An Open Letter to Mike G

Dear Mike (for those of you who don't know Mike, he's a good friend of my brother's and commenter here):

Just wanted to let you know that I took your recent advice to wish for my prince to come. While I was washing dishes on Friday night, I said, out loud, "I want to meet him. I want to meet a nice guy who is potential partner material."

I'd thought share how my day went yesterday (the next day, Saturday).

1. I went hiking with a local Meet Up group. We went to the Red Mountain Open Space north of Fort Collins, where it was (and always is) windy but really beautiful country. When we first got there, there was a group member from Laramie, WY (which is about an hour north of FC) who met us there, and he was driving a red Insight like SIL Mary's. I went over to see how he liked it and we talked a bit. Later in the hike, we were chatting, and it turns out he's from Ohio, and went to the same college that I went to, but graduated a couple of years before I got there. He's asked me out for coffee, and we're volleying emails to set it up.

2. Riding as a passenger on the way to the hike, I'm checking my email, and see that a guy from the dog park who is part of our little group that always seems to bring their dogs there at the same time, has sent me a message, saying if I ever wanted help in my garden, to give him a call. I see him as a friend, but it's still nice to be asked, you know?

3. Finally, in the evening, I drove to Denver and met up with old friend (and former long distance relationship guy) CB, who had been in town leading a tour. I sat in on their last dinner, and it was a really nice experience to see how CB and his co-leader interact with the clients, and how much they obviously enjoying themselves. I was not expecting to feel pretty much the same about him, after a year and a half of being apart. So goes this matter of the heart. It was great to see him. The combination of the 900 mile distance and the need to be good parents to our young kids is difficult to surmount.

How's that for asking and receiving?

I mean, I've been whining for months now about this, but I haven't actually sent a request to... um, whoever receives such things. I'm a nerd who is firmly on the side of science on most things, but the degree of coincidence here is a little freaky.

Haiku #5

Job searching feels like
holding my breath for too long
while life continues

Mixed

I got an email from the x this afternoon, telling me that he and his girlfriend are now engaged. No firm plans on the particulars yet but they are staying in town.

I have mixed feelings on this. I don't mind, or care that he's taking this step. I really don't. There has never been any ambiguity as to our status, and I am thankful for that. And furthermore, as I told him when I replied to his email, anything the promotes stability in Mr W's life is fine by me. She seems a reasonable person, has a son of her own (a couple of years younger than Mr W) and doesn't seem to have any hangups about her role in his life. I asked Mr W tonight what he thought, thinking that, like a lot of kids of divorced parents, that he might be a little sad that this event meant that his parents really would never get back together.

He said it was fine, and then asked right away how I felt about it. And then asked if I was ever going to get married again. I hope I don't appear like this crazy spinster type person to him. I told him that I was really looking forward to being married again, I just hadn't found the right guy yet. His response was, "So someday, I'll belong to two families." Yup, that's been the goal, my sweet offspring.

This gets to why this news kind of sat like a pebble in my shoe today. I'm a little bummed out that I am not in the same place. I'm a little sad that I am not in the same position. I haven't by any means lost hope, but I figured I'd be there by now. But here I am, and life is good. I'm looking forward to a lot of things. The job thing will resolve itself. My kid and I are healthy. The important stuff is in place.

Occupied

It was another up and down-ish sort of day yesterday on the job front. I'm still waiting (it might be too soon yet) to hear something on the fed job, which I will call the Biologist job to distinguish it from another fed job I'll talk about shortly. The Biologist job closed a little over two weeks ago, but I'd like to know NOW, thanks. It's nice that they let you see, on the electronic application system, whether all of your materials have been received, and mine have. So it's just a waiting game.

I finally heard about the teaching jobs. I didn't get them! Not too surprising there. I'm still a bit flummoxed as to what exactly they were looking for that I didn't even rate an interview. Well, fine, then. Keep your $9,000 a year pay cut and I'll take my talents elsewhere. It's kind of like that, that I was willing to sacrifice in order to do this important job, and they more or less said, "No. No thanks". If there were a clearer message to move on and focus somewhere else, I don't know what it is.

