always listen to your pig-puppet

favourite books 2011

2011-12-31T19:21:00.002-05:00

The first eight were unambiguously my favourites (in no particular order), but I had a hard time picking the last two.

My brother keeps trying to come up with new career ideas for me that involve things I'm "passionate" about, like somehow getting paid to review books, but trying to write even a couple of sentences about these books I loved reminded me yet again why that is not a good idea. Sorry for the lame descriptions. I included the GoodReads links so you can read more eloquent people's opinions.

1. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. The hype was deserved for a change. This short ebook about the publication of the book is also interesting.

2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I got bored with Echo Bazaar pretty quickly, so if I'd known this was associated with a similar game, I might've been put off. Luckily, I didn't find out until I'd read and loved it.

3. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente. I was a big fan of YA fantasy this year, apparently. This was wonderful.

4. The Magician King by Lev Grossman. Not quite as good as the first book, but I still loved it. However, if this series ends badly, I'll have to retroactively remove the first two from these lists.

5. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. This book would go well with the sad teen girl books from last year's list.

6. How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu. Another depressing and beautifully written book by the author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

7. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. This kind of reminded me of The Time Traveler's Wife. I wasn't expecting to like it this much based on the description and the first few chapters, but somehow it worked.

8. The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai. This was wonderful. I can't wait for her to write another book.

9. The Zero by Jess Walter. Another one with a kind of experimental structure that I wasn't expecting to like.

10. Mr Peanut by Adam Ross. This seemed to have more than one book within it, but they were all good.

Honourable mentions go to The Emperor of Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee for non-fiction, the Enola Holmes and Green Knowe books for children's series and Anja's Ghost by Vera Brosgol for graphic novels.

favourite books 2010

2010-12-30T19:38:00.003-05:00

So, I never actually meant to stop blogging entirely... I've thought about restarting quite often, but I feel awkward, and it's easy to put off. I kind of wanted to post my favourite books of 2011, though. It looks like I had the same thought last year because this was post was sitting here when I logged in.

1. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender. I really liked The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, her most recent book, but this was much better.

2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I don't usually include non-fiction in my list, but this definitely deserves a place.

3. Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann. I read this in one evening, despite its length.

4. How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson. I wasn't sure about the premise of this book and some of the characters were a bit over the top, but I still loved it.

5. The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I loved all of this up until the last few pages, but then I found out it has a sequel, so I'll let the ending slide for now.

6. Natural Flights of the Human Mind by Clare Morrall.

7. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. This was my reward for handing in my dissertation.

8. The World to Come by Dara Horn.

9. A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner. I seem to have been a teen girl in my reading taste this year.

10. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

amazon meme

2010-05-05T21:59:00.003-04:00

Apparently I'm out of the loop, because I've only seen it at New Kid's and Profgrrrl's, both of whom had already seen it everywhere.

On Amazon, my account records only go back to 2003, but I know I got something there years earlier. I was probably still using my high school hotmail account then.

I signed up for an Amazon account long before I had any expectation of actually buying anything. I think I was just interested in the email alerts when my favourite authors published something new. At some point (1998-ish?), I got emailed a $10 gift certificate to encourage me to try the new-ish service.

At first I thought it would be useless, given how far from the US I lived at the time, but I was delighted to discover that $10 would just cover a childrens/YA mass-market paperback plus shipping. I instantly signed up for another amazon account with a second email address, just in case I could get the same offer again, and a couple of months later I did!

I bought two of Madeleine L'Engle's books that I hadn't been able to find at home: A House Like a Lotus and (I think) And Both Were Young (neither of which are now available from amazon in the $3 form I got).

I'm still amazed that the gift certificates had no strings attached. I don't think I actually gave Amazon any of my own money until I moved to the US in 2003 and did all my xmas shopping online.

baby bunny!

2010-05-04T20:08:00.005-04:00

I've become acclimatised enough to squirrels that I don't always feel the urge to take a million photos when I see them (only sometimes). Wild bunnies, on the other hand, are a different story.
I just started using The Daily Shoot as prompts for my project 365 photos, so I didn't post the bunny pics on that blog. They're too cute not to share, though.

Project 365 has been good for getting me out of the house at least once a day so far. Maybe it'll help my self-esteem, too.

I'm such a mess

2010-05-03T14:19:00.007-04:00

I said in my last post that I was happy, but that's really only true because I've been avoiding thinking about lab and my research. I can't do that forever, though. Today I thought I'd try facing up to everything I've been putting off and at least figure out what I need to do. Just seeing emails from my advisor and the program coordinator in my inbox is making me want to cry, though.

I know continuing to avoid things is only going to make it worse, but I really don't want to talk to my advisor or anyone. I'm tempted to wait until I've got something done to tell him about, but that's already the reason I put it off last week. Ugh. Maybe I can email him at least.

I need to make some actual progress today so I'm making a list here.

~~email advisor and ask if I can call tomorrow when I've got something to talk about~~
~~email committee to try to set up meeting~~
~~email program coordinator to let her know I've emailed committee~~
empty inbox (down to 6!)
make figures to add to summary
write results section to go with figures
~~grocery shopping~~
~~exercise~~

5 years (and 1 day)

2010-04-26T00:29:00.001-04:00

I thought I'd remembered my blogiversary being the same as my birthday, but I was a day off. Still, it's a good time to think back on the last five years. I just read my first couple of posts and I feel enormously grateful for how much better my life is now than it was then.

I'd actually recently been thinking that I'd slipped back to my 2005 life, with one very significant difference. I have been pretty miserable this year and I've spent a lot of time at lab either crying or trying not to. I found myself hiding in my room from housemates again. I haven't been to the gym in months. I hadn't cooked in almost as long and had been living on junk food.

But! I have been doing a lot more work and enough of my experiments have been working that I can start writing up (although I still need to officially get my committee to agree to that). Even more significantly, I have my Favourite Person, and right now I'm in the same place as him and far away from lab, so I'm happy. I have also started the Couch to 5K plan and cooked some vegetable-filled meals in the last week, so I'm getting my life back on track. This blog had a lot to do with improving my life circa 2007 so I'm hoping to be more active here again this time.

I turned 30 today, so it's a good time for starting new plans. I haven't completely formulated The New Plan yet, but I started a "101 things in 1001 days" list. I don't want it to be a restrictive list that becomes a chore and I'd like to actually complete it* so I haven't filled in the whole list yet. My goal is really just to do 101 new things, so I will be okay with adding and removing items. You can see my list here. Please let me know if you have any ideas for cool things to do.

One thing on my list is to complete a Project 365. I took my first picture today, with my awesome new camera. It leaves plenty of room for improvement, which is okay with me.

Thank you for all your support and friendship over the last five years. It has meant so much to me and I'm looking forward to being part of the blogging community again.

*Has anyone ever seen someone complete one of these? Maybe that's not realistic, but it's worth striving for.

IALAC

2010-01-22T13:05:00.002-05:00

In primary school we did worksheets on why "I am lovable and capable". I found it hard to believe then too.

favourite books of 2009

2010-01-02T00:04:00.001-05:00

I'm late, but it's time for my annual year-end flurry of posts, starting with books. One of the many things I let fall by the wayside this year was listing all the books I read. Fortunately, the library keeps a record of everything I check out so I was able to reconstruct most of my list on goodreads. If you're really interested you can look at my ratings there.

I only read 100 books this year, although I may have forgotten a couple (I thought it was going to be less than 100 until I tried harder to remember ones I didn't get from the library). I thought I was going to have trouble finding 10-ish books to recommend, but it turns out I gave five stars to nine books, so that makes it easy. Two of them were non-fiction, which I haven't included in the past, so I've added a few 4-star books and I'll list the non-fiction separately.

1. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. I just read Generation A, by Douglas Coupland, who used to be one of my favourite authors and was sadly disappointed. Coupland really needs to avoid writing about science in any detail. Some of the stories were good, but the book didn't really work as a whole and the ending made me laugh out loud, it was so ludicrous. I bring this up because I was worried that Nick Hornby, another favourite, was going to disappoint me as well. A Long Way Down and Slam weren't at all great, and the premise of Juliet, Naked (a women starts emailing the reclusive musician her boyfriend is obsessed with) didn't sound promising. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that a return to the topic of obsessive fans was accompanied by a return to writing form. It deals with wasted lives and when to stop putting up with less than happiness.

2. The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan. I was mostly sick of precocious narrators this year, but this book was wonderful.

3. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. This is a biography of a fictional version of Laura Bush. I thought it was going to be lame, from the description, but it wasn't at all. It's kind of snarky but I did come away from it with slightly more sympathy towards George Bush, enough to see how maybe he mightn't have had entirely evil motives all the time, at least.

4. Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz. This was probably the book I most enjoyed this year. The main character is an admissions officer at Princeton so I spent much of the book feeling inadequate compared to the prospective students and very glad I didn't have to go through the US college application process.

5. The End by Salvatore Scibona. The start of this book read kind of like short stories, which I don't tend to enjoy, but once the stories started coming together it was heartbreakingly great.

6. The Missing by Tim Gautraux. I read this book because of Mary's review at This Book is For You, so I'll just let you read that.

7. Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital. I was tossing up between this one and Orpheus Lost for this list, but that got a bit heavy-handed or something at the end. Oyster is a kind of eerie tale about an isolated country town and the nearby cult.

8. Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. I've read a couple of Dan Chaon's earlier books and picked this one up because he's on my "well, I can't see anything that looks really great at the library, but at least I know this won't suck" list. I was pleasantly surprised to find this was a gripping book about identity.

9. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. I don't usually like mysteries or crime novels, but this was excellent. I also enjoyed Dark Places, but not quite as much.

10. The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer. I don't think this book was objectively that great, but I've been thinking a lot about careers and ambition and what makes life meaningful or worthwhile this year, so it resonated with me. Based on the Goodreads reviews, the fact that I don't have kids might have made it easier to enjoy the book, since the mothers seem to object to their fictional portrayal.

Non-fiction:
Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height by Christine Cosgrove and Susan Cohen.

More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave by Ruth Schwartz Cowan.

These two books made me angry at the world. The second made me especially angry at that Michael Pollan "women need to relearn the joy of slaving over a stove all day/night in order to save the world from obesity" article. I never got around to writing the post I was thinking of at the time because it's hard to be articulate when you just want to smack someone over the head with a copy of Cowan's book.

happy new year!

2010-01-01T02:05:00.003-05:00

2009 sucked in many ways, but I'm hopeful for 2010. I hope it's a fantastic year for us all.

oops

2009-11-10T23:31:00.002-05:00

I completely forgot about NaBloPoMo. It turns out I'm not so addicted to the internet when I'm with my favourite person and have fun things to do. Unfortunately, I'm now back to refreshing google reader etc until 3am...

sick

2009-11-03T22:01:00.002-05:00

I woke up at 5am this morning feeling crappy. Amazingly, I felt better when my alarm went off at 8am and actually made it to my biostats class for the first time in weeks. I came home afterwards and slept, though. And now I have a temperature and still feel awful.

Prestigious U Health Services says to seek medical attention if you have a fever and other flu symptoms, but is there really any point? What can they do?

I'm blaming the housemate who has no qualms about spreading her germs around. Grr.

RBO I have to post if I want to do NaBloPoMo

2009-11-01T23:01:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure if I want to commit to NaBloPoMo, but I would like to blog more, so I may as well post today just in case.
My house had a halloween party last night, which I was dreading ahead of time, but turned out to be fun. And we had awesome costumes.
After mopping every floor at least 3 times, the house is now cleaner than it's ever been.
I'm taking a biostatistics class this semester, by which I mean, I'm working my way through a problem set late every Monday night. I should probably at least watch some of the lecture videos sometime.
Given that I haven't been going to class, I can't really ask for a recommendation if I do decide to go into stats as a career, can I? Would the professor even notice I'm not there, though, when he's lecturing to a couple of hundred people?
My mum came to visit in one of those gaps when I didn't post for a while. I was worried about worlds colliding beforehand, but it was fine. We had fun, even.
Everyone who met her thinks she's the sweetest person ever, which she is. I'm still not going to tell her as much as she wants about my life.
I need to start taking better care of myself again. I haven't been going to the gym or eating vegetables or sleeping enough or flossing for far too long.
I have been taking an ice skating class, at least. I'm by far the worst in the class, because I had to join the intermediate class, instead of taking the beginner one for the fourth time. It's still fun.
I just read this article about what start-ups are really like. I have always known that I would hate starting a company. I didn't realise that I would hate grad school for surprisingly similar reasons.
I have a whole folder of links to things I've wanted to blog about.
Here's another: Merlin Mann's video about procrastination (and some other stuff; it's long). You could just read the title slide: "We procrastinate when we've forgotten who we are." I have no idea who I am.
It's getting close to the 2nd of November, so I guess I'll hit post.

my advisor keeps trying to be my therapist

2009-10-15T23:02:00.003-04:00

Last week, my advisor thought I was depressed and asked if I'd tried medication. This week he told me he didn't think I was actually depressed because I've done too much work (overall, not this week). Ha.

I didn't think I was depressed until I mentioned what my advisor said last week to someone who knows a lot more about my state of mind, who agreed. I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced, because I'm nowhere near as miserable as I was a couple of years ago, but depression can take different forms so it's possible.

The idea that I can't be depressed because I've done too much work, however, is laughable. I don't feel like I've been a hard worker during my PhD, but I didn't want to argue about that with my advisor so I didn't say anything. I kind of want to point out, though, that the period when I was unquestionably depressed corresponded to the period in which my advisor thinks I did the most work. I probably did do the hardest part of my project during that time, but I still spent an awful lot of time reading blogs and trying not to cry.

My advisor now thinks that my biggest problem is fear of failing, not that I don't like what I'm doing. He thinks I need to not think about whether I like what I'm doing and just concentrate on doing it well. He also thinks I need to ask for help and advice more. He's right about all that. However, I've been thinking about why I was able to do all that work when I was depressed but find it harder now and I don't think that's all there is to it.

Back then, everyone in the lab was in the same building, including my advisor. If I showed up late or didn't show up at all, people would notice. There were other people involved in my project who would ask about what I was doing and expect me to be making progress. Since then, all the lab except three of us (who don't work on related things) has moved to a different building, I've finished collaborating directly with anybody and my advisor is never around to notice what I'm doing.

I know I have responded badly to these changes in circumstances by not being self-motivated or -disciplined. Last week, my advisor said he didn't think there was any point giving me deadlines because he'd tried and I just didn't give him whatever he'd asked for. What I didn't say, because I can't say anything remotely resembling criticism to someone in authority, is that I stopped bothering to do what he'd asked when I realised he didn't seem to care or even remember that he'd asked for something. I should be responsible enough to work without relying on external pressure. And yet, I'm not.

Unfortunately, I think my intrinsic motivation vanished very early on in grad school and once the external disappeared too, I was left with nothing to keep me going. The stars worked for a while, but I need some more help. I'm not sure how much of what I really think I should admit to my advisor, though.

If I made a fuss, I could probably move to the other building where most of the lab is. I haven't done that because I'd feel bad leaving the remaining two people alone. It's not like I interact with them enough that they'd feel the loss, though, really.

Do you think I should ask to move and/or tell my advisor why I think I've been struggling?

yet another fresh start

2009-10-07T21:26:00.004-04:00

Last time I posted a Plan post was at the end of June. I made it two weeks of being productive before I had a bad day and slid back to endlessly refreshing google reader, eating crap, not exercising and staying up to 2am. My mother was visiting until last week, so now that I'm back to only having to worry about myself, it would be a good time to get my life in order.

My advisor seems to have discovered accountability in the last couple of weeks, which is unfortunate for my meeting tomorrow, but should be a good thing, if it lasts. I've been trying to think of better ideas for motivating myself, too. A friend recently had some success with real gold star stickers, and silver ones for days she almost made it, but not quite. Maybe I'll try the stars again both virtually and in real life.

So, The Plan is:

exercise
eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables
leave home by 9.30am
no internet without doing an hour's work first and then only for 10 minutes at a time
go to bed by midnight
blog about how well I did each day

I want to go back to using the star icons at the top of my blog to keep track, but I need to learn to keep starting afresh every day instead of giving up entirely every time I have a bad day. I need a reward system that isn't all or nothing so I'm just going to use the stars to count how many total days I meet my goals, not how many days in a row.

low self esteem is just another reason I suck

2009-08-25T22:09:00.003-04:00

My advisor gave me one of his "pep talks" after my dismal committee meeting today. I've been trying to figure out for a while why it annoys me so much when he tries to be supportive and encouraging. I know he means well and he really does care about whether I'm happy, but I still don't like it.

Part of it is that I just get embarrassed and ashamed when people try to talk about anything personal because I can't say anything without crying. Partly, I'm just jealous because he is annoyingly accomplished and well-rounded and nice, or maybe that just makes it seem patronising. He does have a tendency to use his own experience in grad school as an example for what I should be doing. I also got a spiel about how only things that are challenging are really satisfying, with undertones of "only science is really worthwhile (but it's still okay if I would be happy with something lesser)".

Today I realised that what really annoys me is that his advice is the equivalent of saying "just cheer up" to a depressed person. Today he told me to just "let yourself enjoy" the labwork I've said I don't like doing. I shouldn't worry about failing and just focus on getting everything to work as well as possible. But not perfectly, because being a perfectionist is bad, too. I just need to believe in myself and enjoy mastering everything. Okay then. I obviously never thought of any of that before. Problem solved!

Depression is a disease. Low self-esteem is just a character flaw.

more skills I actually enjoy using

2009-08-19T23:17:00.002-04:00

I meant to write a post after I spent a morning a couple of weeks ago making an excel template to automatically do all the calculations once I pasted in my data. That was fun. This post, however, is motivated by the homework I have to complete for the careers workshop I'm participating in.

Last week, they gave us a list of different skills and we had to tick the ones we thought we had. I actually ticked more than I was expecting, but now we have to pick 10 skills we enjoy and write down examples of times we actually used them. That's a lot harder. Trying to think of examples makes me think I don't have the skill after all.

Even harder, for another exercise we have to come up with seven "success stories" describing experiences where we did something successful that we enjoyed and were proud of. I'm really having trouble with that. So far, my experiences are things like "knit argyle socks", "stained and finished my furniture by hand" and "got to an online Scrabble rating above 1100".

Even if my difficulty with thinking of examples makes me feel bad about my time in grad school, the ones I did come up with aren't entirely useless for the exercise. I didn't realise that I liked making things so much until looking at the list. I like having something finished I can point to and think "I did that". I think that's part of what I like about making Excel templates, too. I wasn't sure I really enjoyed the process of sanding my furniture over and over, or knitting and pulling out the same bit of sock multiple times, but I do like seeing visible progress, so I think it still counts.

I did do well in undergrad and I mostly enjoyed that, but I'm not sure it counts. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure why not. Maybe because I always did things at the last minute and crammed for exams rather than studying properly and retaining the information. I'm not sure the whole of undergrad counts as a single experience, either. Same for tutoring maths as an undergrad. I really enjoyed the times when I could explain something so the students got it, but I can't remember specific instances so I don't know how often that happened.

Okay, I added a few more and this is making me wonder again if I would enjoy research more if I could just make myself do more so that I could actually finish things. I did enjoy writing my honours thesis, the discussion part at least. I liked finding connections between my results and the literature and pulling it all together into a coherent model. Of course, that model was disproven a week after I submitted when another paper came out... And I really didn't like doing the experiments themselves that much even then.

