All a whirlwind....

Wow, the last few days have been such a whirlwind. National Science Foundation proposals were due yesterday, and i've been writing one to go back to Alaska once the project finishes up there in September. I've been writing it with a collaborator, who luckily I like, because otherwise, this whole giving me text for the first time at 2am the "morning" the proposal is due is really not the way I like to do things.

But the good news is it's done. It's in. And I wish it had a chance, but with funding rates these days i'm totally dubious. Last night I had a nice beer, and took part in a local pub quiz which was a lot of fun. Then I actually slept for longer than 4 hours, the first in well over a week. On to other things, like another proposal next week, student papers I should have been reading, and the ever dreaded completing the Antarctic medical and dental.

So I found out last week that I need a tooth pulled, and am having that out tomorrow. It's actually not a huge surprise, i've known that tooth has been dead for a long while. It's not been causing any problems (it's one way at the back), but good 'ole Antarctic program says it has to come out, so come out it shall. My friends Chris and Gabby are kindly taking me in tonight and Chris is taking me to my appointment tomorrow (they're sticking me under, so no driving for me).

Fun fun fun. To look on the bright side at least I get to catch up with more sleep tomorrow.....:0)

Weekend on the Cape!

Spent this weekend on Cape Cod - a flying visit to drop off boxes to be loaded into the container headed to the Antarctic. Got to catch up with a few people I didn't catch over Christmas, so that was awesome. I'm pooped, so here are a few photos from Friday onwards.

Friday saw more than a little snow at the Darling Marine Center. Perfect time to get in dive #10! I have to get to 12 dives before Chris (the Diving Safety Officer - DSO) can sign me off to dive in Alaska, so getting to #10 this week really made me feel good. 

It's a good thing Chris is about as crazy as I am, or i'd never be able to dive in Alaska! 

Packing, unpacking and repacking boxes - here's part of the stack that's going to be loaded into a container to head to Southern Chile in just a few weeks. Kathy and Marshall came and helped me, which was awesome! 

Got to catch up with my little friend DSV Alvin too, who is in for a long while to get refitted with a new, deeper diving sphere. 

Kathy and I got to try out the mock up for the new Alvin sphere, quite spatious compared to the present sphere - you get a whole extra 4 inches on the inside! 

The Sound of Science

Love this!

The difference between you and me....

From XKCD Comics

A great day!

Three little coral polyps, all the way from Alaska...:0)

Today was one of those days that makes me love what I do. There are so many low sides to science, it's great to have a day that just makes me excited in science. The Alaska samples have been exciting from day 1, but today I got to put them into the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and take a closer look. Initially I was kind of bummed, because the preservation wasn't great, they've all cracked up and didn't dry as well as I would like them. But after looking at several samples I found a bunch of new things - eggs, larvae and even a specialized structure to house those larvae, something that hasn't been described before. I love a puzzle and these corals are certainly that, some exciting things are going to come out of this project!

On top of that I also had a paper accepted for publication, swopped my half of a -80C freezer for a microscope and some supplies (instead of losing it totally to an ass in the department trying to screw me out of it), got two new pieces of equipment delivered and actually got into my own lab for an hour this morning.

Probably sad I know, but this definitely counts as a great day!

Calm, collected and.....oh crap...

Can I have a re-do on monday? Preferably one that involves going back to Alaska? This morning I woke and discovered the sweet smell of gone off milk and yogurt, my fridge had died in the night (turns out the thermostat had died rather than the fridge, which is a good thing), alongside a day full of meetings and students and lab work, from 6am I knew Monday was going to be a Moanday. My landlady was none-too pleased and though got it fixed today which was awesome, was somewhat rude and hard to pin down to what exactly went on (isn't fixing things like that part of what I pay (a small fortune) in rent for?), yeah it probably didn't make her monday either, but still, it's not like I broke it, on purpose, on a monday morning just to piss her off. I'm pretty sensitive to people's feelings, and when someone is wound up and pissy, it makes me stressed, so that has pretty much been my day, that stressed out feeling.

