Nonsensicle

So CF and I want to fly from city A to city B to visit his family in June. The lowest price I have found has been ~$1300 per ticket. I am keeping my eyes out for any change in price.

The airline the I have flown with the most just sent me an email, so I figured I would check it out.

The airline had no flights from A to B, so I widened my search to within 100 miles of A.

Up comes flights from C, D, or E. I start clicking to see how the stopovers are.

The cheapest is from city E, the longest drive from our point of origin, to city B. Only our one stopover is CITY A?

How does this make sense?

Soul searching

Life: I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do when I grow up...or at least for the next part of my professional career. Some of this stems from a whole host of post-doc bloggers I have happened upon recently, but we will get to the blog-soul searching first.

I am on a training grant that has a pay-back agreement. This means that I agree to work in my research/teaching field for a year to repay the investment in my training. But if I get an individual training grant, that would mean two years to repay. If I do not work in this area, I would then owe the NIH ~$70,000. So I need to stay in the field for up to 4 more years at least, but what do I want my life to really look like? My post-doc time is going rather well on a non-work level. I have worked only a few weekend days in the three months I have been in lab, I have some data, my advisor seems to think I am doing adequate work, and I am not working ridiculous hours in general. Ideally, and this comes up a lot in the science blogging world, if I made $15000 more a year right now, I would be happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah - if any one made $15000 more a year they would be more happy, right? Well, not exactly. I heard a story on the radio or from a friend or maybe it just came up in a conversation once (like my form of citing sources?) that the lower your income the more happiness additional income can bring you. Money cannot buy happiness directly (unless it buys you a trip to Disney World one could argue), but it releases you from financial stress. Eventually, though, I need to publish a paper or two, apply for a grant, get my butt in gear on new and exciting experiments-to-be-designed, start paying my student loans, and get a different job. So all of this blabber about soul searching in life is really me trying to figure out what to do with my PhD and training grant that will make me happy and truly allow me to do things I want to do (like travel to visit CFs family) without relying on credit cards. I would love a forever job in which I worked 40 to 50 hours a week (on average) ONLY and made $60000+ per year. Simple. :-)

Blog: As I mentioned, I have read and occasionally commented on a bunch of blogs by scientists recently. I think I keep reading them to connect to other PhDs who are at the same stage in their career as I am, as I am the only post-doc in my lab. My blog is not terribly anonymous, nor is my real-life identity a piece of cake to figure out (I think). I have told friends and family about the blog, but do not know if other people I know would happen upon it (or tell me if they did, hint, hint, if you are out there). I never really thought of my blog as a science blog, but do find myself reflecting on my post-doc and documenting observations and experiences in my career development...in addition to some recipes and randomness.

So what to do about what I blog? One thing I have considered is taking down everything related to grad school because it was so angsty and anxiety ridden and leave up the happier post-doc experiences. But putting reflections out there about colleagues is not a good habit to get into. Also, as I struggle to figure out what I want from life, maybe having those debates online is not the best option if it would be fairly feasible for someone to happen upon my blog? So if I recently started visiting your science-life themed blog, I have probably signed my comments in some combination of my web address/blogger name/'post-doc'/anonymous because I do not know how I feel about connecting the life and science I write about to a specifically science blog community.

To highlight what I mean: I recently made my blog indexible to see what would happen to the traffic coming through. First, I notice a lot of visitors linking to a post about lab notebooks from a science-oriented blog. Then I noticed that someone who used the internet to look up the meaning of 'queer bait' visited.

I have no way to wrap up this whole post, except that if you have any particular insight or suggestions, I would love to hear them. :-)

What a day

A good-regular-life-kinda-day.

It started off with my first ever facial. My friend gave me an amazing gift card for a local spa. I only used part of the gift card so I can go back again! Who knew they could spend 60 minutes doing relaxing cleansing aromatherapy things to your face? You can make 90 minute appointments too! I bought 5 for $10 raffle tickets, the prize of which is $400 of products and a day at the spa, plus all the money goes to some Great Lakes fund.

I drove the long way home.

Then I did laundry, picked up, and figured out my estimated tax payments for the year, given that they are due in two weeks. Tell me if this makes sense: my salary is coming from a federally funded training grant. I have to figure out how much to give back to the government in tax form. Why can't they just reduce my salary by that much and then not expect me to pay taxes? Sadly, the government does not have any great drawings or prizes if you pay your taxes on time.

