2 hour delay

We received about 6" of snow last night, so there is a two hour delay for the schools this morning. I am relieved, because it's really hard to shovel out and get the kid where he needs to be by 7:30. This way

I get to make a blog post, do a bit of knitting, and will still have enough time to shovel.

It's funny, the school district is of course on Facebook, and under the announcement that there is a delay instead of a full closure, there are comments like, "Really?? Have you looked outside?" and the classic, "You guys are idiots. If you think two hours are enough to clear the roads, you are totally oblivious..." blah blah blah. Safety! Think of the children! We do usually have nice weather here, but it IS Colorado, and the climate means that we occasionally get large dumps of snow.

I need to get a second snow shovel because Mr W is finally a reliable second shoveler. His quality standards are not quite up to mine yet, but he's trainable. I'll have him clean off the car first and then help shovel out the entrance to the alley. I park my car behind my house, and I have to enter the alley to get to the driveway. The alley always gets "plowed in" when the snow plows go by, so I need to shovel it out as well.

But I'll get a bit of time to work on my Leaflet, and I snapped the picture above this morning to show my progress. All hail the thick yarn!! I'm hoping the yarn store is open today because I'll need to purchase a longer circular needle. I had a 24" on hand, but need a 32". The fuzzy Pastaza yarn I have doesn't have super stitch definition, but it was in my stash (and thus free) and I like working with it so far.

My work life is about to change a bit. We're getting a foreign student in the lab to do her Master's project and I'll be in charge of her. This was more or less foisted upon me and I'm going to turn lemons to lemonade. Not that I have anything against having some help but I've set up my work at work to be a solo venture. I've been thinking about what we can have her do, and I talked with my boss yesterday about it and I think we can come up with the stand-alone project she needs that is related to the stuff I'm doing, but my stuff doesn't depend on her outcomes.

Since she's from outside the US, the security stuff is extensive and she'll need to be escorted around the building for the first month or so that she's here. My boss offered to do some of the escorting, but her cube will be near mine, so it will fall to me to do most of it. It'll all work out, but I'm uncertain of the details. She's here for a year.

Psyching myself out

Sleep, why is this so hard for us? I feel the difference when you behave yourself. I feel great when you visit and stay a while. I've read the books about how vital you are to my well-being. And yet, you make me wait. Sigh...

It seems like it's always something, and forgive me please if you are weary about hearing of my sleep troubles. On a very important up side, I've got my pillows rearranged so my lower back pain during the day seems to be almost gone. That's a pretty small change for a big return and I wouldn't have figured it out if I hadn't slept on another bed recently. Thankful for that. 

But I find that, like a lot of people, the things I worry about can keep me up, even if I'm not actively thinking about them. Hunting down these anxieties and telling them to take a hike takes work!! Dammit. In the haze of almost-sleep I'm often just in the middle area between being able to think and being able to not, so it's hard to make conscious decisions about things. 

Last night I was tossing and turning and reached for my phone to browse around because I was awake enough to do it. In my Facebook feed I saw the words "Learned Optimism". It set off a useful little train of thought that ended up with me saying to myself, "I choose to believe that everything is going to work out for the best."

Is anything really wrong? No, just the usual uncertainty of being in a contract position. On most days lately, I feel OK with that because a two-year federal budget has been passed that (I think) keeps funding pretty level with where it is now.

I'm also trying new stuff at work. It has me doing a lot of reading about what other people have done, and I get to collaborate with some co-workers. Those are two really good things about it. But it's stuff I haven't done before, although I'm really interested in it, and that uncertainty bugs me a bit sometimes. 

It bothers me a bit that even though the above work related things have a measure of uncertainty to them, it's really small potatoes. It should be pretty easy to chalk it up to how life works. I feel this is a consequence of living alone - the ideas need to roll around in my head for a lot longer than they would if they bounced off another person. I'm not complaining, but it's good to realize that I sometimes start to loop about this stuff, and I'm the one that has to step in and say "enough!". 

Took the picture above at the dog park yesterday. I just liked the stack of clouds and the lighting on them was nice. 

And we wait

Things are looking good in the kitchen. The cabinets are in and I've waited for two days now for the counter top people (who are also the flooring people) to schedule a time to come in and do the counters. This does not come as a surprise to me. The salesperson at the flooring/counter store has been in no hurry at all to follow up with what I've wanted. I definitely won't recommend his company in the future. Hopefully today I'll hear something.