So, in an effort to try and ward of the Moandays, here are my 5 things that made me happy last week (this one is not easy, since the wind down from Alaska has been tough) -

1. Making the video from the Tracy Arm cruise. Probably pathetic, but I find myself watching it and smiling.
2. To catch up with Jenny, Doug and Hannah, little H is as cute as ever, and though my name is now "Mary" (she has an aunty mary), she is still adorable!
3. Alaska samples - processed a few and found some really funky things, this particular project is probably my favorite of the last few years.
4. Having a colleague stick her head into my office and say "don't go" on a regular basis. Though it makes me sad at leaving, it also makes me feel warm and fuzzy that i'm appreciated.
5. Looking over all the photos from Alaska. Like the above, there were some very memorable moments. Thanks again to Stian for lending me his camera for the Juneau trip.

Be sure to check out the short public radio link below, I usually hate radio interviews, but I think this woman did a good job with all 4 of us.

I'm off!

It's 11pm and i'm up at 4am to get on a plane - yay! Everything is packed away and even in the car, as it's way too early in the AM to be lugging two giant bags down the stairs. I should do that more often, stops me last minute re-arranging....:0)

So i'm off to do two of my favorite things - camping and science - and even combine those two for a few days. I'm really excited, relieved, and happy the time has finally got here. Glacier Bay National Park here I come! Don't forget to tune into my science blog (link on the right), that's where i'll be posting photos (look under Glacier Bay National Park Corals link), i'll try and check in here sometimes too, internet is going to be pretty sporadic, so no promises until I get back!

Lab Productivity

This week one of the grad students and postdocs who works in my lab is going histology crazy trying to get her stuff finished, and one of the undergrads who works with me is helping them out, so it's been a busy time in the lab this week, and next week. But I love it, it's great to see some lab productivity happening! I'd like to point out my fancy microtome by the way (the machine they're working on), sweated blood for that one....

The meaning of life....well, the meaning of my lab anyway.....coral gonads! Basically in my lab we look at how animals reproduce, these are shallow water corals, but primarily we work with deep sea animals. We take pieces of reproductive tissue, mount them in wax blocks then slice them really thinly (5 microns!) and mount them up on slides. We can then use lots of fancy stains to bring out different types of tissues - we use purple (of course), red and green to bring out the reproductive tissues. Through this we can see when, how and how much they are reproducing. And as reproduction is a good sign on a healthy population, we can use that to see how corals under stress are doing. So the above is just a small subset of the thousands of slides my lab produces every month.

The team, covered in wax and a little delirious I think.....

I'm going to miss my labbies when I leave, Jackie (right) has been there since the beginning and will graduate with her PhD in the spring, so I have to come back to Hawaii to do her exam, good excuse to come back to the sunshine. Laeticia is a postdoc who has been doing some histology here and there, she just landed a fabulous job in France, well done Laeticia! 

Science

It's one of those weeks i'm barely having time to sleep, so it may be a while before anything meaning goes up here. I have two proposals to finish up before I go. Scrap that, I have one proposal to finish up, and one to start and finish up before I go. Add in the normal mix of papers to review, students to help, meetings, dive course to finish sunday and everything else that goes along with "doing science" and I'm pooped. My brain didn't turn off enough to sleep until 1am last night, and then woke right back up again at 5am. But the 19th August is creeping up, and that is when i'm out of here, off to Alaska and going kayaking for 7 days before doing some really fun projects for 3 weeks, so if I only sleep every other day to get it done before I go, i'm not going to complain, it'll be worth it.

Stand back, i'm going to DO science!

Operation: Eat through my cupboard....

Anyone who's lived with me knows I have probably a years worth of food stored at any one time, all be it in slightly "different" combinations of meals. Primarily this is because i'm somewhat fickle in the food department, though I eat pretty much anything, what I fancy on a daily basis really changes, and if I don't have something I fancy in the house, I tend to eat chocolate for dinner, so it's important for me to keep my fridge/freezer/shelves stocked at all times so I can eat healthier than a bar of chocolate or nutella sandwiches (which though awesome, are not whole nutrition at it's best). The food stockpiling thing is all the rage right now too, so I feel slightly ahead of the times on this.