I also spent an inordinate amount of time looking for laptop batteries. Apparently mine is no longer able to able to charge even though my computer thinks it is 100% charged. So if you unplug my computer, it shuts off. Isn't the purpose of a laptop to be mobile? Now I am stuck to the wall.

Then I made pizza crust and put just the right amount of sauce, spinach, sausage, onion, mushroom, peppers, and cheese on top. It was D-lish.Then I made ginger pumpkin muffins.Now I am filling out surveys from the bottom of receipts (my new thing) and watching Parenthood. I figure I have to win one of these gift certificates they are offering, and I like the cast.

Are you having a great, good-average, average, less-than-average weekend, or something in between there?

[See comments for recipes]

The Flats

Any of you out there ever had a visit from Flat Stanley? The book was published in 1964, but not until 1995 did a school teacher from Ontario use this book for education purposes. The short explanation is that Stanley is a flat boy who can be put in an envelop and mailed. School kids mail Flat Stanley to someone they know; that someone takes Stanley around and mails him back; the kid talks to his or her class about Stanley's adventures. One of my friends got to take Flat Stanley around New York City. I mean that is pretty exciting!

My nephew sent me Flat Stanley. My nephew's little imagination also created Flat Isabella. On the envelop they came in, it said "her name is flat isabella can you pleas Take care of her Bcuse She is preshis." Adorable. Mostly I just took the Flats to visit where I work and where CF works. I could not think of anything particularly "Midwest" to do. I suppose I could have lied and said Stanley came to a country music concert or the country bar with me, but those are less appropriate for the second grad classroom. ;-) What is more Midwest than these photos?

At night, the Flats would chill on the couch with the cat.

The end.

Myth busted! (sort of)

Americans are known as workaholics. In other countries, people might get 4 weeks vacation from the start of a job and use it. In academia, professors notoriously work long hours hunched over their desks doing something mysterious with only a dim desk light by which to see their work. You have research, analysis, papers to write, review papers to write, a million grants to apply for a year, committee meetings within the department and university, teaching prep/teaching/grading, students and/or post-docs to manage, department and university politics to navigate, job searches and student admissions to keep up with, etc. You may even have a life outside of work you want to visit once in a while.

So is it true academics work long hours? I have a few experiences.

When I was a research tech, the PIs had established careers. One of them seemed as though science was the only thing she could talk about; the other would randomly ask for movie recommendations or discuss travel and didn't really care if we talked about science. They would take their sabbaticals in France where they kept an apartment, so even with their work "trips", life couldn't have been too bad. When they were in town, they would probably be at their desks from about 10 to 6-ish. They would take trips for grant reviews or to give talks and when I was there, had quite a busy lab to try to keep up with.

My PhD advisor was a night person. The only time she regularly was in before 10:00 a.m. was if she was teaching or had a meeting. By then, my friend and I had sometimes been working for two hours already. At the end of the day she would stay "late". Although I think if she thought we had left for the day, she would leave. On several occasions I would pop back in to lab within 5 minutes of leaving, or would be staying later than usual, and she would be out the door already. In the office from 10 to 6 on average is not too bad.

My Post-doc advisor is a morning person. I have run into my advisor getting in a couple of times now around 8:30, so I know she does not get in SUPER early. I really have no idea what time she leaves or how much work she does before she comes in the morning, but I will say that woman is WORKING the entire time she is on campus.

It takes me about 45 minutes from door to door to get to work now (if the commute goes well), so I am usually in around 8:30 a.m., but my commute definitely has made me be in lab shorter hours (8:30 ~ 5:15 usually). Yesterday I had a long work day because of an experiment. I had to do something for half an hour in the morning, then take time points after that half hour at 1, 4, 8, and 12 hours. Because of the 12 hour time point, I was in lab for almost 14 hours. Now I am pointing this out only because when you are in a building that long, you see how many people are around. I would hazard to guess the building is largely unoccupied before 9:00 and after 6:00.