But I love the cabinets. The color is lovely and there is a ton of storage space. That's a wine rack to the left of the hole for the dishwasher. There was a bit of miscommunication about that, where it was originally a wine rack, then the contractor said we could make it into a space for cookie sheets, and then it ended up a wine rack. That's fine. I'll buy some wine. 

I've been super busy at work with a load of timed experiments that have to happen on mosquitoes that are 3-7 days old. It's been go go go since last Friday with that, but today should be the last day. The results are good and interesting and I've got boxes full of tubes of dead mosquitoes that died after a certain amount of time exposed to insecticides, so that's very good. 

I did apply for the university job and turned in my application yesterday. That also was a lot of work, and although I had a month to work on it, I did most of it in the last few days. I'm satisfied that the application (cover letter, CV, research statement, teaching statement) represents my qualifications and experience adequately, so that's good. It will be interesting to see if I even get an interview. I need to tell my boss and his boss that I put them down as references. I know they'll understand because it's a really good opportunity, but I still feel a little smarmy doing it.

And it's been hot this week. Mr W's school is not air conditioned, so they've got these huge fans moving air through, and they keep the lights down. I know I can't do anything about it except make sure he's got his water bottle, and I do.

Hopefully now that the timed experiments are winding down, the application is in, and the kitchen is almost done, things will feel like they are less rushed.

Teamwork

It's almost the weekend! This week has flown by at work. Things are pretty busy, but good. I go at my own pace most of the time, so I don't feel like someone is breathing down my neck waiting for me to finish so they can do something.

I did have sort of the opposite happen though. Something that can happen when four people are working on the same project. We are processing mosquitoes that had blood-fed, so one part of the project is for someone (not me) to dissect off the abdomen and analyze the blood to see what kind of animal it came from, and another part is for me to get the rest of the body, shake it in a tube with a copper BB and this liquid, and extract DNA to do my population genetics thing.

I've got a process that I've made little improvements on over the years. It's something that I can turn on a podcast or audiobook and chug through for a couple of hours and do what I need to do. Yesterday, I'm about 20 tubes into the process (out of about 100) and the numbered tubes in one box end with 393. The numbers in the next box start with 401. Hmmm.

I look in all the boxes again. I go downstairs and look in the freezer where the boxes of tubes are stored. I cannot find the tubes. I email my coworker and she says she'll try to find them. She's busy with other things, so I didn't hear from her for the rest of the day. I'll try to track down what happened and we'll figure out whether to just skip those, or wait and see if they can be located. It doesn't really matter. As long as the parts of an individual are in tubes with the same number, things will match.

Having just read this post, it's pretty boring, work related stuff. Ha! Oh well, more exciting things will be posted about the weekend. I'm thinking of dragging Mr W to a squaredance...

OK, now that that's done...

Sorry for the blogging silence. I've been working on a presentation for work for the last few weeks that has occupied a big space in my mind. The presentation was yesterday, it went very well, and I'm hoping that my boss will tell me in the next day or two whether I'll have my contract renewed and whether my status will be changed from contractor to a "fellow", which would be a little more secure.

My boss and I met with his boss and his boss's boss, who is the Director of the division. There were also two high-up administrative folks there. It was a friendly crowd, but my task was to detail the projects we've done, what we're working on and then talk about future projects to sort of show that I'm valuable to the organization.

My boss and I started talking about these projects a few months ago, and they have to do with genetically characterizing insecticide resistance in the mosquitoes we work with. Yeah, I don't really know that much about it either. But I downloaded about 40 papers and read most of them, and got enough of a basic grasp of the research (it's actually pretty darn interesting) to come up with three ideas for projects we could do.

They all seemed to think these were good ideas, and I was really happy to hear my boss's boss expand on the things I said, making the connection between what we do and the mission of the division.

Things are going well at the moment. It's good to have this thing done and turn my attentions elsewhere. Once I hear for sure that I'll be renewed, I'm going to embark on some home renovations (updated kitchen! new windows! the deck I've been whining about for 4 years!) that I'm sure will provide plenty of blogging fodder. I'm still making bracelets, but still bouncing back from a holiday push I'm not sure was necessary. It's time to start thinking about the garden, and I need to redo my irrigation system this year and shore up those old bookcases I've got for raised beds. I think I can get one more year out of them.

I'm going to try to blog more, and set a 15 minute limit to post. There may be pictures or there may not. Here's one from one of the greenhouses at the Denver Botanic Gardens when Mr W and I went there in December to see the lights.