I once spent a couple of hours translating between two lab members who were getting offended at what they each thought the other was saying, even though that really wasn't what they were saying at all. I managed to eventually get them to understand that neither actually thought the other was a bad scientist, they just disagreed on the direction a project should go. Usually I hate getting involved in conflict, but I did kind of enjoy mediating. I don't know if that's something I should put on the list or not, since it's not something I've done more than once even.

Now that I have enough experiences to list, I'm having trouble listing the values and interests that "they reveal about me". Although, values and interests are on the agenda for tomorrow, so maybe that can wait.

Here's my list of skills I enjoy using:

explain difficult ideas, complex topics
use technology for statistical analysis
gather information from a number of sources
create efficient systems
creat computer generated charts
calculate, perform mathematical computations
edit and proofread written material
analyse data
classify and sort/systematise information
keep accurate and complete financial records

I keep thinking of all the things I could say to qualify those, but I guess I should stop and go to bed.

I'm too young for this, aren't I?

2009-08-13T01:28:00.003-04:00

I just realised my knee has been hurting for over three months now and I'm not sure what to do. I didn't do anything to injure it, that I know of. I just woke up one morning with it feeling weird and like I needed to stretch. I assumed I'd just slept on it funny and went about my day normally, including going to the gym, but it started actually hurting after that. I saw a primary care person after about a month. She had no idea and sent me to an orthopaedic doctor. He seemed kind of annoyed that she hadn't had any idea and gave me some exercises to do. The exercises helped a bit, but it still hurt when I walked much so I went back 6 or 7 weeks later. The orthopaedic doctor sent me to get an MRI on my knee.

When I went back to the orthopaedic doctor to get the MRI results he said it was good news. There was nothing wrong with my knee at all. He said something about how knees just hurt sometimes and told me to go ahead and use the bikes or elliptical machines as he was walking out the door. I was unfortunately too unassertive to call him back once I realised that he wasn't going to tell me anything I could do about the pain.

I thought maybe it would just eventually stop hurting on its own if I kept doing the exercises so I've been ignoring it and started going to the gym again. I thought maybe that was working, since my knee doesn't actually hurt while exercising. I was still always conscious of it and careful with how I moved, though. Today, it's back to actually being painful and I'm not sure what to do.

I kind of feel like I shouldn't be complaining because it's not very painful and I have a hard time describing how it feels. There must be something wrong, though, for it to hurt for months. I don't want to go back to the orthopaedic doctor because he always made me feel like I was wasting his time and there wasn't anything structurally wrong, according to the x-rays and MRI. I guess I'll try going back to primary care and seeing if there's anyone else they can send me to. Anyone have any better ideas?

abuse?

2009-08-06T03:35:00.004-04:00

I've spent a large part of tonight reading Harriet Jacob's blog, parts of which deal with her abusive ex-husband and father. While her writing makes it easy to empathise with her, I wasn't expecting to recognise any of my own experience. Then I read this:

“When he told you he used to insult you just to make you feel like shit and shut your mouth, all you could feel was relieved,” he said. “You didn’t feel angry. You just felt relieved. That’s not normal. That’s fucked up, that somebody tells you they’ve been intentionally hurting you, and you’re just happy they finally admitted it.”

My brother recently apologised for intentionally making my life miserable when we were kids and I felt relieved. In principle, I know I should feel angry, but I can't deal with that. It is some comfort to know that I wasn't imagining the maliciousness I experienced and to stop having to feel guilty for provoking him or reacting in the wrong way. If he chose to act the way he did, then it wasn't my fault. Except I still feel guilty for thinking about blaming him because there are always extenuating circumstances... Plus, I shouldn't even be comparing my experiences with actual abuse. Didn't everyone's older brother beat them up and belittle them?

But then there's also this:

I don’t know how many people can understand this — I know Badger does, we talked about it — but god I am so jealous of people who can break down. I once had a boss who told me about going on a vacation, and calling home from a pay phone in a diner only to have his father tell him his brother had unexpectedly died. He described going into this blind rage, where he punched the pay phone until it came out of the wall, and cried for hours, unable to stand up. I know he was telling me all this in a vulnerable way, talking about something horrible that had happened to him, but I kept thinking how awesome it was. I wanted to ask him, what were you thinking when you punched the phone? Did you know that wasn’t an okay thing to do but did it anyway? Did you not care? Did you not even think about that? Oh, man, how did you not think about that? What does that feel like? I could never do that. I could never will myself to become that unconscious of everything around me that I could even raise my voice.

Especially the last sentence. I can't even write a facebook status because I'm too conscious of every possible interpretation. I act (and think) like I've been abused, even if I feel like using the term is cheapening the experiences of those who've really been abused. Maybe I'm just defective enough to be broken by normal sibling behaviour.

Reading those segments felt like when I picked up a library book called Emotional Incest purely out of morbid curiousity and was horrified to find that the blurb sounded exactly like my experience with my mother. She recently asked me to tell her what it was like growing up with my brother making my life miserable, but I didn't want to hurt her, or more selfishly, deal with her self-flagellation over letting it happen.

Maybe I am angry. I've self-censored that out while writing this. Still, it's hard to let myself be angry at damaged people for their responses to that damage, especially when one of them was just a child himself.

theatre quiz

2009-07-13T17:50:00.003-04:00

My mum has booked her flights to visit me for the first time, several months from now. We'll probably go to New York for a weekend and it will be her birthday so I thought I would get us tickets to see a musical. The Lion King is never going to make it to my hometown, and I thought it was fantastic, so that's an obvious choice. She would also love Billy Elliot, which might eventually make it home (although not with a Tony-winning cast). I've had good luck with picking plays based on whether student rush tickets are available, but I'd like to plan something in advance.

So, I started looking at ticket availability and I'm having trouble weighing price vs quality. For The Lion King, if you pay a lot, you can get awesome seats. Or you can pay a bit less and get crappy seats. Billy Elliot has a greater range of quality and prices.

I'd like to surprise Mum, so I'm going to ask you what you'd prefer, instead of her:

If you don't think it's worth spending so much, which would you prefer?(poll)

Thanks for your help!

2009 take 2

2009-06-30T23:41:00.003-04:00

This year has not been great in terms of health and productivity. I have been doing some work, but my experiments haven't been cooperating and I've spent too much time using aimless websurfing as a way of self-medicating for the anxiety I feel when I think about my project. And while I've been trying to eat vegetables, I've been eating way too much junk food and I haven't even been exercising. My knee has been sore for a couple of months now, but I need to try to do something active, anyway. I have seen a doctor about it and I'm doing exercises to help it.

So, since tomorrow is the 1st of July and the start of the second half of the year, I'm going to start afresh. And to make sure I take it seriously, I'm going to donate $10 for every day I don't stick to The Plan for the next 30 days. I would pledge to donate to a cause I hate, but I think the money will be enough disincentive.

The plan is:

exercise
eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables
leave home by 9.30am
no internet without doing an hour's work first and then only for 10 minutes at a time
go to bed by midnight

I'm actually going to try something slightly different, but the above list will be my minimum requirements (with some adjustment when I'm travelling).

I went to an alternative careers workshop a couple of weeks ago and got discouraged because the person went on about how grad students have all these transferrable skills like time management and motivation. I really don't have those skills. So, I'm going to try treating lab like a job I don't especially care about, but have to do, in order to gain some of those skills. To that end, I'll try to spend exactly 8 hours a day at lab, without using any internet other than for work purposes. I'll let you know how that goes...

the cost of having an awesome email address

2009-06-20T21:21:00.005-04:00

My email address is the real life equivalent of lucy at gmail.com so I get quite a bit of mail that's meant for other Lucys who presumably forget that they had to add a number or something to their username. Two years ago I got an email from Rosemary. It obviously wasn't spam so I replied to say I wasn't the Lucy she was aiming for and to please remove me from her address book. She wrote back "Lucy, it's me Rosemary", because apparently I might just ask everyone to stop emailing me without checking if I recognise their name. I wrote back again, asking if she was sure she knew me, because I was fairly certain I didn't know anyone called Rosemary and she never replied.

Today, Rosemary tried to friend me on facebook. She also commented on my profile pic, which makes me think (a) I missed a privacy option somewhere and (b) either I'm going senile and have forgotten ever meeting this person or she is, since she managed to look at my picture and not realise that she's never met me. I'm pretty sure it's her, but should I send her a message again to ask how she thinks she knows me?

OMG! Ponies!

2009-06-16T23:24:00.002-04:00

In the wild!

Can you blame me for not being excited to be back to normal life?

I need less soul-destroying forms of procrastination

2009-06-02T17:06:00.004-04:00

I had a reasonably productive day yesterday and apparently I had to make up for it today. Getting to lab meeting by 8.30am never helps, either. So, instead of dealing with all the samples I generated yesterday, I've been refreshing google reader and playing pointless facebook games.

For the past five months, I've been playing Mind Games. It's not a single game, instead you have a choice of three simple games, each of which pay out tokens which can be used to buy prizes. Once you've bought so many prizes and got hold of the ones that are awarded randomly, you can move up to the next level.

I've been annoyed at how pointless and arbitrary the levels are. And yet, I kept playing all this time. It's only now that I've reached the highest level and realised I'm now supposed to either continue with the same account to try to improve my win percentage, or start from the beginning again (which a fourth game available), that I've gotten disgusted enough with myself to remove the application. At least it's better than the very similar, but even more pointless version where you can drag a coin across fake scratch-its to get tokens, instead of even having to solve a sudoku puzzle.

Yesterday, after reading my post about skills I enjoy using, a friend suggested I could add Mind Games to the list. I was ashamed to have to admit that I didn't actually enjoy playing it very much. The pointless games I waste time on do say something about my motivations. I like positive feedback and making visible progress. Apparently it doesn't matter if the rewards and goals are mere pixels. I also like competing. I genuinely enjoy playing anagram games against worthy opponents, even though the solitaire versions bore me to tears.

Now that I've removed the Mind Games application, I have no illusions that I'll automatically get more work done. I would like to make my procrastination more worthwhile, or at least enjoyable, though. I know it's easier to waste time online while at work, because it looks enough like work to escape notice, unlike things I'd actually enjoy, like knitting or reading. Unfortunately, I do it at home as well. In fact, I just forced myself to stop so that I could finish this post.

I need to be more mindful of what I'm spending my time on. At work, that means doing my experiments so that I can go home earlier and do things I really enjoy, not just things I prefer marginally to lab work. But I also need to rebuild my ability to delay gratification. I would've aced the marshmallow test when I was a kid, but my self-control has been slowly eroding since starting grad school. Maybe I should start cleaning my teeth left-handed.

skills I actually enjoy using #1

2009-06-01T18:02:00.005-04:00

A blogging facebook friend posted a status message asking for advice on a recipe today so I happily chased down the answer via google. This isn't someone I've had much direct contact with, so I kind of felt like a loser, or at least awkward, for being so eager to help, but I love finding answers for people. After fighting with apathy all morning when faced with my experiments (I have done some real work, too), it was nice to feel some enthusiasm and like I could be helpful.

Several of the career search books I've read include exercises involving identifying your favourite skills. I tend to think I don't have any useful skills, or at least any people would pay for, so I've had trouble making these lists. I'm going to try taking note whenever I actually enjoy something, though, even if I can't immediately think of a job that would use it.

So, number one on the new list is looking up answers to questions for people.

I know I have much more enthusiasm for answering questions that don't require experimentation. I think I also prefer answering questions for other people. I can follow google results or wikipedia entries out of interest for a while, but I lose interest much more quickly if I'm not trying to help someone else out. I like feeling useful, and smart, if it takes some thinking to find the right answer or the right way to explain it.

I've wondered about being a medical librarian since seeing it listed as an alternative to medical research in this article about why research is an over-rated career. It sounds like they might get to answer questions like this. I need to find out what that job's actually like. Someone on an alternative careers panel I went to years ago had a job doing lit reviews for a company that published them. At the time, I thought it sounded boring, but maybe something like that could involve answering questions for people. I might want to have more direct contact with the person whose question I was answering, though. If you have any thoughts about potential careers, let me know.

I often feel awkward for being overenthusiastic when someone asks for help, like I'm being needy and just doing it to prop up my self-esteem. I wonder if it's such a bad thing to try to think of careers that would complement my neuroses, though, instead of trying to overcome them.

on quitting (long)

2009-05-31T15:10:00.006-04:00

I've been collecting posts about how quitting can be a good thing lately. I don't really want to quit, and yet these posts make me feel uneasy so I'm trying to think seriously about why I want to keep going and at what point it wouldn't be worth it.

From Sarahliz:

In some sense I “failed” but really only in the sense that I failed to force myself to continue doing something that was making me miserable just because I could continue doing it. I have no doubt in my mind that I could have successfully finished my dissertation had I wanted to. But ultimately it came down to the fact that I didn’t want to. And I couldn’t come up with a single good reason why I should put myself through something that was making me miserable in those circumstances.

This is close enough to how I feel that it scares me, because if that's really how I feel, then maybe I should quit. And yet, I don't want to give up. I'm worried that the only reason for finishing is to prove to myself that I can do it and so that the people I've gone through grad school with won't look down on me. I still have some lingering hope that I would enjoy research more in a different lab with a different project, too.

I said in my last post that I was originally excited about my project, and that's true, but even so, I've never been as passionate as the people who've really thrived in grad school. I was never excited to get up in the morning and go to lab, even at the best of times and I could easily leave all thoughts of research behind on weekends and holidays.

When I first decided I wanted to do research, back in high school, it wasn't because I was curious about particular questions (I actually thought I might like to do astrophysics until I took first year physics). It was more that I couldn't think of anything else that would be at all interesting. They gave us all a big book that listed careers and what study or training was required for each. Most of them sounded like they'd get boring very quickly, but I thought research would at least involve a variety of things. Figuring out something new would have to be interesting, right?

That sounds so naive, but I did have a decent amount of lab experience when I applied to grad school. I did work experience in high school and was lucky enough to be there at an exciting moment in a project. I did three semi-independent research projects in undergrad, and then honours, which is an extra academic year of full-time research after undergrad. My honours project started out very cool with potential for exciting publications and then ran into technical problems that meant nothing useful ever came of it, so I even had experience with failed research. I still enjoyed all that well enough that I thought I'd enjoy it as a career, so what went wrong?

I think one problem is that I was really motivated by feeling smart, rather than anything intrinsic to research. I was good at school and enjoyed it and this is as far as school goes. Unfortunately, it's not really school anymore. The periodic rewards of good grades and awards ran out after I finished taking classes. The research itself should be the reward now. And it might be, if I were getting results.

From DamnGoodTechnician:

I honestly believe this is an offshoot of the Impostor Syndrome, where you believe that you have failed because you just didn't try hard enough, and that if you were just a better scientist, you'd be happy at what you're doing. These people slog through, believing that that next piece of data, that next paper, is just the thing that will make them fall in love with science again.

Again, I worry that this is true for me. I definitely feel that if I tried harder and were a better scientist (meaning my experiments would work), I would be happier doing research. Every time I've expressed any doubts about whether research is for me, people have urged me to keep trying, because I've come too far to give up and everyone gets sick of grad school. People familiar with my advisor, especially, have tried to convince me I should try working in a lab where people actually publish before deciding to quit. It's easy to say I could do a post-doc and then quit if I'm still not enjoying it, but is it even worth getting to that point?

I haven't mentioned my struggles with depression and anxiety yet in this post. I guess my real hope is that I could get those under control, which would let me be more productive, which would lead to actual results and publications, which would make me excited about research again. I'm not quite convinced I can make an informed decision about whether I enjoy research enough without ever experiencing the satisfying part. Unfortunately, if doing something I don't enjoy is contributing to my depression, maybe I won't ever get to be productive enough to enjoy it.

In the comments to DamnGoodTechnician's post, Drugmonkey said "The key is to be very clear with oneself about what one likes/doesn't like about the current training stage and what one will like about being a PI." What I don't like is feeling stupid (which reminds me, I never posted my rant about that article on why feeling stupid is a good thing (the shorter version: the author is confusing ignorant for stupid; they are very different things)), the lack of obvious progress and the fact that a lot of my benchwork and cell culture is boring and mindless enough that a trained monkey could do it. Of course, I also have the problem that I'm bored enough to zone out and make stupid, but critical errors, which further reduce my progress.

So, what would be different if I were a PI? I'd have my own ~~trained monkeys~~ technicians and grad students to palm the benchwork off on, so that would be good. Maybe I'd be able to see the progress more, if I were looking at the combined output of a whole lab. There's always the hope that I'd be a better manager than my advisor and my lab would actually be making more progress, too, but I don't have any evidence for that. I'm pretty sure writing grants would make me feel stupid, but then, most things do and maybe I'd manage to improve my self-esteem by then.

Maybe I should be wondering what would be different about being a post-doc, since I'd have to get through that first. I don't think much would be different, aside from the pressure to get publications faster (theoretically with less guidance, but I think I already get little enough). So, that's not promising.

From Alisa Bowman:

When you run the right race, you feel drawn to the finish line. Yes, the race might be hard. ... But if you are running the right race, you will keep putting one foot in front of the other because doing anything less results in just one sensation: despair.
When you are running the wrong race, however, you might not have a single hardship, but you’ll still think about quitting. And when you do quit, you’ll experience one sensation: relief.

When my advisor recommended at the last minute that I not present at the conference I went to recently, I was frustrated and annoyed, but also overwhelmingly relieved. A post-doc in my lab has told me several times I should've presented, despited my conflicting data, in order to get feedback and be more visible in the field, but really the only time I even slightly wish I'd presented is when thinking of the line I could've had on my C.V.

Maybe work should not be so hard. Maybe I shouldn't have to force myself to show up to work every day, and I could do something that I would actually want to spend time thinking about, or that would give me some sense of satisfaction after a day's work. Although, I think my anxiety would get in the way of that in any career.

I feel like I've been convincing myself to quit as I write, which was not my intention. I'm left feeling that a big part of my motivation for finishing is to be able to point to the PhD as proof that I really am smart. And that seems pretty stupid.

The more reasonable part is that I'm still holding out hope that if I weren't so depressed or anxious and if I were making more progress, I'd enjoy it. Those are big ifs, though. I'd certainly be happier if both those things were the case, even if I did find out I still didn't like research. Hopefully some of my ideas from the previous post will help me test that.

If I do quit, I'm totally getting this shirt.

moving forward

2009-05-31T13:18:00.006-04:00

I haven't contributed to Scientiae before because I'm not really a science blogger, but the theme this month is "moving forward", which is something I need to work on.

All year, I've been feeling like I'm moving backwards, not forwards. I've spent a lot of time paralysed by depression and anxiety and then every time I do manage to take a step forwards, I get dragged back two by conflicting results or experimental mistakes. A lot of my anxiety used to be about whether I was even capable of doing research, but I think I've come to the conclusion that I could do this well, if (a) I weren't depressed and (b) I were actually interested in my project.

I read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck recently and got very annoyed reading the part about depression. The book is about how intelligence isn't fixed and everyone has the potential to learn how to do whatever they want, provided they believe that's possible and are willing to admit when they don't know something. Unfortunately, instead of learning how to have that kind of growth mindset from reading the book, I just felt bad about not having one.

When talking about depression, Dweck claimed that people with a growth mindset still get depressed, but it doesn't ruin their lives as much because they keep moving forward, despite feeling miserable. However, feeling hopeless about the future is a symptom of depression so I would argue that people who can maintain the growth mindset belief that things can improve and they'll get better are not suffering from the most severe form of depression. Obviously, continuing to go to class/work and completing assignments is better in the long run, but saying depressed people just need to believe they'll eventually feel better is as insensitive and unhelpful as just telling them to just cheer up.