So i'm starting to think of the "big move". In reality my things will probably be shipped out sometime in November, which gives me until November to eat through my fridge/freezer/shelves. So i've decided, for a few weeks at least, not to buy any food. None. Now before anyone panics about this - I use dried milk because it's considerably cheaper than real milk, and I have a whole new Costco box of it, and I have a ton of frozen fruit and veg around, as well as multiple packets of yoghurt. So i'm not going to die of malnutrition here. It's just going to be a good exercise in using up the major components of my kitchen. So wish me luck as I go through the next few weeks, eating some pretty unusual meals i'm sure. In all this too, i'm going to keep bringing in my lunch to work, so there might be some eyebrows raised....we'll see!

Oh - and i'm starting to update my lab blog - so be sure to check that out as I'm running up to some Alaska projects. Tab is on the sidebar!

Back from SEA

Back from the 5 days with the UH SEA program. I wish I could say it was great, but man, the politics i've talked about before seemed to continue, not in the same way, but I guess it's just apparent my friend Alison is just not cut out for life at sea and was over her head. Now Alison is awesome and I adore her as a friend, but it's abundantly clear it was a good thing for me not to be on the first leg as she would have driven me crazy. By the time I arrived she had alienated the whole crew and was really rude to them, and wasn't much better to the students either, she was obviously "done", as was the crew. She'd organized some fantastic trips during the cruise, but a lot was done last minute, and really didn't cope well with the challenges that being at sea creates (weather not allowing you to sample, moorings not being good enough for certain areas etc.), nor did she seem to embrace all that SEA has to offer - namely the sailing and crewing component that makes up so much of what they do. It is the first of hopefully more UH cruises, and I hope this hasn't turned SEA off completely, Alison would be a great director for the program, as long as she remains on the ground, something myself and David, the other faculty involved talked about a lot on the way home today. So it was a tense 5 days, as I feel torn between Alison and SEA, seeing both sides. It was a learning experience for both sides, I hope both sides see their flaws and the ways to better work together in the future.

What was good is that I got to see a small slice of the SEA pie, got to ride the ship a little before i'm potentially  on a full cruise with them. I can honestly say all the SEA crew and science party were awesome in the way they handled the students, the students adored them and they were really learning. I'd feel very privileged to be able to work for SEA in the future. Some pics from the trip. 

Students up the rigging - having a great time! 

Two green sea turtles at the Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park on the Big Island.

We had a tour of the Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historic Park from an awesome guide. 

Student Rhonda enjoying some R&R while under sail from the Big Island to Maui. 

To do an Opihi survey (limpets that are a cultural food, now endangered in many parts) for a student project we had to hike 2 miles over lava to a site within the Ahihi-Kina'u Natural Area Reserve. On the way there were these brackish ponds, where rainwater had pooled and seawater had seeped through to create these lush pools teeming with shrimp and a nesting site for stilts. It was awesome, hiking through hot barren A'A' lava and over a crest would be these pools. Our Nature Conservancy guide Matt was awesome, as well as fearless during the Opihi transects - which were often sheer cliffs being pounded by the waves. All of us came back with scratches and bruises! 

Finding our way to the sites - these are areas that have been closed to fishing for the last two years, so are sampled by the Nature Conservancy regularly to look and see if they are recovering. So the sites we sampled were GPS points to make sure the same area was being sampled. Over barren, hot and dangerously sharp lava, the trek was a challenge, as was finding sites sometimes!  

This is what the end of the hike looked like - this was the final site of 15 we did. By this time the tide was so high it was too dangerous to keep surveying, so we sat, rehydrated and had a quick snorkel in this pool before heading back out of the closed reserve. Feel very special for being able to go in there. 

David, one of the other Hawaii Faculty displaying his Opihi wounds! 