Shuffle

I'm going to be moving from one office cube to another at the end of next week. A bunch of people, including the director and other people who have been there for years/decades are moving from office trailers to the building where I work and where the labs are. My boss is moving, and he asked if I'd take one of the computers that we use to do data analyses and have it moved to my new cube.

I said sure, and went over there yesterday to pack it up and get the all-important stickers on the parts so they will be moved to the right location. My boss was still packing his office, and his boss, who has the office next door, was also in and out packing his office. They had a ton of boxes, and both said how they have thrown out a lot of stuff as well.

As a side note, one of the things we sciencey types are supposed to do is to keep a library of sorts of journal articles relevant to our work. Used to be people kept folders upon folders of papers in file cabinets. These days, almost everything is available online. It makes for a lot of recycled paper when the time comes to move that stuff.

Anyway, as my boss and his boss (who I also really like) and I were chatting, it occurred to me that these two people are largely responsible for my being employed in a good job that I enjoy. These two people have gone to bat to keep me on when my contract comes up for renewal, and view what I do there as relevant. Yes, I try to do a good job, and that's probably part of why I'm still there, but still.

My boss's boss joked, "So, are you having Linda pack your office?" That struck both my boss and I as funny, as I don't think either of us would have considered it. He then said there were a couple of PI (Principal Investigators - someone in charge of a lab's work) who had done just that. I was grateful that I wasn't asked.

When the move happens, we're supposed to work from home, which for me means getting caught up on some much-needed reading on several things. It'll be a nice change.

Better

My ankle (or "cankle" as one dog park friend called it - calf + ankle looking) is much better. Thanks for the well wishes. I thought at the time it happened that it wasn't too serious and sure enough the swelling is down a lot. I might get a good-sized bruise out of it yet, which is always a conversation starter :-)

What else. We are making the transition to Mr W's middle school schedule reasonably well. I've been getting up 15 (just a puny 15) minutes earlier and I have felt it. Or so I think. After two weeks of it (on school days) I woke up last Friday a little before the alarm and took that as a good sign. However, I've also been in sort of a rut of waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble falling back to sleep. Nothing's wrong, I'm not anxious, I just can't fall back to sleep. It's frustrating, and hopefully will turn around soon.

Work is good. I handed in another manuscript to my boss so we can get that study published. It's a sometimes painful process, the editing and the back and forth about how things should be worded. He's nice about it, but it can be a long process. We've got two other authors this time around who will want to (and should) have input, but at least the ball is rolling. This means I can go back to the lab and do lab stuff, which is my favorite part of the job. Try this, try that, run samples, get data. I know it's not for everyone, but I do like it.

The bracelet stuff has taken a lot of my free time lately, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I need to promote the stuff, because just listing items on Etsy doesn't go very far. I use their within-site advertising, so if someone searches "button bracelet" my stuff will be at the top of the page, and that gets some views, but so far not many sales. So I'm beefing up my blog presence at my other blog, and trying to make those connections with people who make things out of polymer clay, mostly. They are by and large warm and friendly people and that makes it not so much like work. So much interesting stuff out there.

But it's hard to know when to stop with the checking and promoting and what works and what doesn't. I'm still not in a spot where I feel like my efforts translate into selling my stuff. So far that, and feedback about pictures that I post, are the signs of "success" in this for me. However, I do still get a kick out of making the stuff. I love it when a piece comes together and all the parts look good. I feel like I need to focus more on that, but would really like for this little hobby to at least pay for itself.

And for heaven's sake, don't take the above paragraph as a plea for you to please go over and buy something. Don't do that.

In the meantime, I have not played my banjo enough, and am making a concerted effort to practice more. I hate feeling guilty about not practicing, and really don't want that to be my motivation. I want to practice because I enjoy it.

I have had some insights about the garden this year that I will share in another post. Growing veggies didn't go quite as I had hoped this year. My tomato plant is monstrous, but with few fruits. The powdery mildew came early, and I probably, because I planted cukes near my cantaloupe, have some weird melon-cuke hybrids. The fruits between the two plants are more cylindrical than the first melons I  harvested. More on this later.

The new schedule

Mr W is one week with his dad, and one week with me. He has to be dropped off around 7:20 am and school gets out at 2:25. Ack. We are still in the adjustment phase, to be sure. It's really nice to get to work around 7:40, but the last couple of days we've been flying out of the house with me saying, "C'mon, we're gonna be late!!!" Yesterday we got stopped by a train for about 5 minutes, which was enough to make him just about late, but it was OK.

