skookumchick | September 30, 2008I got a paper review back yesterday. More revisions. *Sigh.* The history of this paper is: this is part of one chapter of my dissertation. I revised it into a paper last fall. I submitted it the first time in February, and got my first reviews in April. I revised it and resubmitted in June. This review is closer, but while 2 of the 3 reviews think that it's pretty much ready to go, 1 reviewer (who is otherwise very complimentary and I cannot otherwise dismiss as one of those nutjob reviewers) wants me to do more data collection. Crap. Unfortunately for me, the associate editor agrees…
skookumchick | September 29, 2008OMG, has it been a busy few days. I'm just starting the second shift of working today, after an 8-5:30 day of back-to-back meetings, and tomorrow will be all day in a workshop, but I need to share some updatey things, including a belated announcement for the October Scientiae (yay!) below the fold.
Jen at Deliberate Pixel has had a tough month, but is going to pull out all the stops to get us an October Scientiae carnival. Get your posts in by Friday on anything or the theme "being a good example even in a misstep" and she'll post the carnival this weekend. Thanks, Jen!
Everyone is gearing…
sciencewoman | September 29, 2008I justed wanted to give a shout-out to my friends at YellowIbis.com, a science t-shirt shop. They specialize in wonderful shirts featuring all sorts of molecules (pick your favorite, they'll make it), sciencey one-liners, and "science varsity" shirts. Minnow and I were recently outfitted with some of their shirts and we debuted them at the zoo blogger meet-up.
I have coveted one of Yellow Ibis's shirts ever since I first heard about them. I love, love, love their "this is what a scientist looks like" t-shirt, and now I own it. Pictures of the shirt, and Minnow's adorable shirts below the…
sciencewoman | September 27, 2008Domestic goddess, I am definitely not. But I do love to bake, though it is rare that I get the occasion. So when I saw a couple of bananas getting too brown on the counter, I seized the opportunity.
Banana bread is too much work for a busy scientist-mama, but banana oatmeal muffins can easily be in the oven 10 minutes after you start. Even if you don't have quite all the right ingredients. Recipe and a photo below the fold.
1.5 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
0.5 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
0.5 tsp salt
2 eggs
0.25 cup milk
Ingredients as written in my cookbook…
sciencewoman | September 24, 2008In all the excitement of our weekend travel, two important milestones went by unmentioned. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of my Ph.D. defense, and the one year anniversary of my move from blogger to ScienceBlogs. In celebration of the latter, I undertook the ambitious and miserably overdue task of updating our blogroll. The old blogroll was nearly as old as Minnow and it didn't reflect the incredible growth in women in STEM related blogs over the past two years.
We've got so many and such excellent blogs in our community these days, that they deserve more than one blogroll. They…
sciencewoman | September 23, 2008Are reading the cheeky and well-illustrated Dr. Isis? If so, you'll already know that she's well on her way to meeting her goal of being a domestic and laboratoy goddess.
But I had to laugh when I caught with one of her recent entries. In the post she decries the claiming on her sacred adults-only second floor with innumerable toys, art supplies, etc.
Why did I laugh? Because this was the scene in my home office as I read her post.
Figure 1. Minnow hard at work in her mommy's office. Please note the open desk drawers indicating that mommy's stationery is now being shoved into the kitchen…
skookumchick | September 22, 2008There are 999 messages in my inbox. An inordinately large number of them are flagged "urgent." There are 1710 messages in my "to sort" mailbox. This is a local folder where I dump messages from my inbox and outbox when I start getting error messages about having too many messages in my IMAP boxes. I am afraid of scrolling through my email because I will undoubtedly find a lot of things I have forgotten to do. And I don't have any more time to do them now as when they came in. I find I'm actually terrified of my computer, repository of all email-related requests, which makes my…
sciencewoman | September 21, 2008About 20 Science bloggers and readers met at the North Carolina Zoo yesterday for a day of animals and fun. Minnow was the youngest, but not the only, child in attendance. And I think she was quite happy to meet some other children-of-bloggers, particularly the 22-month-old son of James Hrynyshyn. They can have their own meet-up in a few years and commiserate.
Pictures and details below the below the fold.
The group with their backs to the gorillas, who had their backs to us.
The animal highlight of the day came at the elephant enclosure. We happened to arrive at feeding time and got to see…
skookumchick | September 20, 2008As announced, Steve Higgins of Of Two Minds and I are hosting a Millionth Comment party on behalf of Scienceblogs on September 27, starting at 7ish, at Jupiter Pizza in Champaign IL. Come join in, and the first round is on us. Er, Scienceblogs, rather. :-)
See more info on Facebook.
sciencewoman | September 18, 2008 Money is on my mind a lot this semester. First, there's the grant writing marathon. And then there's the personal budgetary shortfall. Without a second income, we run a several hundred dollar per month shortfall. I've trimmed the fat from the budget and we're eating through the small amount of savings we had squirreled away. Soon it will be time to think about more drastic measures. And there's one big item looming large in my nightmares of financial ruin - the almost $1200 per month that I am paying for Minnow's truly excellent daycare where she is very happy and well cared for.