It's possible part of the reason I got so annoyed was that I know I should be doing more to help myself. I'm not so depressed that I'm incapable of moving forward, even though it's hard. I know I will feel infinitely better once I'm finished grad school so I need to make sure I keep taking steps in that direction, even if they're baby ones.

I'm currently reading Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression. The second step, after recognising that depression is a sign you need to make changes to your life, is to do the things you know make you feel better. I know getting enough sleep, exercising and eating more fruits and vegetables make me feel better, but I've been slacking on all those things. I have been making a manageable list of things to do each day at lab, but I need to work on starting the list earlier instead of wasting time online first.

Small steps can help in overcoming depression and anxiety, but I'm not sure how to deal with the fact that I really don't care about my project anymore. I've tried to find an interesting way of looking at it, but every potential point of interest has turned out not to be true. I started out working on a very cool project that was really too ambitious for grad school, but I didn't care because I was excited about it. Since then, however, technical problems and depression and poor advising and lack of self-esteem have all combined to crush my enthusiasm. I'm left with a boring sliver of my original project and no interest in lab work or research. I do wonder if I'd be more interested in science if I had a better project, but I've come to dislike doing experiments so much that I doubt it.

I've also been reading a bunch of books on choosing careers and jobhunting. That's been making me feel hopelessly inadequate, because I don't feel like I even have any of the basic time management skills or conscientiousness employers wnat, let alone any higher skills. I'm wondering if it would help to treat the rest of grad school as just a job I'm doing while I figure out what I really want to do with my life. Maybe that would make it easier to focus on getting things done and developing good work habits without my worries about the larger picture becoming overwhelming.

Of course, quitting grad school could also be moving forward, but I think that might be another post.

scientiae-carnival

things that are making me want to cry today

2009-05-18T16:33:00.003-04:00

Having to wait 10 days for an appointment to see someone about my knee that has already been hurting for two weeks.
Not complaining about the wait.
Taking too long to find my second elephant earring.
Talking to a career advisor about alternative careers.
Reading the CVs/resumes of all the overachievers in the materials she gave me.
Missing out on a seat on the bus.
Getting my samples all ready and then finding out there was no wash buffer left.
Reading an article about selective mutism that says the goal of treatment is to "create an environment that assures the child that, “You are capable. You have interesting things to say. You are fun to be around.”" because I don't really believe any of those are true.
Other people being in the kitchen when I went to eat lunch.
Having to present at lab meeting tomorrow.
This photo (and not even the fact that they were rescued from a fire).
The fact that none of the anti-depressants I've tried have ever done anything so there's probably no point trying again.

help with wedding clothes again

2009-05-13T23:55:00.005-04:00

I have another wedding to go to and once again, I don't know what to wear so I made a poll for you.

I bought three dresses for the wedding/cruise last year and it would be nice to get to wear any of them more than once, but I'm not sure they're suitable. And, after looking at photos in search of ones to show you, I'm not sure they're even flattering...
It's an afternoon wedding and not very formal.

Dress A:

Dress B:

Dress C:

Thanks for your help!

happy easter

2009-04-13T00:08:00.003-04:00

I had the most Easter-ish Easter in a long time today. I made hot cross buns, had Easter lunch with housemates and dyed eggs with another friend. I hope you had a good day, too.

Anyone know what to do with 11 hard-boiled eggs?

maybe I really should just quit

2009-03-27T18:52:00.002-04:00

I'm not giving the talk anymore. I've done a bunch of experiments this week, trying to increase the weight of evidence for what I was going to present. Unfortunately, every result contradicts my previous data. At first my advisor was his usual optimistic self and kept saying I could leave the bits I was unsure of out, but then he realised there wasn't going to be much of substance left and suggested I withdraw.

I wanted to argue, but really, I wouldn't be happy publishing anything I've got so far, so I really shouldn't present it anywhere other than lab meeting. Of course, right after I sent the email saying I wanted to withdraw, my advisor called back to say he'd thought of a way I could frame the believable stuff to make it more coherent without the dubious parts, but I think it's better not to.

He also called back another time to see if I wanted to not go to the conference in order to stay here and work. Hell no! I'm feeling stupid and demoralised enough that I'd probably just procrastinate and/or mess up any experiment I did. Plus, I've been hoping to use the conference as a gauge for my enthusiasm for science. If nothing there excites me enough to be able to imagine myself working on it, I think I'll give up on continuing in research. I wasn't sure if he wanted me to not go. Maybe he'd prefer me to do more work, but I doubt my registration fee and airfare are refundable at this point.

I feel pretty worthless right now, so I'm going to try to focus on the good things. Like, now I can go home immediately, instead of finishing a last experiment and writing my poster and talk. And, I can sleep in tomorrow. And, I can go skiing next week, without having to worry about preparing my talk. I'm going to pick up ice cream and chocolate on my way home and hopefully put off the self-loathing and -recrimination for another day.

part 2

2009-03-26T15:33:00.002-04:00

Dear advisor,

So, I was feeling bad about blaming you for how much I'm floundering, but we were supposed to meet today to go over the talk that I will be giving next Wednesday to hundreds of people, with your name on it, and you just blew me off, even though I told you about the new result that potentially invalidates what I wrote in my abstract and that I didn't know how to structure the talk so it's at all coherent. I can edit the slides until Wednesday, but I have to print my poster tomorrow. Why are you not worried?

Yes, I said it was fine to meet with another post-doc before me, since I was in the middle of editing a figure. I should know by now to get in first if I want to actually meet, but I thought the talk would be important enough to get your attention.

Maybe I should take it as a vote of confidence that you think I can just pull some slides together at the last minute... At this point, I seriously doubt I'll be looking for a job with anyone who'll be watching the talk, but I hope for your sake it's not a complete embarrassment.

it's still better than despair

2009-03-25T11:31:00.001-04:00

I feel like a neglected kid

2009-03-24T12:23:00.005-04:00

Dear advisor,

Just how bad a grad student do I have to be for you to notice I'm struggling? Years spent depressed and barely doing a few hours work a week wasn't enough. Doing significantly more work didn't seem to register, either. Ignoring your emails doesn't bother you. Showing up at 1pm on the one day a week you're here or not coming in at all doesn't rate a mention (I stayed until 11pm and was working at the other lab, but you don't know that). You're fine with the fact that I still don't have slides to show you for a talk I'm giving in a week at a fancy conference.

Sure, it's nice having no accountability. I can come in whenever I like and read blogs all day. That's not getting me any closer to graduating, though (or getting you any publications). I know I pretend I'm fine and don't need you, but can't you see I really need some boundaries and guidance? It would help to have some sign you thought I was worth paying attention to. You say you want to start meeting twice a week, but I'll believe that when I see it.

Signed,
Your apparently 4 y.o. grad student

craft it forward

2009-03-22T14:13:00.002-04:00

Disgruntled Julie posted an offer to create crafty presents for commenters recently and I signed up to get one. In return, I'm offering crafty things to you!

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! This offer does have some restrictions and limitations so please read carefully:
I make no guarantees that you will like what I make but I will do
my best. It will be done in the next couple months.
You have no clue what it’s going to be - that’s the fun part! It could be artwork, handmade stationary personalized for you, baked goods from my kitchen, or something crocheted or knitted. What will it be? You’ll have to wait and see! I reserve the right to do something completely bizarre or completely normal.
Here’s the fine print: In return, all you need to do is post this text into a note of your own and make 5 things for 5 others. What could be more fun! Some ideas you could do for others: artwork, CD’s, Burn a DVD, write a poem, crochet a scarf, make a mini book, send a photograph (a printed one, not e-mailed. etc…).
If you are interested, leave a comment below with your email address (if you don’t have a blog-based email address and are not comfortable leaving your personal email address, you can also email me at pigpuppet (at) gmail (dot) com.)

Lenten Plan

2009-02-26T22:25:00.005-05:00

I am still not doing so well with The Plan, but I have been doing more work and going to bed earlier, at least. I'm not at all religious, but lent seemed like a nice time for yet another fresh start. Of course, then I didn't quite meet my goals today and I think not having posted them publically made it easier to let them slide. I don't want to give up and wait for the next neat starting point and lent is already pretty arbitrary for me. So, here we go again.

Everyday until April 12th, I am going to:

exercise
eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables and only one treat
leave home by 9.30am
work for at least an hour before doing anything online
use the internet for no more than 15 minutes at a time, separated by at least an hour of work
make a list of what to do the next day
go to bed by midnight

If I do all that, I'm going to get the mp3 player that was going to be my reward way back in October. I might even make it an iPod.

I keep waiting for concentrating on work to seem easier or more imperative, but it's never going to unless I just do it.

localised depression

2009-02-03T21:37:00.004-05:00

Thanks for all your comments on my last post. I haven't heard any more from my advisor, although several people told me they saw my name in the program as a presenter, so maybe it will be too late to change things anyway and I won't have to do anything.

I've been slipping back into old, bad habits lately and starting to feel miserable again when it comes to lab. So far, it hasn't spread to the rest of my life, which is good in that I'm still enjoying non-lab things, but bad in that it's more incentive to avoid thinking about work entirely (aside from making work difficult). I am becoming alarmed at how much time I'm spending on mindless, repetitive games, though, and I'm worried that feeling useless at lab will lead to more widespread depression.

At the moment, I'm stuck in a negative feedback loop where I stay up too late online, can't drag myself out of bed in the morning until it's too late to go to the gym (although, really, I'd probably be better off exercising and getting to lab even later than not exercising at all), getting to lab so late that I feel lazy and pathetic, wasting time online to avoid those negative thoughts, not getting enough work done and staying so late at lab that I don't have time to cook dinner or take care of anything like laundry in the evening. I need to break the cycle, but I'm struggling.

Getting out of bed earlier in the morning would make a big difference. I did think I just needed to go to bed earlier, but, although that would help, I'm not sure it's the whole answer. I can get up after less sleep when I've got somewhere fun to go to, but on weekday mornings, I can snooze my alarm for hours on end. Once I've hit snooze a few times, I already feel bad enough about myself that the whole morning feels like a struggle and I often feel like crying. I already have my alarm far enough away that I have to get out of bed to hit snooze, but that's not enough of a disincentive. Clearly, my avoidance is beyond the usual tips for getting up earlier. I think what I really need is a reason I absolutely have to get up. I can do it when I have lab meeting starting at 9am, but since my advisor is only in my building one day a week, there isn't much accountability the rest of the time.

The other major issue is that I need a way to calm myself down when I start feeling awful in lab. At the moment, whenever I start worrying that I'm not getting enough work done or I've messed up an experiment or I don't know what to do next, I start refreshing google reader or facebook or twitter and next thing I know it's an hour (or more) later. I need something to take the place of the internet that will actually make me feel better, instead of just helping me avoid the feelings.

By any conscious reckoning, I am very eager to get my research done so I can graduate. Unfortunately, I still end up paralysed because my desire to be done isn't always strong enough to overcome my intense avoidance in the short term, which only makes me feel worse.

I know I've got around these problems using the stars before, but that hasn't been working lately. I think my self-discipline atrophied badly while I was home and I haven't been trying hard enough to build it back up. However, I also think I'm demoralised that all my effort with the stars over the past two years hasn't changed my underlying problems at all. I'm tired of fighting my feelings of inadequacy just to get a minimal amount of work done.

I'm still wondering if my lack of interest in my research is real, or just an excuse to give in to the desire to find something easier. The only way to tell would be to get rid of my imposter syndrome, but I don't have any idea how to do that. I tried explaining to the therapist last week, but she just told me I'm being too hard on myself. Even if that were true, just saying it isn't going to convince me. I don't know what will.

(Ugh. Maybe the depression isn't as localised as I would like. My internet connection keeps dropping out and that's making me feel like crying (and/or breaking something).)

Does anyone have any ideas for helping me feel less worthless and pathetic at lab? I want to recommit to the stars, but I'm not sure how much I can do at once.

how annoyed should I be?

2009-01-30T00:27:00.002-05:00

I'm going to a conference in Ski Resort Town soon. I was excited to get the email my abstract was accepted for a poster presentation* because I didn't have to feel like I was wasting my advisor's money by going (and I'll get to go skiing!). It was also validating that the organisers didn't think my abstract (written at the last minute with a quick glance by my advisor), and therefore research,was rubbish.

Yesterday, I got a second email saying that my abstract was also selected for an oral presentation, which is a bigger deal. My first reaction was "Damn! Now I have to have better results to present because people will actually see it", but it also gave me a much-needed confidence boost, given that getting a talk is more competitive. I was surprised that nobody else in my lab got a talk, in particular, the post-doc who is a lot closer to publication than I am, but I'm not a fan of his communication style so I thought maybe he just wrote a bad abstract. My advisor asked me to include a slide or two promoting his and the other students' posters, which I was happy to agree to.

Today, my advisor said he might get this post-doc (A) to do the talk instead of me. I was surprised because that seemed like something straight out of a YoungFemaleScientist blog post (i.e. an example of how PIs can screw over their advisees) and I've long counted myself lucky that my advisor was a nice person who wouldn't do anything like that. I still think he's a nice person, so I'm not sure what to think about his asking me to give up the talk.

He went on to explain that there had been a mix-up with A's abstract submission and his was never reviewed. He was going to try to get them to give A a talk as well, but they usually only let one person per lab speak. I took this to mean that if the organisers had read A's abstract, they never would have chosen mine, which obviously didn't leave me feeling very good.

I mostly agree that A's work is more worthy of presentation than mine, but I wonder how much of that is my low self-esteem. This is why I was glad of the external validation when I got the acceptance. I also think that abstract selection is not infallible and just because my advisor thinks A's work is better, doesn't mean the conference organisers would agree, especially when going by just an abstract. If someone who I thought didn't have as interesting an abstract as me got a talk and I didn't, I doubt I'd assume it was a mistake, as I'm sure A does.

I'm inclined to think A complained to my advisor and said he should be the one to talk. He's a lot more confrontational than both my advisor and myself. There are legitimate (though, political) reasons why it would be in my advisor's interests to have A present instead of me. Perhaps that means it would be better for the lab as a whole and I should take one for the team, but it's not in my personal interest.

If I were hoping to network at this conference in order to apply for post-doc positions, I would be extremely annoyed at being asked to give up the opportunity to be more visible and have a presentation to list on my CV. As it is, I'm not sure what I want to do next, but I'm leaning away from academic research. Does that mean it doesn't matter? I'm not sure what my advisor thinks my plans are. He talked months ago about this conference being a good networking opportunity, but maybe his opinion of my academic career potential has gone down since then, or maybe he hasn't thought of it.

On a less personal level, it irks me that this fits the pattern of a junior, female scientist being taken advantage of, even though I know the reasons behind it aren't sexist. The fact that A's assertiveness about demanding what he feels he deserves and my own reluctance to assert anything at all conform to gender stereotypes makes me want to stick up for myself more than I might otherwise.

So, what should I do? I will at least raise the issue of whether I'd still get to put that my abstract was accepted as a talk on my CV. Should I argue for keeping the talk, though? Given my ambivalence about an academic career, it probably is more important to A and my advisor, but it still seems unfair. I know the other grad student in the lab wouldn't stand for it, but I've been meaning to post about how we tend to take things to opposite extremes, so I'm not sure he's a good reference point.

*This is the less prestigious and lower profile way to present work at scientific conferences. It's not as primary-school-project-ish as it sounds, although I do know of a couple of people in undergrad who didn't realise that and put drawings of puppies and kittens on their poster...

The Plan 2009 #1

2009-01-14T13:43:00.003-05:00

I have been slacking on restarting this for too long. I know that if I publicly recommit to it, I'll have to stick to it (which is partly why I haven't before now...) and I'm finally sick of my laziness enough to do that.

First, a summary of 2008. Which was okay, but not great. I did 822 hours of work last year, which is 200 more than the year before and accounted for 48% of my time at lab. It's an improvement, but not enough of one. I exercised 227 times in 2008, which is fewer than in 2007. I started slacking a bit. I want to get that back to being something non-negotiable, no matter how much my day sucks.

The Plan has become much more narrowly focussed than it was meant to be at the beginning. Work is definitely the area I still need help with most, but the others have mostly fallen by the wayside. The health-related goals stayed because they were mostly easier to implement and stick to but the social, family and being unselfish ones I just ignored. I think some of those goals failed because of my anxiety/lack of self-esteem, so I need to work on that first. So, I'm adding a new goal to do some of the CBT exercises from one of my workbooks every day. I'm still thinking about whether to go back to the CBT therapist, but I'll post about that later.

Starting tomorrow (today I'm going to make a plan for the next couple of weeks, or rather update the one I've been ignoring), if I don't do the following for the next 30 days, I have to give the awesome mittens I'm knitting to a homeless person. If I do, I'm getting a bag to carry my knitting in to replace the Borders plastic bag I've been using.

go to bed by midnight
exercise
leave home by 9.30am
waste no more than 10 minutes on internet at a time, separated by an hour of work, up to an hour a day
eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day
complete a CBT exercise

I'm not an idiot

2009-01-12T02:21:00.003-05:00

I know I'm not stupid. I am smart. Very smart, even. So why do I not believe that translates into being able to do anything useful? Many people who are objectively less intelligent than me have rewarding, successful careers, so why can't I?

I'll hit publish now before I start listing the reasons why not...

help

2009-01-11T23:12:00.002-05:00

It's been over two weeks since I got back from my five week holiday and I'm still avoiding getting back to work. I think the break was long enough that my will power has atrophied from lack of use. I didn't think about work at all while I was gone and I'm still not eager to do so now. In fact, every time I start to think about my research, my brain throws a tantrum and starts yelling "No! I don't want to!" until I placate it with another game of word twist and some chocolate.

So far, I've avoided seeing my advisor because he's only in my building one day a week. The first week, that was a holiday and last week he was leaving to take his daughter to an appointment as I arrived. I'm supposed to meet with him tomorrow and I'm not sure what I'll have to say for myself.

I was thinking that maybe my extreme reluctance to even think about science means I should finally accept that this isn't what I want to do and figure out what I would enjoy more. I've been very tempted to just tell my advisor that I don't want to continue in research so I just need to get out as soon as possible. Although, the thought of everything I'll have to do just for that is paralysing anyway. I've even been considering the possibility of just quitting now. I'm not entirely convinced that it's not just an elaborate double bluff to avoid dealing with the anxiety about sucking at it, though.

I've been trying to think of careers I might like more, but even if I did find another area I was more interested in, I'd still have most of the same problems, I think. I can't even begin to imagine how I'd cope with a job interview. I'm not a hard worker, I don't show any initiative, I'm disorganised, I can't talk about anything I've done in a positive way without feeling like a liar.

At our departmental retreat in October last year, my advisor asked me to go for a walk with him to talk. I was terrified that he was going to confront me about not doing enough work, but I started to relax when he asked about general project-related things. Once I was off-guard, though, he did confront me. He was very nice about it, but I still felt awful. He tried to get me to explain what was wrong, but it was just like a therapy session and I couldn't talk. He asked if I was depressed and I wished I could say yes, but it wouldn't be true anymore. Depression seems much less stigmatised than anxiety, like I could blame some neurotransmitter defect, instead of myself for thinking unhelpful thoughts. I did manage to say I haven't been as interested in my project as I used to be and that I wasn't sure if it was because I really wasn't interested or if I just didn't think I could do it properly.

If I could explain exactly what's going on, I'm sure he'd be understanding (ignoring the question of whether it's a good idea to share mental health issues with one's boss), since he made a point of saying he didn't care if I didn't want to go into academia, he just wanted me to be happy. In order to talk about my anxiety, however, a lot of it would have to go away first. I'm sure he was frustrated with me not talking, but I got frustrated that he kept saying I should just talk, as if it were that easy. He also gave me an excerpt of a book to read about how you have to try things you think are too hard in order to improve that also made me feel worse.