It'll be fine, but I am still getting used to getting up a little earlier so I can have my coffee and goof around on the computer for a while. Tonight is the back to school night and they have a 2.5 hour program where the parent goes through each of the kid's classes in order, for 8-10 minutes. I'm looking forward to it, but it's gonna be a long day and I'll need to schedule a strategically-timed caffeine infusion for about 2 pm.

What else. Oh, this and that. I made peach jam but it's not setting up yet. I followed the directions from the pectin box and it took so much sugar I'm kind of grossed out (3.75 cups fruit and 5 cups of sugar). I've got some low sugar pectin and will use that with the rest of the peaches this weekend. I ran out of sugar, otherwise I'd have pressed on. :-)

Work is a little monotonous. I'm rounding third on a paper that I'm writing, and would really like to be back in the lab WORKING as opposed to writing, so I'm getting a bit antsy. Almost done, though, and then I can get back there.

OK, I need to get going. Hope things are good in your world. I'm doing so many social media things between this blog and the bracelet stuff that I need to set up a posting schedule. Not there yet, but soon, and then I'll be here every other day, like I would like to be.

Use 'em or lose em

One big benefit of moving from our old lab and office space to our current building at work is that the stairwells are wide, brightly lit, and conducive to "taking the stairs" if one should want to do so. My lab is on the second floor and my cube is on the fourth floor, so I'd would take the stairs instead of the elevators at least a couple of times a day. There's a mezzanine level at each floor, two, so it was something like eight or nine flights of stairs (if a flight is 10 steps or so).

At first, I couldn't do it without stopping, but in a few weeks, I'd be a little less out of breath as I got back to my desk. It's nice when you can do something at work that is totally permissible (like getting to your desk) and have it be exercise too.

Well, last December, they started doing construction within the building to increase the amount of office space so the rest of the people in our division can go over to the new building. As much as I like my fourth floor cube, I'll be ousted moved to the second floor. I have no power in this, and I'm glad not to have to share a cube, so there is really no problem.

During the construction, they have closed the stairwell that I used to use. So I've been taking the elevator like everyone else. A couple of days ago, as I sat at my desk for another day of writing stuff, I decided to use the stairs in the other stairwell, and go from the first to the second floor. Well, I thought those stairs only went up to the second floor or so, but they go all the way up to the top, and there's no signs saying people can't use them. Hooray! I'll now do those a couple of times a day.

However, after the first day of doing stairs, I got up from my chair at work and my calves were so tight, I couldn't think what that could be from. Spin class? We didn't do anything different than usual. Then I realized it must have been walking the stairs. Wow. Use it or lose it, and those muscles got used to not being used. It's funny how losing the strength there is painless and unnoticed. And getting it back is a little ouchy.

A little catch up

Happy weekend! It's supposed to be near 100 for the next two days. I'm volunteering at our local brewfest this weekend. It'll be fun, I need to drink lots of water. So, what's been happening here? 

Well, at work, I got work done on a project and it's ready to hand off to my boss, who was this week collecting ticks in Missouri. The magnitude of my gratefulness for not being asked to go on this trip is huge indeed. Ick ick ick. So, that's good. I worked from home yesterday afternoon on a little proposal that helps explain the connection between the sort of research we do and public health. It's not always a straight line, and it helps to try to make it clear for the people who at the top who make decisions. 

I've been working a lot on Etsy shop stuff. Well, it seems like I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to promote my stuff on Pinterest, Facebook and Tumblr. The overlap is definitely there, but it seems each has its own different audience. But setting that stuff up and keeping it current takes time. I do enjoy it, though, so it's not like I feel like I'm wasting time. Those earrings are the last of five pairs I posted recently. I used mainspring barrels from old watches, plus the little glass cabochons and my clay tiles. If you've got an opinion, what do you think of the price? Reasonable?

I'm also doing a giveaway on the FB page. Check out Wednesday's post for details. 

It's been so very dry here. I know it's not like that everywhere, for sure. I've been dutifully watering my garden and sometimes my grass. I'm trying not to let my lawn die this year. I've gotten a so-so harvest from the lettuce and spinach - it got too hot too fast after I planted them. But the rest of it is coming along. I planted a bunch of cantaloupe, and with the hot summer, I'm hoping we get a few good ones. It seems like it's around the beginning of school by the time they are ripe, but the plants have flower and I'm hopeful. The dog's been helping herself to the raspberries, which I think is quite funny, and I'll just need to try to get out there before her.