Did you read/listen to the piece on NPR about aging and stress? A new study indicated that our ability to bounce back from stressful events has something to do with longevity. Looking forward, I am.

I had been meaning to contact a friend who I hadn't talked to for a while. I am friends with he and his wife and our kids went to the same daycare when they were little spuds. He works for a nonprofit that helped me choose my study organism when I was in school, and has since become its director. I emailed him to see if he knew anyone that might be connected to the Biologist job, and he said no, but he'd keep his eyes open for other positions.

That night, that NIGHT, he forwards me an email that is what they call an "Outreach Notice" where another agency wants to gauge interest in a position before it's actually posted. The position is another fed position, in town, and is for something called a "Science Application and Delivery Specialist". Another job that is right up my alley, blending science and the explaining of science. And it pays well, too. This one is mostly the explaining of science. I'm still marveling at the timing of it. I would have seen the posting when it becomes official in a month or so, but now I've sent my resume directly to the person I'd be working for. How cool is that?

They are still trying to wrangle the extra months for me at work, and I feel ambivalent about working so hard to get out of there and finding the next thing. I hope the timing works out so I can get done all I want to there, and then take a couple of weeks off and start the new thing. HA! Right. But that's OK.

Progress

Here is my Cadence as of this morning. I did move all the live stitches to scrap yarn so I could try it on, and the neckline, which is really wide in the pattern, and which I made on smaller needles, will work fine. The yarn is pretty grabby, so I've had to change the way I hold it and that has sped up the process a lot. I'm ready to do the 2" of ribbing on the bottom now, and then hopefully knock out the sleeves.

I say hopefully, because this is the time of year when knitting loses its appeal to gardening. I used to worry that I'd lost interest in knitting all together, but it comes back in the fall. I like the rhythm of that. I was outside for a bit yesterday, and made a long list of things that need to be done in order to properly usher in spring/summer at my house.

Has anyone every tried doing weed control by pouring boiling water on the weeds? The previous owners put down pea gravel in the font of the house and it always has weeds, which I usually knock back with Roundup, but would like to find an alternative. I did a test patch yesterday, and the leaves sure looked cooked, but I'll have to wait and see it that actually kills the plant. I remember seeing a butane torch apparatus in a gardening catalog that allowed the user to burn weeds, and thought that was a good idea for this small space, too.

Since the government shutdown isn't going to happen, it's back to work today, and I am relieved.

Haiku #4

Sally hearts dog park
Tongue dotted with dirt and grass
Please, just throw the ball

Haiku #3

Government shutdown

Bicker like little children

I've got work to do

Similarities

With the pending government shutdown, it feels like I'm losing my job twice. I can't believe that actual adults are compelled to let the government shut down so they can posture themselves into a better political position. I didn't think it would happen, but here we are on the day, and no budget. I only hope now that I will be able to enjoy myself on this involuntary furlough, as it's out of my hands.

We're not going to starve, and indeed today is payday, so we'll be OK for a few days while it gets sorted out. Did you know the shutdown of 1996 was 21 days? That's a little scary. I don't remember much about it.

Have you seen the Decorah Eagle webcam? I observed eagles for my MS, and while some say it's like watching paint dry, I find it fascinating. More like watching a fish in a tank. The little ones were just born in the last week or so, they come out from under the mom relatively frequently.

OK, back to the job stuff. So I've been putting my resume up on Monster, and the federal job site, and Career Builder. I've heard from several recruiters for things like selling insurance and being an analyst in WI, but nothing serious there. Which is fine, I guess I don't really expect to have a future employer find me in that way, I'd just like to be ready to tweak a resume that's on the site and send it along as an application.

