All in a day's work...

I have been feeling very restless and unmotivated at work lately. Maybe because I'm in this weird limbo on a lot of projects waiting for responses from a lot of people and I don't feel like I'm going to get the papers out as soon as I had hoped, it's the way it is sometimes, but it can get disheartening to feel like you're standing still.

But, today, we had a full no plans weekend day. So we stayed at home and made some amazing accomplishments. I finished a knitting project that will be a birthday gift for someone, and this:

became this:
Not bad for a day's work.

And the best part. I FINALLY got to make use of my new hatchback.

It's amazing how finishing one thing can help motivate you to do another. I'm not dreading Monday quite so much now :)

Math vs. the social scientist*

We had to move our bed to a different wall when we put the window AC in earlier this week. Later in the week the following bedtime conversation ensued:

DH: I like the room like this, it gives us more space.

Me: It can't give us more space, the bed takes up the same amount of space and the room didn't get bigger.

DH: But see we have more space to move around.

Me: No we don't, it's just different space.

DH: Still, it seems like more.

Me: Yes, it seems like more, but actual areawise it can't be. The bed takes up the same footprint, moving it leaves the same amount of area free. Mathamatically it's the same amount of space.

DH: I know, but it seems like more

Me: Ah yes, but really it's perceived space, not real space

DH: I think that perception is reality

Me: No, that's why they have two different words and two different meanings.

DH: Let's go to sleep.

Me: Why?

At which point we decided this conversation was getting far too academic and philosophical for bedtime.

What do you think? Is our perception our reality, or do the laws of space and time have to hold true?


*this post is in no way an insult to social scientists, they provide an essential part of our world knowledge. I love mine with all my heart and his point of view different from my own is what makes my world complete and interesting.

Flying needles

A bit of craftiness today.

I have a project that I've been working on but couldn't blog about because it was a gift. Yes, it was one of the many pairs of in progress socks. Since, I'm me and can't do anything simply. These socks became a PROJECT. The yarn and a pattern were a bit of an impulse buy, but perfect for my sister. She has some type of allergy to most tights and therefore can't wear tall boots and skirts. Being a very fashion forward individual, she finds this disturbing. Being a fan of the boots and skirt combo myself I emphasize. So when this kit went on sale at kpixie. I bought it. That soft alpaca...yum...knitting heaven.

So I knit, it's one of those nifty patterns that changes needle size to change gauge. I had the first two sizes, but not the 3rd. So when I got to that point, I ordered some new ones. They came. I knit. They had splinters. They snagged the yarn. I got a splinter in my finger. I sanded. I knit. :) I was well on my way to having these socks done WAY before her birthday. Then DH decided to vacuum. I was sitting across the room and suddenly, knitting needles were flying everywhere! Somehow, the yarn between the sock and the rest of the ball had gotten caught, and it ripped the two apart. :(

A problem yes, but fixable, just like joining a new ball, no problem. Until we discovered this:

Yes, that is about 90% of the remaining yarn, wrapped around the brush in our vacuum cleaner. After a lot of "oh no, oh no, oh no" we got it all off and mostly saved. Enough to finish the sock at least. What a mess! But as repayment DH wove in all the ends (now that there were extra I was a little cranky)


The end result was mostly pretty socks:

I'm back

I should be cleaning the house and paying the bills and weeding the garden. But travel always has this overwhelming effect on me. I'm tired, and I just want to let my brain go wherever it wants to go for a few hours. My mental health is too important, the house, the bills and the garden can wait. So I'm here in my PJ's with a cup of tea and my brain went to blogging. Probably because of the extended absence due to the lack of internet. I did compose a post yesterday about a particularly sexist comment made to me in a meeting, but I didn't finish and it didn't get posted. In retrospect it's kind of negative, and while I do think it's important for some people to understand, I don't feel like being negative today. Maybe I'll make it cheerier and post it another day.

So, my trip to Minneapolis. Was good. Here's my thoughts.

- It was a surprisingly lovely city.

-They like live music and British and Irish pubs. I enjoyed both.

