A good and a bad

Good:
I'm still making at least a little progress each day. I may be a bit behind where I wanted to be, but I'm still okay to meet my goals for this month. And my labmate and I came up with an idea for a short-course for our undergrad minions that will help them understand what they need to, and give us a little bit of teaching experience. Awesome.

Also, the pie I baked and thought was inedible? Actually pretty darn good. I didn't take it to the party I made it for because I didn't want to poison anyone, so I've been having some for breakfast the last couple of days. Yum!

~~ And now an unscheduled break from my month of optimism ~~

Bad:
The situation in my office is rapidly deteriorating. Labmate K, who shares the office with me and 8 other people (and whom I've written about here) has gotten on one of my last nerves. And I'm usually pretty patient. K is leaving in August (yay!), but I still have to find some way to deal until then. K throws temper tantrums in the middle of the lab, is insulting to labmates and disrespectful to pretty much everyone, and somehow has no responsibility for any of her problems. Classes? The professor hates her. Research? The people who collected the data screwed up. Classical ecological theory? It's wrong, because she thinks it is. And pickles confuse her, so they must be bad.

I need help finding a way to not blow up in K's face this summer. Her complete refusal to take responsibility for her problems is grinding away at what patience I have left. If she was only nice about it, I could deal. But the next time she has a hissy fit or insults me I think I'm going to snap and take myself down to her level. Any tips for dealing with people like this?

First steps

Today I made progress.

That is what I want to be able to say every day for the rest of this summer (at least!). Yesterday I set goals for part of the summer, and today I took action on a task that has been sitting in my "procrastinate" box for at least a month. It feels so good to have it started. I just need to remember this feeling and keep doing things that get me here. And then I can ride the wave all the way in, right?

As I told Advisor yesterday, I'm making a deliberate attempt to be an optimist. Don't crush me! My normal cynicism aside, I'm typically pretty happy. But For the next month, I am going to be perpetually happy and looking for a silver lining. Like, when my labmate whines or insults me or goes googly eyed over some olympian that she doesn't have a chance with, I can go out for a walk with a friend and get a snack. Or when it freezes tonight - it's nice to have my plants inside to decorate my apartment. :)

So. Tomorrow, I will finish the task I started today, and cross at least two other things off my mini-goals list. (I have four major goals for each of May and June -- they're in baby steps, so I feel like I have a chance at getting them done, but still adequate to get me where I need to be at the end of the summer. The mini-goals list is lined out by specific tasks I have to do each week, and gets progressively more general out to about 1 year from now.)

Also - the fieldwork that got canceled last fall? On again for this year. YES. (Daily optimism: it will happen, and I will learn things that will benefit my career, if not my thesis. And it will be fun!)

I seem to be slowing down on my blogging - I suppose that's fitting, as just about everything else in my life has also slowed to the pace of molasses on a cold day, but it's frustrating. On both the life and blogging counts.

So. I have a conference next week, but after that (and possibly even during!), I resolve to get my lazy bum in gear and get working on my dissertation research and writing that paper that's been hanging over my head for years. Will do.

I am currently procrastinating on prepping for my talk next week (and my practice talk during lab meeting tomorrow)... It'll go fine, I'm just slightly more anxious than really necessary because 1) this is my first oral presentation at a meeting, and 2) I have no idea what the culture of this meeting is like, because I've never gone before. From all accounts, it's less formal and back-stabby than the October meeting, which is good.


Field work is now complete -- lots of good data, but short of the main goal again this year. Upsetting for my advisor, I'm sure. I personally think that new technology is going to be needed before we can get that data, because our lovely study species is doing a behavior that is just not working with the tech we have. So we'll see.

Random notes:
- People are confusing. And adorably sweet, but mostly confusing.
- Beets are kind of gross. Anyone have a recipe that can improve them?
- I love the weather. Especially as opposed to where my family is, which got several inches of snow yesterday. :)

And back

Back at school now, though the field season isn't over yet. Advisor and a bunch of other people are still out collecting data - they have some data points on species 1, and just last night got really excellent data on species 2. Go team!

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things now... I think I'll take today and try to catch up from home, and then go back into the lab and classes tomorrow. Have a conference coming up in a few weeks, as well, so I should be more than comfortably busy for a while.

Fieldwork

I've been out on fieldwork since Friday morning... I'm already exhausted. I think that it's mostly my body missing the nice easy routine that I'm used to doing on normal work days, but the sun and the salt (and the occasional rain/snow/sleet) probably amp it up a bit.

Finished goal one of the project this morning, so after the weather rolls through in the next couple of days, we should be good to get on with the rest of it. I love fieldwork.... as much as I might grumble about the hours and the work, I really truly love the people that we're working with and getting out on the water.

Good weather to all, and to all a good night!

So, that spring break thing...

You know how I said I was going to get work done last week (and you were all secretly laughing and saying "yeah, sure...")? You were right. I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to/ should have. Rats. Now I have to do extra this week, along with classes, and meetings, and field-prep.

I've gotten used to it being light outside when my alarm goes off in the morning, and it was great, because it made it that much easier to crawl out of my nice warm bed. But when I woke up today, it was dark. Thanks, daylight savings time. (on a related note, happy Pi day!)

Also, the undergrads are back and mobbing the grocery store. Which I should have expected, but was still shocked by when I went to buy things to make scalloped potatoes with today. I'm trying out my grandmother's recipe for the first time, so this should be interesting. Do any of you know if potatoes freeze well? I'm essentially making these to use up a bag of potatoes before my fieldwork, and I'd like to freeze about half the pan for the week between my trip and my conference, but I've never tried to freeze potatoes. Hmm.

Still impatient about my DDIG application, but I was accepted to the other thing I applied for. Excellent.

Alright. On to cooking and back to finishing up homework I should have done last week. :)

Wait, what happened to February?

I am astonished that it's March already. I haven't accomplished nearly as much as I feel like I should have (though I've done a fair amount and jumped at least one major hurdle), and I can't remember what happened through most of February (which is why I'm meeting with Advisor tomorrow - I feel like my brain shut off on the 4th and I need a kick-start to get it going again. eep!)

To follow up from last time:
point 2: YES. This will happen. I'll be gone for 10 days, which works perfectly - just enough of a time crunch to motivate me but not enough to really interfere with classes, and a lovely short break from the bench. Awesome.

point 3: We will also NOT extend an offer to the second prospective student we interviewed. Note to applicants: please have an idea of what you'd like to work on, and have some questions for the current grad students. Sitting and staring at each other for 30 minutes is not really a great way to impress us.

I'm starting to panic about conference stuff and thesis stuff... but I can discuss that in my meeting tomorrow, and spring break is next week (!!!), so I should have some time to deal with it.

I'm getting impatient about the two applications for things that I have out... my NSF DDIG app, which I don't expect to hear from for at least a couple more months, is driving me nuts. The other one is minor and as Advisor is on the review panel, I can probably dig up hints. Hmmmm.

December of this year will bring this. I can't wait.