But there is a similarity to posting one's resume online, and posting an online personal ad. I didn't realize this until I went onto Monster and saw that my resume had been viewed by two "potential employers". And I felt that little rush I felt when people looked at my profile. That's so freaky. Look at me! Look at me! To what end, I have no idea. I need to expand my search and submit resumes for some positions that I sort of qualify for.

I can see that attitude is a big driver in this. If I feel down in the dumps about it, that's going to come through when I'm deciding what to say in a cover letter. Nothing's really changed in my search for a new job, the openings just aren't moving fast enough. That's another similarity between this search and my search for a partner. Oh, why, Universe!? Why do I have to learn this lesson over and over?! Enjoying the ride in the meantime is so very difficult.

This segues me into the other thing that is going on. The person I was in the long distance relationship with is in CO working this week and next. We're going to eventually get together for a visit at the end of his tour, and I'm looking forward to seeing him. It has made me remember, though, how hard it was to do the long distance thing. "Waiting gracefully" was the term I used for being able to live my life between visits, and it was something I was never able to master.

So, as life will go, I have an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is today. I don't feel like going out and having fun, but my son's class needed a chaperone for a field trip to a park today, and I'm going. I'll go into work for a few hours in the afternoon to prepare for the shutdown, but am going to concentrate on just being with my kid today. He's really looking forward to it, and I felt (but covered it up) sort of ho-hum last night. Today we will have a nice time, it's supposed to be a nice day and those kids are always a lot of fun.

It will work out, and I'm doing what I can about the things I can do something about.

CPR class

Work offered a free CPR class yesterday, so I took it. It has been a while, over 10 years, and the AED (Automated External Defibrillator) is at the forefront of the process now. They've also changed the sequence of steps from ABC to CAB, meaning that a round of chest compressions (hard and fast!) should start right after assessing that the scene is safe, followed by checking airway and breathing.

This emphasis on the AED of course assumes that when someone goes down, someone can start chest compressions, while someone ELSE calls 911 and gets the AED. We have seven of them at work, and I could get to one if need be. Great, so if there's a crisis outside of work, where do you go? It occurred to me that there should be a smart phone application for that. And there is, so I will download it to to my phone today.

Participating in stuff like this always makes me a little anxious that I would someday have to put the knowledge to work. Everyone should at least (if I may pontificate for a moment) have read how to use one. The statistics are staggering. Almost a quarter of a million people go into sudden cardiac arrest each year.

More Spring Cleaning

Here are my seedlings this morning. I have to laugh at the scale of my "operation" here at Casa LindaCO. That's half broccoli, and then some tomatoes, cantaloupe and pickling cucumbers. I also started some broccoli and tomatoes for the community garden that grows stuff to donate to the food bank. The rest of what I want to plant needs to be direct-sown so we'll do that in about a month.

I'd like to finish this sweater I'm working on before it gets warm, but time is getting short and I can feel the desire to knit starting to slip away like it always does when it gets warm. I'm about half-way done, so it's anyone's guess at this point.

I was listening to a song on my iPod the other day and had the most curious thought. The song was "Useless Desires" by Patty Griffin. The link is for a live version video. For some reason, this song found its way to me the summer of 2006, when I thought (incorrectly) that I was ready to start dating again. I met someone online, and we had a really good rapport, electronically, anyway. I remember it feeling so great, and that perhaps this was it (or maybe IT). After we met, he absolutely lost interest. Perhaps because I was just a wee bit taller? We'll never know, but the despair I felt was a really good lesson about infatuation vs the real thing, and when to let your guard down, that kind of thing.

So I heard this song last week when I was going over data on the computer in the lab, and I had this thought, which was: if I could go back to the Linda of the summer of 2006, I'd tell her that things are going to be OK. I'd tell her the road to finding a partner isn't nearly as linear as she would have hoped, but that we've learned a lot about the important stuff in life so far along the way. And we are strong (most of the time).