Before I left on my trip, he said the time away would be a good chance to reflect on what I want to do, so now I'm sure he's going to ask about it and I don't know what to tell him. The safest thing to do professionally would be to just say I'm eager to get back to work. Unfortunately, my behaviour so far this year doesn't match that sentiment, not to mention the fact that it's completely untrue.

Obviously, I have to figure out some way of dealing with my anxiety and other issues, but if you have any advice for the meantime, I'd love to hear it.

maybe spider solitaire really is therapeutic

2009-01-07T13:00:00.002-05:00

Playing the video game 'Tetris' could reduce trauma, claim Oxford University (via Lifehacker)

Of course, playing it to block out the thoughts about how I should really do some work but really don't want to is probably not so helpful...

year end diagnostics 2008

2009-01-01T03:09:00.004-05:00

I usually love looking back on the previous year and planning ahead for the next one. I have mixed feelings about 2008, though. Looking back, it seems disappointing, but I think I feel like it was worse than it was because I didn't see such big improvements in my behaviour as I did in 2007. I was starting from a much higher baseline, though. At least I maintained the changes I'd made and made some progress. I definitely still have some big things to work on this year.

I updated my blog mood graph, even though it probably isn't as accurate this year, given that I didn't blog anywhere near as much. I think I tended to blog more when I was feeling bad, too, so I'm surprised it doesn't look worse. (2008 is only the far right. The graph goes back to 2006)

My life rating is pretty much the same as last year. I'd like to improve my family and friends score. I'm not sure why it went down a bit this year or why my spirit score went up.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	8.1
Mind:	7.9
Body:	8.9
Spirit:	9.5
Friends/Family:	3.3
Love:	6.9
Finance:	8.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

I was surprised that my authentic happiness score went down again to 2.5 (it was 3.04 last year), though, because I was feeling pretty positive as I took it. I think the biggest thing holding me back there is that I don't enjoy my work that much. That's definitely something I've got to work on this year, or at least think of a solution to, even if I can't change anything until I'm finished with my PhD.

Actually, maybe there isn't such a difference. I went back and gave the most positive answers I could without lying and got 2.92. I still think I need to figure out what work I would enjoy, and improve my self-esteem, but I don't think I'm really unhappier than last year.

end of year meme (abridged)

2008-12-31T22:55:00.003-05:00

I can't remember what questions I cut last year, but I'm just copying from there again.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Went on a cruise, visited some new places, took a couple of tap classes

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I did pretty well with The Plan, but I think I've been getting a bit complacent. I need to start again with renewed enthusiasm.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
C'land, several South Pacific island nations.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Motivation and self-esteem, as ever. But also to figure out what I would really enjoy doing with my life, since it apparently isn't biomedical research.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I just read back over my blog for the past year to see if that would jog my memory, but I still can't think of any big achievement. I did win Ravelympic gold for the C'landian team.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting further with my research, as usual.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Plane tickets, maybe some presents

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The last two times I've done this, I've said mine, but I think I slacked off a bit this year, although I did do better at some things. I think I was more happy with US voters' behaviour.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Mine, unfortunately.

14. Where did most of your money go?
The cruise and other travels.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Travelling home and other places.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
I really didn't listen to much music this year.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) happier b) I think I was thinner before the cruise and holiday, now I might be back to the same c) richer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Talking to friends, working.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinating, feeling bad about myself.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 28. I had dinner with a housemate, then met up with one of my favourite bloggers, then had cake with housemates.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?It's kind of demoralising how similar my answers are to previous years'. Not procrastinating so much or being so anxious and seeing my favourite person more.

33. What kept you sane?
I don't think I used my blog so much for this, which is a pity. My favourite person was great, though.

36. Who did you miss?
My favourite person and my family and friends at home.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
I'm not sure if I first met this person in 2008, but I'm glad I'm better friends with a friend of a housemate now.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
I'm not sure what I actually learnt, but the lesson I'd like to take away from it is not to waste my life refreshing google reader.

favourite books of 2008

2008-12-31T16:55:00.000-05:00

I read 170.5 books this year (I haven't finished Madame Bovary yet, but I'm pretty sure it won't be one of my favourites), of which 32 were non-fiction.
I thought I might have trouble even coming up with a top ten list this year, since it felt like I hadn't read any really great books. Then I did that last post and realised there were several excellent ones I'd just forgotten to record until now. The good books did seem to come in batches this year. Here they are in approximate order (I kept shuffling around the top three, since I couldn't quite decide which I liked best):

10. Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski (#103)
9. Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda (#37)
8. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (#168)
7. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson (#152)
6. Bookhunter by Jason Shiga (#38)
5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (#170)
4. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu (#4)
3. The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (#1)
2. What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (#33)
1. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (#165)

I didn't write many reviews this year so the title links go to goodreads.com. For the few I did write anything about (including ones for which I just added something now), I linked the number book it was for me, although in most cases I didn't say anything substantial.

It's interesting how my ratings at the time differ from my memory now. A friend recently complained that I'd recommended The Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and I denied having done so, although I see now that I gave it 4 stars. I remember it being enjoyable but not quite recommendable. I also gave Out Stealing Horses 5 stars, but I didn't put it on this list because I don't remember really loving it. I'd probably be more likely to recommend other books, e.g. the last book I cut from the shortlist, The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, over some of these, but these are what I'm most glad to have read.

books #124-170 (2008)

2008-12-30T17:49:00.001-05:00

I was sure I was on track to read 200 books this year, but I guess the past 5 weeks in which I only read 5 books messed it up.

124. The Boat by Nam Le ****

125. If Today be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar ***

126. When We Get There by Shauna Seliy ****

127. And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts ****1/2

128. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif ***1/2

129. Consequences by Penelope Lonely (audiobook) ***

130. Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (audiobook) ***

131. The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry ***. The ending on this was just too unbelievable.

132. The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson ****

133. Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (audiobook) ***

134. Personal Days by Ed Park ***. It wasn't bad, but if you're only going to read one book set in a soulless office and written in first person plural, read Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End instead. I wasn't expecting there to be two books like that. I bet Ed Park was annoyed when he heard about TWCttE.

135. Tolstoy Lied by Rachel Kadish ***1/2

136. The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard by Eddie Campbell and Dan Best ***

137. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller ***

138. Then She Found Me by Elizabeth von Arnim (audiobook) ***. I don't think this is much like the movie.

139. Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson ***1/2. I thought this was a pretty good prequel. Most things matched up with the original book, although there were a couple of things I would have expected to have been mentioned in the original if they'd happened. I'd never actually thought about how horrible three sets of twins would have been to look after.

140. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery ****.

141. The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry ***1/2. This was fun.

142. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney ****1/2

143. Sickened by Julie Gregory ***.

144. Get it Done When You're Depressed by Julie A. Fast **1/2.

145. This Charming Man by Marian Keyes ***.

146. Heart, You Bully, You Punk by Leah Hager Cohen ***1/2. I was expecting this to be better. I would have loved it if the ending hadn't been awful.

147. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo ****. I read this because of Flea's review, in which she described sobbing her way through it. I cried my eyes out, too.

148. Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum ****. This book made me think I should never have kids.

149. Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick ***. I was hoping for more advice on overcoming loneliness.

150. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill ***.

151. Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

152. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson ****1/2. There were several violently shocking moments in this book that made me curse Kate Atkinson for making me read murder mysteries, but I still love her writing.

153. The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert ***

154. Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg ***1/2

155. Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen ***

156. Home by Marilynne Robinson ****1/2. Gilead from another character's perspective. I liked it a lot better.

157. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones ****. I wish I'd read more of her books when I was younger, but they're still great.

158. No Logo by Naomi Klein ***1/2

159. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (audiobook) ***1/2

160. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis ****. Someone (New Kid?) mentioned this as a comfort read and it was very enjoyable, so thanks!

161. Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield ****. I wasn't expecting this to be so sad, but it was very good.

162. Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher

163. The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti ***1/2

164. When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (audiobook) ****. David Sedaris books are definitely ones that work as audiobooks.

165. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan ****1/2. Excellent book (although disturbing enough to make it hard to believe it's really a YA book) and excellent cover.

166. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin ***1/2.

167. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb ***. It kept me interested, but in that trainwreck way that makes me feel icky and is typical of Oprah's book club books.

168.The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood ****1/2

169. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier ***

170. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman ****1/2. This might be my new favourite Neil Gaiman book. I have to read The Jungle Book now.

IFComp part 3 and results

2008-11-13T16:57:00.002-05:00

Violet won! I started playing the other entries thinking it would be hard to beat and at the end I still didn't think anything else was even close. I'm glad the voters largely agreed with me that it was awesome. The few detractors criticised it by saying it was too whimsical, similar to Garden State, but that's a compliment in my opinion. Congratulations, Jeremy! Remember, you can play it here.

I did actually play almost all of the games (there were a couple I couldn't get open), but I didn't end up voting on all of them. The last few that I didn't write reviews for missed out because I didn't play enough to feel I'd given it a fair chance and then just wasn't interested enough to go back to in time for the deadline. I might at least follow the walkthrough of Nightfall, which got second place, since it was obviously a good game, even if the story didn't really grab my interest. My last few reviews are below.

Nerd Quest (3)
I could only play this game via the web interface, which is kind of annoying. I'm not sure if I should count that as a design flaw, though. It's a pain that it doesn't recognise "X" or even "EXAMINE". Well, that was short, although I did cheat and use the walkthrough. There should really be a separate competition for people who just want to make a new IF program.

The Lucubrator (5)
It works pretty well, but I wasn't sure what my objective was so I ended up following the walkthrough mostly. I tried figuring parts out on my own, but apparently my actions, while similar, weren't exactly the right sequence to win, which was annoying. There was too much waiting around for text dumps and I just wasn't engaged. It would help to have more description of the player character's thoughts and motivations.

Escape from the Underworld (6)
I like that there's a clear description of what I'm supposed to be doing and why, although it would be even better to have it be part of the story. Yay for implemented scenery! Ooh, and it understood when I mistyped "receptionist". I still didn't solve the problems without the walkthrough, and I think I somehow got the game into an unwinnable state, but I quite liked it.

something is better than nothing

2008-11-11T14:24:00.003-05:00

I was travelling over the weekend and didn't even think about NaBloPoMo until I'd already missed a couple of days, and then what's the point in continuing?

I'm also having the same problem with working. I messed up the star thing last week and have been struggling ever since. I'm going home for a long visit in less than two weeks, so now I'm at the point where I feel like I'm not going to get enough done before then, so why not just give up and do nothing? It doesn't help that my non-work-related to-do list is long enough that I could probably fill up most of my time just working on that.

This kind of all-or-nothing thinking is one of the cognitive distortions that came up in cognitive behavioural therapy for social anxiety, but obviously my problem with it is more widespread than just when thinking about social situations.

I'm going to try to at least go back to only taking 10 minute breaks with an hour of work in between, even if I don't do everything else. I really have to get these things done before I go:

PCR, westerns on infected cells
extended time course
PCR on cDNA from last week
westerns on lysates from last week
cloning
talk to B about 2D gel
analyse data from last week
plan transfections
ask T about expression
repeat westerns for different treatments

justice

2008-11-06T22:18:00.001-05:00

Last week, I got a letter from the US Parole Office in Minnesota, which kind of freaked me out when I saw the envelope. It said someone had been convicted of wire fraud and identity theft and I'd been identified as a potential victim of the crime. At first I thought it must have been a mistake, but then I remembered that a year ago, somebody used my credit card number to buy two $199 Panera gift cards.

I googled the perpetrator's name and the first thing that came up was a story about a database breach, so I got worried that it wasn't the Panera cards and someone had stolen all my personal information. That court case was from 2006, though. Apparently, he didn't learn from the 8 months in prison or 100 hours of community service he got for that crime. He started selling fraudulently paid-for gift cards on craigslist while on supervised release.

The letter came with a form on which I could describe the impact of his crime in order to help determine his sentence. The thing is, it didn't really have much of an impact on me. I called my credit card company and they removed the charges. There was the slight inconvenience of not having a card for a week and having to fill in some paperwork, but I didn't have to see a therapist about it (one of the questions from the form) and nothing ever showed up on my credit report. That doesn't mean I want him to get off without punishment, especially since it's not a first offence, but I don't know that more time in prison would be any more effective, anyway.

I'm leaning towards just ignoring it (or would that get me in trouble?). Maybe I should call the parole officer and ask what I should do.

instant chocolate cake reviews

2008-11-05T22:21:00.003-05:00

I tried this 5-minute chocolate cake recipe a while ago and it was okay, but not chocolatey enough. It was pretty much exactly the same as the chocolate cake recipe that most of my family inexplicably loved and requested for their birthdays growing up, but that always disappointed me, too.

Several weeks ago, I was feeling cavalier with my personal information and signed up for a bunch of free samples. My free instant molten chocolate cake arrived today and it was very yummy. I'm almost certainly not going to ever buy it, though, so I started wondering if there's a way to recreate it from real ingredients.

Apparently, it's just a single serving of regular cake mix, which would be cheaper, but still wouldn't allow me to make it whenever I feel like chocolate cake. So what is in the mix that makes it properly chocolatey?

yes we can

2008-11-04T23:43:00.002-05:00

Or rather, yes, (some of) you can. You rock, America!

I have given up on despairing over ruining my experiment today because I couldn't stop refreshing various electoral maps and am just happy about the election.

Ugh

2008-11-03T23:57:00.002-05:00

NaBloPoMo is still not off to a good start. I'm still in lab, typing one-handed, while waiting for something to thaw so I can set up the experiment I should've done 9 hours ago. At least I realised just in time that I needed to hurry up and post. Today has sucked*, since I completely messed up my star plan, but I will get back on track tomorrow.

*Which reminds me, someone please reassure me that when the registrar's office says it takes 10 business days to process a visa renewal form, that 10 days allows for things like the form-processor taking a whole week off.

NaBloPoMo

2008-11-02T23:56:00.001-05:00

I already missed a day and I only have 4 minutes to make it for today, but I've done this for the past two years and enjoyed it, so I'll try it again. I wasn't going to, because I'll be travelling for quite a bit of the month, but I can write posts ahead of time for those days. I know I never end up writing the posts I've been meaning to get around to, but it would be good to get back into the swing of blogging again.

The latest Plan

2008-10-20T23:58:00.004-04:00

I have been slacking badly since I last got to 30 stars. I have more (of more interest) to blog about this, but it's getting late and I need to publically recommit to The Plan so I don't waste any more time. I'm trying something more extreme this time.

I will:

exercise
eat 5 servings of fruit/vegetables a day
go to bed by midnight
leave for lab by 9.30am
immediately start by planning for 15, writing for 15 and reading for 30 minutes*
spend less than one hour at lab a day online, in 10 minute increments, separated by at least an hour of work

If I do all that for the 31 days left before I go home, I'm buying a new mp3 player. I guess I'll have to buy it earlier and then give it to a homeless person if I don't make it.

Now I'd better go to bed so I can wake up on time and start.

*unless any time-dependent work-related thing has to come first

IFcomp08 part 2

2008-10-16T21:17:00.001-04:00

The Missing Piece
Channel Surfing
Trein
Opening Night
Magic

Keep reading...

The Missing Piece
I didn't rate this because I didn't want to play it for reasons unrelated to quality. It could be a perfectly good game for all I know, but I don't want to listen to music while playing IF. I also don't want to use a mouse or have pop-up windows.

Channel Surfing (5)
The start of the second sentence of the intro, "You open our eyes", intrigued me. I was wondering if it was some interesting thing to do with the player character and the actual player being combined. Unfortunately, it was just a typo.

I'm already hitting unimplemented things and a guess-the-verb problem. And now a guess-the-noun problem. The scene description doesn't change, even after someone leaves. And another game-stopping guess-the-verb problem This game had beta testers; did they really all psychically guess the right verbs?

The story was too didactic for me. If it was meant to be satire, it needs to be a lot subtler. On top of that, the puzzles weren't very challenging. I mainly just walked through the options as presented to me. The author admits that it's too easy and short for non-newbies, but I don't think that's a good choice for a competition entry.

Trein (5)
Implementation problems. I was definitely spoiled with Violet. Instead of just saying I can't do the obvious action, it would help if the game prevented me in such a way that hinted at what my real objective is. Or just have the puzzles be clued better to begin with.

Ooh, a guess-the-preposition problem. Haven't seen one of those before. I'm using the walkthrough to get around the numerous guess-the-verb problems, though.

Wait, what? I didn't do what I was supposed to do and yet somehow I win? That's kind of a letdown. There are better endings available, but still, if there are no consequences, why should I be invested in achieving the goals of the game? Also, "you can see ... An Evidence" ? That is the most egregious piece of telling, not showing, I think I've seen so far. Put some effort in, next time.

It wasn't as bad as I think I've made it sound here. I did get to two different endings without much help and I was interested enough in getting to the end to play it the second time.

Opening Night (6)
I wasn't expecting much from the opening, just a few puzzles to solve to get backstage. Then it got weird. I didn't get all the puzzles without hints, but that was mainly due to not expecting locations to change between visits, rather than them being challenging. I liked the story and the unexpected turn it took, but I think it could've been better done.

Magic (6)
This game was frustrating because I wanted to like it, and yet I couldn't figure out the main puzzles without help because they weren't at all intuitive or clued well enough. I got stuck at the end for a bit, having done everything mentioned in the hints. It wasn't entirely clear to me what the main objective of the game was. It should really be obvious what I was trying to achieve all that time. Instead of having a goal, though, I just did whatever I could with the objects I came across. I think hints that aren't dependent on location would help with knowing what the overall objective is. I could have maybe figured out more of the puzzles if the trick were reciprocal, too, or worded to make the directionality clearer. Still, I enjoyed it before the frustration kicked in. It has the potential to be a good game.

stuck

2008-10-15T18:48:00.003-04:00

I had a thesis committee meeting last week. Unfortunately, preparing for it coincided with the breakdown of my Plan (I got enough stars to keep my pretty yarn, but then it all fell apart), so instead of being sensible and working consistently, I dragged out the process of writing my progress report and powerpoint presentation over a painfully long period and got no sleep.

The main part of my meeting seemed to go fine (aside from a committee member suggesting a simple explanation that could account for all my data in a way I hadn't thought of). It was nice to hear that my advisor's standards for completing one part of my project were ridiculously high (let's just hope he doesn't decide high standards are better).

The worst part was actually the part not related to my project. At the beginning of the meeting, I had to stand outside the room while my advisor and committee talked about me. It was awkward enough just standing there, because there's a student lounge right outside the room. Luckily, a student I knew was there so I could chat with her and distract myself from the fact that they were probably talking about how much I suck (for at least ten minutes).

As much as I would hate to be told I suck, I'm starting to wish grad students got official feedback about progress somehow. Employees in the lab have to have an annual review meeting where they get given something in writing about what they're doing well and what they need to improve. I'm not sure I see the point of my advisor telling my committee about me, since nothing is written down. There is a form they have to fill out to say I've had the meeting, but it only has space to describe my project and a box to tick if I'm on track to finish at some point, so it doesn't help much. Saying that I'll be fine if I do what I've said I would do isn't enough when I'm not sure I can do what I've planned.

I spend so much time thinking I suck, but then I wonder why nobody ever complains to me directly. It's easy to think that it's just that my advisor is too non-confrontational to say anything negative (which is a realistic option, since I've seen what he put up with from a post-doc who did less than me at my worst). It would be nice to either get some reassurance that I'm doing okay, or know for sure that I should give up on research and find something else to do.

