Not Getting Things Done

Like I mentioned in my last post, I was in Ann Arbor this week.  ICPSR (the Interuniversty Consortium for Political and Social Research) holds trainings every year on lots of topics, from Data to Methods and its basically awesome.  I have been wanting to go for a long time, and this summer I finally managed.  I ended up signed up for a 5 day workshop on Structural Equation Modeling.  Unfortunately for all involved, I only got about 50% of what we covered in class... but its been several years since I had a formal stats class.  The good news is that the materials were ON POINT.  So, I have everything I need to get in lots of trouble with SEM when I get home.  SO that is good.

But being away from home for that long is hard.  I stayed in the dorm- so I didnt have easy access to a fridge or air that didnt feel like the inside of someone's shoe.  Also, it was pretty structured... so my MO of grazing on healthy food all day was thrown out the window. So instead of eating 4-6 smallish meals/snacks throughout the day, I had to eat three BIG meals.  Plus, with that kind of learning, it's real hard to be motivated to do anything when I got back to my room.  I'd like to say that I worked out, wrote, and saw Ann Arbor, but I would be lying.  I did manage to get through the 5th season of Dexter... so there is that.

I think I just need to stop kidding myself about being "productive" on trips like this one.  I had grand intentions to GET SHIT DONE.  But then, Netflix Happens.

Ringing in the New Year

After the holidays are always kind of a bummer... it's a bit of a let down, right?

Winter Storm Hercules made us a visit over New Years.  We got a bunch of snow.  Which was cool.  Like enough to render cars buried in snow.  Dave is still working on his deadline, so Nico and I hung out most of New Year's Day.  We played Royseball and I taught him Slap Jack and Old Maid. Coincidentally, when you are only playing with two players, most (and in our experience all) games of Old Maid end in a tie.  The good news is, that I love this age with Nico because we can start playing board games and card games.  Although, something tells me this kid is going to kick my ass at Boggle. Still, I am looking forward to him being a scotch older, mostly because he needs to be introduced to the Bishop method... which is running all your errands and doing all your chores on Saturday morning and spending Saturday afternoon, evening, and Sunday lazing around the house and reading the 9314129347 books you got from the library.  

We also did a fair bit of shoveling on Jan 1.   I wonder what I have to do in order to keep the novelty of shoveling snow for him. Because it would be great to have a 12 year old that shovels all the snow.  Don't tell Dave I said that... I'm not allowed to talk about difficulties of winter weather.  For ever.

I also did a fair bit of knitting.  My mom taught me to knit in the round, which is just like regular knitting, only easier. The socks I am wearing in the picture below were knit by her... in peacock colors... I am halfway though a hat for Le Boy... If Dave doesn't watch it, he's going to end up with a hat too!!  Although he probably wouldnt wear it, because he likes the Stoner hat that Aunt Judy got him last year (he wears it pretty much everyday).  

I'd been procrastinating on some errands that needed to happen.  So Wednesday afternoon, I sent Dave to Panera so he could work.  When Nico woke up from nap, we shoveled the car out and set about our errands.  Mind you, I had never driven in snow, but I figured a good way to start would be on a holiday with few people on the road.  I did a pretty good job shoveling the car out- it was surprisingly easy to navigate our road.  Most of the main roads were pretty well shoveled and salted.  

Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist with me using my phone while driving, know that we were at a stop light stopped when the light turned.  

Parking the Kia was a different story- because when I got home, I almost got stuck trying to park.  I finally ditched the parallel parking idea and chose to bury my car in 10" of unshoveled snow in the next block.  

Apparently a 10" snow is business as usual, because Thursday DePaul was open and Nico's school was open.  So I was back at work.  I got a lot going on and am trying to get my feet under me.  I know that my job isn't like being President of the US or even being an Assistant Professor, but damn it's hard to take almost three weeks off.  In any case, I am back on the grind.  

I'm baaaaaaaaaack....

Well hello there!!  It's good to see you.
As promised, I have returned from the hiatus- with a mixed record as to what I did with my time.  Before Thanksgiving, I had gotten down to within 5 lbs. of pre-nico weight, but I undid a bit of that when we were in Texas over the holiday.  I went to the doctor (to get some meds reupped) and was weighed on his "official" (read: bullshit) scale.  He confirmed that since August 7th, I had lost 18 lbs.  This works out to be about a pound per week.  The upside to this that my left knee is feeling great- which is a departure from what it usually feels like.

