Science Monkey

Dear Blog,

Apparently I’m not so good at this whole writing-every-day thing. I have every intention to, but there are often days when I’m too lazy or have nothing interesting to say. I’ve written a half-dozen entries that, upon re-reading, have just been me whining, and I’ve deleted them in disgust. Every morning is a new day, though, and who knows? Maybe I’ll get better and realize I’ve written every day for a week. Or two weeks. Or even a month.

Last week I mentioned that we have a few new residents sharing our home, and wondered how they would do, living so close to us and our cats. Apparently they like where we moved their nest.

Can you see what’s in there? An egg!

And by the next day there were two eggs!

And then three!

So the thing that puzzled Emma and I most about this nest — which is clearly currently occupied — is that we had yet to actually see a bird in or near the nest. Admittedly our experience with birds is limited, with the vast majority of our knowledge coming from watching the chickens in the coop, but we still didn’t understand. Don’t birds roost? Emma had to work overnight this weekend and she would come home about 7 and there wouldn’t be a bird in the nest, but by the time we walked back outside later in the morning, the number of eggs would have increased.

Ah, but this morning! This morning we went out to breakfast after she worked, and when I came home the nest was occupied. I could only use my camera phone before she flew off, but take a look (larger version):

And, of course, she left an additional egg! Um, you’ll have to take my word for it in this next picture.

So, the mystery is partially solved. They lay eggs a little bit after dawn, then leave for the day. The roosting is still an open question, but the answer appears to be “no.” A little research in our Audobon guide suggests that these are Carolina Wrens. Very cute! And maybe there will be baby chicks in a couple of weeks!

Chirpily,

A.

Dear Self,

Don’t forget that you’re trying to post an entry every day for a month. I know you were busy yesterday, so I’ll let it slide, but let’s not let that happen again, okay? Cool.

Love you, man.

You/me/us.

As I’ve mentioned to some of you, yesterday was the second Big Meeting between me, my boss, the department chair, and the associate dept chair/member of my committee. And like the first meeting, yours truly got beaten around pretty badly. This time they were all upset with me because I hadn’t finished writing up a list of specific aims to finish my studies in this lab. This was something that I knew I had to work on, but somehow I missed that this past meeting was the deadline to have it done. I wrote a draft which I sent to the associate chair/committee member but hadn’t heard back from him, so I figured that this was an ongoing project. Had I realized that I was going to get yelled at for half an hour, I would have pressed him harder for his revisions, especially after I saw him last week and he said something like, “I got your draft and need to get my comments back to you.”

Now I have another Big Meeting next Wednesday. I wrote a draft of the specific aims in precisely the format that they asked for last night (another one of my problems…I didn’t realize that they wanted it formatted as in a grant proposal, which is apparently the way a list of specific experiments is supposed to be organized) and sent it out. I’m supposed to meet with Tom today to go over it but have yet to hear anything. Of course, it’s only 10.

Here’s the thing that’s really bothering me, and I can’t decide whether I’m being overly whiny or not. I feel like Tom is the person who has screwed up and I’m the one being punished for it. I’m at the end of my fifth year of grad school. Our departmental graduation average is 5 and a half years, so even if I finish this summer I’d be ahead of average. In this lab, nobody finishes in five years. As far as I know, every former student has taken at least six years to finish his or her degree, and some have taken longer. So how is it fair or reasonable to threaten to cut off my funding because Tom has failed at his job?

I haven’t actually said any of this to Tom or the other people at the Big Meeting and I can’t decide whether I should or not. I understand the realities of the fiscal situation. It’s a difficult time to get funded right now and I realize that it costs money to support me, both in terms of my salary and the reagents I need to actually do the experiments. However, my job as a graduate student is to learn how to do the experiments and to perform the research while the job of my mentor (and I use that term loosely) is to advise, teach, and find the funding to support his lab.

Enough ranting. Time to do some bench work, although that apparently doesn’t matter until I have a “road map” in place. It apparently doesn’t matter if I can actually do the experiments, so long as I have a plan to do them, or at least that’s the lesson I’ve learned in the last 24 hours. Grumble, grumble…

Dear JoCo,

Please come to Gainesville. We’d love to see you here!