The only time I almost cried in the meeting was when I came back in the room and they sent my advisor out. I was expecting that it would be the same as last time, i.e. they'd ask if I had any problems with my advisor, I'd say no, my advisor would come back and I'd go on with my presentation. Instead, they asked how I thought my progress was going. I said it was going okay, but slower than I'd like. And then immediately regretted it, because of course they asked why. I wasn't about to admit that it's because I'm lazy and I suck, so I said I wasn't sure and just looked stupid instead.

Then they asked if this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my career, which is when I really almost cried. Maybe that's a sign that it's not... Still, I'm not ready to cut off that option completely so I didn't say no, although my non-committal answers probably had the same effect. I tried to say I was just focussing on trying to finish the PhD and I still need to think about what comes next, but one committee member definitely thought I was "profoundly unsettled", which is true, but not something I wanted to admit to. Although, honestly, whether I explicitly admit to being unmotivated and unenthusiastic about research or not, they're hardly going to be fooled into thinking I'm the opposite.

At the end of the meeting, they came back to the topic of what I wanted to do next, because that would affect my project. I.e. if I don't want an academic research career, I could just do the minimum required to finish with a crappy thesis. That made me think my advisor had suggested I'm not good enough to do better. I know there are plenty of more positive interpretations, but this is why I think I'd prefer clearer feedback.

I've spent the week since the meeting mostly avoiding working, because I'm afraid to try in case I do suck. Now I'm supposed to be making a poster for the departmental retreat. It should be easy, since I've already put my results into two different forms in the past week and a half, but I'm stuck. I know I should put some effort into trying to make it good, but I'd really rather just throw something crappy together so that it's obvious I wasn't really trying and therefore my full potential can't be judged.

IFcomp08: interactive fiction liveblogging

2008-10-11T00:21:00.007-04:00

I've been playing the games entered in this year's Interactive Fiction Competition because I beta tested one. I'm not really writing proper reviews, just comments as I play through them. I was mostly trying not to give away spoilers, but I've put them all behind a cut, just in case.

First, though, I'm going to plug Violet, because you should play it, even if you don't care about the competition. Violet was Jeremy's super secret hobby project and I got to beta test it, which means I'm not allowed to vote on it in the competition. It is an awesome game, though, so it's my standard for a 10 as I'm judging.

Here's a link so you don't even need to download anything to play (press enter until you can type). It's about a grad student writing their dissertation, so you're probably the perfect audience. (Unless you're just here for the reviews, in which case you should also play it. It's not just me who likes it (links contain spoilers).)

Games reviewed below:

The Lighthouse
Freedom
Piracy 2.0
When Machines Attack
Grief
Affliction
The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
Dracula's Underground Crypt
Buried in Shoes
The Hall of the Fount of Artois
The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
Red Moon
Snack Time!
Riverside
Everybody Dies
Recess at Last
Project Delta
A Date With Death
April in Paris
Cry Wolf

Keep reading...

The Lighthouse (1)
There doesn't seem to be anything special about any object in this game. And it's over already... That was anti-climactic.

Freedom (4)
A game about social anxiety! I'm having trouble guessing the right commands, unfortunately, and there isn't enough detail in places. I'm not sure if I missed something at the bookstore. I'm attempting to talk to a young woman now, which is kind of awkward, since she just keeps listening intently and not saying anything. I couldn't figure out what else to do so I looked at the walkthrough. I was only one turn from finishing, but I wouldn't have guessed it. It's kind of sweet.
I wanted to like this, but I think it could have been much better. I'm sorry I can't give you a better score, anonymous game author, but I will send you a virtual hug.

Piracy 2.0 (7)
The intro doesn't really excite me, but it is an actual game. Things are implemented and there are puzzles and a scoring system (my standards have dropped already). I've solved several puzzles, which involved some thought, but I just got to a computer with several levels of commands and I'm not sure I'm interested enough to go through them all. Also, I've probably been spoiled by beta testing a very well implemented game, but there are some things that should work that don't.

When Machines Attack (5)
Too much text at the beginning (which unfortunately includes a "your" for "you're"), some of which could have been broken up by turns, and then I got an error message on my first turn... Not a great start, but it could get more interesting. Or not... It just told me I'm in some sort of locker room, described some lockers, then another character told me that "as you can tell, ... this is a locker room". Thanks for that. So far all of my turns but one have been entering directions to follow that character around. This fiction is not very interactive. I gave up on even skimming all the enormous text dumps.

Now that I finally get to start playing, it's not clear what to do. I just looked at the hints. Here's a hint for the author, if your game is so simple that you feel the need to patronise a player for looking at the hints, perhaps that's a sign that you should make it more interesting.
Apparently, I need to go back to one of the places on the tour. I went to see if there was a map or anything and found the walkthrough. It's six screens long! That's way too long for me to bother figuring out myself, I'm afraid. I'll see how far I get just following the walkthrough, but it's pretty tedious and the diagrams aren't displayed properly in the program I'm using.
I'm giving up. The game works, but there's way too much text and it takes too many turns to walk around between places. It's just not interesting enough to spend this much time on.

Grief (6)
This game is a relief after When Machines Attack - reasonably clear objectives without walls of text. It's an interesting idea to have to replay multiple times to see how it affects the ending. It didn't make me care enough to want to bother, though.

Affliction (7)
This one isn't bad, but it's not entirely obvious what I'm supposed to be doing at first. Oh, it does become clearer, and quite gruesome. Somehow I'm not that interested, though. Maybe my character should react in a slightly less understated way to the gruesomeness.

The Absolute Worst IF Game in History (1)
Yeah, the title pretty much says it all. I'm not sure what the point was.

Dracula's Underground Crypt (6)
This had some amusing bits, and it's reasonably well implemented, but apparently there isn't a real point to it.

Buried in Shoes (8)
This is more literally interactive fiction than game. It's more of a non-linear short story, that makes use of your actions to move through the story. Some of the transitions didn't work too well, because I was typing too fast to see some screens that were unexpected. It's an interesting use of the medium.

The Hall of the Fount of Artois (4)
This one is okay, although the lack of command shortcuts is annoying and the one joke I've come across was painfully set up. I just hit a bug that might make it unplayable, though. It's claiming I don't have something that's in my inventory. I went back and followed the walkthrough and that wouldn't let me pick up something. There's a bad guess the verb problem, too. I'm having enough trouble managing the inventory (while using the walkthrough!) that I'm giving up.

The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom (3)
The title didn't look promising, but I've only read the intro and I already have an objective, which is good. Unfortunately, I'm immediately having trouble finding a verb that is recognised. I am completely stuck, which obviously is not entirely the fault of the game, but it's hard to give a better score when there are no hints or anything to make it possible to play without getting the first puzzle.

Okay, I saw somewhere that it's possible to cheat by opening the file in a text editor. I so wouldn't have got the answer without a hint. And then it turns out not to have been worth the trouble. It was very short and I'm pretty sure I dropped something and then still had it in my inventory. If it had had hints, I might have given it a 4, since the puzzles really didn't involve much interactivity, but I think a one point penalty for the guess-the-verb problem is fair.

Red Moon (5)
After examining everything in the room, I wasn't sure what else I could try. The hints made it sound interesting, so I wanted to figure it out myself, but I didn't. I don't think I could have.

Feedback for the author, since that was your reason for entering a game that really wasn't ready:

If you have to explain the story, in a separate FAQ, to someone who's just won, that's a sign there's something missing from your game. That information should have been incorporated into the ending as part of the narrative.
I don't think the goal of making the player feel "weirded out" is a very good one. I didn't feel weirded out, just frustrated at the lack of clues, puzzles, things to interact with.
If you want people to repeat actions, it would help to have things change the second time. Why would anyone expect a third time to be any different?
Unimplemented things are extra disappointing in a small, one-room game.

Snack Time! (8)
This is cute. I like the premise and the fact that the first puzzle is easy enough to get started on. Hey, I did the whole thing without a walkthrough (although I only got 40/50 points) and it kept me engaged and amused the whole time! Great game.

Riverside (1)
Things that should be implemented aren't. I'm not sure if I should be doing anything other than waiting for information to be revealed to me in text dumps. Guess the verb problems that the walkthrough gets wrong... I give up. Actually, I was only 2 turns from the end, so I finished it and now I'm dropping its score, which seems to be what the authors intended. Congratulations.

Everybody Dies (9)
I liked this one a lot. It had more depth than Snack Time, but was just as engaging and I hardly needed hints. I did get frustrated at one point when the game wouldn't let me look at something that was right there. It had a reason not to show me, in terms of the puzzle, but not in terms of the story. I really liked the illustrations, too.

Recess at Last (6)
The game worked and I finished it without needing any hints. It felt very straightforward but still took a while to work through, so the puzzles felt like pointless busywork. I guess that set the scene well, but I didn't really care about recess. Hmm, I just looked at the walkthrough and apparently I solved one of the puzzles in a way that required extra busywork, so maybe I'll add another point for having an alternative solution.

Project Delta (1)
The game is going to train me on the game interface. So, it's not even pretending that I'm a character in the game? And yet, I'm a fit, white woman. Of course. I also "wear" a tattoo and don't know who I am. Not a promising start.

I don't like only having a limited number of actions to choose from. I also don't like not being able to type more than one character.

Um, that wasn't a game; that was a tutorial. And not one that made me want to play the the actual game, when it appears, either.

A Date With Death (5)
I bet this author is a Terry Pratchett fan. Let's hope this is more in the vein of the early (but not too early) Discworld works, rather than more recent ones. Too much text already, but it isn't badly written. ASK (character) ABOUT X should be implemented. I think a character just walked into this locked room and left again, without letting in the person who's trying to get in... I'm getting bored, hiding in here. I can't figure out how to get out of my hiding place, though. I think I may have to restart. I got a bit further the next time, but I'm still just waiting around. I think I'm running out of patience, especially since the hints suggest this is a much longer game.

April in Paris (6)
Decent writing and gameplay so far. Oh, wait. Now I can't seem to move in any direction. And now I can again. That was the only problem I noticed. Aside from that, it's pretty well implemented. The solutions to the puzzles seem a little arbitrary, though. I gave up and used the hints most of the way. I wouldn't have guessed a lot of the solutions by myself and the hints didn't really help until they gave the answer away.

Cry Wolf (7)
This looks interesting. A couple of awkward sentences and unimplemented things and errors so far, unfortunately. I hope the thing I can't take isn't necessary later. I like the puzzles, although I had to use the hints to figure out how to do what I wanted to do.

Um, I'm having a bit of trouble believing this story now. Highlight for complete spoilers: You splint the wolf's broken leg and let it sleep in your bed with you (let's ignore for the moment how unwise that is), then you wake up the next morning and the wolf is gone, but instead there's a woman with a broken, splinted arm in your bed. Even supposing you think you're in the real world where werewolves don't exist, why would you not wonder where the wolf went? And wouldn't you recognise your own splint?

Someone really likes skylights. And wow is this character dense.

The transitions between scenes aren't very smooth. I can't tell if I'm meant to do something to get to the next one, or if time will pass anyway. I'm pretty sure this isn't meant to be a time travel game, but time just jumped back several turns. Aargh. Did I just make the game stuck by not asking the right questions? Apparently, yes. That is not good. I should have saved. Okay, I just restarted. Despite all the flaws, I am interested enough that it was worth replaying to continue. Um, this is kind of creepy. Do I have to pretend I think everything is fine to get her to keep talking to me?

Now I'm not sure how to rate this game. I think it's the one I've gotten the most interested in (aside from Violet) and the puzzles were good, although could've been clued better. There were quite a lot of unimplemented things and guess-the-verb problems and I didn't like how slow the player character was to get what was going on, but I think it could be a very good game with some more revisions.

help me shop for a cruise

2008-10-09T23:32:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking of things I want to post about a lot, so I didn't realise it'd been over a month since I last blogged... I'm sad that I'm out of the habit of it. I did think maybe I should wait until I had something more substantial to post about, but if I did that, I'd never start back up, so instead you can help me shop!

The cruise was one of the things I was going to blog about at one point. My best friend at home got engaged a couple of months ago and decided she wanted to have her wedding on a cruise to avoid the enormous family function it would have to be at home. She started out saying it would probably be March or April next year and she would give everyone plenty of notice so they could take time off. Then she found a cheap deal on a 12 night cruise at the end of November.

I was all excited at first and agreed to go, but I'm feeling less enthused now. Twelve days is a pretty long time. Plus all our joint friends are either overseas or too poor to go, so it will be just me and her fiance's friends and their families. I'm sharing a room with her fiance's grandmother. I'm trying not to think about the many opportunities there'll be for social awkwardness.

This week, I asked for some advice about what to pack and learned that there will be two formal nights on board. Aside from the fact that I'm not sure I'll want to participate in all the enforced socialising, I haven't worn anything remotely formal since moving to the US five years ago, at least. I did think to look for a dress to wear to the actual wedding a couple of weeks ago, which was too late for any normal stores to still have Summer clothes, but perfect timing for the big discounts at the fancy consignment store. I got two dresses for $30 (although I'll have to do some minor modifications to the straps to get them to fit properly). Neither is really formal, but I'm hoping one will do and the other will work for the wedding. I went shopping again last night and bought a sparkly, purple dress, but now I'm having doubts about keeping it. It's pretty, but I can't imagine I'll ever wear it again. If only I were flying home before the cruise, instead of straight to the city the ship is leaving from, I could've picked up my semi-formal and formal dresses from high school. Hmm... I wonder if my friend will have any room in her suitcase.

Anyway, I was also informed that it would be good to have two pairs of togs (swimsuits). I have one pair that are maybe 8 years old. I still like them, but I now have to tie the straps into a halter neck, since they've detached from the back. I also left my lap-swimming togs out on the balcony for weeks, so they are now stretched and baggy. Clearly, I need new ones, but now is not the most convenient time to buy swimwear.

It's hard to guess at what will fit or look any good, when I can't try things on, so I was just going to go for plain, lap-swimming togs, but these fish are kind of cute:

And I'm also wondering if I should risk this set being terribly unflattering, because it could be cuter:

I did briefly consider this top, but, while I'm a lot happier with my body than I was, I'm still way too self-conscious for a bikini, I think.
I know I could just order them both and return whatever looks bad, but I'd appreciate any advice. It doesn't help that each of my measurements suggests a different size.

I am also going to need fancy shoes, but at least they still sell non-sensible shoes in Autumn so I can try them on. Unfortunately, again, I have a perfectly good (and comfortable) pair at home.

I'm not sure why I owned more dressy clothes at home and none here. I think I gave up on doing things I didn't really enjoy to try to fit in when I moved here. I also haven't had any events like weddings or graduations to go to, and I've worn jeans to things that my mum would've made me dress up for, too. I just found some make up recently that I'd brought with me when I first moved here, but haven't touched since. I think I threw it out since it was so old. Can I go to formal events without make up or am I going to have to buy that, too?

meh... farm share

2008-09-01T14:08:00.003-04:00

I'm kind of over the farm share at the moment. That might be because we're getting less interesting vegetables now. It might also be because last week's recipes were kind of failures (and I didn't bother taking photos). They weren't terrible, but I doubt I'll be making them again.

I wasn't sure what to do with leeks, other than potato and leek soup, which I've made before. Instead, I made this Leek and Tomato Crumble. I think maybe my crumble-to-filling ratio was too high, because it was a lot better when I scraped some of that off and put some cheese on top instead, but it was a little bland or doughy for me.
The other recipe I tried was Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes and Corn, which was nice, just not anything special.

This week, I made quesadillas. They were supposed to be Pumpkin, Pepper and Corn Quesadillas, but when I went to get the pumpkin out, it was all mouldy and mushy, after only a week. I thought they were supposed to last into Winter. I added some black beans and extra tomatoes and capsicum instead and they were delicious.
I also made cucumber and radish salad, which I'm not optimistic about and I'm going to make fried rice with whatever I have left in the crisper this evening, too.

I know choosing meals based on what's in season is the right, polar-bear-saving thing to do, but I'm kind of looking forward to being able to cook whatever I want again, instead of finding something to do with the weird/abundant ingredient of the week.

rboc

2008-08-19T23:36:00.006-04:00

So far, I've worked 55% of this week

I forgot an important rule yesterday, though, so even though I spent 7 hours working and met my 50% goal, I also spent nearly 5 hours online.

Starting today, no more than 3 hours a day of internet while at work.

For a while now I've been wondering if I'd started developing psychosomatic RSI. I know two people who are almost completely incapacitated by it, so I thought maybe I was just imagining that my wrist was sore. It does seem to get worse when I spend 5 hours at my incredibly unergonomic desk, though, so today I tried to fix that.

I now have a spare box of tissue culture plates to rest my feet on, a stolen external keyboard and a stack of phone books to sit my laptop on.

If nothing else, it's already improved my posture.

Luckily, knitting didn't seem to hurt my wrist.

My patriotic yarn shipped yesterday, but it has to cross the whole country, so I'm not sure when it will arrive.

I got a real-life ravelympic medal, kind of. They're selling souvenir pins so I got one.

I have farm share pictures again!

I missed a couple of weeks because one week I went out and ate previously frozen meals (usually I'm reluctant to reduce my stocks, which kind of defeats the purpose of having them, but this time I was happy to get rid of the borscht, even though it did taste fine) and the other the person in charge forgot to pick up our veges.

This week I made bean and kale (and various other things I had lying around) ragu. It was a lot yummier than I expected (especially considering I mistakenly added the beans 50 minutes before I should have). Also spicier, since I just put the whole two peppers I had in.

I also made cucumber salad, since I didn't mind the one a housemate made for a barbecue recently. Mine wasn't terrible (mainly thanks to lots of fresh basil), but I still don't like cucumber.

I got another cucumber this week, unfortunately, but at least it's only one. Plus corn and beans and a little pumpkin (according to the Americans, it's a winter squash, but it looks like a pumpkin to me).

I'm not sure what to do with the corn. I like corn a lot, but that means I'm a little reluctant to waste it on recipes where frozen corn is just fine. I do have four ears of it now, though, so I can afford to mix it with something.

I have to get up early and go to the gym tomorrow, and then I have a busy day of work planned, so I should go to bed. I guess I'll add the photos later, sorry.

Bonus bullet:

I just got to lab and am unable to focus on anything around the distance my laptop is now at. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. I'm wearing the glasses I got last time I was home because they were free and they're helping a bit. I hope my vision comes back, though.

The Plan: yet another fresh start

2008-08-18T10:59:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted a Plan post in a while, because I've been slacking. Well, I've still been mostly doing the important things, like exercising and working more than I used to and eating vegetables. I haven't been doing everything every day, though, and as time went on I was getting more and more slack. Last week, after several above-average weeks, I only worked 26% of the time... Clearly, I need some discipline back. I think the 30-days-in-a-row plan was better than the 90% goal, which very quickly became out of reach. I'm out of sync with calendar months already, so I can just restart if I miss a day.

I posted about an especially productive week when I worked 71% of the time, so I know I can do a lot better than I did last week. I only got that high, though, because I had a terribly unproductive day and hadn't given up on the whole star thing, so I wanted to make up for it. The Official Star Arbitrator agreed that I could get two stars the next day by not using internet before 3pm, I think, and I tried to work as much as possible before then. I ended up using only 15 minutes of internet all day and was surprised at how easy it was (well, maybe not easy, but it was possible) , so I continued doing that.

It worked pretty well until I ran out of stuff I'd already planned to do. My worst problem comes when I have to think about my project and decide what experiments to do. I can only think about that at a very superficial level before I get too anxious and have to distract myself to stop myself from freaking out completely. Last week, I spent a lot of time distracting myself.