What goes on at sea stays at sea. Well maybe not. These are some of the awesome SEA crew, who made clean up day a whole lot more fun than you could imagine. In the space of 3 hours the entire boat was scrubbed and cleaned, every surface inside and out. Everyone kicked in, science, students and crew alike. 

One of the students Andrew at the helm. I was in awe, by the time I arrived they had been at sea for 3 weeks, yet they knew every rope, every command and just got on to get the job done. It was awesome to see them take on the responsibility of the ship, take commands and pitch in together. What SEA is all about! 

Iceland here I come....

Our conference field trip today - we went to Laugarvatn - heralded as the second most beautiful place in Iceland (the first now being covered in ash). It was a loooooooooooooooong ass drive out there, 3-4hrs, which kind of put a damper on things - I think most would have been much happier with somewhere closer. The hike at the end was nice, the place nice, nothing too spectacular, but then again I am kind of spoilt for dramatic volcano scapes these days....

The long drive out in 4WD buses! Eric and Scott for scale....

They took us to this park, where we had sandwiches and then were left to wander for a few hours before a lamb BBQ. The scenery was stark, basalt and lava scapes, with hydrothermal pockets, lots of steam oozing from rocks, was pretty cool.

Looking over a river myself and student Anela went to explore.

Looking over the lava field.
We did a little "off roading"...

The result of the volcano, even many hundreds of miles away - here is an ice bench, covered with ash.

A hot hydrothermal pool at the end. I didn't partake, I was going too, but the water was a little "gooey" as someone put it, and there were 100 deep sea biologists also in there.....

Iceland here I come....

Wowsers, what a week. And in a few hours i'm out of here, off to Iceland until the 15th June. It's the Deep Sea Biology Conference, one of my favorite conferences to attend, and luckily I got a great travel award to be able to go. It's so expensive though, the award barely covered my flight and registration, so it's hostel time for me this next week! Haven't done the dorm style travel in a while, and it's hard to do when you're going to a conference and having to look nice, but it's all I could afford on this one, so it'll be an adventure. Because I needed cheaper flight I don't fly back until the next monday either (it takes two days to get there, and get back - ouch! Overnighting in Seattle both ways), so that rather nicely means I have the weekend to hopefully see some of Iceland!

No pictures this week i'm afraid, it's been a busy one just trying to get paperwork together and all my bits and pieces for this conference. I'll take some in Iceland I promise. Next Saturday a friend and I are going diving in the Sifra Rift, and are totally excited about it. I need dry suit experience to go diving on a project I have in Alaska later this year, so took my course while on the Cape. But we could only squeeze in two dives, and I really need more to dive with this Alaskan group. The guy I was diving with on the Cape mentioned Iceland, as he knew I was going, and I am so glad he did, this looks awesome! So that's my birthday treat from myself to myself, and it means more chance of me being allowed to dive with deep-sea corals in Alaska - woo hoo!

Okay, i'm off - take care out there!

Visit to the Darling

I'm on day 4 of the 4 day interview, and it's been a whirlwind. No day has been overly busy with meetings, but it's just been chock full of meeting new people, seeing the labs and space and just getting to know the area. It's a beautiful area, even though i'm on interview, just being in a setting like this puts me at ease. I don't know how it's going, I think well, but I also don't want to get my hopes up. It's a position I would like, but the funding is so unknown I don't know if it's something I could take even if offered. We'll just have to see.

Tomorrow i'm driving up to Kate's house, and then on Saturday we're driving to Canada, for the work visa interview portion of this trip!

The lower campus of the Darling Marine Center, as seen from the dock. There are just 8 researchers in residence here, so it's a wonderfully small group of great scientists.

The upper campus (a ten minute walk up a dirt road), this is the building I am staying in. Upper campus is primarily admin buildings, with a couple of labs.

The center has 150 acres to it's name, and in it lots of trails and tracks, and even a cemetery in the woods! It's been a little wet and chilly, but I did wander some of the trails on sunday when I arrived, and saw some beautiful old stone fences.