I can tell you this because it's done and there's no jinxing it now. I had gone out on a few dates with someone I met online. I know, I know, why the online stuff again. In short, because I feel like there's no one out there (so I don't spend much time on the site), but yet I'm an optimist, so it feels like leaving a business card in a jar. Anyway, we went out for lunch a couple of times and went hiking once. Each time, it was this thing about how busy he was, and whether he'd be able to make the agreed-upon time. We moved things around several times, and the last straw was when we had agreed to go out, potentially, on a Saturday night before he was leaving for a conference. We had set up the potential outing at least a week in advance, so it seemed to me he could find a couple of hours to do go out. He emailed at 6 pm, not to apologize, but to say he couldn't make it, he had too many things to do yet.

The reason I mention this is because there was a time when I would have put up with this bs. There was a time when I would have thought this pretty normal and would have been understanding. In fact at the beginning, when we had to reschedule or he couldn't make it, I thought, "well, he's got a lot going on, so I'll be flexible." And you know what? We all seem to manage to make time for the things we think are important. We do. We are all busy, too. So I emailed him and said that he seemed like he was always too busy, and that there was no hard feelings, I just didn't want to conduct things that way. 

And I never heard from him again. I guess he's too busy to reply. 

But things are good. I was telling a dear friend who came up from Denver and took me out to dinner last night (and has been married forever) that yes, I still sometimes can't believe that I have been single now for 6.5 years after the divorce. But I have come to realize, especially after hearing about how one half of a couple can make bad choices and make things difficult for both parties, that it's nice to come home to a friendly dog and just check my email and go to bed. 

Our in-town fire

You may have heard about the High Park fire that's burning just west of Fort Collins. Here's a link to our local paper, and one to a TV station. At least 118 structures, lots of displaced people, lots of smoke down here in town. My house isn't in any danger, but the fire is less than a mile from where I work. The building is pretty smoky, and it's hard to concentrate. They don't seem to think the fire will crest over the hill close to the building, but it's been an unusual fire, and people are a little anxious, myself included.

It started Saturday morning, from a lightning strike. Not too much more to say about it, but it's unfolding.

In other news, I had a couple of interesting dreams last night. In one, I was with Mr W and we were standing on the side of a street. All of the sudden, this life-sized pink plastic VW Beetle comes bouncing, literally, down the street, doing several car lengths at a bounce. It's got a big black push button on the bottom of it. Mr W is unimpressed.

In the other, I've got friends over to the house and some stuff has been delivered that I'm supposed to work on as part of my craftiness. The pieces are on my porch, and it's something like a large dining room table top, and three wooden cutouts of animals. For the life of me, I can't remember what I'm supposed to to with them. Then I find a letter, also on the porch (where my mail gets delivered) and that explains it.

I got an email from Mr W's dad yesterday saying how all Mr W wants to do is play on the computer, and I was telling him that the kid needs to be gently pushed to do the other things we know he's interested in. I fear the kid will be unimpressed by anything not on a screen and we have to work on that balance.

The other dream I suspect has to do with this button stuff, although I'm sitting really good on making the first batch - they look great.

I'm delivering a meal for a family from church with the mom undergoing chemo this summer. Just so happens I ran into an acquaintance in the grocery store over the weekend, also undergoing chemo this summer, and is also signed up at the same meal-delivery-organization web site. I'll get on that schedule too and count my blessings.

Embarrassing myself at work

I attended a phone conference yesterday with my boss and the people we're working with in California. Afterwards, I was discussing the work with him, and was explaining that the genetic characteristics of one group of mosquitoes we worked with there aren't as strong and obvious as when we've worked with specimens of that group from other parts of the country.

Our shorthand for the group is P. The other group we refer to as Q.

I found myself talking about the "P-ness" of the group in California, in comparison with this group from other parts of the country, and said it a couple of times. Go ahead, say it out loud. "P-ness" P-ness".

That sound you hear now? Me smacking my forehead again. When I told Mr W, he thought this was hilarious. I'm very thankful my boss either didn't get it or let it go so as not to embarrass me. I did pretty good embarrassing myself, it would appear.

Freakonomics

I'm still a podcast junkie. My favorites include Radiolab, NPR's Talk of the Nation (which has Science Friday), Harry Shearer's LeShow, a BBC Medical podcast called Medical Matters, a knitting one called Cast On, and a few others.

I was looking around for some new material and found the Freakonomics podcast. I love a show that can hold my attention for an entire hour. Their tagline is "The hidden side of everything". As in you might think you know that A leads to B which leads to C, but you may not have known that this thing affected B, so it very well could have been D, but was C instead.

