Natural selection, according to one of my (very good conceptually, not so good with writing) students. One of those weak ones getting eaten in my 101 class, upset that he did poorly on a second exam, told me, "I studied my butt off for that one. I studied an hour and a half."
I'm not sure he appreciated it when I laughed at him, but I had to.
Next year I'll be with different students in a different state where I can at least fantasize nobody will get ait.
M and I would be really depressed over KU's loss last weekend if we hadn't had the pleasant distraction of welcoming our new son, Max, into the world. He was born March 20 on the Spring Equinox at 12:34am. We had a really amazing labor and delivery experience and are happy to be home now getting to know each other. I hope you all can meet Max some time soon!
First of, we're going to be moving since our house sold and we have an accepted offer in on another. Pictures forthcoming once the appraisal goes through on the new place. But it's 3600 sq ft, a third of an acre yard and .4 miles from the train to the city and the U of C and built in 1913. 4 beds, 2.5 baths (with a BIG master suite).
So we're going to be moving in about a month and we're having a debate about whether we should get another storage locker. We have one which is full already. The storage locker is about 10 minutes from our new house and is open from 6 am - 10 pm 7 days a week. The locker is about 35 minutes from our current house.
We've decided to pack ourselves but will be hiring someone to help with the heavy lifting of furniture. We're going to have about a week (one weekend) to get our stuff out of our current house which we'll be renting from our buyers for a month. My birthday present is going to be a new house.
Thoughts? Advice?
Okay, so I have been terrible about keeping in touch lately. Some of that is my fault, some of that is the craziness that never seems to settle down in my life. In any case, I thought I would do a mini update here so I can inform a bunch of people I care about as to what’s been happening in one go.
1. This is a weird thing to say and I haven’t said it because I haven’t figured out how to word it…but I’ll just say it. Since returning from Japan I have made it a priority to live my life healthier, i.e. eat better, exercise regularly, and most of all lose weight. I have been pretty successful on all fronts. Those that have seen me recently (Jenny and Beth) can attest to that fact. I’m not sure of the exact number but I have lost something like 80 pounds over the course of a year and some change. I kept thinking that I would just post a picture of me but it turns out I still don’t like pictures of me so that won’t be happening. I could still stand to lose like 20 more or so, but at least I’m in a much healthier place now. I have much greater stamina, sleep better, and just generally feel better about myself so it’s been a good thing.
2. I did not go to N. Ireland all that time back, but I will be going to South Korea this summer. I decided to take advantage of the program I applied for to go to Japan and try Korea (and Singapore) this time. I’ve been accepted to the Korea program so I will be there for at least 8 weeks this summer (and probably longer to travel). I’m trying to decide if I want to make a quick trip to Japan, maybe see my lovely host family again (the kids are getting so big!) or see a part of Japan I didn’t see before, but this will mostly depend on whether my parents decide to come visit Korea at the end of my time there. We’ll see. I think I am going to revive my jellyfish and hanabi blog (I wonder if I can change it to include a Korean word?). I found that the easiest way to post, though I will probably still do pictures through facebook as that is way easier to upload (I never did upload pictures from Kanazawa did I – need to do that).
3. All of this is good but I have had one sort of bad thing happen this year. It’s nothing terrible, just frustrating. Basically, my right ovary has decided to go a little crazy. It started developing functional cysts which, while annoying and can be painful occasionally, are not generally a problem and do go away. In the midst of monitoring these buggers, my doctor discovered that I had grown another kind of cyst, a dermoid cyst. These are the really weird and kinda gross ones (the ones that have teeth and hair – both of which mine apparently had). The thing grew quite big (7 + cm) very fast (in less than 2 months) and these things have to be surgically removed. So just last week, my mom came to stay with me and I had surgery to remove this thing. Turns out it was in the nick of time – there were actually 2 cysts, not one, they were wrapped around my ovary rather than being to one side of it drastically increasing the amount of time it took to remove them, and the larger one was starting to rupture. Which is probably why I was periodically having pain with it. In any case, I’m very glad I didn’t wait any longer to take care of it because a ruptured cyst sounds terrible to deal with. I’ve been recovering nicely with little pain(this hurts way less than my ankle when I had surgery on it) more just general soreness. Really the only problem I’m really having is some tenderness with my scars (which inhibits the wearing of some of my pants). But all in all, pretty minor. Hopefully that right ovary will settle down now and behave itself.
So that is the very long update on how I have been doing. I’ll try to be better about responding because I would really hate to lose touch with you all. I hope you all are doing well!
I taught a class in it, according to my CV that has already been distributed.
Good thing that brains of search committee members probably work like yours (and mine and my proof-readers') and automatically changes it to the intended "conservation biology".
I'd be pretty good at the conversation biology class, though.
Does anyone else struggle with purchasing airline tickets and the meaning behind each flight segment? I am going to a conference in FL and will visit an uncle I haven't seen in > 20yrs. Should I get there as early as possible to spend more time with him? If I get there that evening instead what does that convey - I want to spend less time (because it is $100 cheaper)? Now that I write this out it sounds silly, but I just spent 45 minutes agonizing about which flight segments to choose and what it means.
Hi Everyone!
Three upcoming chances to see me:
1) I will be in Lawrence for the Society of Self Fellows meetings on March 22. I should buy a ticket this today, but generally plan to be there Sat-Tues and will have Dianthus with me.
2) I won a big (for here) faculty development award that includes going to the Center for Case Study Teaching in Science's annual workshop in Buffalo in May. I'd love to hang out with a friend while learning to better teach with case studies.*
3) The Mister, Dianthus and I are going to see family in Colorado and Kansas this summer, so we may be in your part of the world in June or July.
While I've already registered, won the funding and intend to go, this is partially contigent upon the failure of some recent travels I've been doing. Talk to me "off-line" ("off-blog"?) if you think you might be going.
Anybody going to be around?
Since I just missed Molly's birthday, (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOLLY!), I'll post about SalSis's birthday a little early (HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAL SIS!).
We all wish you both the best and hope you celebrate fully, whether early or late.
