I have been finding a place between CF and my job to live, canceling utilities here, setting them up there, reserving relocubes to move, figuring out if I could even have them on the street here overnight, asking friends to help carry my stuff down two flights of stairs, getting my dissertation to my committee, seeing friends as much as possible, I have not spent much time thinking about actually leaving.

Today when one of the grad students told me he was going to miss having me around, then came to help me move with some snacks for my car ride, I realized that I will miss everyone here. That might be a no-brainer, but I just had not spent time thinking about it because I have been thinking about getting distance between my advisor and me. I have been trying to make a point of seeing people, sure, but not thinking about when I will see them again. Luckily, many of them I will see in 2 weeks for my defense and celebration!

This had been some long drawn-out post in my head, but phone calls interrupted my train of thought, so you are left with this. Oh, and this is where my cat hid while all the moving was going on.

Different view

While I have a definite defense day (woohoo!), two papers at various stages of revision, a non-refundable deposit sent for an apartment to move into near CF & my post-doc, packing and purging started for the move, I still do not know exactly when I am packing all my stuff up, have pods reserved to send my stuff off, or have my flights set to come back for my defense (because my defense is the first week in December, it makes more sense to move beforehand financially). But, rather than post another laundry list of the ups and DOWNS of this whole process with my advisor or how much I think about being near CF soon (!!!!), I will post some pictures of that roof I can see outside my bathroom window. I like the idea of taking photos of something over the seasons, and this is along those lines.


There have been some pretty spectacular sunsets over that roof. Maybe I will add to this collection if something different appears.

Pseudo-countdown

I have an idea of when I will be defending my PhD, but no set date yet. WOOHOO! I was pretty miserable Friday morning as my whole immediate family plus my brother's girlfriend were getting ready to head on vacation together. I had a meeting set up with my advisor essentially to let her know I was completely done and really wanted to set a defense date. Unbeknownst to me and true to form for her, she had been collecting my comittee members' schedules to set a date during the week. (This may explain why she did not meet my eye much during lab meeting on Monday.)

There are some nation-wide politics that are affecting how timely my paper can get reviewed. While my advisor thinks it is fair for me to wait through the review process, she said she does not think it is fair for politics to influence that. I am greatly relieved and can move ahead with actually transitioning. I can print out my dissertation!

Who knows how she came to this. She is pretty good at talking out of her butt. I would assume that she thought the paper would come back and we would discuss a timeline for what needed to be done and when I could defend. Several potential reviewers apparently refused to review the paper though, so she had to come up with a reason to back down from her publication rule and let me defend. For the record, I have one publication, one revised and resubmitted, and this other paper, so it is not as if I am leaving with no publication experience. Anyway. I feel better but remind myself that this does not erase how she has made me feel over the past months.

For now, I am going to go pack some boxes.