Friday, January 29, 2010

Part one: Age

So I haven't written about the current job search because, well, I've gotten a very defeated feeling about the whole thing. I've applied for post-doc positions, as this is my third (and thus final) year here, and I have applied for faculty positions. For the latter, well, there's still a lot of time. But for the former, there's a problem.

Probably 90% of the post-doc positions I have applied for I could not get. The reason for this is my age. Not the number of years I've been alive, but the number of years since I got my PhD. Many institutions (as well as the official rule of the Dept. of Energy, where much of the funding comes from for us) have a policy against hiring someone who is more than five years out of getting his/her PhD. This of course immediately rules me out. As for the other 10%, well, that's just a crap shoot (and hoping that many people take the jobs I can't get to leave these open).

Honestly, the worst part is my interest in teaching. Obviously I want a faculty position due to its (more) permanent nature, but I also just want to teach. So getting a post-doc position is basically in case I don't get a faculty job (which is rather likely), but I would immediately pull out of it if I did. Basically, I'm frustrated because I have always taken getting post-doc offers for granted (my first time around I got three offers, plus two potential offers, and the second time around I got one potential offer and two offers, so I've always been able to choose).

So that's frustration number one right now.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Alarms no more

So apparently I don't need an alarm anymore to wake up. Usually, my alarm is set to 7:40, I snooze four times (something Corbett just loves*), and get out of bed at 8:20 to start the day. This is what occurred on Monday, but since then things have gotten all messed up.

Tuesday the volume was off (not sure why), and I woke up at 8:20 realizing this. Both yesterday and today apparently I shut off the alarm without snoozing it when it first went off and proceeded to sleep until 8:20. I guess my internal clock is finally set. Only took nearly 33 years.

I've been not all interested in posting as of late, primarily because of not-so-positive things really. One of these days, perhaps even later today depending on how I feel, I may go into all the detail, but I'm just not in the mood this early in the morning.**

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* Except in all honesty, he usually doesn't hear it anymore.

** It's nothing major, mostly just work-related mumbo jumbo, so really, it's nothing like personal or family health problems or anything...

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Need to work on the algorithm here

I just went to the 'burg's library website and searched for the title "Anything Goes." It did not find this title, but then asked if I meant "Nothing Gobs."

Interested, I had to click on it to search, and sadly it came up with no results. Now, I'm all for these "did you mean" corrections (so long as they don't, as Google often does, automatically search for the "correction"), but if you are going to suggest it, should it not have a result?

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

How dare she?

I came into my office this morning all ready to start the day. I get my laptop out, open it and let it connect to the internet (very slowly, mind you, as apparently even the web is sluggish today). I connect my external drive and pull out my lunch. I take from my backpack my bottle of seltzer and put it on my desk, when I notice something missing.

My cup.

I have two items from which I drink. First there's my coffee mug, which I generally use for, well, coffee. Then there's my plastic cup that I obtained two years ago on a drive to New York, when I stopped at a gas station in Delaware for a refreshment and gas. Since it was a fairly sturdy cup I kept it.

Apparently, the cleaning woman decided that it needed to get tossed. Note, it was not dirty (meaning I have only ever drank water from it), and was not on the floor.

I know she was "just doing her job," but as far as I'm concerned, unless it is rotting food, then anything on my desk is not tossable. I mean, I have plenty of things that could be perceived of as garbage (mostly a lot of paper piled up).

Not a happy way for me to start the day...

Monday, January 18, 2010

It takes years to development this lack of caring

So Dante somehow injured himself yesterday, sometime around noon. All we know is that he couldn't put weight on his front right leg, and was limping. My initial response was mild concern, while Corbett was more worried. I did my fully professional examination of his leg, and saw no cuts, swelling, or other sign of injury. He didn't seem to get hurt if I squeezed it and as far as I can tell it wasn't broken.

So I brushed it off, saying he'd be fine in a few minutes. Well, it lasted much longer than that, so much that when I brought him out four hours later, I had to carry him down the stairs. (And up them.) Corbett was very worried, and I was growing concern until later when midnight came around and he happily limped down the stairs to go out.

This morning he was still limping a little, but he could jump with no problem and was (sort of) bounding about outside. He'll be fine, thankfully, but it's amazing how little I really was worried. I felt terrible because he was clearly in some pain and unhappy, and wanted me to do something, which I couldn't.