Then I thought, how about the future Linda? The five years hence Linda? What sage and sound advice would she return with? My hope is that she'd say I'm currently doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and that things with finding Mr. Right fall into place when they should and in a very natural and fun way. I'm hoping also that she'd rave about what a great thing it turned out to be to get the kick in the pants to move from my current position to the thing she's doing. Meeting people, working in some kind of conservation biology and/or science communication sort of job.

And this all made me smile a bit.

Current Favoritist Song

Disclaimer: I listened to this song before I saw the video, which is sort of odd. Not obscene or gory or anything, but I don't get the exploding people at the end... I suggest you listen to it before you watch the video, maybe? Anyway, I love the words and the beat. The teacher at my Spin class was nice enough to let me foist a playlist on her yesterday, and this was on it. Go! Run! Be happy!!

Haiku #2 and Spring notes

Yesterday I bought a few bags of Sheep and Peat yesterday, and worked that into the soil of my raised beds. After trying to keep up with turning compost and watering the pile during this really dry winter, I have no finished compost to give to my garden this year. I guess it's going to be a two year process. I have a spin composter for my kitchen scraps and that goes pretty fast, especially now that it's warming up. I wish I could just throw compostable stuff on a pile and leave it alone, but I don't have the space.

I also shored up the raised beds by putting wood screws in at the corners, and will be switching what is grown in each bed, so I moved the trellis and planted lettuce and peas yesterday. The garden center where I bought single starts of lettuce last year had their lettuce in four-cell packs, so I bought two, one green, one red. That's a lotta lettuce. I also got my snap peas planted, and planted a lot - most of a package. It feels good to be underway.

Last night, I woke up around 2:30 to the smell of smoke. It has been a really dry winter, so my thought, after I sniffed around my appliances and found nothing on fire, was that it was a wildfire somewhere. Sure enough, there's a fire burning west of town and the wind blew the smoke right into town. Humans must have some really basal mechanism that says, "Hey! Fire! Don't sleep, you might have to flee!" because the rest of the night I was restless. At the time I write this, it's 2000 acres and only about 30% contained, so people are being evacuated. Nothing to worry about here in town, though, except the smoke. After an 80 (!) degree day yesterday, it's supposed to snow this afternoon. It's so Colorado, but that weather should help the firefighters' efforts.

Here's a haiku for my gardening efforts yesterday.


Bags of Sheep and Peat
turned over to feed the soil
The peas are happy

National Poetry Month

It's National Poetry Month in April, and I thought I would give myself a light challenge of writing at least 10 haiku (haikus?) this month. Sounds pretty reasonable, especially since I'm going to use one that I wrote a while ago to start off.  The poster above is from the 2010 celebration and I just love it for some reason. Love how it looks like paper cutouts assembled together, love the colors, love the line of poetry. It just really does it for me. I have this image on my desktop at work (I guess for about a year now!).

OK, here's #1:

Don't know much about
the laws of attraction, but
haiku writers, wow!

I wrote this when I was doing the online dating thing.

Hey, here's an idea! Feel free to play along.

Happy Birthday, Judy

 

Today would have been my mom's 74th birthday. Wow. She died much too early, at age 56. Miss you, Mom.

Annnd up we go

This job thing has taken a bigger toll of me than I had previously thought. It's been interesting, though. When I was first divorced, I figured by the time I was 5 years out, I'd be happily settled down in the relationship I'd be in for the rest of my life. OK, I'm trying not to roll my eyes either.  My point is that I had assumed, it's been part of my plan, to be settled down with a nice guy, with another income, by now. I didn't want someone to provide for me, but to be kind of a backup.  And I'd be the same for him.

This feeling was ingrained when I was first looking for jobs, and saw the federal one that I did end up applying for. It was offered at two pay scales. The higher one (that I don't qualify for; I applied for the lower one) has a maximum salary (over time) of over 100K. When I saw this, the thought came into my head, unbidden, "If I made that much, I wouldn't need a man". And I guess that would be true financially.

