Check!

Laundry - Check!
Training walk - Check!
Weeding - Check!
Brew iced tea - Check!
Shower - Check!
Clean bathroom - Check!
Eat lunch - Check!
Rearrange furniture a bit - Check!
Have the Olympics on TV - Check!
Go to the post office - Check!


Now wasn't I supposed to spend the day working on writing a paper for work?


Oops!

Sharing the view

One of my friends said that the pictures I post of my new place look great, and it is! I am VERY happy I moved here. Save on gas, wear & tear on my car. Save time commuting. It is close enough that I know people will come over when I invite them. Every night, when I sit on my porch, I want to photograph the sunset. Part of it, I think, is because I am seeing it by myself and I want to share it with whoever will look!

 

In the mornings, I have started opening my doors to let more cool air in before I head off to work. I am glad I do, because this greeted me a couple of mornings ago.

Sometimes I do not get my camera in time to take a picture of something cool. Last night, I watched a small heron of some sort dive, get a fish, then land on a post of the dock and swallow the fish. It was gone before I could come back with my camera. Tonight, I caught a yellow finch enjoying one of the sunflowers I planted that has maturing seeds. I grabbed my camera and it had moved on to a younger flower. Sadly, it flew away as I snapped the photo. You can see its tail in the top corner though.

My garden has done well too! The only drawback, per se, is that as an organic operation, I brought a nice sized spider into the house with basil tonight. The spiders seem to do a good job eating little bugs though!

When I went to a conference the end of June, my downstairs neighbor fed my cat, but I had not mentioned my plants. The only thing that is struggling to come back from the lack of water are the violas. From left to right, that's the tomato & basil, lettuce & green pepper & nasturtium & parsley, yellow bucket with a purple pepper & cucumbers climbing onto its wire, and finally two cucumbers & nasturtium & violas (you can't see in the background). So far I have eaten a lot of purple peppers, lettuce, two cucumbers, basil, lots of nasturtium flowers and leaves, viola flowers, and tonight my first two tomatoes!

And clouds lit from above.

On the road

I attempted to write an actual blog post, but cannot figure out what in my head I want to write about. Instead, I will give you pictures. I was just back East for 10 days (well, one day of driving on each side in a car with no AC, but whatever). I fit a fair amount of stuff in, but did not take many pictures.

I went back when I did because I had friends getting married. It was outdoors and lovely. Her dress was beautiful, as wedding dresses tend to be, and the hydrangeas were in full bloom.

I saw lots of sail boats.

Boats that apparently do not have room for a dinghy, so they have a helicopter pad on top instead.

Oh! More sail boats!

The Boston skyline from afar. (Also saw it from up close, but then it is harder to capture.)

I saw nice sunset while walking to the subway when my friend and I were on our way to her friend's roof-top Friday night happy hour overlooking the Charles River. The 'Do Not Enter' signs really make this picture, I think.

And the morning after a night out? A long drive home. At the beginning, I was thinking about how much more I like the scenery along the Mass Pike than along the highways in the northern Midwest. This picture is not the best example, but there are mountains and vistas!

I stopped and visited my grandmother (and uncle) and then hit the road again.

 At one point, I was in two countries at the same time. Crazy! Spark, I think I could see Toronto from there.

 And then the sun set.

 And unfortunately, the crescent moon does not photograph so easily when you are driving 110 km/hr.

And then there were two times when I thought I should not be driving, but I was SO CLOSE to home, so I rolled the windows down more and turned the radio up and made it home fine. My cat was so happy, her whole chin was wet with drool. It was a long 16-hour trek home.

Things that...

...suck. I am trying to be positive, but life does make that more difficult sometimes. The other title I thought about giving this was something to the effect of, "A list of things that would suck less if you did not have to deal with them on your own." Suck less = glass half full?

• A completely broken car air conditioner. During a 100 degree+ week in the northern Midwest. The compressor is kaput; there is also a short in the wiring to the compressor. Let's just say it would not be cheap to fix.
• Someone keyed my car the day after the AC broke.
• A new car = car payments, and that would severely limit my ability to save money beyond the limits of being a post-doc to begin with.
• Several days this week there has been a big thunderstorm 30 to 60 minutes before I intended to get up. Living alone, I should be able to at least sleep until my alarm goes off.
• I have sliding windows in my apartment. After searching dimensions and types of units online, I have confirmed that there is no air conditioner worth buying that is less than $300. Ones that cost less are not so effective, according to online reviews. If you own a home or rent out apartments in a place where central air is not the norm, you should only put in sashed windows.
• I worked all day on the 4th of July, you know, a national holiday. I do not REALLY care, but it is more the principle of the thing. That is the same day my car's AC broke.
• Having people comment to me over and over and over again about ME moving to where CF decided knowingly and of his own free will to move. I remind him that I do not appreciate the assumption. He left me a beautiful bouquet of flowers; that does not make it okay.
• Three or four weeks ago now, someone hit my mail box and the two next to it (with a bat or something, not their whole car). The other two were mildly damaged, and I fixed them. I just cannot fix my own. I do believe my mail carrier has officially stopped delivering mail despite my note in the mailbox explaining this and that my landlord knows and I have someone who will be fixing it on Monday. It is not even my fault that it is all flimsy?
• Also, WTF with blogger only "supporting" google chrome. I know blogger is free and all, but come on. It is like they are giving the heads-up that they will intentionally be putting something in the site that will prevent you from using anything but chrome.