And I, for one, find that kind of thing endlessly fascinating. I love hearing about the connections between seemingly unrelated things. The first show I listened to had to do with how people rate more expensive wines as tasting better, but if they don't know how much a bottle costs, the vast majority of people can't tell cheaper wine from expensive. Then it had a story of a restaurant where a woman was served a salad, and there was a dead mouse in it, and used that to illustrate how if companies take responsibility for crazy stuff like that, it not only allows the company to examine how it does things (as in there were probably five people who should have seen the mouse on its way to the table), it also makes people more loyal when the company owns up to their mistakes.

So interesting. Their blog has a bit on gas prices. Some folks want to blame the president for high gas prices, but the post today walks through how it's (not surprisingly) more complicated than that.

I'm a Meetup gal this weekend, and otherwise hope to do a bunch of bracelet/button stuff. I worked on getting a packaging card for the buttons yesterday, and it's almost there. Tweak and print, tweak and print. The Meetups include a parent's night out with the single parent group, board games with another group (something almost out of my comfort zone, but sounded fun), and lunch with a social group from my church. I'm blessed and lucky.

Oh, and I got the word yesterday that my contract will be extended for six months. My reaction was sort of "yes!" then "wait a minute". But I'll take it. If they are sure about the six months, it seems that they very well might find the funds to add a second six months. As it is, I'm good until the end of January 2013. I had a good talk with my boss yesterday, and I know he'll do what he can to keep me on. We talked about some future projects, and there's some new stuff in there that sounds really interesting to me.

Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket today.

All good

It's been a normal weekend around here, and it's been nice to be feeling better. Finally. I'm still having to blow my nose a few times a day, and have a little cough, but will gladly take those because I feel fine. Mr W picked up something this week, and has been snotty (in the literal sense) but said he's feeling better today.

We went to a hands-on science demo thing at the university yesterday, and that was fun. We probably would have stayed there longer if he had been feeling 100%, but saw and got to try lots of the demos. Magnets held in front of old TVs, sounds translated into light, liquids moving around, echoes, I had fun too.

Today I'm scheduled to usher at church. It's an easy way to volunteer: pass the basket, count the dough, hand out the bulletin. After that, I'm going to work on more clay stuff. I've been thinking about ways to package the buttons, three to a card. I'm meeting a former coworker friend who has worked in the printing business for coffee next week and will ask about options there. I think I could make a wire display rack and would like to see if one of the shops downtown (a sewing store, or the yarn shop are my first two ideas) would be interested in selling them.

And work is humming along. We received mosquitoes from Japan and they were preserved in alcohol. I extracted the DNA, and wasn't getting any results, when I decided to use less in each reaction instead of more. For some reason, that worked. Phew! Picture me relieved. It'd be a bummer to say, "sorry, I couldn't get any of these to work". Our thoughts are that the mosquitoes in CA, where we've been working with collaborators, might have hybridized with this species from Japan, perhaps brought into one of the CA ports in a shipping container. I love this stuff and am looking forward to sequencing a few individuals next week.

It feels really good not to be sick. Good to get the reminder now and again when nothing hurts or feels weird, that THAT is reason to be thankful.

Mind tricks

As expected, there was a banquet held as part of the conference I went to. Funny how there is a huge range of outfits for these events. Plenty of suits and cocktail dresses, and then the rest of us. I just wore what I wore to speak that day (slacks and a jacket), and it was fine.

Something different they had (it was California, after all) was a magician who did 3 or 4 short acts during the course of the evening. He did card tricks and the expected stuff, but then he did a couple of tricks that weren't  sleight of hand at all. Instead they relied on reading people. It was really interesting.

He got a volunteer from the audience and asked her to think of her best friend from childhood. Then he asked her to think of the first letter of her name. He asked her to say "no" as he went through each letter of the alphabet. So it went: "Is it A?" "No" "Is it B?" "No" "Is it C?" "No" regardless of whether that was the right letter for the name or not.

He guesses the first two letters correctly, L and I. I'm thinking the name is Linda, so I tune in to hear what she says as he gets closer to N. L? No. M? No. N? No - but her voice went up when she said it. It was so goofy. He was tuned into it, so he easily guessed the rest of the letters.

I think it's a good thing that we aren't generally good liars. I find the details of life quite enough to keep track of without having to remember things that didn't happen or happened differently than my story says they did.