I think that thought started my current mindset that it is all me here. It's my responsibility to find and keep the job that will provide me and my kid (for the half time that he's here) a reasonably good and stable life. And, it turns out, this doesn't scare me as much as it once did. I've got some skills, I can talk to people, I will find something.

I mentioned here a few days ago that there was the possibility of some money coming in that would keep me employed for a few months after the official end of my contract at work. I think that looks like it still might happen. As much as I'm privy to the goings-on at that level of the organization, anyway. Along the same vein, my supervisor told me he met with the highest level people in the division (i.e. our site) to make a pitch to have them change their minds and fund me so I can continue doing the genetics stuff I do, which no one else at the facility does. I was really pleased he would do this. I don't know when we'd know, and they didn't make any promises.

At the same time, I feel a little unsatisfied. I don't want to cobble together a few months' work at a time. And if I do get renewed, I don't want to have to go through this job-related anxiety next year. I don't want to appear ungrateful because I'm not. This, I suppose, is typical of the job situation for a lot of people. We're UP! We're DOWN. Oh, wait, someone's making a pitch for us, we're UP! Stay tuned.

Grappling with the big questions

Are these worth the money (three ladders for $50)? I hate the tomato cages I had last year. They came with the house, and were the conical type. They leaned over when the plants got top heavy, and took up too much room in my raised beds. I have one tomato spiral that I use periodically, and it doesn't work worth beans. I vow after each time I use it to never use it again.

I like the idea of a ladder because I could tie the plant to it as it grows, and easily get at the fruit. The other thing I'm thinking of is to get a bunch of 6' bamboo and put three posts of bamboo around each plant. It's cheaper (about $35-$40), but I don't know how that will work. So, dear readers, what do you use? I know some of you are intrepid and experienced gardeners, so I would appreciate your opinion.

Home Again

I am back home after my trip to CA for work and a spot of play. It was a good trip. I gave a good talk, and am hopeful that the extra three months of work that my boss is trying to finagle will come through. Or, that I will get a good job before then. I had my classic anxiety dream last night, wherein I am back working at the nature center in Toledo that I worked at (happily) before moving to CO. In the dream, and it is always the same theme, I am back working there, and there is a group of kids coming, SOON, and I need to present part of the day's programing to them without any preparation.

In this dream, though, there were more details, and it was one of the those dreams that seemed to last most of the night. I remember saying, as I have before in this dream, "I sometimes dream that I'm back here to work". Wacky.

Anyway, here are a few shots from the trip. This was much more of a professional/trade show type conference than the academic ones I am used to. This is one of the workers there, and behind her, you can just glimpse the exhibit hall. I had no idea there were so many products to kill mosquitoes with. Must be pretty lucrative, too, because those displays were really nice.

It rained the first day I was there, to my surprise. Here's a genuine west coast snail, trying to get out of the rain by coming up on the sidewalk. Its shell was about an inch across.

I really did laugh out loud when I saw the sign on this Mickey statue. Sure, put up a totally climbable statue and tell everyone to stay off. 

We went to dinner one night at a New Orleans-themed restaurant. I had shrimp and grits and it was really good and really salty. The piano was totally covered with rhinestones, which reflected white in the picture, but you can kind of see on the sides of it.

Around the same area of the restaurant, there was a shopping district and I found this nice purple-flowered shrub. I have no idea what it is.

On to Palm Springs. After the conference, I took a shuttle to the airport, rented a car, and drove to see my SIL, who was visiting family in Palm Springs. I won't bore you with the details of the trip, but everything they say about California traffic is true. There are just so many people packed into that space. Here's a gas station that actually still offers full-serve gas - but it's going to cost you.

One of the botanically (and gastronomically) awesome things about southern CA is that there are citrus trees grown as ornamentals in people's yards. We picked these from the tree in the front yard, and there were also lemons and oranges about. I love that kind of stuff. And they were good, too.