Bench mark by the sea.

One of the schools research vessels.

Now that, is a bird house!

Holy Crap!

Not too many posts i'll start with those words, but since those words were the first thing that came out of my mouth when I had an email come in this afternoon, it's probably a good place to start.

I just took on my first Ph.D. student.....from scratch!

Now i've advised many graduate students over the years, helped many in the lab, given advice on projects and jobs, even helped a few graduate, but this will be the first one i've hired from the very beginning on one of my projects. We've be chatting over the last few weeks, and she had offers from other schools, so to be honest I didn't really think she'd choose to come, and I wasn't really trying very hard to encourage her either - for no other reason than this particular project doesn't start until later in the year, so it's not urgent for me to take someone. But I just got an email saying she's declined her other offers and really wants to come.

And at that very moment I felt both excited and scared at the same time. I'm now responsible for this person for the next 5-6 years. Her salary, her education, her future in science. It's hard enough to predict my future in science at this point in time, let alone take on a student, but to be honest, this is the next step for me, and I can't put it off any longer. It'll either work out or it won't.....

Either way....holy crap......i'm an adult!

Ada Lovelace Day

There's a good chance you may not have heard of this day, but today is Ada Lovelace Day. This day is an "international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in science and technology".

Ada Lovelace was one of the first computer programmers (not just the first women, one of the first). While everyone else planned to use the (never built at that time) "analytical engines" for basic maths, Ada wrote an algorithm to use the machine to calculate bernoulli numbers, making her the first computer programmer, though way before her time.

So what to write for this day, it's a hard one, because looking back there were really no women scientists who directly affected my past - in Aberystwyth where I did my undergrad there were no female scientists teaching the Marine and Freshwater biology program, and in Southampton i'm having trouble putting my finger on any who I worked with or even around. The European consortium I did my PhD under just had a handful of female sediment biologists. I guess it's not really something i've thought or dwelled much on, i'm not a fan of this talk of sexism in science, not that I think it doesn't exist and haven't experienced it myself (one particular Antarctic cruise will go nameless), I just feel that much more than half of the time it's brought up as an excuse for someone not doing well rather than something in reality, so it makes it hard to tease out. It's an attitude i've unfortunately met often with some women in science, and one that I don't think has done those particular people any favors. Certainly the women I see around me who have done well in the careers (and lives) are not the ones to sit back and blame sexism for this that and the other. I also know far more men who haven't made it past their PhD or postdocs in marine science than I do women.

But getting off that subject, this day is to celebrate those women in science and technology. Women like Caroline Mikkelsen, the first woman to the Antarctic in 1935; Christine Muller-Swartz, the first woman to do science in the Antarctic in 1969; Ruth Turner, the first woman to use Alvin; Cindy Van Dover, the first (and only) woman Alvin pilot and Slyvia Earl, a National Geographic Explorer in residence and someone who has brought the marine world into peoples homes for many tens of years. There are many women back in history who have turned the tides of marine science, particularly marine biology. Do I think women are overlooked, sometimes, but mainly I think we just don't like to shout about our science as much as the boys do, and that personally works for me.....:0)

This page here is a wonderful compilation of women in marine science.

Instead of naming the colleagues I have now, i'll just say this post is dedicated to the, thankfully large, handful of women who I work with, and thoroughly enjoy doing so!

Happy Friday!

Certainly for this wee turtle, what a great story for the start of a weekend. Message from the Research Vessel Atlantis working in the Pacific on the Galapagos Spreading Center -

Atlantis on station , position 02-36'N, 094-52'W, in the EEZ of
galapagos for Atlantis cruise 15-63 (Sinton) Alvin dive #4593 in
progress.

Captain walking on deck sees something floating in the distance. Color
is yellow @ 1000 meters away, asks Alvin "top lab" in communication with
the submersible, for permission to investigate.

Object turns out to be an illegal fishing longline. Tangled in the mess
is a sea turtle.

Deck crew frees turtle,
turtle swims off.

photos by Rod Catanach.