He did another one, and I can't remember the details, but it was another thing where a volunteer was asked to recall something, and he asked her each number or letter. This time, she held her palm out, and he pushed lightly on each of her fingers in turn while he asked and she answered. Something about the amount of resistance from each push on a finger gave him the information without his volunteer giving it directly. J from the dog park, who is up on things psychological, had a name for this and knew of the phenomenon.

It was pretty entertaining. Whether people who can read people like this use their powers for good or evil is another matter. I'm guessing that TV psychics use similar tricks to seem legitimate, while the client is giving them most of what they need to know. On the other hand, I've met a couple of people who I would call truly intuitive, and it does seem like a gift.

In other news, my cold is taking its sweet time to exit my system, stopping to visit lungs, head, throat, etc. This morning, I woke up with what I'm guessing is sinus pain - ouch. I can't recall having it before. I still have a junky cough, but my throat doesn't hurt. Mornings definitely are the hardest. I haven't felt much worse, just differently icky over the last few days, so I guess that means my system is fighting the good fight. I did go to Spin class yesterday, thinking I'd take it easy and leave if I started on a coughing jag. It was fine though, and it felt really good to do it again after being absent for a week. When this clears up, I will appreciate my symptom-free condition a little more!

Ugh

Well, perhaps because I was using my teacher voice to practice my talk, or maybe I picked up a bug somewhere, but I've picked up a sore throat and that general feeling puny feeling. But I'm on my way home, and sitting in the Sacramento airport writing this.

The conference was good, and I feel like I am on my way to making a contribution to this little taxonomic conundrum that is the group of mosquitoes I work with in California. Yesterday, I visited some of the study sites and talked with the PhD student whose project this is about what we want to get done in the next few months.

One of the places we visited is called the Heronry, as in a place where water birds nest. I and my clothes are grateful that they are away at the moment, so it wasn't a crapshoot (ha!) to walk under the nests. This is a site where the mosquitoes are different genetically, and it could be sort of a genetic congregating spot.

This is what the area functions as, in addition to a home for protected squawky bunches of birds. It's an apiary. Isn't that cool? A family lives here, and it's a woodlot island in the middle of a lot of farmland. I didn't get all the details, but the hives are transported to various fields so the honeybees can do their jobs as essential pollinators. The whole place was maybe a couple of acres, but they had at least a hundred hives around. The place buzzed, literally! But the bees left us alone, as I guessed they would.

We also visited a couple of the sites in downtown Sacramento and Old Sacramento. In this area of CA, Victorian architecture is the norm, not much Spanish influence in the places I visited. The sites were manholes and areas that led to underground drainage/sewage sources. Apparently the mosquito control folks are pretty good at what they do, because the populations get wiped out pretty regularly and reestablish because the habitat is still there.

All in all a good trip. Hopefully I'll be able to kick this sore throat without it getting any worse. Fingers crossed.

Today's Document

I can't remember where I first saw a link to this blog, but I've put it in my feed. It's from the National Archives, and it's called "Today's Document".

They post one thing a day and I have enjoyed the variety of items they've chosen to show.

My talk went well! I was very glad I brought a copy of it on a jump drive, as they did not have the version I had emailed last Friday. Phew! A couple of people have come up to me and offered to send me mosquitoes, and I'm excited to get some more coverage for the CA study.

And now, it's off to the banquet. I'm tired! But it's good to do this schmoozing. Tomorrow, we're off to Davis for the day to see some of the sites my specimens came from. Looking forward to a good night's rest tonight.

Cloudy California

 My plan was to go to the Flower Conservatory today, but alas they are closed on Mondays. So here is the outside of the building. *sigh*

I've been up since 4 am, so I'm fading fast, but wanted to post these. I waffled a bit, but pushed myself a little to go down to Golden Gate Park. I wish I had more time to do it, but I had a good time. It was a three leg trip each way: ride the shuttle from the hotel back to the airport, pick up a train from there to a bus stop and then transfer to a bus the rest of the way. Going over to the airport, I rode with a couple of ladies who were going down to the wharf (The Wharf?) downtown. I imagine if the security camera footage in the train station was ever reviewed, they'd get a good laugh out of the three of us trying to negotiate the ticket vending machines.

The bus didn't follow the same route coming back, so I thought I had missed my stop and had to ask a knowledgable high schooler whether this was the case. That would have been a bummer, but all was fine. It was a little exhausting, all that paying attention, but I'm glad I went. 

