- Tuesday was definitely a good day for me. Not only will I be taking comps a bit before I’d anticipated, I’m also doing a study later on this semester. A real one. As in, I need to get IRB approval, develop an instrument, do the study, and then publish it if it’s any good.
- Comps will also be easier than I thought (though by no means will they be easy). Instead of showing up a few Saturdays in a row, I have 3 questions, each one requiring an answer up to 20 pages long. I’ll have from May 15-August 15 to complete them. One will be a general ed psych question, one will be written by my advisor (probably dealing w/ my area of interest), and the third will be a methodology critique question. There will be lots of work, lots of research, and tons of writing involved, but I think the format is a lot more my speed. I’m actually excited, even though I know I’ll be swamped.
- Wednesday was swamped, as all my Wednesdays will be. I don’t like my human development class, but it’s a requirement, so I suck it up and do my best.
- Thursday was actually a lot of fun. I went to some law school function for dinner, then to a newcomer’s coffee for the University Women’s Club. It seems somewhat anachronistic, but I think it will be good for me in terms of networking and having volunteer opportunities. I’d say the average age of the club is solidly over 50, but there are a decent number of younger cool people. The club is for spouses of University faculty and women faculty members. There’s a certain “ladies who lunch” sort of feel to it, but these people are hardly shallow socialites.
- We have absolutely no plans for this weekend, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I wish we had something going on. We’re going to watch the game on Saturday, but other than that, I don’t know. There has been some discussion of painting the den, but I doubt that will happen.
August 31, 2007
August 28, 2007
My advisor approved me for taking comps this coming summer!
::taps dances around like a fool::
I’m sort of grossed out by this August 28, 2007
What I find most interesting about all this is….well, a couple of things, actually.
1. They blame our obesity on the Southern diet. I think this is somewhat of a cop-out. I know we’re a bit fond of stuff like deep-frying and cream cheese, and that isn’t exactly conducive to health and fitness, but…
Ever eaten much German food? Heavy, starchy, and meaty, yet most of the Germans I know are slim and fit people. A friend explained it to me this way: “You’ll eat something like pure fat on a piece of toast with some sort of cream sauce or gravy, but you’ve probably biked 10 km (~6 miles) to get there to the restaurant and then will bike the 10 km back home, or you may bike on to the next city to go to some event.” That leads me to my 2nd point.
2. We’re inactive. That seems to explain our excessive girth, given that other cultures with fatty diets aren’t always necessarily destined to be fat. For such a sports obsessed state as we are, I find it terribly ironic that we’re fat and unhealthy because we don’t move around!!! People here talk about what sissies residents of California, Colorado, [insert blue state of your choice here] are, but they’re sure as hell a lot more physically active than we are.
My dad came to visit us last night as he was driving through coming back from his trip to Arizona. He said he was amazed at the number of people running and biking there, even in the heat. He also said that he met a lot of attractive women in their 40s who were still in great shape. Not so much here.
3. We live in a heavily agricultural state, and yet our citizens are not taking advantage of the bounty of great fruits and vegetables grown right here in our our great state. Peaches, okra, eggplant, cabbage, corn….The farmer’s market here in Tuscaloosa is improving, and of course the Pepper Place Market in Birmingham is absolutely fantastic. Going there really makes me proud of my state. Why would I want to eat peaches trucked in from California or Mexico when I can eat something grown right here thatwas picked yesterday and is going to be 10x better than something picked before it ripens? Our weather (drought this year aside) is so perfect for growing a lot of things, and as someone who comes from a family of farmers, I know that people here struggle to compete with corporate farms in other parts of the country. But people get lazy. They’d rather eat whatever greasy slop comes in a paper wrapper, or they eat a lot of frozen stuff that isn’t nearly as good as what you can buy fresh. So they eat more to get the same amount of “satisfaction,” as it were. I really miss Grow Alabama
I just hope that people start taking action, rather than just sighing about their destinies and what-not. As
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pointed out a while back, we have some of the best cardiovascular health doctors and programs in the country. I think there’s a connection, and I wish there weren’t. We’re literally killing ourselves with our culture.
GAH! August 21, 2007
I despise Behr paint with every fiber of my tiny being. The primer and first coat went on pretty much fine, though not perfectly. Yesterday afternoon I did the 2nd coat, and that’s where the poo poo hit the fan.
There are now lap lines all over the damn place, and there are spots that are darker than others all over the place. Scott just wants to “fix” them by painting in the spots that are lighter, but they’re splotchy, and that would be damn near impossible. I say “Fuck it…prime over it and paint with a different brand.” He says that he likes Behr, but from looking at what’s already been done in our house, and from what other people have said, Behr is crap.
I suppose I’ll be getting some Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams here in the next few days. I am so fucking pissed.
Applejack the Wonder Kitty August 20, 2007
Yesterday, Scott looks out the back door and says, “Look at Nappy (our nickname for him)! He’s in the tree!” I looked up, and he was about 20 feet up just hanging out on the branch. He then proceeded to climb higher. I was fully prepared to climb up the tree to retrieve him when he inevitably got stuck.