Moreover, I am getting so strong.  Case in point: we do a lot of pull-ups in CrossFit.  I have never been able to do a pull-up and have always had to use the black band (think of a very large rubber band that you loop over the bar and put your feet in.  Then you step off the box and your weight is somewhat supported by the band).  In order of support, the colors are: purple, black, green, blue.  Since I started CF, I have been on the black band, and have tried a couple of times to go down to the green, but could not get the pull-up.  But the black band has felt really easy the last couple of weeks... like not even a workout.  This week, just for grins, I gave it a go and was able to get a couple of pull-ups.  It was fantastic.  I'm not sure I could do a whole workout with just the green band (yet), but it's nice to have that as a measure.

Last night I went to an Olympic lifting class for the first time.  I am starting to really like a couple of the movements (power cleans and power snatches), but my technique is a hot mess.  So I went to the class to do a little work and just get in a lot of reps.  It's totally like goalkeeping... where sometimes the only way to improve is to do 100 punches over the crossbar.  It is what it is.

So that is great.  The trade off is that I am sore all the time these days.  And I have a lot more muscle... so clothes just do not fit.  Not only the ones that I already have but most the ones I'm looking at when I go shopping.  But I guess that is a good problem to have, right?

In other news, I am looking (on my desk) at a complete second draft of a paper that I have been working on.  Today I will be sending it to my old boss at the FSU COM, for his comments and remarks before we submit it for publication later this month.  Which is fantastic.  I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but I got another publication last month (November).  Back in the spring, I helped one of the FSU COM students with a paper he wanted to submit for a patient safety award.  Well, as I left, he was working on getting it published.  Back in October our old boss (the third author) sent me a note that it had been published.  So, make that two publications since I have been in Chicago.  Isn't that cool?

I have about a third of the lectures for my Winter Quarter class edited.  I still need to record and post them, but I like the progress so far.  I am experimenting with "flipping the classroom", where I record my lectures and my students view them on their own time.  Then they come to class and we work on problems together.  For statistics??  I think it could be really good.

More later.

Haters Should Hate

I think it would be hard to like me.

I don't know if I have haters, but assure me, I probably deserve it.

I have a fantastic life: an adorably funny and smart son; a superhot husband who does laundry and cooks (almost as well as I do). I have a job that I LOVE. I live in a cool ass city and I am getting some time to do things I have wanted to do for a long time (photography and fitness... A LOT OF BOTH). Nobody's life should be allowed to be that awesome, right??

Speaking of awesome, take a look at this kid:

So that is how the cookie crumbles.

I had my interim probationary review at work this week and my boss had some really nice things to say. One component of my job is to provide research consultation to faculty members. This might be anything from helping someone run some stats, to finding data sources for someone else. Earlier this week a faculty member that I helped a couple of months ago approached my boss and raved about me. Unsolicited. Yeah... that is pretty cool.

I really like the people I work with. While I appreciate that I have fairly low standards for work-place interactions, I believe that my current situation would be enviable to anyone. My boss is cool in that he tries to empower all of us to be in control of ourselves and our work. In fact, he hates us having to be dependent on him for stuff. Which works out great for me, because I hate being dependent on people for stuff.

My co-workers mostly leave me alone. We all have the things that we do and no one tries backstab or undercut each other. We all have the things that we bring to the table, so we don't compete with each other. And here is a weird thing, that "bitchy-we're-all-friends-but-we-aren't" thing that happens in a lot of places? Not up in the SSRC. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

Opportunity Knocks

So, in other exciting news, I have been offered a course for the winter quarter at DePaul.  I know, right?  Just when I think I am out, they pull me back in!!

Turns out that the senior research methodologist in the SSRC has taught classes in statistics and methods, prior to my arrival, so the teaching coordinator asked if I would be interested.  While I have never taught a statistics class, I have taught methods.  And I have had some pretty damn good training  in the art of teaching.  And also, I have won two teaching awards.  So it's not really like this:

Of course, I am not sure how much of this the coordinator knew when she asked me to teach an undergraduate statistics course.  It's probably a bit uncommon, for someone who is a good teacher to not move automatically and fully into the teaching track.  If I wasn't in Chicago at DePaul, I would probably be at a teaching college, with my four courses a semester and no research activity.  

The conversation I had with the coordinator was a great conversation and she said that she would send me the course list so that I might consider teaching some of the "fun" classes in demography and health.  Yeah.  How much fun will that be?

This development is actually quite fortuidous...Dave and I watched a thing on Sunday Morning a couple of weeks ago about the Khan Academy that has made me rethink how I would revamp my teaching style, if it ever came to that.  