- The city seems to have an aversion to free internet, none at the hotel, none at the convention center and none in the airport. I think this is a cultural thing because this is the first trip I've been on that I've experienced a situation where I could not get online at a least one of the above mentioned locations. (It should be noted that I did find a Panera Bread with free internet and it was like heaven, but my laptop chose to have some type of hiccup at that particular moment and refused to boot properly.)

- The world headquarters of Target is there. It's a big building.

- Auto flush toilets do not save water if they flush four times for every single use.

- Despite a very busy meeting schedule I did find a little time to make a pilgrimage:

now if I can just get that theme song out of my head...

still here...

I didn't die, nor did I lose my blogging momentum. I'm out of town at a hotel that charges $10/day for internet access and even though I can get reimbursed I won't pay it on principle. Seriously, you get free internet at Motel 6 these days, these high faluting places should fall in line. So I'm in the common internet room on a 15 minute limit (2 computers for 21 floors of guests...don't get me started) Line is starting...details later.

The saga of Ellen's afghan

I realized my last two posts were a little ranty and not so much fun. I'm really not an unhappy person, there's just some things in the world that bother me and I think are important to share. Then I looked at my stats and they are way up. I think that many visitors are coming from ravelry. Since none are commenting that lack of crafty content is probably bothering them. So as to not scare anyone else away I have crafty content for today!

First, I have a confession. I have discovered so many WIPs in my house that I'm embarrassed to put them all up on ravelry. The site is great though and I'm glad I did put one long hibernating WIP up on it becuase now it's there everytime I log in and it gave me a little kick in the butt to work on it again.

So here it is: The story of Ellen's Afghan.
I try very hard to make things for big events in my friend's lives. Weddings, babies, etc. Not everyone who should get something gets something, it really just depends on my free time when they get married or pregnant. For example the year we went to 10 weddings, no one got anything. Same true for the 6 babies in 6 months. The projects that do get off the ground often get backlogged and delayed and delivered very late (like on 2nd anniversaries). Ellen's afghan is one of those projects. I designed it from the 200 Crochet Blocks book so that it would be as special as Ellen and her fiance. They are wonderful people and deserve a wonderful afghan. I picked out the yarn, test crocheted some squares, decided on a hook and was ready to roll. Then I went into dissertation mode and defense mode and nothing else exsisted in my life. Ellen's wedding was two weeks after I defended. And two weeks wasn't nearly enough time to finish and afghan. So I made a scrap book, detailing the whole process for her, and promised the afghan would follow. That was in September. I've finished one square since then. Ravelry has shamed me and square 2 was done this morning. This is the project I'm going to bring for the plane next week. We'll see how it goes. But I've doubled the size already!

I'm getting all girlie...

I am becoming a feminist.

I've always been a feminist on some level. It was always one of those small self-identity things that was there, just not a big part of me. By the most basic definition of a feminist being one who beleives in equal rights for women, I think all women must be feminists. (I know that this is not true but I'd like to believe it is). So, it's always been there. I once did go see Gloria Steinman give a talk and found her truly inspiring. I didn't change my name when I got married. But I never really considered myself a "FEMINIST". You know what I mean...the ones with the bad raps. The ones who are vocal and almost unladylike about the cause. The ones without bras.

To me, believing in equal rights was enough, fighting for them was too much. I always just figured I'd get through it. That the need for feminism would dye out with time, the world would get more welcoming as older generations moved pass and the bulk of the population had grown up in a more enlightened time. During my years of engineering education, I did realize that I was a minority, but I mostly just ignored it. I encountered a few old school professors that gave me a hard time and I chalked it up to a generational gap, a few classmates from cultures and religions that don't respect women well and just let it slide. I had a rare uppity moment, but mostly just let it fly by and grew a tough skin. I refused to join the women only societies because I believed they were making the problem worse. To me, excluding men was just as bad and bringing the problem to light actually made the problem worse in some ways. I guess I mostly just developed selective hearing and went about my studies. Don't get me wrong, the occasional tear was shed, there was a burden to bear, I didn't enjoy the situation, but it was what it was.