This is the view out the back door of where I stayed. Just lovely. They plant annuals in the winter that we plant in the summer, and then come through as it gets hot and pull them out to leave the desert landscaping to get through those hot summers. It was a really nice visit.

I planted some seeds before I left, and they have germinated. I need to get out today and turn my compost pile again. I'd like to get the soil prepped in one part of my bookcase raised beds, so I can plant peas. It's fun to be thinking about gardening again. I got the job application submitted for the job I really want, and want to send in a couple more resumes to companies that don't have anything at the moment, but might, blah, blah, blah. It'll work out.

Thoughts and possible news

My presentation went really well yesterday. It was a relief to have it over, and the whole day's worth of talks (a symposium on the bugs I work with) was interesting. A couple of near-snoozers, but overall good stuff. Note to people giving presentations: Leave your 30 row tables at home and just give us the good stuff, OK?

Last night, my boss and I went out to dinner with some collaborators, and they really liked the stuff I've done so far with their mosquitoes. There's talk of more collaboration, and me training one of them in our techniques. And talk of how to get as much done as I can before leaving at the end of July. Today I sat in on another symposium on the outbreak of West Nile disease in AZ last year, which a group from the CDC responded to and then gave talks on today.

As I listened to the talks, I thought to myself, "I'm going to miss these people; I'm going to miss this." Erg, kinda sad about it. My friend from work moved to WI to start a new job, and I miss her, too.

Well, tonight was the banquet. Man, the food was so good! I'm still full, 3 hours later. Anyway, My boss told me tonight there is talk about these collaborators putting up money to keep me on for an additional three months past the end of July. It's not a full reprieve, but they're trying, and maybe they can find some more money in the meantime to keep me another year. It feels good to see they'd like to see me stay.

A short dispatch from Anaheim

Well, I did it again. Chose a hotel that is a little too far from the conference. Not horrible, but a 12 minute walk, and I don't want to walk it after about 7 pm. I should just take taxis, there are plenty.

Can someone explain the appeal of Disney to me without using the word magic? Or using it and defining it somehow? I just don't get it. I haven't seen much of the park, as the hotel where the conference is is on the edge. We can walk through "Disney Downtown" which has shops and food, and then yesterday I went through a slice of the park on my way to catch a shuttle (which ended up being as long of a walk as going from my hotel). It's been chilly here, and it looks like they don't have everything open as they might if it were warmer.

Anyway, the conference is pretty good. It's got more of a trade show feel to it, and people are dressed up more here than at the academic conferences I'm used to. On a bright note, I saw my boss get an award from the Association whose conference this is, and that was a nice surprise. He hadn't let on that he was getting it. The talks have been OK. My world of population genetics is an infinitesimal part of the scene and that's fine. My talk is ready to go, I'll run through it one more time before I leave this morning. We've got 20 minutes, and if a ramble through it, it's 19 minutes. Perfect.

I had a dream the other night. I went into a room and there were two dead trees in pots. Small trees, like citrus. The smaller pot was sitting in the dirt of the larger pot, but they both had sand in them (which doesn't hold water, right?). So I was presented with these things, and my first inclination was to water them, which I did, trying to revive them, but I realized they were too far gone, and that with the sand, the water wouldn't help anyway. I'm pretty sure this has to do with past relationships.

OK, up and at 'em!!

Off to see Mickey

I'm going to Anaheim, CA for a conference soon. I've got my computer and camera, so I'll try to post some pictures. Since work will pay for me to check a bag, by golly I will. I'm also going big time and bringing my sweater knitting project to work on at the conference - that seems so decadent!

One weird thing is that the weather (think southern CA in spring) is supposed to be rainy and low-60's. Blech. The conference is at one of the hotels at Disneyland, and I'm staying at another hotel close by. I'll try to get over to the park once, although I admit the Disney stuff doesn't hold much magic for me.

It's a small world after all....