That said, I believe that I will make every effort to incorporate memes in this class, as well as pop culture references to Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Keeping up with the Kardashians.  For example, here is a question that I might ask on a midterm:

"Following the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, a CDC researcher is interested in how many people are infected ("turned") each day.  She has been collecting this data for a year, but decides to draw a random sample of 30, for which she obtained a sample mean of 34.1 infections per day, with a sample standard deviation of 0.4."

Question 1: Calculate the standard error of the mean.

Question 2: Construct a 95% confidence interval to estimate the mean number of infections.

Question 3: Write a narrative explanation of this confidence interval.  

And so on... couldn't it be very fun??

I think so.  

In addition to that new opportunity... I was chatting with one of the other girls at CrossFit this afternoon and she mentioned that she (and another girl in our class) do Roller Derby.  Apparently this particular establishment is pretty good.  And they invited me to come to their tryouts!!  Can you believe it?  My mother's dream come true!  When I pointed out that I don't "skate" they replied this as not as big of a problem as you would think.  Apparently, being an athlete is a solid enough foundation... then after that, it's just learning how to skate.  Normally, I would be all over this.  But I decided to show some restraint and not jump with both feet.  But it was cool that they invited me.  And in case you were wondering, yes, I have thought about what my name would be.  

Guns McGee.  

Of course this only works if you have actual guns (i.e. well-developed biceps).  Otherwise, its just sad.  So we will revisit this issue in the nearish future.   

Ice Cream

So, one of the best things about the new place is it's proximity to a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robins.  When I got home from work yesterday, Nico and I sent Dave to do some work at a coffee shop and we did some stuff around the house.  I tried to put the bed together- but failed because we are, apparently, missing a piece (don't ask me how).  Then we had some dinner and walked to get ice cream.  Isn't that awesome!!

I have biked to work two days this week.  It's a nice ride... about 12.5-13 miles round trip.  Overwhelming though, because I see all these places where I want to go... this bar...this restaurant... this book store.  Its hard to keep my bike going.  It's weird because I used to be so gunshy about riding my bike.  I would go out of my way to stay on bike paths.  And often I would end up lost.  I've finally just said, "to hell with it!" and just got out there with the cars.  I fully expect to get tagged some day... but since I am riding on crowded city streets,  I am banking on the offending driver only going about 20-30 mph when they hit me.  And since I am wearing a helmet, I think I will be okay.  I mean, obviously, it would hurt, which is why I am careful- defensive. When I have questions about other drivers being aware of me- I just hop off my bike and wait for them to go by.  No big deal.  

It's cool. 

I also finished my work for the College of Medicine this weekend.  I had been working half time for the grant since I left in April... helping with presentations and posters and such.  Yesterday was the big annual meeting and I helped pull together the figures for it.  It was a bit unceremonious of an end for me.  The person who took over my position seemed grateful for my help, but my old boss seemed a bit ambivalent about my contribution.  Oh well.  Consider that a life lesson learned.  

All for now. 

Pipe Dream

Not much else going on.  The legislative session is about 4 days old and I am already over it.  I am going to be glad when the session is over... and better yet, when Dave doesnt have to deal with Florida's legislative session.  Boom!!

We took Gordon to the vet yesterday for Cardiologist appointment.  You know you have old dogs when your vet starts recommending senior dog stuff.  Cray.  

We are going to Fun Station Junior on Saturday with Graham.  I can almost promise that Nico is going to show his tail when we leave.... But hopefully he will have more fun than last time when it was just us.  I think he will.

Other than that, I am hoping we can just have a chill weekend.  I am trying to stay on top of the cleaning and whatnot at the house.  Who knew that running a household would be so much work?  I don't know how our Moms handled it.  I am just worn out most of the time.  I am looking forward to the days when I can just sit on the couch and knit ALL DAY while alternates between doing chores and playing... I'm living a pipe dream, you say?  Oh well.

ASA ES

My conference in Denver was okay.  I wasnt on the program to present anything- I was mostly going to participate in the Employment Service.

The ES is mostly just a speed dating service that allows potential employers to interview potential candidates for 20 minutes.  I did it last year and had a bunch of interviews.  This year, I had 7 interviews and an informal informational session- which is pretty decent, especially considering that a lot of people had 0 or 1 interviews.

I have already sent out a bunch of applications.  For those of you who are interested:
Furman University
Skidmore College
Texas Wesleyan
University of Texas at San Antonio
Coker College
UNC Pembroke
UNC Wilmington
Baylor University
U of Richmond
U of Portland
U of Miami
U of Alabama-Birmingham
Ohio University

Yes.  You read that right- three schools in Texas.  Yeah, I can't believe it either.  Ohio University had the earliest deadline- and they have already contacted me.  This means that I am likely one of about 6-8 other "top candidates".  After the phone interview, they will narrow that list down to 2-3 and invite those people for campus visits.  The job is at a College of Osteopathic Medicine, in their Department of Social Medicine.  Despite spending about an hour online last night trying to find it, I still don't know what the difference is between DO (doctor of osteopathy) and a regular MD is.  Both do surgeries, both do residencies, both have specialities.... so who knows.