In other attempts to be upbeat...

• My credit cards are paid off. Next step is getting a month ahead of
• I do love the guys at the car shop where I go.
• I could list other stuff, like I have a job, can pay my bills & afford luxuries like cable and internet. This stuff only makes me feel guilty about being frustrated with life though.
• I leave next week for about 10 days back East trying to catch up with as many friends and family as possible. It will be nice to get away.

Time to finish "working" and head out into the heat sans AC.

PI

PI = Principal Investigator in science speak. It is the person who runs the lab. On two or three occasions over the past couple of weeks, the grad student in the lab has informed me that I will make a good one (compliment #1). But, I do hope there is a difference in what "being a PI" and "being a post-doc PI" is like.

I leave for a meeting on Wednesday at the crack of dawn, and I have SO MUCH WORK TO DO in the next 24 hours. Realistically I cannot get it all done if I expect to be coherent at the meeting, so I cannot miss out on too much sleep. Being coherent would be good because I am giving a talk and really need to make professional contacts. Luckily, something about the summer and daylight allows me to be perfectly (hah) functional on less sleep than I manage in the winter. I know a couple of Moms who are probably laughing at my management of my sleep right now.

I have an undergrad who started a few weeks ago. I have her up to speed enough that she can get stuff done while I am gone! She took introductory biology, but had essentially zero lab experience. She has good lab hands though, which is a huge bonus and means she seems to pick up the way you do things in lab easily. Today, after talking about what she would do while I am gone, she wrote a color coded detailed list of what she will do every day. No joke. My PI (the actual PI of the lab) came in, commented that the UG would be busy while I am gone, and also that she notices that I keep people busy (compliment #2).

I found out at about 6 this evening that my second undergrad will start tomorrow. At 8:30 a.m. She has only taken an introductory biology course for non-majors (read: VERY LITTLE BACKGROUND). I will not be able to get her up to speed enough in one day for her to do anything productive while I am gone. I did print out a bunch of papers for her to read though!

In addition to these two undergrads who are directly under my care, I have helped another undergrad over the past month learn two new techniques for his thesis, and regularly consult with the grad student, the other post-doc, and (yet) another undergrad. Oh, and the lab manager has started splitting her time in lab with another on campus job because our PI will be retiring in the next 5 years, and it was an opportunity she could not pass up. So at least 1 1/2 days a week I am the one "in charge" in lab anyway. OH, and I have a work study student finishing this week (who will luckily be back in the fall) who does what bench work I wish I could do right now. He has been invaluable.

So back to the post-doc PI thing.  If I count back, I am directly in charge of three undergrads, supervise 2 others 1.5 days a week, and also consult with, oh, everyone in the lab. And I am working on a paper. And I am giving a talk this week. And I lead an undergrad journal club every couple of weeks. And I have stupidly volunteered to present at the last two lab meetings. The only thing I am missing from being an actual PI is worrying about budgets and paying people (Difference #1)! To even out the time commitment that budgeting requires, I will start looking for a job.

Also, as a PI, I will actually be in charge, rather than wonder if it is my place to tell the OTHER work study student to reallocate his time to something more useful than what he is doing. (Difference #2)

And here I am procrastinating on my work by posting. Whatevs.

My "garden"

I started off this spring with a mess of a porch. This is actually after I had picked some stuff up! There is a Christmas tree, a chair from my old neighbor with paint peeling off. Cushions. Bags of potting soil.

Inside the screen-in part, I finally got a table that I was putting together here. There was an ancient air conditioner that I finally sold on Craigslist. (I may be sorry about that, but I think I can get a more energy efficient one now.)

Then I potted some things super early in these great felt pots my parents gave me for my birthday. They are supposed to be good for root growth, because they breath. Who knows! There is cilantro, lettuce seeds you cannot see, a tomato plant and basil plants. (For the record, they were COMPLETELY full of soil when I planted them, and it has all settled down.)

 Then I added some (edible) flowers and a pepper plant and moved the plants outside.

I planted violas (Johnny jump-ups), and those flowers have a very mild sweet flavor. I also planted nasturtium, whose leaves and flowers have a spicy flavor. Adds a little color to a salad!

 Fortuitous shot when I was watering the pots and water got caught in the nasturtium leaf.

I even planted the rest of the cat grass that the cat does not eat. She has sniffed it a couple of times, and I have put some in her food, but she could not care less.

This is my garden just a few minutes ago! My tomato and basil plants are in the top, then a pepper and a viola, then cilantro, lettuce, and a nasturtium, and in the bottom, more nasturtium (and BOY are they growing!), two cucumbers that are finally growing, and violas.

I also had the other post-doc in the lab over and we did some painting of that yellow chair in the top photo and a table that was holding the AC up. At some point when I vacuum the screened in part and have it all set up with the chairs out, I will take another photo.