Best regards,
AD (Captain)

So....

I might not be a doormat anymore, but boy, can I have a redo on this week?

The story - i've been working on an exciting SEA project with a friend - trying to organize a program for UH students to go out on the boat for a month to experience something they would never have the opportunity to do otherwise. The issue has always been that I need salary to be able to do it, and i've been given the royal run around by a friend of mine, that has been more than a little stressful. I was very up front about needing salary (6 months ago - when this all began), yet totally out of the blue, she put me in a really bad position several months ago, announcing one day (as I was working on the project) that they money she wanted wasn't coming in and I would have to "work for free". Not asking, mind you, just announcing, almost as an afterthought.

This left me stumped. As 100% research funded i'm used to being bled dry, people are always trying it on, I just didn't expect it from this avenue. So I was firm, and she kept saying she was trying, but it was becoming clear that salary was not forthcoming. While I was in Canada I finally nailed it down, and she said she wasn't pursing funding for me anymore, so I said I wasn't involved anymore - no hard feelings, that's just how it goes, you win some, you loose some, it's just important to cut bait before it becomes too much and you invest too much time in it.

But when I got back the pressure was back on for me to work on this, I was asked again last week to be a part of it (when all the student applications came in), yet again, though there was the hope of salary, there was no commitment being made. I swear i've lost years off my life in stress alone in this, as whenever i brought it up, a big deal would be made of it, blowing it out of proportion and myself made to feel guilty or like I was pushing for something the other (tenured - ie - funded) faculty weren't getting. I hate talking about needing money, it was so hard to bring it up 6 months ago when we started putting this project together, but I did, because I knew I couldn't do it without. We're talking about a 6 week project, with all the run up too that would be needed. I don't have 6 wks of salary period, let alone 6wks spare to use on an unfunded project!

Yesterday we had a meeting of the faculty involved and it became clear both from that meeting and from emails that it would be a while until we knew if I would have salary. But I can't wait for an answer - unfortunately I have an interview in Maine, a work visa renewal and an important conference all in the same time period that I should deal with if I am not going on this cruise, and so travel plans need to be made for those now (as in last week!). As much as I would love to do it, I can't keep that time period open just in case.

So finally today, I got a firm answer - she was not prepared to definitely allot salary to me at this time point. As sad as I am not to do it, I am relieved, I got to the point last night where I didn't care what the answer was, I just didn't want to be run around anymore. I think what got me was a comment one of the other faculty made yesterday that made me think that my friend had said to them before that she would make me do it for free. So i'm not sure where I went wrong, where did I give off this impression that I would be able to do this without salary?

So that's what i've been dealing with this last few weeks. I think what has really upset me is the avenue it came from. This is a friend (and still is) who i've lamented with often over other people doing just this to me, someone who has been very pro me standing up for myself against those people, someone who knows my financial and work position, so I just don't get it...?? I guess the lesson here is you have to be careful with everyone, even your friends, which just makes me sad, and even more determined than ever to be careful how I treat people. I feel good because I stood by what I needed to, I just don't feel good because it dragged on, makes me feel guilty and was just way more stressful than it ever should be (admittedly not from my own doing, but regardless...). I'm hoping we're still friends, I really can't harbor hard feelings, I just know where i stand with work things now.

So reasons I want a redo on this week -

1) the above

2) my -80C freezer (with many $K of samples in) went down this morning. Luckily all samples saved and squirreled away in various freezers around the building, but I won't know until tomorrow if the $10K freezer is toast. Ug.

3) Three migraines in 2 days! So not happy, but I have discovered ice helps, which is something positive.

I thought 32 was supposed to be my "lucky year".....so when is that going to start?? Hope you're all having a better one.

Bye bye ABE

Bye bye ABE. What a sad day. I just got an email from some friends out on the Melville, doing science off the coast of Chile, looking for hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. They were using ABE - the Autonomous Benthic Explorer. ABE is an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) - meaning it's a very very clever robot, that you put over the side without a tether and it goes off and runs a program underwater, like mapping an area at a certain depth above the bottom for Xhrs, or taking photos or measurements, and when it's done it sends a signal and comes up to the surface for you to pick it up again. It was really the first of it's kind, developed in Woods Hole by dear friends, and something i've used now and then.