I really liked Denver.  It is definitely a cool city.  But I was ready to come home.

Snail Mail

So we've had Granny You in town of late.  She is here to hang out with Nico during his spring break.  Oh yeah, you heard me.  HIS SPRING BREAK.  Wha-what?  Know that saying, "Youth is wasted on the young?"  this particular situation exemplifies this.  What does he need a spring break for?  What does he know?

So, like a chump, I have been working.  Not so much a big fan of the work during spring break.  :(

This is pretty cool... so one of the things about this project I am working on, is requesting medical records for patients who consented to be part of our study.  I have been a bit bummed because it seems like we werent getting a lot of records that we had requested.  Until I passed an Admin Assistant in the hall and she told me that my mail box was blowing up.  Turns out a lot of offices are sending records via snail mail.  Isnt that awesome?  Woooo hooooo!!

In other news, a peer at FSU (she is an instructor in Sociology) turned me on to new music.  This guy Yt is apparently a grad student in Sociology.  At FSU.


I am currently trying to figure out how to ask him to write/record a song for the War Eagles.  Seriously.  How amazing would that be?

Burying the lead...

So, I have had a brilliant last couple of days. Friday, I had a soccer meeting with the WHS girls down in the county. When I got back, I scooped Nico up and we went to check out a backhoe loader that was by my work.

I probably shouldnt have let him climb on it (sets a dangerous precedent). But it was fun.

We started Saturday with a trip to Angelette's Cajun Kitchen for breakfast. FORGET ABOUT IT!! So delicious. They have shrimp grits that are completely off the chain. So delicious. We then went up to the Pumpkin Patch at the church off of Meridian. I took my camera hoping to get some pictures of Nico cutes.
Here is one:

We came home on Saturday and Nico had a nap. When I woke up, I went to shoot some pictures of my friend and co-worker Lavon. I dont know if she knows this or not, but she is really photogenic. She is sort of a goth type girl- wears black eyeliner and has long dark hair. She is the only person I know of whose skin has less melatonin than me... So you know I like standing next to her, because I look like a bronzed beach baby goddess next to her. In any case, I shot some pictures of her, her husband and baby for Christmas cards. Some came out pretty good.

Sunday morning Nico and Dave made me breakfast. When Nico woke up he said, "Its your birthday, we gotta eat some cakes!!" Which is pretty adorable. They got me two things I have been wanting for a while, but have been too gunshy to pull the trigger on (a Fitbit- which is a fitness device that records how many calories you burn throughout the day, along with sleep efficiency, etc and an adidas sling backpack... whoot). Am pretty excited about it. Mom and Dad gave me a gift certificate to Amazon...which is pretty rad. Amd trying to figure out how to spend it... on a really expensive digital watch (that can also be worn with a heart rate monitor) or on a Nifty Fifty lens for my Canon DSLR? I think I would love both equally.... I dont know.

Dave took Nico to Premeir for the kids room and some swimming on Sunday. I did some actual work on a presentation for a paper I am presenting on Thursday at SDA (its in Tally- whoot).

The REALLY big news is that I got my offer letter today. I told my boss at DOH. My last day is November 11... so that is really cool. I have 98 hours of leave that I am trying to figure out how to take. Turns out, I wont be in the office much... which completely rocks my face off. I might even take myself to see a movie. Probably the new Footloose, because I dont think Dave would go see it with me...

Got it..

So. I got the post-doc at the med school. I think I am going to take it. While it is an amazing opportunity, I am still really nervous that its the wrong decision. But this is me. Sometimes I am just a nervous nelly.

I spoke with a peer who is an assistant professor at a teaching school. And I am trying to talk to another faculty member to get some more perspective, but if he tells me what I think he is going to tell me, I'm going to accept it.

That is kind of exciting. I dont know how it works with work... taking leave and such. I havent told my supervisor yet, but I probably will today (if I can talk to this professor first). This is literally, the toughest part of this whole thing... because I really like the other people in the arthritis program. And it wont be easy to meet our grant goals in this last year while trying to fill my position. I hope it can go well...

So that is that.

Anyone see this story? About the woman who was given the wrong lottery ticket and won 15 million dollars. That is pretty awesome.