During my master's program it got harder, there were fewer women, and I found the state I was in to be less liberal then the northeast where I had grown up and done my BS. The lack of women was probably a factor in my decision to leave engineering and switch to science. Not a major factor, not THE factor, but it was a consideration. I found my PhD program more welcoming, from a grad student perspective at least. I felt well-respected by my peers and faculty and I was no longer self conscious about being a women. The comfort I felt was probably a small factor in my staying in that same department to be a post-doc.

Now, in the limbo-land of post-doc, I am suddenly acutely aware of my being a women and the different treatment I receive because of it. And, I'm becoming more vocal about it. And more pissed off about it. In the last three years we have hired two new faculty, both male, one of whom has been fairly anti-female. I'm running into some major problems with a collaborator from another country who will tell me I'm wrong, ignore my work, or worse yet do it over. But will praise the same techniques when presented to him by my advisor. I'm finding the prevailing attitude to be that I'm only doing this to bide my time until my husband finishes his degree. I think Am I a Women Scientist states it best in her profile. "if you ever forget that you’re a woman, someone will always be around to remind you."

So why? What is up with the world? Why is this anti-lady attitude making a comeback in young PhDs? Was I right that all the feminism pissed them off too much? Will it get better? Why should I stick it out?

So I'm a feminist. While this self discovery is a good thing. I'm note sure it's a great thing. On some level, I'm becoming paranoid. I've started to attribute almost every action that offends me as an anti-feminine gesture. I'm touchy and uppity and a bit mouthy about it. This is not helpful. This behavior makes it worse for others who follow. But without a little uppitiness can it get better? What's the balance?

The feminist in me is part of the reason for the new blog, without my real identity attached. I think these thoughts are important to share, but I can't share them without fear of repercussions in my non-blog life. The parts that make me whole seem to be socially incompatible. Maybe by writing about them I'll change those social perceptions. I can be a feminist who knits. I can be a wife with a career. I can be a scientist who wears a bra. The rules of decades past need not apply anymore.

hmmm...

So after reading this post about this article, I got to thinking. Mostly about my currently unfulfilled dream to find a faculty position. Could the current "flight of faculty" be the cause of my multiple applications being returned with a nicely worded you are fabulous and we'd love to hire you but the other applicants had more experience note in them. (A note for full disclosure, my particular rejection letter from UW-Madison was just that...a straight out you suck kind of rejection...not the we love you but kind)

Given my recent encounter with the age old can't get experience without a job and can't get a job without experience brick wall I started to wonder what was really happening. Are these supposed fleeing faculty fleeing to jobs that would otherwise have gone to young, energetic faculty candidates? And if so, what does the mean for the fate of all the Universities? To me it has implications beyond the shrinking reputation of UW-Madison. I'm assuming that most of these fleeing faculty are tenured and therefore fleeing to other tenured positions. Does this mean that the dwindling number of pre-tenure positions are a direct result of faculty just jumping from University to University and leaving no room for new comers? I sure hope not, because that means we will come to a point were all of these hopping faculty will retire, and if no one new has been let in, then every school that wasn't proactive and just happy to accept faculty from a school with a supposed better reputation will be screwed in the long run, with no faculty to fill up the ranks.

To me the tenure system works because of it's revolving nature. And the advances in science, arts, literature, etc that we make are directly fed by the combination of young professors producing the solid kind of we'll definitely get results and therefore many papers stuff so they can get tenure, and "older" (don't like that what that word implies but can't think of a better one...I personally never met an "old" professor...and let's remember that my major advisor is retired now) professors with secure jobs allowed to pursue the more experimental, risky types of experiments because their whole career isn't riding on the formula of X grants to produce Y papers, where X and Y are arbitrarily assigned by a tenure committee at some upper level of the university who really only cares about Z dollars. I hate to believe it, because everyone wants to think that everything they do is the hottest thing out there, but the truth is the most amazing science, often comes either from a) tenured faculty whose tenure gives them the ultimate freedom to pursue the science they dream of b) people who have given up on the tenure system, do whatever the hell they want, win some big prize/award for their work and are granted automatic tenure or c) those with extraordinary luck. This is not to say those of us still hoping to get a tenure track position and eventually tenure don't produce good, valid, important and ground-breaking science, but in the grand academic scheme we are still children learning to walk on our own.