I'm not sure what to do about that, except force myself to think. So, back to The Plan. I even found an incentive this time so that I won't just give up when it gets hard again. This is where the rainbow-coloured yarn I mentioned yesterday comes in. I couldn't justify spending $30 on a pair of socks, but as a reward for working, it would be worth it. I was going to make it that if I got 30 stars in a row, I could buy the yarn, but I didn't want to get to the end and find someone else had already bought it. Plus, losing something is supposed to be a stronger disincentive than forgoing a gain, so I bought the yarn and will have to give it away if I don't get 30 stars.

So, what I need to do each day is:

exercise
eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables
leave home by 9.30am
not use my computer for anything non-work related until I've done half an hour of work and have a list of things to do that day
no blogs until I've done another hour of work
only selected blogs until I've done another hour of work after that
work at least 50% of the time
go to bed by midnight

I just added the rule about working 50%, which seems like it could be hard, but I'd really like to do a lot more than that, and I know I can. Maybe I should have bonus rewards or something for getting that percentage higher, but it was hard enough to find one incentive.

ravelympic gold!

2008-08-17T21:53:00.005-04:00

I finished my socks!

(Trust me; there is a second one.)

I think I may already have become one of those weird knitters who is constantly knitting socks. I didn't really see the point, since why would I spend so much on yarn, plus many hours of work, when I could just buy Smartwool socks. There are so many pretty sock patterns, though, and gorgeous yarn and they're pretty quick to knit... I just bought some more yarn in C'landian colours to make patriotic socks with, hopefully while the Olympics are still on. And I couldn't resist this beautiful, rainbow-coloured yarn, but I have a Plan for that. I hope that will last me quite a while.

knitting for my country

2008-08-12T23:22:00.003-04:00

I entered the Sock Put event of the knitting olympics held at Ravelry. This means I'm planning to knit a pair of socks between the opening and closing ceremonies. I thought this was going to be tough, but I've already turned both heels (the picture was from Sunday night), so I'm pretty sure I'll finish early. Now I wish I'd signed up for more events.

books #104-122 (2008)

2008-08-07T17:14:00.002-04:00

104. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas ***1/2. This was another of the New York Times' best books of last year, but I didn't like it as much as the others I read in January. I could see that it was well written, and I'd probably recommend it, but I felt like I just didn't really get it. The book club questions at the end really made me feel stupid. Usually they're things like "The main character was worried about money. Has there been a time in your life when you've worried about money?", but this time they could've been from a literature class.

105. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (audiobook) ****. I enjoyed this. The person reading it did a good job of giving everyone a different voice and she did a great range of English accents. Her Canadian was a bizarre cross between Irish and American, though.

106. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler ***. If only it were as easy to gain self-esteem in real life as it is in a YA novel.

107. Thumbsucker by Walter Kirn ***1/2. I think I actually liked the movie of this better than the book.

108. The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar ****.

109. Ellington Boulevard: a Novel in A-flat by Adam Langer ***1/2.

110. Bonk: the curious coupling of science and sex by Mary Roach ***. Just before I read this, I had a conversation with housemates where MRI studies of people having sex came up. They all thought it was bizarre and teased the housemate who brought the subject up for knowing about it, so I was kind of embarrassed to be reading it.

111. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga ****. This was good, and now nominated for the Booker prize.

112. Nowhere is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden (audiobook) ***1/2. I liked this a lot more than I was expecting to.

113. March by Geraldine Brooks (audiobook) ***. The author certainly capture the March parents' sanctimoniousness, despite giving them flaws.

114. The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg (audiobook) ***1/2. This was an interesting story, about a woman whose sister's revelations about her childhood force her to change the way she thinks about her family.

115. When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson ***.

116. That Night by Alice McDermott ***1/2.

117. Life by Gwyneth Jones ***. I wanted to like this book about a woman scientist struggling with sexist bosses and balancing work and family more than I did. It didn't help that the science didn't seem real.

118. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow ***. This was interesting, but I think he was mistaken in one of his first arguments, so I was sceptical from then on.

119. Fear and Other Uninvited Guests by Harriet Lerner ***.

120. Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan ****. I tend to find novels about Indian families too similar to enjoy any one particularly, but this was good. Maybe it helped that it was about an Indian family in Malaysia.

121. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott ***. I thought the author of March got a major event in Little Women wrong, so I had to reread it, but it turns out I was mistaken. Although, honestly, what was supposed to be a major event was so downplayed that it seems reasonable that I conflated it with a similar, more dramatic event.

122. The Concubine by Norah Lofts. I read a review somewhere saying this was a much more accurate version than The Other Boleyn Girl. I probably didn't need to read another version of the story, but it's interesting to see the differences.

123. The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott ****. I almost forgot this one because I read it in a comic book store. It's another with no words that I kind of feel it's cheating to count. It was very interesting.

cultural exchange

2008-08-01T22:36:00.003-04:00

My laptop died suddenly yesterday and the IT people can't even look at it until Monday. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, other than go to sleep early and spend a lot of time in the Prestigious U computer lab. That's where I am now, unintentionally eavesdropping on summer school kids from Thailand and Israel teaching each other about their home countries.

"So, the ousted prime minister..."
"Wait, what does ousted mean?"
"Well... it's kind of psychological..."

farm share

2008-07-29T21:45:00.004-04:00

This wasn't a very interesting week of farm share cooking. I didn't even take photos of the red curry I made with the eggplant and beans (and some of the fennel) because that's something I make ordinarily.

I did make cucumber pancakes for breakfast on Saturday, though. The cucumber taste was quite well disguised, but I was lazy and used regular flour instead of rice flour (or cream of wheat) so the pancakes were kind of doughy. They definitely would have been better crispier, but they made quite a good vehicle for ketchup, at least.

Since most of the recipes and suggestions for fennel that didn't mention any liquorice taste involved roasting the fennel, I made roasted fennel and potato salad. It was yummy, but in spite of, rather than because of, the fennel. I don't think I'll be buying any fennel on my own.

This week the vegetables were less exotic. We got potatoes, carrots, bell peppers (capsicum), spring onions and tomatoes. And a little more chard (silverbeet) and cucumber (sigh...). The more conventional vegetables did at least come in exciting colours. We got purple beans! And a purple pepper.

bullets

2008-07-27T14:45:00.007-04:00

I spent about an hour on Friday trying to write an email to a professor at another university, asking for a reagent. I even wrote a blog post begging for advice on how to phrase my request. I didn't post it, though, because a friend, who is a professor, showed up on google talk just at the right time and immediately told me what to say. If only I had read that day's PhD comic, instead of avoiding google reader in the name of being productive, I would have known to ask sooner.

I included that hour in my tally of time spent working, even though it kind of felt like cheating, since I didn't really have anything to show for it. I certainly didn't do it for fun, though.

I never posted a Plan post for this month, because I was feeling too pathetic about my lack of productivity. But! I just had my most productive week all year. I worked 71% of the time I spent at lab (80% of the last four days)! Over 31 hours! That's approaching an actual work week!

I was definitely flagging by Friday, and seriously doubting my interest in science, but hopefully I can keep working like this.
I saw the therapist this week and told her I've been feeling unmotivated. After I rejected several incentives for doing more work, she suggested I not let myself read unless I'd done a certain amount.

My feeling horror at that suggestion might indicate that it would be a useful one. I'm not sure I can do it, though.

I told her that I wasn't sure I wanted to keep doing research like this after I finish my PhD. She asked if I'd be interested in doing research in the humanities instead. As if doing another PhD in an area I've never studied, with many fewer job opportunities than what I'm doing now was a reasonable idea.

She also suggested library science, since I like books. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't pay me to sit there and read all the books, though.

I forgot to tell her the part about how maybe I'm unmotivated because I think I suck at what I'm supposed to be doing. That might have been important.

I feel like I have wasted the whole weekend, so far.

I do at least have most of a space invaders baby hat to show for it.

I should at least go to the gym now.

Why is it that blogger likes to put extra lines of space between items on my numbered lists and yet won't put any space at all between bullets?

more farm share

2008-07-23T00:01:00.006-04:00

Maybe I will post what I cook every week. Last week, we got more beets, more cabbage and more kale. And carrots! Maybe we're finally getting to the vegetables I would choose for myself (we got green beans, this week, too!).

I made borscht, which I hated when it was freshly cooked. It didn't even look that pretty, since I think most of my beets were candy cane ones (at least they looked pretty while I was chopping them). I froze two servings of it, since I had too much food, but I was thinking they might sit there a long time before I got around to thawing any. I reheated the rest of the unfrozen portion tonight, and liked it a lot more. I don't think I'll be making it again, still.

I also made plasto, which was yummy. I'd never heard of it before, but it's basically cornbread with greens, onions and cheese (I used feta) baked into the middle. I thought I used a big pile of beet greens and kale, but mine still turned out a lot heavier on the cornbread than the recipe picture.

My attempt to make cucumber palatable was cucumber raita, which was fairly decent, but I'm glad I also made the eggplant chutney to alternate dipping my carrot sticks into.

I also made muffins, because carrot sticks and dips didn't seem like enough for lunches, but I didn't take a photo of them. They were based on this recipe for date and walnut muffins. I used mixed dried fruit and raspberry jam, though, and left out the walnuts, so they're more like christmas cake muffins.

We just got another load of veges today. It seems smaller this week. I almost feel like I might actually have to buy some more. Maybe it's the lack of green leafy things that makes it seem smaller. There's no kale or collard greens or chard or anything. We did get a lot of fennel, which I've never eaten. My housemate assured me it didn't taste like aniseed, but after reading numerous recipes praising it's licorice-like flavour, I'm dubious. Anyone have any suggestions? So far, I'm leaning towards this vegetarian cassoulet, although it's not a very Summery meal.

in which I finally reach the end of my advisor's patience

2008-07-17T00:12:00.005-04:00

I just had a meeting with my advisor in which he finally told me my experiments suck and I need to work harder. He said it very nicely, but still. I made it through without crying, but I'm supposed to go back after I've finished an experiment and go through my crappy plan for what to do next. I'm pretty sure I won't be so successful at holding the tears at bay then.

I feel awful, because I know everything he said is true, and he should be a lot more mad at me than he's acting. I don't know what to say, though. Actually, that's a moot point, because I can't say anything. But, is it worse to let him think I'm stupid and don't know what I should be doing or try to explain that I have no motivation? I suppose the lack of motivation is largely due to the fact that I do think I'm stupid and don't know what to do, anyway...

It would probably be better to spend the time left before the meeting trying to come up with something vaguely intelligent to say about my plan, but instead I'm distracting myself from doom-laden thoughts by reading blogs.

Update: I over-reacted, apparently. I didn't even come close to crying and my advisor didn't hate my plan. I still feel like he should have yelled at me for not working hard enough, though. He also didn't tell me exactly what I should do next, which I kind of wanted, but I guess that means my vague list is okay. I did at least get him to admit that the hypothetical version of the paper he keeps telling me to outline has no actual point yet, so it was reassuring to hear that I could stop squinting at my crappy outline like a magic eye picture, waiting for the 3D central hypothesis to jump out at me.

I shouldn't have looked

2008-07-17T00:12:00.002-04:00

I somewhat reluctantly agreed to go to a Chinese restaurant the other day. I like Chinese food, but the vegetarian options are generally limited to plain vegetables, with none of the yummy sauces. This time, however, I was happy to discover a delicious tofu dish I hadn't tried before. It was so good, in fact, that tonight I looked for recipes online, thinking maybe I would make it myself sometime. The only problem is, all the recipes I found have meat in them. I didn't notice any meaty taste in mine, and the waitress didn't mention it when I asked what the dish was, but now I'm wondering whether it's safe to order again. At least the recipe looks fairly simple, so I can make my own definitely-vegetarian version.

mmm.... farm share

2008-07-13T21:50:00.002-04:00

Last year, I think I threw out my whole farm share, except for two or three meals worth. So far this year, I've only thrown out half a kohlrabi and some cucumber that I'd forgotten about. I am getting sick of green, leafy vegetables, though.

This week's attempt to disguise the kale/collard greens/beet greens was the most successful yet, although it was also the least promising recipe. The beet and green risotto (mostly this recipe) was delicious, and very pretty. I've also tried pasta, dal and chard pie, but except for the chard pie, those mostly seemed like nice dishes that were ruined by the presence of the greenery. Does anyone know when leafy green season finishes? Or have any good recipes to disguise them? I'm also hoping cabbage season finishes soon, although the spring rolls and peanutty coleslaw were good.

The only vegetable I've completely given up on is cucumber. I gave my share to another housemate last week. I think the problem is that they're generally eaten raw, which makes them harder to disguise. I could make tzatziki, but I wouldn't have anything to put it on. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

I finished cooking all my veges yesterday, just in time for another load to arrive tomorrow. Looking for recipes that use as many of them as possible has been a good procrastination technique. Maybe I'll try looking for cucumber ones again now...

abstract opening sentences from a single issue of Nature Subject

2008-07-10T17:32:00.008-04:00

Mechanisms facilitating A are incompletely understood.
The characteristics of B are not fully defined.
The molecular basis of C remains vague.
The mechanisms responsible for D remain enigmatic.
The influence of E1 on E2 remains uncertain.

Someone should create an opening-sentence-o-matic poker machine. I would include "elucidated" as one of the final word options.

slow progress

2008-07-09T15:46:00.004-04:00

I'm trying the m&m reward method for dealing with my inbox. I'm using peanut butter ones. Two for a regular email and three for an extra-guilt-inducing one. I'm down to 14 emails from 36, but three m&ms doesn't feel like enough inducement for the remaining ones. Maybe I'll have to go up to five. Plus a scrabble game.

I also have a problem with accumulating firefox tabs. I meant to blog about my achievement when I went through and closed 130+ of them. I didn't have anywhere near that many open this time, but I just lost them all in a crash. I'm sure there were useful things in there, but right now I'm just feeling relieved that I don't have to deal with them.

Update: I'm down to 5 emails. One of those is a new one from someone I just replied to after 4 months (the person I least wanted to hear from, of course). I had the idea of making it a goal to keep my inbox down to 5 messages, once I got it cleared out, so I'm going to just count it as cleared and start that now. Which means I can go to bed.

wow

2008-07-08T17:11:00.002-04:00

I just did an experiment and got an actual result. I didn't realise how long it's been since that happened until I noticed I was actually interested in playing with the data. It's not anything especially exciting, but I think the last experiment that had a conclusive result and wasn't just a positive control to test an assay was in February. No wonder I've been so unenthusiastic about science lately.

avoidance isn't working

2008-07-07T17:15:00.004-04:00

I spent a large part of Friday doing loads of washing and cleaning my room. The piles of stuff covering every surface had been making me wince every time I had to pick my way across the room for weeks before I could finally be bothered doing something about it. But, now that it's all tidy, it makes me happy just to be in my room.

You'd think I'd learn that it's good to be organised, but I'm still resisting applying that lesson elsewhere. I've been feeling overwhelmed and incompetent today and I think my lab environment is contributing significantly. My inbox has become a museum of guilt-inducing messages and my desk is covered in results and notes from experiments that I haven't written in my lab book and have therefore forgotten the details of. Instead of dealing with any of that, though, I've just become very careful about where I look.

I know I would feel much better if I were on top of my email and lab book, but the pain of dealing with 3-6 months' worth of things I've messed up and people I've let down is too much of a deterrent so far. I did reply to two of the most guilt-inducing emails today, but that took an hour of tear-filled angst and much encouragement, and neither subject is entirely resolved so I don't even get to feel good about my efforts yet.

Maybe I need a more immediate reward system. I want a brownie for every email I deal with, but there are 34 of them...

what should I do?

2008-07-04T11:21:00.003-04:00

It's raining and the gym is closed. And I'm sore from doing 75 (non-consecutive) push-ups yesterday (I've been trying this, minus the pull-ups, since I still don't like the weights machines at the gym), which has been my usual gym substitute. Maybe I will run in the rain, anyway. It is warm.

intuitive eating

2008-07-02T21:02:00.003-04:00

I've been reading a bunch of fat acceptance blogs lately, which has made me think about how I eat. These blogs promote intuitive eating, which means eating exactly what you want, when you're hungry, and stopping when you get full. The idea is that, if you listen to your body and do some exercise, you'll settle at a natural weight that is healthy for you, and it doesn't matter what that weight is.

I'd like to think I don't care about my weight, as long as I'm healthy, but really it does make me smile a little when I weigh myself (although I don't do that often) and see a smaller number or when my clothes are looser (except, I like some of my clothes and don't want to have to stop wearing them). I'm not going to actually do anything to try to lose weight, because I know I don't need to, but I still notice that I'm not as skinny as some people (or that I actually was the thinnest person in my last tap class).

My mum was always telling me (and sales assistants...) that I just needed to lose 5 kg (~10 lb), which now seems too little to worry about, but it was enough to make me feel bad. When I was in high school, she would plan diets and morning walks for us sometimes, but they never lasted long. I always enjoyed the pre-diet binge phase, at least... I used to think that if I had more will-power, I'd become anorexic, and then she'd be sorry, but I leaned more towards overeating just to pretend I didn't care. Looking back at photos now, I can barely see the difference between me and the ballet classmates I felt so enormous beside and I'm sad that my mum could see it then (although, I understand she has her own issues with weight).

For the most part, I've gotten over worrying about whether I should or shouldn't eat something I want, or what people will think if I don't ask for just a tiny piece of cake and I'm mostly happy enough with my body. But, given how much I worry about what people will think in general, I still have trouble with that sometimes.

Even though I'm not actively trying to control my weight, I am trying to control what I eat. A lot of the disordered thinking about food that fat acceptance bloggers write about sounds familiar to me. I feel like, if I didn't have my rules about eating 5 fruits and vegetables a day and only one treat, I would devour the world, too. I have trouble with feelings of scarcity, as though, if I don't eat as much cake as I can while it's there, I'll miss out in some lasting way. Unfortunately, when I don't get a star for a day now, I automatically eat extra, just because there's no penalty so I might as well stock up while I can. I also tend to eat too much of something just because it tastes good, even if I'm not hungry.

Aside from thoughts of scarcity, I also don't eat whatever I want because I'm lazy (and frugal - I hate throwing stuff out once I've paid for it). I cook a whole week's meals at once so I don't have to do anything when I get home from lab. If I were to try to figure out what I wanted to eat on a particular day, I'd have to cook a lot more often, and really, I wouldn't. I'd just decide I wanted toast for dinner, the way I did for a long time before instituting the vegetable rule.

Despite reading many blog entries by people who have learnt to eat well by paying attention to what they actually feel like eating, I'm sceptical about whether it would work for me. They still sound as naturally virtuous as my housemate who claims he has a sweet tooth because he likes fruit a lot (who irritated me yesterday by acting horrified at the pile of 4 or 5 chocolate wrappers after I'd eaten my (generous) treat). I don't trust that I would get used to being able to have whatever I want and not eat too much junk. Plus, I'm pretty sure that I dislike vegetables enough that I'd never decide I actually wanted to eat 5 servings of them in a day. Is it worth not being intuitive about eating, in order to ensure I get enough nutrients?

Right now, my food is being controlled more by the farm share we signed up for than anything else. I've been eating salads for lunch, even though I usually hate salad, just because they keep giving us lettuce. Last year, when I wasn't cooking, I threw out most of my share of farm vegetables, so I've been proud of myself for eating everything so far (except the cilantro that shrivelled before my weekly cooking day). Would it be better to throw out what I don't actually like?