I just got an email saying that ABE was lost at sea yesterday. It had just started its survey at 3000m when everything went dead. They're not sure what happened, and probably never will be, but the best guess at the moment is one of it's glass flotation spheres (contained in the red floats) imploded at depth (at the great pressures that are down in the deep-sea), setting off the other spheres to also implode. Without any floatation it could never come back to the surface to be collected. They lost signal with it too, meaning when it happened, it likely took out all the electronics. A glass sphere imploding would be something like a few sticks of dynamite going off, so alas ABE is probably in many pieces at 3000m on the seafloor.

Loosing science equipment at sea is something that happens occasionally - if you throw something over the side into the bumpy ocean, especially without a rope, you have to expect to be lucky to get it back. It's certainly something that's happened to me before. But ABE was really like an old friend, though he was replaced last year by SENTRY at Woods Hole, he was dusted off for this cruise as there is so much demand for this technology right now, and there are so few of these AUVs in the world. And now ABE sits, at the bottom of the ocean by Chile. Here is part of an email I got today.

By Al Bradley, inventor of ABE

The Autonomous Benthic Explorer
1991-2010

Under the wide and restless sea,
Lies my grave, now let me be;
Glad did I work and now I rest,
Now by deadlines no longer stressed.
And I lay me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
"Here lies ABE where it longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home to the sea,
Here it rests, now let it be."

(Thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson)

Sadness and Spending

Well, i'm definitely back! It's been an amazingly productive week so far considering. Monday I skipped off and caught up at home and on ignored emails. Since then i've edited two student papers, reviewed a (terrible) paper that seemed to take forever and did the final revisions on a paper now submitted and in press. Papers and my big need this year, last year they were too long ignored in favor of writing proposals. It's a hard line to tow - papers don't get me money, they don't pay my salary - proposals won't get me a permanent job - so where should I best spend my time? Balance would be good, but when you're looking at your job ending soon, it's hard not to focus on proposals.

So sadness - this is my last week with my little peruvian lab technician. She's been fabulous and i'll miss her. She's really kept the lab going while i've been away, and is just the organizing figure head I need for my lab. I didn't get the funding to keep her going this year, and she got a fabulous fisheries job in Alaska. It's a great opportunity for her, and she'll love it i'm sure, but I am hoping she might decide to come back after, when that position finishes in the fall.

Spending. Well, being away from home is always expensive (though staying with my canadian family really helped me out this trip!), and when I returned i've been faced with 2 new expenses. 1) there was a power out while I was away that must have killed my TV. Ug. But there is nothing better to switch my brain from stress to relax than watching some trash TV or a movie, so, unfortunately, it's going to be replaced. At least anything larger than 20 inches is too big for my little place, so that keeps my costs down....:0)

The second expense is interview clothes. Yes, interview. I have an interview in Maine - which i'm saying right up front i'm not expecting to get as i'm the most junior person they're interviewing, but I am headed to Maine in May (when my teaching is done) to interview for a job at the Darling Marine Center. I would love a job there, but yes, it's totally unlikely. But there is something about having smart clothes that make you feel good to make an interview go well, and I realised on this trip, I seem to be lacking in that department. The set I wore for my interview in Hawaii I wore to my PhD thesis defense 5 years earlier. Two more years and Hawaii humidity has seen an end to those. I did an invited talk in Canada, and realised I really have nothing in the way of really smart clothes right now. But clothes cost money, and time, and I hate clothes shopping with a vengeance, especially here in Hawaii where I can't online order easily and the stores are always packed. Makes for an unhappy Rhian and an unhappy Rhian's wallet.

On the good side, as the interview isn't until May (and the symposium in June), at least I have some time to spread it out. I need 5 days of nice clothes........so maybe an outfit a week.......it's a long ass interview....