Since the Flower Conservatory was closed, I wandered around a bit. I only had about an hour, so didn't feel purchasing admission to the CA Academy of Sciences was justified. I did ask if they had a reciprocity agreement such that I could use my Denver science museum membership, but no dice. I went to the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park and that was very nice. Despite being winter here, things were pretty darn green. There is some cool detail on the roof of this building. One of the ponds had several of the largest koi I've ever seen. Fat and happy. 

I had dinner with my collaborators, and we talked a bit about the work I'm doing as it relates to the research questions they have. So far so good. My talk is at 8:30 instead of 8, so that's good news. And now, I must go to bed. So tired! 

Some handmade buttons

Here are the buttons I've made so far. I've divided them up for the shop by color and shape, so a person could buy the six round lavender ones as a set. I was online looking at polymer clay sites and found this, which has a lot of ideas for polymer clay in general. 

One of their most fantabulous ideas was to use a corn cob holder to poke button holes in the uncured clay. Brilliant! I was using a small drill bit, which works, but I have to place each hole separately and get a few off center ones that don't make the final cut.

I have found that I enjoy the process of making the buttons a lot. There's something almost meditative about going through the steps. And I'm a sucker for color, so I do enjoy mixing the colors as well. Last week, I had a little bit of time to kill before picking up Mr W, so I went to the craft store, and thought I'd just see if they had any accessories I couldn't live without. I know darn well that what they charge for a 2 oz. block of polymer clay is more expensive than I can find online. It's not like this store is local, so I don't mind looking for the good deal. 

As an aside, I was poked with a little guilt when I bought a book on Amazon to make it to the $25 threshold for free shipping on some craft supplies. I had planned to buy the book for a book club at a book store downtown, but it was the only thing I could think of that I actually sort of needed. 

Anyway, I make my way back to where they have the clay and, hey! it's half off. Blink. Blink. I select 25 blocks and make my purchase. I felt like I had this treasure; it was funny. I'm still working my way through a couple more purples so I can make pinky purpley all-clay bracelets, and then will get to dive into the new clay. 

I then need to come up with I think one more thing to get on the shop and then need to advertise somehow to get more people to the shop. Only so many hours in the day. I've been busy (still) at work, and for the last week and a half have been analyzing data and working on a PowerPoint presentation. I got a first draft done yesterday and sent it to my boss. I think it's close. I've not quite switched to "hey, I'm going out of town" mode yet. Sally gets to stay with my friend from the dog park, and I think she finds that preferable to being in the kennel. I would! I'm happy to give B the money I'd otherwise give the kennel, too.

Who's got the button?

There is a story that Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat Pray Love fame) tells in a TED talk that I've mentioned here before. It's about the singer Tom Waits, who once was in traffic and got an idea for a song. He didn't have paper and pencil, and was quite busy driving. He cried out in frustration something like, "Can't you see I'm driving?" The idea being that sometimes creativity seems to come and get a person, as opposed to being something that one just sort of pulls the lid off of and has.

I'd like to think of myself as a sometimes creative person. I get ideas that seem neat to follow up on. I was surfing around Etsy and looking at the things people do with polymer clay. In a great example of how there are very few original ideas, I saw some buttons on the site and thought that my stamped clay medallions might make good buttons.

Here are a few of my first efforts. I think I will offer these in sets of 6.

In other news, Mr W and I watched Howl's Moving Castle last night on Netflix. I don't know what it is about some of the anime stuff out there, but I loved this movie. I had seen it before, but it was great to see it again. I dropped the DVD part of my Netflix subscription a few months ago, and since then have not had much luck finding the things I specifically want to watch offered as streaming video. But this movie was offered in that format.

I'm funny with movies. It's hard for me to commit two hours to what part of my mind sees as "just sitting around". I feel like I should be "doing" something. I suppose I could knit, or work on some bracelet stuff that doesn't require a lot of mental effort, but for whatever reason, I don't like to double up like that. So, I don't watch many movies on my own, and that's OK.

We've got two engagements today that involve restaurants. We're going to lunch with friends from the dog park, and celebrating M's retirement. Then, just a few hours later, the single parent group is getting together for an early dinner at a restaurant down the street from the first. In between, I'd like to pop over to work to see if some of my DNA sequencing results have been uploaded so I can see them.

I've pushed myself to get these results in order to have something to present to our collaborators, and I'm really hoping that they show something interesting. This process has been kind of exhilarating, and I've enjoyed work for the past few weeks, going through this process of finding differences that help solve a taxonomic puzzle.