Whirlwind-ish

The first exciting thing that happened on my vacation, was that after 13 hours of driving to my parents' house, my 2001 Jetta finally hit 100k. I smiled a little to myself because it happened at the top of this big hill that has lots of stop lights and my car is a standard. I remember driving up that hill the one time I got to drive my Dad's Saab and worrying that I would stall and/or roll back and hit the person behind me. Didn't happen in the Saab nor in the Jetta.

The second exciting thing was at my parents' house. They live on a mountain. In the woods. With woodchucks and bear as neighbors. In the winter you can almost make out the next house through the woods. Well, my parents were not home (I knew this, but wanted to break up the drive to RI). I got there after dark and hurriedly brought my bag into the car, shut the house door, and rearmed the alarm. Then I spent a couple of hours telling myself the sound on the windows was bugs. I did sleep in the bedroom closest to my car with my key (and car alarm button!), my cell phone, and the house phone near by. Then there was a BIG old thunderstorm and wind. Normally I do not mind thunderstorms, and this would not have been much different. Except the TV turned on by itself. Twice.

My car had a bunch of leaves all stuck to it from the wind, and I survived. Then I headed off to my college reunion in the morning. I have pictures of people, but we will stick to a couple from around campus.

 

I got to see Danielle after many years at the end of the weekend, and her friend Sea Queen, who did a fair amount of my training when I was a research tech when she was leaving and whose father apparently works in my field.

Then I headed up to the Boston area and went guest-room hopping and eating and pretending to do work occasionally because my PI wants my paper done (and I do too, but not really on vacation).

THEN on Thursday of last week, CF flew into Boston for the Jack and Jill shower for my Bro and his fiancee. My sister made a great cake (mango spice cake with coconut cream frosting and homemade fondant letters) and cookies. Because she can.

I managed to coerce men into playing gift bingo by telling them there were prizes. My niece and my nephew got to work their first keg - I am pretty sure no cup was empty all day. I do not know about my future sis-in-law, but my brother seemed pretty excited about getting home-boiled maple syrup and a fancy shmancy vacuum. And the night was topped off with a fire in the fire pit, complete with weiners and s'mores. Somehow CF and I hit the road in the morning to drive the 13ish hours back here...not until 9:30 a.m. though.

Anyway. I think I got a lot "done" while I was back East. In no particular order, I got to:

• Catch up on the good and not-so-good with friends from many stages in my life - college, research tech years, and grad school
• Put on a fancy dress and test my shoes for my Bro's wedding
• Visit several restaurants from college and grad school that I miss
• See things I have missed - a friend's house, friends' 14 month old pivot (she saved the first steps for just after I left. Jerk.), another friend's six month old (and a grad school guy friend who refused to put said baby down?!)
• See things I got there just in time for: a friend's ultrasound photo of her growing "parasite" that they just started telling people about, an engagement, a new apartment
• Finally get frames for my college and graduate degrees
• Drink too much on three distinct occasions
• Experience about the best weather I think Boston has had in a row in a long time

Not bad, huh?

Back to life

After about 10 days away from lab, I have spent about 32 hours there so far this week. Why bother with vacations, really? Just today, my-favorite-grad-student-who-needs-a-blog-name and I were discussing how you are not compensated monetarily for your effort in academia. And if you think you can get by happily on tenure alone, more power to you. Anyway.

I was going to make some long post with photos and stories, but that will have to wait until perhaps tomorrow night when I am making CF's birthday cake for his postponed party. For now, I think I should leave you with that amazing song and hit the sac.

Now, here's an idea

I am not generally into ultimatums. I admit I have never tried one though. Maybe I should take a lesson from this woman's life.

Whose responsibility?

1. The other post-doc at work is not a native English speaker. While I understand how difficult it is to live in a foreign country and not be able to communicate, I struggle between things that I should do for her, and things that are not my responsibility. I was lucky when I lived in China, because my job was to speak English. Here, though, her job is to do science. She came to the lab about six months after me, but has more research experience in our field than I do. I constantly wonder if I should make sure she reads the department emails about when the water is being shut-off in the building for repairs (for example). Or, follow up with an on-campus symposium that was free, but for which you should pre-register. Or, coordinate submitting poster abstracts for said symposium because our boss was out of town. I struggle with this because while English is not her first language, reading emails about these things should be on her to-do list, but I know that she does not always read them. Blissfully unaware is not always a good thing, and I cannot make sure she is keeping track of these non-experiment but somewhat important aspects of work.

2. Being that CF has managed to keep himself alive to 35 years old (almost), I am not inclined to do everything or make decisions for him. Nor do I appreciate the implication that he does things for or because of me (like leaving somewhere at 1 in the morning because I am tired). At some point he needs to stop acting like an early 20-something. He has taken to try to make me make decisions, like should he come to my college reunion weekend or the shower weekend? I told him I want him at both, but know that he can't/won't so he needs to decide. Both are important to me. This past weekend he managed to get in two bachelor parties in Milwaukee: my brother's and a friend's. Apparently Friday night he stayed at the baseball game while the rest of my brother's bachelor party crew went to a bar. We had a text discussion about this (probably because he was alone at a baseball game). I think his decision was weird (and kinda rude). I told him so. His response, "They were pretty toasted already." So? He also would have been toasted had he left on Friday to get there when he originally planned to. Not my problem. (Being that the Brewers are his favorite baseball team, I understand not wanting to leave halfway through, and I would feel the same way at a Red Sox game. I did not know he viewed the weekend as a baseball weekend instead of a bachelor party weekend though.) Then he tells me that my dad indirectly mentioned going to a beer fest the night before the shower in a couple of weeks and did not pay for part of the hotel room. What the hell am I supposed to do with this information? They say men don't want mothers, but really....

Close but no cigar

I may have a scar across my neck, but I consider myself lucky that I do not suffer from morning sickness or migraines like some of my friends. These are just the two I can think of because of my weekend. The lessons I learned:

1. Do not forget to take your birth control. (Particularly you men out there. Hah!) Not because you'll get pregnant and have morning sickness, rather, in the past, I have ended up taking the forgotten pill and the regular pill too close together and wake up throwing up and/or nauseous. Not pleasant.

2. If you have an unbearable headache, just take the meds. Don't try water, caffeine, and alcohol first. If you do, you may end up sleeping for three hours on the couch during the rare Red Sox broadcast (through Big Papi's 300th home run!) only to go to bed and wake up 12 hours later in the morning with a headache.

Off to the medicine cabinet for those meds.

Rain, rain go away

Spark mentioned she does not mind the rain, and I agree to a certain extent. According to my sunflowers, though, we have only received about six inches of growth's worth of sun in the past 6 weeks. That's not much sun.

The good news is that the strawberry plants from my co-worker look like they'll give some fruit! Plus the lilacs are FINALLY blooming in my yard. I have brought a bunch into work and these are on my table (in cute little jars from plum wine my fellow post-doc gave me for my birthday...which I drank...and from which I saved the cute little jars).

When I went out and weeded a bit today, I started running down the wish list of plants for my future home. I have put some thought into this. In no particular order:

• lilacs
• blueberries
• cherry tree (s)
• crab apple tree
• probably a regular apple tree
• pear tree
• raspberries
• sunflowers (if mine blossom this year, they might be my new favorite thing)
• herb garden (after all, rosemary can survive winter, apparently parsley too; chives come pack; my cilantro and dill reseeded themselves - easy!)
• rhubarb