Why is…
skookumchick | September 17, 2008The press release for our big grant came out today. I have so far been interviewed by the student paper, and the local NPR station, and I have already learned some things about what not to do in interviews with friendly reporters. Some tips are below that I'll add to over the day, and please share some of your thoughts in the comments.
We wrote some talking points to share with all the main grant members who were more involved in different parts, and may be less prepared about others. Don't forget to read them carefully, annotate them, and add to them BEFORE your press release goes out.…
sciencewoman | September 15, 2008
Very early one Saturday morning in October, Minnow and I will be congregating in the heart of Mystery City with thousands of other women and men, girls and boys. And many of us will be wearing pink. Then we'll run or walk five kilometers in honor of the 1 in 8 women who will be affected by breast cancer over the course of their lifetimes.
This issue has taken on a lot more personal dimension for me in the past few years, as my mom fought uterine cancer, an aunt continues to battle breast cancer, and a lovely neighbor BandanaLady is struggling with chemotherapy following a masectomy. My…
sciencewoman | September 15, 2008Alice is rolling in the dough (yay Alice!!!!), but ScienceWoman is flat broke, both personally and professionally. The personal is a story for another day, but now's the time to talk about being professionally broke and the implications for my fall research output.
Due to MU's too restrictive policies, I don't have any more start-up funds to cushion the first one to three years of going from post-doc to PI. Last year I wrote two proposals. One got funded. The little one. The total uncommitted money remaining in that account is <$300. So, broke. In fact, this fall I've been paying for…
skookumchick | September 12, 2008I saw this meme over at at Jane's, who saw it at Janet's: The Vegetarian's Hundred, a veggie response to the Omnivore's Hundred meme. Here are Jane/Janet's rules:
If you want to play along, here's how you do it: copy the list, including my instructions, and bold any items you have eaten and strike out any you would never eat, and then post it to your blog.
I'm going to add the following rule: italicize items you have made (or grown) yourself. (Presumably, you've eaten those as well.
Fun! And I'm in avoidance about work too. Best think about food!
1. Real macaroni and cheese, made from…
skookumchick | September 11, 2008So I'm going to throw my hat in to the Millionth Comment Hoopla and join forces with geographically proximal scibling Steve Higgins of Of Two Minds for a combined Indiana/Illinois party to which you all are welcome! Steve is working on the details, but currently we're looking at Sept 27, at the Blind Pig in Champaign where the first round is on us; however, I'm lobbying for somewhere with food and other than alcohol for our non/low-drinking readers. Short story is, watch this space for more details.
Any one going to join us? I hope? or we'll just have a nice chat, just the two of us?
sciencewoman | September 11, 2008Dear SW and Alice,
I will soon defend my dissertation, and I don't know whether it is customary or acceptable or expected to give an appreciation gift to one's adviser. ...I asked around with colleagues... and there seems to be no consensus - I got, "you could and it would be nice but I don't think it would be expected". Is there a standard of behavior to show appreciation for dissertation advising, or is it part of the job, in your experiences? Did you give gifts? If you did, what did you give? Can you shed any light on this?
Sincerely,
Soontobe PhD
Dear Soontobe,
Congratulations on your…
sciencewoman | September 10, 2008A few weeks ago I solicited suggestions for how NOT to give a talk, and I was overwhelmed and greatly amused by the volume and enthusiasm of responses.
At about the same time, Dave Ng over at The World's Fair was thinking along the same lines. He claims to have created the most evil powerpoint slide ever. Take a look; it's pretty heinous. He also made a totally awesome video montage of things to avoid while speaking publicly.
I'm not as video savvy as Dave, nor will I lay claim to the absolute slide ever. But I did manage to put together a pretty darn awful powerpoint presentation. Before I…
skookumchick | September 10, 2008I've carried on with the activity of actively waiting in accordance with Boice's Advice for New Faculty Members that I'm blogging about this semester. And I'm preparing for trying Chapter 10: Begin Writing Early.
More below the fold...
I mentioned to a colleague that I was trying to follow Boice's exercises, but that I was being blocked by not knowing what to do during my periods of "actively waiting." She had started reading the teaching section (as Lab Cat also did), and found ideas there that parallel the idea of actively waiting to write. Advocated, in fact, is (p. 24):
doodling and…
sciencewoman | September 9, 2008My 19 month old Minnow is at the stage where she likes to name the things she sees. For some weeks now she's been particularly into telling me about all the water she notices. "Wa-we!" says she in her sweet little voice. There's wa-we in the bath, wa-we in the dog's bowl, wa-we in the toilet, wa-we in her cup, and wa-we in the wading pool ("poo" she says insistently). It was tremendously exciting for her when we had a few days of heavy rain and everytime she'd go outside there'd be wa-we in the air.
As we drive from home to school each morning, Minnow tells me about the lake ("wa-we") we…
skookumchick | September 9, 2008I came home from a meeting yesterday afternoon which was supposed to be thinking about what our dean calls "blue ocean" ideas for improving the diversity of the population of students, staff and faculty in the College of Engineering. My group was supposed to be focusing on issues that impact women's underrepresentation (or, as one might put it, men's overrepresentation), considering women of all ethnicities and classes.
The thing is, we kept getting hung up on current realities. We can't do this because the faculty won't hear of it. We can't do that because we can't get the data from…