Posts tagged ‘Uncategorized’
Grrl group
Webgirl’s note: I know my RSS feed is usually not displaying properly. It’s due to the new version of Movable Type. I’ve reported it as a bug, and followed up, and they still haven’t fixed it…I hope the fix will happen soon. In the meantime this entry should look nicer 
We interrupt this workday to bring you a special bulletin. Wait, no, it’s not a bulletin, it’s just a feeling of niceness. (Strange, I know!)
A couple of months ago I fell into a group of female grad students’ and postdocs’ blogs. I arrived at them totally serendipitously: I somehow found StyleyGeek’s great site (Fumbling Towards Geekdom) first, and was hooked from the start since she’s from NZ and has just finished writing her PhD thesis. I see lots of parallels between her physicist husband Geekman and my own biologist Kiwiman. Plus she takes pictures of parrots and makes me think that Australia is totally full of parrots everywhere.
From there, it was easy to start reading the adventures of Geeka (at When do you think you’ll be done?) and her workmate Image Goddess (at (Non) Scientific Observations from a female scientist). Then there’s Geeka507 (at Until Geekas Rule the World) – but I can’t figure out whether she works with Geeka and Image Goddess or if they just know each other in cyberspace. Everyone is hush-hush about their identities which allows them to tell scathingly honest stories about academic life. I’m envious; I always shied away from the honest truth, mostly because of what I call the “mother effect” – would I want my mother reading my cattiness? So far I have been too shy to say yes.
Kisha (at 10-Year-Plan: 1. Graduate…) is from Arizona too! Disgruntled Julie takes great lab pictures and seems even more fed up with the PhD process than I do. She does work that reminds me of the officemates I had when I was in the experiment-doing phase of my PhD – those immunology lab girls.
Then I found some postdocs’ blogs to read, too, like Dr. Brazen Hussy (at What the hell is wrong with you?) and Ms. PhD (at YoungFemaleScientist). Katie (at Minor Revisions) is by far the most prosaic of the lot.
Every now and then all of the grad students (and please excuse me if I’ve listed you above and you’re not a grad student) come together at the Carnival of GRADual Progress. What’s Up, Postdoc? is a similar carnival for postdoc blogs, too. At the moment I don’t think my blog fits nicely into either of these categories, but maybe in the future…
So, I’ve been lurking around these people’s blogs for a while, and occasionally commenting…this week I commented at Geeka’s blog, and she added my site to her blogroll! I’m so pleased!
I found that Geeka, ImageGoddess, Dr. Brazen Hussy, and StyleyGeek are all on Twitter too, so now I feel like I have friends there at last.
Is this all a bit too “fangirl”? I don’t want to come across like a stalker. For the last ten years I took great pains not to make new friends solely from the Internet. I’m bad enough at keeping in touch with the people I know in real life. However, my mom is yet again putting me to shame and forging great links with Shetland sheep people all over the US, some of whom send her yummy care packages…why can’t I make a few friends online?
Progress
I apologize for the late update! Mondays just don’t work for weekly updates, but if I leave them too late on Sunday nights…
In my last post, I alluded to my worries about getting a cold – these were proven right by Monday, and I suffered through last week by honking and drugging my way through work. In spite of this, it was still a good week in general, and I seem to be back to 99% normal now.
My mom‘s recovery from her recent back surgery is progressing pretty well, although she’s still doing too much. While she focuses on her recovery, Kiwiman’s parents are in the throes of planning their upcoming trip to visit my parents in September.
Thesis monster
The monster isn’t off of my back yet, but it is getting lighter. I got feedback from the German on Thursday and moved very quickly to make changes this weekend; I happily sent the revised introduction off to the Placentologist last night. We might be meeting this week for the first time in about three months, so it’s good that she now has important bits to read and comment upon.
This just leaves me a couple of small sets of work to finish before I become entirely dependent upon the mercy and feedback of others (German, Placentologist, and CSO – the latter being my official “primary” supervisor who only wants to see the thesis after it has been through the other two and then been bronzed and placed in a glass display case ready for submission. I like these nicknames!) With luck I’ll get these bits finished within a couple of weeks.
Life as a “postdoc”
Unsurprisingly, my cold really hindered my ability to function at work.
My group (the smaller group, not the larger group into which we are merging) had an excellent planning meeting last week to decide what to do in the next year. We’re trying to get onto the winning strategy of using our last, final year of grant funding to position ourselves to get a new grant. In line with this I’m sure I’ll be involved in writing said grant – that process will happen in December-February.
It looks pretty clear (though I still have nothing in writing) that my contract will be extended through at least next September. This is strengthened even more by our new science leader asking me to be the project manager for someone else’s new grant too – and their grant (and our own new one, if we get one) would start next October and run for at least 3 years. Chances of staying around for that long are now quite high. The messages I was sending – “I want to stay” and “I am good at organization and project management” seem to have finally filtered through to the right people.
This week we’re all going to the Auckland Food Show on the company’s dime! Hooray! I’m sure it will be perfectly gluttonous, just like last year.
Geek stuff
The Windows Home Server is doing well. The network is stable. I didn’t spend too much time on the internet this week. We have no more money to spend on new computer things this year. Nothing to see here – please move along.
More and more people I know are now publishing blogs – first there were Grumpator and Who Needs Reality, and now there are Kerry’s Garden, Nightshade Kittytoes, and That’s So Jen. C’mon, people, what are you waiting for? Blogger is free for everyone!
Yummiest meal
Sometimes the meals I consider “yummiest” are not the ones that take the most time and effort to prepare. Kiwiman performed admirably this weekend, making a very nice steak dinner, but I still liked the sandwiches we had after he’d played squash last week. Tuesday evenings I go to spin class, so he makes dinner, and we switch on Wednesdays when he plays squash. This week I think the prize must go to the lovely dinner we had on Monday with my PhD project group (the one where we farewelled Sabbatical). There was tender, thick-cut steak with English mustard, there was a beautiful cheese plate, and there was apple crumble. It was fantastic.
Gripe of the week
I had a cold! Enough said.