If this had happened in the first couple of months when I got him, the story would have been very different. Now, after nearly eight years, I think I need to see a lot of blood to start to really worry.

I guess that's good?

Friday, January 15, 2010

Still a child, part 2

It's still in my head, the idea of not being fully grown up. Today there were two things that prompted these thoughts:

1) First of all, I have a zit. That's right. I was promised by my parents over fifteen years ago that this was something that would go away once I got older. Well, it hasn't. Okay, fine, I'm not breaking out like a freshman in high school*, but seriously, now. And yes, they don't come very often, but I am past this.

2) Secondly, I still have this urge to run places. Remember being a kid, and never being able to get somewhere fast enough? I wanted to run down the stairs to my car today, and upon arriving on campus, I wanted to run all the way to my office. Walking is just so slow and well, boring. Just wait, sometime in the future, I will be "that professor."

You just wait.

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* And yes, I do wash my face daily.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Still a child

I don't think I've ever grown up, fully, and it's sometimes an issue, as I am at that age where, well, many people have (often multiple) kids. That having been said, I do not like the idea of changing, so I will remain immature.

For example, yesterday I went to lunch with people I don't know very well. We split up into two cars, me driving one of them. When we got to the restaurant, one of my passengers said to me, "If we beat them I'll give you creds, as they should have beaten us." This was referring to the fact that they were parked much closer to the building we were in previously, while I was parked rather far.

It is very high schoolish of me to care about this, as generally this means I'm just a reckless driver (no argument there), but it does sadly give me pleasure.

Childish? Yes? Do I really care?

Not really.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Don't rain on my parade

Every Christmas I drive to Georgia, something bad happens to my car. I don't think someone is trying to tell me something, but let's go with the various times I've gone.

Dec 2007 (two events):
1) Oil leak while at my parents' house
2) Lug nut flies at my car while on I-85 driving home, leaving a perfectly circular hole in my
front bumper.

Dec 2008:
Flat tire while driving home, requiring the purchase of two new front tires.

Dec 2009:
While driving home, a rock hits the windshield, leaving a small crack just three
inches from the crack that I was able to get just a few months ago.

I have gone there one time in the summer, and nothing happened, but the average is 1 event per trip (4 events, 4 trips), and well, I'm worried about what may happen the next time to the poor car.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Bane

According to the 'burg's website (which is nicely updated and very informative, I must say), our street is supposed to be repaired by the end of this month. I haven't posted about this, even though I feel I should have, but not too long ago, they started work on our street, right next to the apartment complex. This made for some minor inconvenience of having someone direct traffic on the at-the-time-one-lane road. As far as we could tell, all that was happening was that they were digging a rather large hole next to the road. Also, FYI, the road basically is bounded by ravines on either side.

Then came the infamous "November Nor'easter," which dropped 6-10 inches of rain on the area, eroding the nice new hole they dug, and collapsing the road. Thus, they had to shut it down completely, and block our access to that escape route, which is the best way to get basically anywhere but the grocery store here. So now it looks like this:



It has looked like this for a month now, and I feel as though it's going to be several months before it's finished, and I also have this fear that the road itself will completely collapse, and they'll just give up. Maybe that's not the right attitude, but alas...

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

New digs

So the move to the new building is almost complete. The only thing I need now is a key to my office (talk about great planning: "We'll move you all over the holidays, but since the campus is closed, no one will be around to give you a key."), and working phones. Andre has a key to the office that he swiped from someone, so we've had access this last week, given us a chance to set things up.

The phone issue is hilarious. Both of our numbers are accessibe through the same jack, but we can't make outgoing calls on either of them, and when it rings when someone calls, we can pick up the receiver, but the phone keeps ringing. So who knows if IT will be out to fix this today or not, but it's rather irritating.

The building itself is pretty gloomy. Not that the other was all that great, I mean, they are renovating it after all, but that was a form of dismal I had become accustomed to over the last two-and-a-half years. It's worse there now, as I went to the old building and it looked like a wasteland. Desolate, and with not everything taken out (some of the furniture in my old office I didn't keep), it looks like the place was evacuated in a panic. Like our own little end-of-the-world movie.

But it's a new year. I have things to worry about now, that I didn't have before, and I have plenty of other things on my mind, which is sure to take over my life any second now. But first, my coffee.