I think I would also have trouble figuring out what it is I would like to eat. If I'm going out to eat and therefore have unlimited choices, I can never pick a restaurant I specifically feel like (and not entirely because I don't want to impose my choices on others), although I do better at picking from a finite menu. I very rarely have specific cravings for anything, I don't ever get bored of eating several meals of the same leftovers and I've pretty much eaten the same breakfast every day for the past few years. I don't know if that means that I shouldn't bother with intuitive eating, or that I should really try to develop the ability to figure out what I want to eat.

In any case, I'm not giving up on the 5-a-day rule now, because I do feel better eating this way. Maybe I'll try think about what I really want to eat more, though.

books #83-103 (2008)

2008-06-29T12:14:00.000-04:00

I thought trying to read 200 books this year would take some effort, but I'm ahead of the required pace so far and I haven't even noticed reading more than usual.

83. The Next Thing on My List by Jill Smolinski **. I finally made it to the library, but with only 5 minutes before it closed and I lost my ability to pick anything interesting off the shelves under pressure. This was fairly bland chick lit, although it actually took almost half the book before I could tell which guy she was going to end up with. The list in the title is a list of things to do before turning 25, written by a woman who died in a car accident while the protagonist was driving. I've been thinking a bit about what I would put on a list of things I'd like to do before some milestone. If I actually come up with a list, I'll post it.

84. The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser ***. Luckily, this book was on hold for me, so I at least got one decent book to read. It was a little hard to follow, given that the chapters were named after days of the week and yet time jumped around all over the place.

85. McSweeney's 27

86. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

87. Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category ***

88. Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster *. I got this book (and the previous one) from a box on the footpath because I still haven't been to the library. It was kind of annoying from the first few pages and yet I kept reading. I'm not sure why, other than it was fairly quick to read and I didn't want to have wasted time reading half a book and not be able to count it. The footnotes that I think were supposed to be an amusing affectation were the most irritating part.

89. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote **. I didn't like the movie all that much, but I thought I'd see how it was changed (and this book was on our communal bookshelf). It was okay. I liked the last story best, but I didn't like the middle two much at all.

90. Goodbye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson ****. Very sweet, but kind of sad, too.

91. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe ***1/2
92. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab by Gideon Defoe ***1/2. These were both fun. I was worried that they would be lame, despite all the positive reviews, especially since I'd given them as a gift, but they were good.

93. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka *. I could barely stay awake reading this. The title story was by far the best of them, but I really didn't care very much about anyone in any of the stories.

94. Play it As it Lays by Joan Didion ***. I read this whole book in a single trip to the gym, plus as long as it took to eat breakfast. I was hoping it would last until I got to lab, at least.

95. Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith ***1/2.

96. Bound by Sally Gunning ***.

97. Love and Other Near Death Experiences by Mil Millington **1/2. The author's website, Things I've Argued With My Girlfriend About, which is the reason he got his first book contract, can be quite amusing and there were similarly amusing bits in this book, too. Unfortunately, as a whole, the book isn't that great.

98. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri ****.

99. Keeping the House by Ellen Baker ***.

100. If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz ****1/2. I wasn't expecting that much of this book, but I really liked it.

101. How the Hula Girl Sings by Joe Meno ****. This was much more like The Boy Detective Fails than Hairstyles of the Damned, luckily. It was fairly depressing, but still kind of hopeful.

102. What We Lost by Dale Peck ****. I couldn't remember if I'd heard good or bad things about Dale Peck, but I'm glad I read this. The first part of the book was great. I didn't like the second part so much, because it took way too long to figure out how it related to the first, and there seemed to be a lot missing. It was still definitely worth reading, though.

103. Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski ****. I'm loving this so far. It's part-memoir, part-travel story about travelling around the US by train. The author is kind of socially awkward, but okay with it, so it's interesting to read about her interactions with people on the train.

I thought I was over the whininess, sorry...

2008-06-27T14:42:00.004-04:00

I was feeling much better yesterday. I still did what I had to do for the experiment that I scheduled over the weekend, in order to get it done in time for the abstract deadline that no longer applies, even though now I'm just annoyed at having to be here all weekend.

Unfortunately, today I talked to the post-doc who was also considering submitting an abstract. Luckily, she doesn't have enough data either. Luckily, because I would not have coped very well if she'd been able to get enough results in the few months since she started, when I haven't after years. Talking to her still made me feel awful, though, because she was kind of horrified to learn that I didn't even have enough data for an abstract, after all this time. She hadn't realised that I was serious when I said I didn't have any real results.

That sapped any motivation I had for today, since it really hit me how little I have to show for my time here. I've been reassuring myself with the thought that if I just keep accumulating hours of work, it'll add up to something eventually. It won't, though, unless I have a specific plan to make sure what I'm doing is useful. The things I've been doing have seemed useful at the time, but I don't think any of them will ever be a figure in a paper, which is what I really need.

My advisor has been telling me for a long time to make a detailed plan of the figures that will go in my hypothetical paper. Every time he says this, I believe that he's going to want to see it next time we meet, so I try to map out figures. I always get overwhelmed at how pathetic my attempts are, though. I never get further than a list of experiments to try, because I have no idea what the point of this paper might be. It doesn't help that I think this project is pretty boring, either. You might think that this lack of interest might explain my apathy, but the only reason I'm working on this is that I didn't work enough on the interesting project to show it could be done, even though I thought it was very cool, and now I'm stuck with this unless I want to spend several more years in grad school.

Anyway, despite asking me to make this plan many times, my advisor has never asked to see my attempts. This is even after he made me promise I really would have it to show him, the second last time he mentioned it. He usually just talks about one experiment when I meet with him, then goes off on tangents that are supposed to be encouraging, but make me feel like crap. Not that we've even met much lately. The meeting that made me miserable on Tuesday was the first in a couple of months. I was surprised to hear that he's been insisting on meeting with the newer post-doc every week. She was all impressed that he has time to have individual meetings with everyone that often. I guess not with everyone.

I know I should be more assertive about getting him to meet with me and go through my draft, so that I know what I should be doing. It's hard to push for that, though, when I'm sure he's just going to be disappointed with how useless I am.

maybe I could work at mcdonald's again

2008-06-26T11:07:00.003-04:00

My mum called last night, wanting to know if I knew when I could come home next, since I'd told her it might be possible to go home after the conference in Japan. She was all sympathetic about me not getting to go. She tried to reassure me by saying things like some of you did, about how things don't always work, even if you're working hard. The problem is that I'm not working hard. I know the difference between experiments not working and me not working. I have been tracking my time all year so I have hard data to back me up on this.

I haven't ever told my mum before about how unmotivated I've been, because I don't want to feel worse about moving so far away, supposedly to do this PhD, when I'm not working on it. Last night, though, I couldn't bear having her feel sorry for me as if it was all out of my control. I'm not sure it was a good idea. She spent most of the rest of the conversation trying to convince me to go to a doctor in case I'm anaemic or have a thyroid problem or something. When I kept insisting I was perfectly healthy, she came up with several more ways it could be not my fault. I guess I appreciate the sentiment, but it doesn't help. She did the same thing when I tried to tell her about my social anxiety, insisting that I had friends and she'd seen me talking to them, therefore I couldn't actually be all that shy.

If I knew why I'm so unmotivated, it would be easier to explain. I can't tell, though, if I really don't want to do research or if I'm just crippled by anxiety about doing it all wrong. If it's the former, I feel like I should be able to just force myself to do the work to get finished while I figure out what I actually want to do. The problem is that I can't think of anything else I would enjoy more, or be more motivated to do.

When I try to imagine doing any of the jobs I've read about in the many books I've read recently about non-academic careers, I feel the same fear and avoidance I do about research. I certainly can't imagine going to an interview for any real job and being able to sincerely claim I'd be a great candidate - I have no people skills, I'm clearly not self-motivated or good at time management or organisation. The only thing I can actually imagine doing for 8 hours a day is something repetitive with no responsibility. Which makes me think anxiety is really the problem. Or maybe I should just get some crappy job I can forget about at 5pm and concentrate on doing fun things the rest of the time...

If anxiety really is the problem, then I obviously need to work on that, regardless of whether I want to keep doing research. I don't know how, though. I wish I could talk to the therapist or someone, but I literally can't speak out loud with her enough to explain. I can't even talk enough to explain the not being able to talk issue. I feel stuck.

need coping mechanism. now.

2008-06-25T21:49:00.004-04:00

I just walked home in tears and am now shovelling food into my face while searching for something to read to distract me from how much I suck. It's not working though. I feel like there used to be something I could do to drown out the montage of reasons why I suck that's playing in my head, but I don't know what it could be. If you have any ideas, please share them. I don't really think blogging it all out will help this time, but I'll see how far it gets me.

I just got out of another pointlessly long meeting with my advisor in which he tried to be encouraging and just made me feel more hopeless and pathetic than ever. The guilt-inducing statements about how I've been working so hard have been replaced by even more guilt-inducing suggestions that it's time to learn how to be really efficient, since that's what will be required as a post-doc.

As if that wasn't enough, I also found out I don't get to go to Japan for a conference. Submitting an abstract has been my goal all year, and yet even that wasn't enough to get me to work hard enough. I was going to submit an abstract anyway (it's due next week), with the idea that I'd actually turn it into a real story before the conference near the end of the year, but after reading my draft, my advisor told me it wasn't worth it.

How can I not have enough data to even cobble together an abstract, two whole years after the last conference I went to? When the guilt at not being objectively productive gets overwhelming, I've been reassuring myself by comparing the amount of work I'm doing now with how much I was doing two years ago. It is more than it was. Clearly, though, it's nowhere near enough.

new shoes!

2008-06-23T22:25:00.004-04:00

These just arrived today:
And these should be here soon:

This is more exciting than you might think, because for the first time in years, I now have two pairs of shoes I can wear to lab with clothes other than jeans. For the last few weeks I have just kept wearing jeans, despite the warmer weather, so I could keep wearing my doc martens.

This is also exciting because my quest for shoes I liked that I could wear to lab began over two years ago! Since I never found anything I liked, I just further wore out the shoes that were already old enough that I thought I should get new ones, and then bought an interim pair that were meant to just last until I found something I liked, but ended up getting worn every day until they started letting the snow in. At least I learnt from that that I should have more than one pair of shoes.

I don't know why I have such trouble buying shoes. These pairs had better last.

thanks for voting

2008-06-12T10:24:00.009-04:00

I had a therapy appointment yesterday and the first thing the therapist said was a comment on my t-shirt. She thought it was mean and scary because the big creature was either taking away the ice cream from the small one, or tormenting it. I said I thought the big one was giving it to the small one, but she kept arguing that the ice cream was melting and why would that be, if he was just giving it straight to the small one? I could think of explanations, but that would be too much talking for a therapy session, so I just started planning the poll I would make for my blog to resolve the question.

I had never considered the mean possibility. I thought it was a cute and happy t-shirt. I got a little worried that everyone else thought that it was mean, and that I thought it was cute that it was mean. I thought maybe I had been influenced by the fact that the title of the t-shirt is "sweet creep". Although that could be ambiguous, too. I'm glad you almost all agree with me. Thanks!

aimless websurfing finally pays off

2008-06-04T14:15:00.004-04:00

I was wasting time this morning online, aimlessly following links, since this is a (usually unfortunate) loophole in my rules about when I'm allowed to look at email and google reader. I looked at my stats on statcounter, then followed a link to Moreena's blog, wondering how Annika was doing. From there, I clicked on a link to an amusing craigslist post. Then I went to my local craigslist page, not sure what I was looking for, but assuming I could find something to waste time on. I clicked on the rideshare link first, wondering how that worked, then I noticed there was a lost and found category.

I was trying to decide if it would be worth posting something about my wallet as I scanned the listings, not expecting that anyone would have found it. But, there was a found wallet posting that described the contents of my wallet almost exactly. It wasn't perfect enough that I was sure it was mine and it didn't mention the cute monsters, but I guess requiring a description of something so distinctive is a good way of verifying the real owner. I didn't get much work done while repeatedly hitting refresh until the finder got back to me, but it was mine! Yay!

Of course, I already cancelled my cards, but I'm very glad to get the actual wallet back, and I'd forgotten I also had a cheque in there, so it would've been about $40 I lost.
So, I should give this person some kind of reward, right? What would be appropriate?

cute baby hats

2008-06-03T23:02:00.004-04:00

I'm trying to think happy thoughts and not dwell on my sucky last couple of days (I didn't find my wallet today). To that end, I've been looking at cute, knitted baby things. I finished H.'s jumper just in time for him to be born (although I haven't posted it yet). Today I had ice cream with a friend who has a baby due in September so I thought I would knit her something, too.

Dressing babies as fruits and vegetables seems to be a common theme. My favourites are the pineapple, tangerine and pumpkin*. I also like this viking helmet.

My favourite so far, given that the parents are pretty geeky, is this space invaders one:

I'm going to a sock knitting workshop on Saturday and I think we're going to make baby socks to practise, too.

*pattern links:
Pineapple (link also has a different viking helmet)
Tangerine
Pumpkin

it got worse

2008-06-03T10:22:00.002-04:00

Just as I was leaving lab, after 11pm last night, I realised that I didn't have my wallet anymore. Then I remembered that I'd forgotten my keys and had been counting on getting home while my housemates were still awake. Luckily, I was able to call a housemate before he went to sleep and get him to leave a key for me. I also raided a labmate's change collection for train fare home. I was a little worried that the ticket machines wouldn't accept coins and was relieved to see that they did.

My labmate must have been selectively using all his quarters, because most of the coins were nickels (5c) and dimes (10c). It was kind of slow, putting all those coins into the slot and waiting for the machine to recognise them. I'd just got up to $1 in nickels when the machine beeped at me and told me it would only accept 20 coins per transaction. The fare is $2. I cancelled the transaction and started counting dimes to see if I'd had enough, grateful that I'd grabbed the whole pile of change, rather than counting out $2 as I'd started to do.

As I was counting, I was already thinking about blogging about how my day degenerated further and realised it would be a better story if I didn't quite have the right coins to get to $2 in 20 coins. But, I really just wanted to get home, so I was glad to find I had exactly 16 dimes and 1 quarter as well as the many nickels. Apparently the universe was thinking of your readerly enjoyment, though, because one of the dimes turned out to be Canadian.

At this point, I thought it was kind of amusing how sucky my day was, so I wasn't too miserable as I walked home. I was feeling much better this morning, too, although I came in early to try to salvage some of my ruined experiment and didn't get to finish it before someone else had booked the machine. I also just realised that I forgot to bring any money with me and I'm supposed to meet a visiting friend for ice cream later. I really hope my wallet is at the other lab where I last saw it. If someone had handed it in there, the security guard would have emailed me, but that email account has apparently been cut off because I've been slow at renewing my visiting student status...

how much do I care about a star when there's cake in the kitchen and I've ruined my experiments?

2008-06-02T18:05:00.003-04:00

This wasn't exactly the kind of blogging I had in mind when I resolved to post more, but it's either this or burst into tears and eat the remaining half a cake that's taunting me every time I have to do something with my cells (which is a lot). I just ruined yet another experiment because I wasn't thinking when I set it up. I do this all the frickin' time and I still haven't learnt to plan everything out ahead of time. I'm setting up another experiment now and will probably mess something different up this time, since it's kind of hard to concentrate while trying not to cry, cursing myself for being so stupid and failing to think of alternate careers I might suck less at. I'm going to be here all night now, too.

The Plan: June 2008

2008-06-01T22:06:00.002-04:00

1. Lab

May didn't end as well as it began. I was doing so well until a week and a half ago when I accidentally spent too long online twice in one week. The first time, I made up for it by barely going online and working all the next day, but the day after I wasted so much time that I didn't get home until after midnight, so the star was so completely shot that I just gave up.

Still, May was a lot better than March and April (and was possibly better than January before I messed up), so I just need to come up with an alternate plan for not giving up entirely if I mess up a day. This is my current suck that needs patching. I was thinking about things I don't give up on after messing up the current month's goal, like exercising now and budgeting (which hasn't even needed to be part of The Plan to (mostly) stick to). I think the difference is having a longer term goal to aim for (I'm secretly hoping to exercise more days this year than last, although I have a feeling I'm not on track for that). So, there are 213 days left this year. I'm going to aim for 190 stars in that time, which is just under 90%. I'll adjust the number if I'm travelling or something.

The other thing I need to do is get some kind of notification telling me when I'm about to go over my allowed internet for the day, since I only went over by accident at first (and then kept going once the day was ruined). I said I was going to use the interruptron last time, but I never remembered to set it up in the morning. I discovered that leechblock has all kinds of fancy customisable settings, though, so maybe I will use that instead.

I'm also going to try to set up a morning routine for once I get to lab. I need to plan my day and start working before I even get my laptop out of my bag. That makes it so much easier to have a productive day.

2. Health

This went pretty well, despite giving up on working. I was still trying to eat vegetables (except that I didn't make it to the supermarket last week and didn't have enough vegetables to last the week), although I did start eating more crap. I think I got used to that, unfortunately, so it's been hard reminding myself not to snack this evening. Going to bed earlier was definitely a good idea, although it's hard to stop chatting with my favourite person, sometimes.

3. Social

I need to reply to emails, but I think I'm adding too many goals already this month, so this will have to wait for yet another attempt next time. I want to ask a couple of people about doing fun things soon, though.

I think blogging counts as being sociable, too, so I'm going to aim for 2 posts a week. I know I said I was adding too many goals, but this isn't a daily one, so I think it's okay.

4. Being Unselfish

This hasn't been in The Plan for a while, but I keep walking past the blood donation centre and feeling bad, so I'd really like to at least do that this month.

hello?

2008-05-31T21:30:00.002-04:00

Posting the book post the other day was supposed to be a way of easing back into blogging, but it hasn't worked so well yet. It's not that I don't want to blog, or even that I don't have anything to blog about. I keep thinking of topics, but the problem is I need to actually think about them in order to write anything and thinking is hard work. It's much easier to mindlessly hit refresh on other people's blogs.

I'm kind of tempted to make a list of the things I want to blog about as a kind of public accountability, but the last time I did that, I never wrote about anything on the list. Maybe I should commit to posting every day for a bit, just to get back in the habit of it, although I never post anything thoughtful during NaBloPoMo.

Anyway, for now I'm just posting to say I'm still here. Which I know is lame, especially since I've done that before. I could say I'll try to post more, but I know "trying" doesn't work for me. I will post a Plan update soon, though, which doesn't count as a thoughtful post, but will include a blog resolution, I think. I miss being part of a blog community.

books #48-82 (2008)

2008-05-27T20:06:00.001-04:00

48. How to work the competition into the ground and have fun doing it : a proven program to raise your personal productivity by John T. Molloy ***. I read this because of this article about brainwashing yourself to be productive. It had some useful advice about training yourself to concentrate and focus longer. The author's style was pretty annoying, though, since he was constantly talking himself up.

49. Amy Unbounded: Belondweg Blossoming by Rachel Hartman ****. This was fun.

50. Lottery by Patricia Wood (audiobook) ***. I don't think this was a good choice for an audiobook. The main character is one IQ point over being retarded, so the narrator is reading with a slow, Forrest Gump-ish voice. The book is also full of annoying definitions of the kind that are meant to show how he sees through most people's artifices. It's not a terrible story, so I've still given it 3 stars, but I'm not enjoying it a huge amount. If I didn't need something to listen to while knitting/walking, I'm not sure I'd finish it. Now the main character is beating people at Scrabble, because he's spent years reading the dictionary... This is such a Mary-Sue book. How did it get nominated for the Orange prize?

51. The Year of Endless Sorrows by Adam Rapp ***. I didn't love this book. The blurb compared it to Douglas Coupland and Nick Hornby's work so I thought it would be at least slightly funny, but it was just depressing. The main character lived a pretty pitiful life on the bottom rungs of New York publishing, barely making ends meet, which was miserable enough, and then the book turned tragic.

52. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo ****. This was kind of a slow moving story about a man reflecting on his life spent in a small town. It was interesting, but the major theme, that people don't ever change, was kind of depressing.

53. The Contract With God Trilogy by Will Eisner ***. Apparently this was the first graphic novel ever.

54. Wishcraft: How to get what you really want by Barbara Sher

55. Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower edited by Cynthia Robbins-Roth

56. Proust and the Squid: the story and science of the reading brain by Maryanne Wolf ****. This was a pretty interesting book about how various parts of the brain that evolved for other tasks are used to learn to read. The most interesting part was about how different written languages use different parts of the brain, so people who are dyslexic in one language might not be in another.

56.5 The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. I think this was an Amazon suggestion based on my looking at reviews of the previous book. It had a potentially interesting premise - that the development of written language was responsible for the rise of the patriarchy and loss of goddess worship (Anastasia, I thought of you while reading it). I only made it through half a chapter before being irritated with all the evolutionary psychology, though.

57. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote ***.

58. The Outcast by Sadie Jones ****. Now this one deserves to be on the Orange shortlist.

59. After Dark by Haruki Murakami ***. Perhaps it's the translation, but I wasn't all that impressed by Murakami's writing, despite all the wonderful things I've heard about it. Then again, I don't know anyone who's read it in Japanese, so maybe it's just me, or maybe this isn't his best work.

60. Grace by Elizabeth Nunez ****. I usually pick books to listen to that I don't think I'll really love, because I'd rather read than listen (it's hard to find the right balance between something I think I'll wish I'd read and something that isn't good enough to keep my interest). This one was surprisingly good, though. It did spoil Beloved for me, though.

61. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow ****. I got a free review copy of this. It's definitely a page turner. I almost missed my bus stop at least 3 times while reading it. There are a lot of technical descriptions of things like encryption, but they don't disrupt the story too much. It felt somewhat like a recruiting manual to get teenagers to care about civil liberties, but that's probably a good thing. I was going to quote the Neil Gaiman blurb on the cover, but I may as well link his whole review, which I think is a pretty accurate one. You can download the whole book for free under a creative commons licence.

62. The Folded World by Amity Gaige ***1/2.

63. Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman ***.

64. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely ***1/2. This was interesting. Read the NY Times review here.

65. I Could Do Anything if Only I Knew What it Was by Barbara Sher

66. Career Renewal: Tools for Scientists and Technical Professionals by Stephen Rosen and Celia Paul

67. I Don't Know What I Want but I Know It's Not This by Julie Jansen

68. Schuyler's Monster by Robert Rummel-Hudson ***. I already knew most of the content of this book because the author's blog was one of the first I started reading, but it was still an engaging story about a father dealing with a "broken" daughter.

69. The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman *. This was a frustrating book. The subtitle was tacked on by the publisher, apparently, so it's not really an argument against reading. The problem is that it's not really an argument for anything. The author just rambles about celebrity gossip, her childhood, author's private lives etc.

70. Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall ***.

71. The Theory of Clouds by Stéphane Audeguy **.

72. Beloved by Toni Morrison ***. I felt like a bad person for not loving this more. It was sad and moving and all, but I didn't really get why it's such a great book.

73. Leftovers by Laura Weiss ***.

74. Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar ***1/2. This was longer than it needed to be, and the ending left me suspicious that there would be a sequel, but how could you not love a book about an anxious, depressed, anorexic werewolf?

75. McSweeney's 25 ***

76. Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way

77. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah ***. Another book I felt like a bad person for not loving. Sure, it's an important topic and tragic, but as a book, it wasn't so great. The part that I really thought was missing was the process of rehabilitation, but one minute he was attacking the rehab centre staff and the next he was giving speeches about the plight of child soldiers.

78. McSweeney's 26

79 McSweeney's 24 (Can you tell I haven't been to the library in far too long and am finally getting around to reading books I own?)

80. Rhubarb by Craig Silvey (audiobook) **. I might've enjoyed this more if I'd been reading, rather than listening to it. There were large segments that were all sentence fragments that were hard to follow and I didn't really get how the main character went blind. The writing seemed a bit too full of adjectives, too. There were way too many references to rhubarb, too. You don't need every single major (or minor) event in the book to involve something for it to be an overarching symbol, you know? And I'm not even sure what its significance was supposed to be.

81. Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman (audiobook) ***.

82. Children Playing Before A Statue Of Hercules Edited by David Sedaris **1/2. I was disappointed when I noticed the "edited" in there. I only really liked one of the stories, another 2 were okay and one I didn't like much at all (although the author's voice was kind of monotonous, which probably didn't help).

The Plan returns!

2008-05-04T21:49:00.004-04:00

I was feeling lame again about posting nothing but Plan stuff a while ago and I thought maybe I could keep up with my goals without having to publicly commit to doing 30 days in a row, but that didn't work so well (see fig. 1). It didn't help my blog either, since I just haven't been posting at all. So, The Plan is back. I already started (see fig. 1 again) and feel much better already. May is already looking better, even though one of the two days used for that average was shortened by me going home sick after less than 4 hours (almost 3 of those were actual work!).

1. Health

I didn't go to the gym yesterday, because I was feeling too crappy, but I'm not restarting the 30 days for that; I'll just add one to the end. The gym has really become a habit, even without the stars. Eating 5 servings of fruit and veges a day is almost like that, too, except that I tended to save my healthy dinners for another day when it could count for a star, and I ate more crap on top of the fruits and veges once I'd already ruined the day.

One thing that makes a huge difference in determining the rest of my day is how well it starts, which is itself determined by how late I go to bed. This month, I'm adding going to bed by midnight to the star requirements.

2. Lab

I am back to making lists of things to do each day. I also installed the interruptron, which will hopefully encourage me to get off the computer after a short break, instead of letting inertia keep me refreshing long after I've read everything worthwhile.

3. Social

I actually invited a bunch of people to a barbecue my housemates are having next week. I'm hoping I won't dread it so much if I know people who will be there, and I won't be able to just avoid it if I've invited people. The therapist last time gave me homework to make myself leave my room every time I felt like avoiding people (unless it would be too stressful) and I haven't even noticed wanting to hide this month (I did stay in my room most of the weekend, but that was more about wanting to stay in bed and I feel much better, so I think that was a good thing).

I still need to work on replying to emails etc. I replied to a bunch of people who wrote on my facebook wall for my birthday, but then I lost momentum... (I'm sorry if I missed you! Thanks for your kind wishes.)

birthday wishes

2008-04-23T13:01:00.004-04:00

It's that time of year again, when I start to feel miserable about my birthday. I'm not sure why I'm writing another post, when I could just direct you to last year's. Nothing has changed. Once again, I don't have plans, because I don't want to make people hang out with me just because it's my birthday. On the other hand, I know one housemate will probably feel sorry for me and try to convince people to go out to dinner or something if I don't plan anything and I don't want to make him do that, either. I wish I could think of something to do that other people would actually want to do anyway, but I'm not good at inviting people to do things in general.

The first year I was here, I asked my classmates and housemates to go out to dinner and I made C'landian desserts to have afterwards while watching a movie. I'm not sure how I managed to do that. It helped that I actually saw my classmates a lot. I wish I'd stayed in contact once we stopped taking classes. I wish I were more sociable in general, so trying to do something for my birthday wouldn't be so awkward. I wish I could just do nothing without making my family worry and people feel sorry for me.

I've been feeling mopy all week, which makes every little thing feel so difficult. I missed the bus this morning and felt like crying. It makes me feel like nothing has changed and it never will. I know I'm much happier now than I was a couple of years ago, but I wish I was also better at being friends with people.

I guess my morning wasn't so bad after all

2008-04-21T12:06:00.004-04:00

Somebody jumped off a bridge near my lab as I was on the shuttle bus going past this morning. I didn't see them, but someone at the back of the bus did and yelled out to ask if anyone had a cell phone. Nobody answered him until he said he'd just seen someone jump from the bridge. By the time I got up to my lab on the 8th floor, I could see people starting to congregate next to the street, then an ambulance and a fire engine showed up. I was hoping the ambulance would speed off quickly, since that would suggest the person still had a chance. The police cordoned off the area with tape and a second fire truck arrived and eventually I saw a group of paramedics carry a stretcher to the ambulance, but it sat there for another 10 or 15 minutes before driving away. I didn't hear any sirens, so I guess the person didn't survive. Now there's a tow truck on the bridge, towing away their car. The only thing left is the ring of yellow tape.

self-fulfilling incompetence

2008-04-16T23:34:00.005-04:00

I have not been having a good week. I was trying to be productive last week and got some experiments done, but after spending Friday morning in a class on Matlab that made me feel dumb, I got the results of three different experiments and found out that nothing had worked. I had a fun weekend and thought I could start the week afresh on Monday. But, after hearing a post-doc candidate from C'land talk about all the impressive work he got done in his 3 year PhD (and unfavourably comparing my own progress), I discovered that I had hugely messed up my taxes, in a way that also made me feel incredibly dumb. Trying to fix that wasted most of Monday and Tuesday and today I was still feeling miserable and useless.

I don't think I deal very well with feeling stupid. I'm used to easily understanding things like Matlab so when I had no idea how to do the first basic exercise, I felt like crying. Not because I can't ever handle having to work at something, but because the one thing I can believe I have going for me is that I'm good at logical, maths-type things. If I can't even learn basic Matlab, then I have nothing left to feel good about. The instructor eventually admitted it was a poorly written question after most of the class had wasted half an hour on something that was supposed to take 2 minutes, but by then I was also feeling pathetic about getting upset, so it didn't make me feel much better. The tax problems left me feeling similarly stupid and pathetic, with the added bonus of having to pay a heap of money.

Feeling incompetent makes me just want to curl up in bed and hide. Except that then I'd dwell on how pathetic I am, so I've been glued to my laptop, obsessively playing Scrabble to distract myself. Initially, the Scrabble was supposed to help me feel better, but apparently feeling incompetent also does wonders for my Scrabble skills -- my score has fallen almost 200 points since Sunday.

I keep wanting to start again with being productive, but I'm having trouble forcing myself to think about experiments, too. Thinking about them just makes me feel more incompetent, which makes me want to ignore them and keep losing at Scrabble, and so the cycle continues... I know the only way to stop it is to make a plan and actually do the things I've planned, but so far I've resisted that because I'll probably just mess up the experiments and not get anywhere, anyway.

Despite that, I'm going to try again and I'm hoping some accountability will help. Tomorrow I will:

order the antibody I need
figure out what to do about the missing plate
stimulate my cells
dilute primers
deal with the old B6
take primers, cDNA and sups to the other lab
update primer database

Oh, I did get my watch back yesterday, at least (but without even an apology for losing it for so long, so I still managed to feel cross after collecting it).

how many wallets could I actually use?

2008-04-07T20:22:00.009-04:00

In one of my many procrastination breaks today, I followed a link from Cute Overload to a site selling (among other things) cute wallets. My current wallet, which is also adorable*, has been slowly disintegrating*, so I've been half-heartedly looking for a new one. I think it was also a Cute Overload link that led me to my previous favourite wallet company, espe. I think those wallets are a bit big for me, though. Today, I was tempted by this robot wallet, or this panda vs robot (and dragon) one, or this puffer fish one. Then I googled the company and found a much larger selection of cool wallets.

I think this one makes me happiest to look at:

But there's also this one with flying robots:

And, as I heard in a story today, "How can anyone be sad around a robot!?" It would be even harder to be sad with so many flying robots in my pocket!

How do I choose between picnicking monsters and flying robots? Maybe it would be handy to have a spare wallet...

help me get my watch back

2008-04-04T14:09:00.003-04:00

My watch band broke recently, so two weeks ago I took it to the watch shop where I got the pin replaced the previous time it broke. This time, the whole end piece of the band was missing, so I had to leave the watch there. They called me a couple of days later to say it was ready to be picked up. I couldn't get there while it was open until last Friday (they called on Monday). When I went in, they couldn't find it, although the owner remembered it and knew it should be there. She said someone would call when they found it, but now it's a week later and I haven't heard anything. I was going to send an email today to see whether they'd found it or given up on it, but the card the owner gave me doesn't have an email address on it. I guess I need to call, but I don't know what to do if they haven't found it.

My natural inclination would be to just say "oh, that's okay; just let me know if you find it" because I can't bear to cause any conflict or ask for anything, but it's not okay. I want my watch back. I kind of feel like I can't ask for them to replace it or anything, because I think it was a free gift that came with a Time magazine subscription. Still, my grandmother gave it to me and I've had it for 10 years so it has some sentimental value (although, its provenance lessens the sentimental value a bit, and its age also reduces its value).

You can see I'm not likely to be very assertive when talking to them. I'd probably be slightly better via email, but sadly that isn't an option. So what should I say? What should I expect them to do about it?

not so aimless, but also not productive

2008-03-29T23:40:00.003-04:00

Apparently all I need to keep from feeling aimless is something to procrastinate on. I spent a large part of today hitting F5, but because the alternative was working (preparing for a meeting on Monday), I wasn't worried about the more fulfilling things I could be doing. I was actually kind of disappointed when I realised I didn't have to do a state tax return because that would have let me feel super productive without having to do any actual work.

I did go to the gym and grocery shopping and make delicious mulligatawny soup for dinner (and a vegetable pie thing for future dinners and sandwich filling for this week). All the cooking created a lot of washing up, so that took a fair bit of time, too.

Tomorrow I'm having brunch at a Mexican restaurant with a housemate. They have a prix fixe menu from which it's possible to order a dessert-like thing for all three courses. I'll have to restrain myself to get my star, unfortunately, but luckily the other options also sound good. Then, I really need to do some work...

aimless

2008-03-27T22:02:00.002-04:00

I was home and finished with dinner by 8.30 and then didn't know what to do with myself. I wanted to do something worthwhile, but I couldn't think what, so I just kept wasting time online and now I could probably go to bed. I played some Scrabble, but I just got my rating up over 900 so now I don't want to play in case I lose it straight away. I don't think online Scrabble quite counts as worthwhile, anyway. Last night I watched a movie and knit for a couple of hours, but I don't have any DVDs at the moment. I could've read a book, I guess, but I already read a lot, so I'm not sure that even counts as worthwhile.

Ideally, I'd have the motivation to work on putting my photos that are in boxes into albums, but I couldn't bring myself to start something so big when I thought of it tonight. I really should have emailed some people from home, actually. Or, I could've hung out in the dining room with all the people a housemate invited over, but that was too scary.

I'm doing better at procrastinating less at work, but I also need to waste less time at home. I need to figure out what I'd really like to be doing with my time so that I have alternatives to mindless websurfing.

X is not a gene!

2008-03-26T18:26:00.003-04:00

I've spent most of the afternoon reading about the gene I'm currently working on, or at least, trying to. Amazingly, my lack of reading about this gene isn't due to procrastination--I have actually been reading--it's because the people writing the papers refuse to be clear about what gene they're working on. My protein is X2, which is very similar to X1. Unfortunately, a lot of the papers are written about X, which isn't a real gene name.

At first, I thought the authors just didn't realise there was an X2 and so were being lazy about adding the 1. However, I've just read several papers where the authors reveal in the discussion that they knew all along that their experiments targeting X1 could also have been affecting X2, but "we are presently lacking any direct evidence" that it does (i.e. we haven't bothered doing the experiments). And yet, they keep using antibodies and other reagents that recognise both X1 and X2 (or not even making it clear what it is they're using). Grr!

Of course, it's better for me if they all ignore X2 and keep pretending X1 is the only one, because I think X2 is actually more important, or at least interestingly different. It makes for very frustrating reading, though. And it's not like reading was fun to begin with.

books #10-47 (2008)

2008-03-22T22:32:00.003-04:00

If I wait until I feel like writing reviews, I'll never post this. Ratings will have to do.

If you're looking for recommendations, you should read Hunting and Gathering, What Was Lost and Bookhunter (and also maybe Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and Lost in Austen, and any other 4 star rated book; there are quite a few of them in here).

10. Beginner's Greek by James Collins ***. Chick lit by a guy. The only differences that made was that the main character was male, had higher self-esteem and a better career and there was less shopping. The last three things did help a little, admittedly.

11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz ****.

12. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton ***1/2.

13. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris ****. I'd heard good things about this, but I wasn't sure I'd like it when I realised it was written in first-person plural and was about working in an office. It was very good, though.

14. The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling ****.

15. The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall ***1/2.

16. Lost in Austen by Emma Campbell Webster ****1/2. This was so fun! My first time through I was imprisoned for killing Mr Elton. There was quite a lot of death in this book, actually.

17. Beige by Cecil Castellucci ***1/2.

18. Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman ***1/2.

19. Behind the Moon by Hsu-Ming Teo ***1/2.

20. What You Have Left by Will Allison ***1/2.

21. Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker ***.

22. Three Junes by Julia Glass ***1/2. Surely there are reasons for men to be infertile aside from mumps at age 12, but that's the only one I've ever seen in a book.

23. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer ***1/2.

24. Strawberry Fields by Marina Lewycka ***1/2.

25. Straight Man by Richard Russo ***1/2.

26. Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann Sweeney ****.

27. Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander ****.

28. Stuck in the Middle edited by Ariel Schrag ***.

29. Echo Maker by Richard Powers ***1/2.

30. The Secret Language of Sleep by Evany Thomas ***1/2. This was cute. I liked the online test to determine your sleeping position, too, and it seemed pretty accurate:

Find your own pose!

31. An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks ***.

32. Away by Amy Bloom ****.

33. What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn ****1/2. (review added 12/31/08). This is the book that has stuck with me most this year. The first section, about a young girl who wants to be a reporter, reminded me of Harriet the Spy, but it's definitely a much more grown-up and nuanced book. I say I don't like mysteries, but this was a wonderful one.

34. Charity Girl by Michael Lowenthal ***.

35. An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke ****.

36. The Archivist by Martha Cooley ****.

37. Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda *****. I'm not sure why I loved this book, especially after someone I recommended it to complained about the ending and the way the main character needed rescuing by others. I did love it, though. I still need to see the movie.

38. Bookhunter by Jason Shiga *****. A graphic novel that's like CSI or for book nerds. Here's the Making Light review that made me want to read it.

39. The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum *.

40.The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory ***.

41. The 60-second Procrastinator by Jeffrey P. Davidson ***.

42. How to Write A Lot by Paul J. Silvia ***.

43. Digging to America by Anne Tyler ***.

44. Say When by Elizabeth Berg (audiobook) ***.

45. Blue Shoes by Anne Lamott (audiobook) ***.

46. Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar ***.

47. The Pesthouse by Jim Crace ***1/2.

better, slightly

2008-03-21T22:14:00.003-04:00

Today was still difficult. I really didn't want to get up this morning, and then I really didn't want to go to the gym, so I sat around for a while (all those articles that say it's easy to get going once you're up and dressed lie). I did go eventually, though, and I still left the house by 9.30am.

Then, every time I tried to convince myself to do some work, I would start thinking about what I needed to do and feel so guilty about how far behind I am and how long it will still take to get the reagents that I should have ordered weeks ago that I kept giving up and going back to refreshing my scrabulous games. I managed to fill my day with enough lame "work" to get my star, even if things like printing out papers and finding files my advisor wanted didn't make me feel at all productive.

I really need to figure out how to stop feeling demoralised when I think about my project so that I can plan what I need to do. I don't know why this is so hard, when I was doing so well in January and even February. Another post-doc said, when introducing me, that I would be finished soon. Maybe the fact that I should be able to get lots of results and finish this project quickly is creating too much pressure.