Granted, academia brings ups and downs - when you have a grant due, you are going to be working a lot longer hours; when you are lucky to have a couple of "regular" weeks, you will probably be able to take a day or two on the weekends without doing much work. Even though my post-doc advisor might not be on campus for 12 hours a day, I know she does work at home. So sometimes when you work it can be in the comfort of your own home and at least be around your partner and family. I think that makes long hours more palatable and maybe seem a little less long.

Writing

A lot of people say that people who are trained scientists, or I suppose more importantly how to write scientifically, do well in law. Science writing is a bit habitual for me know, although I certainly still need to work on aspects such as organization of the content. However, I think this science writing versus legal writing stems from the idea that both are supposed to be clear and concise. That is not to say that someone writing a thesis or dissertation in the humanities cannot write clearly, it is just that they use a lot more words than a scientist would. In fact, when I was a writing tutor in grad school, I worked with an English grad student and half of our sessions resulted in her shortening whatever she had written.

My PhD advisor was not known for being concise. I frequently cut a lot out of what she wrote. Still, after trying to make my last paper shorter, in the end I cut another FIVE pages out of the original twenty-ish before it was accepted. That is a lot of ideas or connections I tried to make in the original manuscript just gone! But the feedback I got from reviewers will be really helpful as I continue on in this crazy career and try to approach my writing objectively to avoid redundancy. (And of course getting those ideas out on paper helps you think about your work and generates other avenues to explore.)

In the legal field, from what I can tell, you write a lot of briefs. I think the name is self-explanatory. I also feel like politics and the law are related. The government writes the laws; many politicians are trained in the legal field; the judicial branch of the government is crucial to maintain our domestic safety and rights. By extrapolation, one might assume that government writing is therefore legal writing is therefore clear and concise. [insert laugh track]

So what is big in politics right now? Healthcare. I am sick of hearing politicians just throwing out random crap about what is or is not in the bill. Rather than prefacing my opinion with "I have not looked this up, but I think that...", I figured I would go back to the documents that were just released and are supposed to be voted on tomorrow. (Do reps get any extra pay for voting on a Sunday?) I thought I could figure out answers to questions about whether abortion would be funded by federal dollars, whether this would suck tax dollars to pay for health care for the poor, and whether the federal government is trying to take over the health care system in this country.

I started with the letter from the Congressional Budget Office because, well, it is 1/5 the length of the other document. My conclusion:

Government policy, although you may think it is related to the legal field and in theory legal and science writing are similar, is not comprehensible to the general public.

It started off great - three bulletted points about the figures and financial analysis to come. As far as I can tell, the next couple of pages repeat this in more detail. Pages 6 through 25 have the data. I will have to look at that later.

The other file is essentially edits of the health care bill the Senate passed, I believe. Does the government not have 'track changes'? Is producing a 153-page document with detailed modifications of a bill really the most efficient way to proceed with policy? Also, when I say it is 153 pages, it is important to note that this is a large font double spaced with margins a couple inches wide. These guys and gals pull out all the tricks you ever tried to meed a page requirement. Only they do not have page requirements and when you hear there are 153 pages of changes, you think OH MY GOD why didn't they just do it right the first time. I suspect the 153 pages is more like 50 of what you would expect.

Anyway. CNN has this breakdown of what the bill means to your average person and highlights of the bill. That seems like a good place to start for people. Congressmen may "work for us" and "vote according to their constituents' opinions", but when there are big controversial issues like this, they just seem to throw the rhetoric around that will make them look good, making the two main parties seem like they have different goals that we are supposed to think converge on doing what is best for the country. They also seem to do and say what will get them re-elected and get the party opposite them not reelected. That is what bothers me the most. That politics are political and a lot of congressmen act as though they are not working towards a common good. Listening to it makes me change the radio station.

Back to the document...If you know what this means, do let me know:

in clause (i), by striking ‘‘with respect
11 to any taxpayer’’ and all that follows up to the
12 end period and inserting ‘‘for any taxable year
13 shall be the percentage such that the applicable
14 percentage for any taxpayer whose household
15 income is within an income tier specified in the
16 following table shall increase, on a sliding scale
17 in a linear manner, from the initial premium
18 percentage to the final premium percentage
19 specified in such table for such income tier:

In the future, congress should release a document with all changes accepted for the general public to be able to read through. When this is all over, I also want to know if there will be any Medicare or Social Security when I am old. We are all putting money into those public programs, after all....