Events by Eventful

On Thursday, May 1, there will be a live broadcast of This American Life, and it’s being shown in Gainesville! I really want to go but Emma is on Medicine then and isn’t going to go out on a Thursday night, having to go to work at dark-thirty the next morning, and I know that I’m not likely to go by myself, so…who’s with me? New stories from the TV show! Ira Glass! Ira Glass performing a radio story! Did I mention it’s live? One time only? Never before attempted in the history of public radio? It’s gonna be pretty cool*…

*And by cool, clearly I mean nerdy but hella-fun.

Dear Neighborhood Bird,

Our front door is not really an ideal place to build your nest. I know that it looks nice and that the wreath provides a nice foundation, but it’s really not a great idea. There are three problems that I can think of immediately. First, we use the front door to go into and out of our house. Consequently, we’d end up shaking your house repeatedly throughout the day. Second, we have two cats. Admittedly they aren’t the greatest of hunters, but I fear that they’d both be able to take out your babies, given the opportunity. And third, there’s that screen door. I know that we often leave it ajar when the front door is closed, but when the weather isn’t very hot (like now), we like to close the screen door and open the front door, to let the fresh air inside. This is what happened on Sunday, when you sat on the tiki torch, screaming at me through the closed door. I’m very sorry.

I’m glad to see that you haven’t laid any eggs in there, yet, so we still have a chance to move your nest. I don’t want to potentially break it by taking it out of the wreath, so I think that I’ll try to move both the wreath and the nest together as one unit later this evening. Maybe somewhere on the side of the house? That’d be nice, I’m sure.

Songfully,

Your Inadvertent Landlord

Dear Brain,

Why are you so easily distracted? I intentionally left Lappy at home so we couldn’t play internet and get some work done. But you, you devious lump of gray matter between my ears, you figured out that there was *another* computer here in the lab which can internet. And facebook. And blog.

I even brought you our current knitting project, so we could pretend to be productive, while waiting for the Southern probe to label. And yes, you did humor me for a while and let me knit for half an hour, but then we were back on internet before I even knew what was happening. But know I know your trick, Brain. I’m wise to you. “Let’s just check our email,” indeed.

A.

PS: Dear Focus, as I know you’re reading this with Brain, let’s get it in gear, eh? You know we’ve got that meeting with Dr. Flanegan Wednesday, and I think that all three of us (you, me, and Brain) can agree that we’d like to have something useful to present to him then. So chop chop! And hop to! And some other obscure, unused motivational phrase from thirty years ago!

Dear Rain,

Thank you for coming again, at long last. I think it’s been about three weeks since we last saw each other. It’s been awfully hot around these parts for the past week, so you bring a much-appreciated breath of cool air. Plus, it’s not so muggy now, which is totally awesome.

Also I’d like to thank you for waiting to arrive until the afternoon, so Emma and I could go to the Spring Arts Festival. It was fantastic, as always, and we bought some nice new objets d’artre. One of my favorite local painters, Peter Carolin, designed the poster this year, so I was very excited to be able to afford a piece of his art. Some day, when I have more money than I know what to do with, I’m going to buy actual paintings, but for now I’m very happy with the poster. I’ll want to get it framed, I suppose, but that can probably wait until my TA money comes in.

We also got some new pieces of jewelry. Emma got a new pair of earrings and a matching ear cuff, then convinced me to get an ear cuff myself. It’s blue rather than purple, and I think it looks okay. It’ll take some getting used to, but should stave off my desire for knuckle tattoos for a little longer. Heh.

Time to get a little more work done before the guild tries to knock off the last few bosses in Karahan tonight. Type to you tomorrow.

Torrentially,

A.

Dear Readers (both of you),

For the last several years in November, I’ve registered for NaNoWriMo. And every year it’s the same output…about 5000 words that go nowhere and get buried away, never to be seen again, and the crushing feeling of self-disappointment at failing — yet again — to meet a challenge that I set for myself.

Earlier today, while cruising around Temerity Jane’s blog (funny, funny stuff!), I noticed a badge that read NaBloPoMo. NaBloPoMo? Naugahyde Blowfish Poetry Month? Of course not. National Blog Posting Month. 30 posts in 30 days. Hey, even I can do that!

There’s a theme, apparently, and for April it’s “Letters.” No promises on how well I’ll keep to the theme…they’ll probably rapidly degenerate into “Dear Blog, here’s what I did today” and “Dear Anonymous Jerk Who Cut Me Off In Traffic Last Night” pretty quickly. Let’s see how it goes.

Affectionately,

A.