That was unnecessary. He then turned around, and climbed all the way back down. I’m beginning to wonder how long he’s been doing that, and if he’s ever managed to catch anything up there. My cat’s a bad ass.
In other news, I painted about 96% of the bathroom last night. The tacky wallpaper is finally gone, and in its place is a beautiful blue semi-gloss paint. I’ll post pictures when I’m completely finished and everything is back in place (towels, artwork, etc.). I started around 4:30 and by 10:00 had primed and painted one full coat nearly all the way around. I’ve got to go after work and buy another quart to finish off the project.
And thus begins… August 19, 2007
I really feel like I got cheated, summer-wise. My “vacation” lasted a grand total of 3 weeks (1 week after the wedding, and these past 2 weeks), and that wasn’t nearly enough. I start back to the grind for real tomorrow. I went in on Friday for a couple of hours to make the transition and learn the ropes. I think this job will be good for me, and there’s a lot of potential for growth in the lab, and I hope I’m the one to make it happen. My current work schedule looks something like this:
Monday: 9-3
Tuesday: 10-3
Wednesday: 10-2
Thursday: 9-3
Friday: no work!
I also got an e-mail on Friday afternoon saying that my Qual 3 class that meets Thursday nights has been canceled. I was actually kind of pissed because I felt like I needed that class. Since I expect my dissertation to be qualitative (rather than quantitative…y’know, statistics-based), taking the full 3 course sequence would really be in my best interest. Only 2 people (including me) enrolled. I think this particular professor’s reputation is really in the outhouse, and I don’t see her lasting long around here. It used to be that all the classes in the Qualitative sequence (1-3) were somewhat hard to get into because everyone wanted to take them (when my old advisor taught them). Now that’s not the case, and I worry that people won’t be able to get through the entire sequence because of low enrollment. I dropped that class and enrolled in another Ed Psych class that’s taught by another one of my favorite professors. It sucks because it meets Wednesday nights after I have a class Wednesday afternoon, but it shouldn’t be a lot of work. This is the last semester where I really have to take anymore than 2 classes, and if I’m lucky, I might take comps in the spring. I’ll need to talk to my advisor about this, since he has to sign off on that. That would put me writing my dissertation prospectus next summer, and defending it next fall, then hopefully collecting data in the fall and early spring, and writing through spring and summer of 2009. Holy crap, I’ve been in school a long, long time.
teh craziness August 14, 2007
- On a whim, I painted the coffee table white. It worked out well. I was kind of afraid, but it brightens up the room significantly, and it saves me from having to sand down and refinish the damn thing. It was old and a hand-me-down, and to me wasn’t worth all that time and effort.
- I met up w/ a friend yesterday for coffee because she said she had big news. Boy, did she: she’s 1 month pregnant by a guy she’s only been with for 5 weeks. I have no idea how that will pan out. Pray for her.
- I’m priming our new window and the window frames and sills in anticipation of painting them. I’m hoping I can talk Scott into helping me paint the living room, because it’s a damn huge room (23×18) and it would take me weeks to do it on my own.
- There is a good possibility that the dean of the law school will grant Scott a 1 year contract extension (they are usually in 3 year cycles) if he asks for one. The rationale is that everyone’s contracts are lined up, so if all 4 of them (or even if 3 of them) decided to leave at the same time, it would be difficult. Having at least one of the legal writing faculty on a different cycle will really benefit them. I told him to ask for one so that I don’t have to fit 1 year of dissertation work into 4 months (or some other insane time frame). It means we stay here a little longer, but it also means I have the luxury of job hunting a little longer and being a little more selective about where I go.
- If you happen to have $60 to burn, go buy the BBC’s Planet Earth. The footage is fan-fucking-tastic! They make an $85 HD-DVD version, but we’ve been blown away with the high quality of what we get with a regular DVD player and an HDTV. The Caves episode is especially good.
sonuvabitch!!!!!!!!!! August 8, 2007
So I worked my ass off all day yesterday to get the floors cleaned (tons of dog hair and dust, of course) and get the furniture moved so that the contractor could come this morning at 7:30. All this after running 2 miles in the heat, cleaning house to get ready for company, running errands around town, etc.
He shows up at 7:30 and I show him where the quarter round will go, and he goes outside to set up his equipment in the front yard. He comes back in about 10 minutes later saying that the company made a mistake and insisted that they charge $600 for the job, twice what we were quoted. Oh hell no. Then the guy says that he’ll be happy to come this weekend (on his own) and do it for $350. It seems a bit shady, but at this point we just want this shit done. I am so sick and tired of dealing with this. It should have been done over a WEEK ago. If I could get a mitre box, you bet your ass I’d be doing this myself. This is the LAST time we hire anyone to do anything around here. We’re both pretty smart people, and I have some home improvement/repair experience, so we can certainly figure out all but the most complicated things.