But if the system stops revolving, doesn't let the young pups in, what will happen? Will it be the death of science? I see more and more young PhD's opting out of the academic lifestyle, mostly because it's becoming next to impossible to find a job, and hopping from post-doc to post-doc being asked to pursue a new topic each time doesn't allow anyone to build up enough work to truly be productive...and then it doesn't really help the paper and grant count that is needed to get into the tenure system. They just get tired and say screw it. I myself have come to the conclusion that the lack of women professors is directly do the the Post-Doc stage of the career coinciding with prime child bearing years, and I could go on about that for a whole other post.

Personally, I think Universities, should stop worrying about who they are losing and start worrying about who they aren't getting the first place.

just some thoughts.

Ravelry!

We interupt this blog from it's regularly scheduled random rants and random crafts, the author is happily distracted with updating her Ravelry page so her projects and yarn will be well cataloged. She is so enthralled with this process that she just can't find the time to compose a long witty post.

But, the grocery store did credit us $0.15 on our last purchase for bringing our own bags!

Why I Didn't Buy a Prius

After reading Paul's blog yesterday, I was thinking a lot about what I should post on my new science and craft blog. I decided to go with Sciencey thoughts today. Maybe tomorrow they will be crafty.

Since we recently bought a new car, (VW Rabbit), which I'm totally in love with...and I am a atmospheric scientist, and therefore should understand the fossil fuel problem intimately. The first question I'm asked is why didn't I buy a Prius.

The simple straightforward answer is the cost. We test drove a Prius, I drove a Corolla for years and was very happy with it and therefore Toyota, and I really liked driving the Prius...but it costs $6000 more then the car we bought. The common response is that I would save that in gas. Well after hearing this many times, I did the math. Considering that we would be financing that extra $6000, it actually translates to an increase in price of $6926.22 over the life of the loan. Assuming all else to be equal (maintenance, reliability, safety, both cars are PZEV, etc) Driving each car for 100,000 miles with gas being $4.00/gal, which it isn't yet and I think some federal relief is going to kick in before it gets there and if it gets there it won't stay there consistently for the duration, but we'll figure and average price of $4 over the next 10 years or so results in these costs, now I admit these numbers might be biased, because I used a 45 mile/gal figure for the Prius, which is not the rated value, but what average drivers report, and 28 miles/gal for the VW which is what I'm getting.: Prius $8,888, VW:$14,285. Difference: $5,397. Making the VW overall ~$1500 less then the Prius. Now, this may not seem like a big difference, but 1) Have you seen what they pay young scientists these days? Not enough to be fully environmentally friendly that's for sure. 2) I'm debt conscious, and may or may not have to qualify for another mortgage in the next year or so, an extra $7000 in the debt category makes a difference to me. 3) DH hated driving the Prius, and was determined to see how terrible he could do on gas mileage...meaning I doubt we'd ever see 45 mpg Also, we never got the real time gas mileage meter above 32 miles/gallon on a fairly long test drive...so the 55 they advertise is suspicious to me. 4) For us that difference was even greater since we had $725 in VW credits and they gave me nearly $1000 more then Toyota was going to for my old Corolla.

Now, does this make me un-environmentally friendly? Many people would say yes. I say no. I did seriously consider buying the Prius, if for no other reason than to support the alternate technology that I very strongly believe in. But, life is a balance, and making a purchase that large involves a lot of decisions, right now the big one being, can we afford the monthly payment and still put food (most of which is organic) on the table. Prius: No, VW: Yes.

So I continue to alter my life style in ways I can both feel good about and afford. Envirosaxs, locally grown food, carpooling almost everyday, recycling, high efficiency light bulbs, regulated thermostats, etc. I'm considering a TerraPass for the cars, but I need to spend some time doing the research on that before I purchase.

Maybe once I'm not a "young" scientist anymore I can truly afford to Go Green all the way.