I'm moving!

But not literally. Hi guys, I decided to start a new blog. Check me out over at Theology and Geometry: http://theogeom.blogspot.com/

Yes, that's exactly what it's like...

Nation's Optometrists Finally Starting To Recover After Raucous Optic Disc Expo 2011

It's pretty exciting when The Onion parodies something specific to your own life.  Not that I think the writers of the article had ARVO (the vision conference we attend almost every year in Ft. Lauderdale) in mind, but they got some great coaching on eyeball terms.

An excerpt:

While days were reportedly filled with "mind-blowing," "wild," and "f***ing amazing" presentations on hyperopia in baby boomers and new ways of reducing bilateral papilledema, optometrists said they also spent long nights in their hotel rooms talking with colleagues well into the morning hours on wide-ranging topics such as the vessels that supply blood to the retina and slit-lamp biomicroscopic examinations.


The eye specialists told reporters that when they returned home from the intense weekend of nonstop optic disc lectures and discussions they "immediately passed out."


"I got maybe three hours of sleep the entire expo," said Dr. Cyrus Patel, who had to cancel nearly 40 appointments this week because he was too exhausted to go into work. "I kept telling myself I was allowed only one more optic disc drusen seminar and then I had to go to bed, but that would mean missing Dr. Lappen's keynote on optical coherence tomography, and it's like, you only live once, you know? It's not like there's another Optic Disc Expo next month. This is it for 2011."


Yesterday was not the funnest day ever at work (at least the AC was fixed), so it was a great surprise when someone found this at 4pm.  I need to go raid the bins to get a couple paper copies.  As someone who spends waaayyyyy to much time thinking about "vessels that supply blood to the retina"- heck I'm hoping to have three papers on that topic accepted this year- that was probably my favorite line.  I've talked that topic to death but fortunately not in the wee hours of the morning.  Unless I was having nightmares.

Things are basically back to normal with the cooling systems on campus, and the gym is open again today.  I'm chugging coffee to try to wake up because we were out late last night at the Gillian Welch concert (fantastic!).  Hopefully I won't have to fight anyone for the squat rack as I am feeling slow and dimwitted.  Have any fun plans for the weekend?  My sleep schedule is going to be further disrupted by seeing a friend play a show Saturday night, but that's about it other than the usual chores, etc.
 

IRL/WIAW

Very early yesterday morning I wrote a post about the nine things I feel make up an ideal day for me in terms of making me feel my best, inside and out.  "I can totally do this today," I thought.  I'd even managed to drag myself out of bed not *much* later than I'd wanted.  Because the day's virtual summer retreat topic was about eating healthfully and mindfully, I was going to do a What I ate Wednesday post today, and you were going to see how healthful and mindful I could be.  By lunch time it was all out the window.

So I decided to just honestly recount my day yesterday- the good, the bad, the usual and the unusual.  Some may find this boring, but I actually kind of like reading about the mundane parts of other people's lives so here goes.

My Day 6/1/2011:

4:20am - Push snooze button without actually gaining consciousness
4:30am - Push snooze button and think, "Not yet."
4:40am - Drag self out of bed.  Start coffee maker.  Put in contacts, etc.
4:50am - Drink coffee, do e-mail, write blog post.

    
6:00am - Frantically finish blog post.  Get stuff together to leave for the gym/work.
6:10am - Ride bike to gym.
6:25am - Lift weights
7:20am - Shower at gym
7:22am - Dress.  Realize that- because I'm not at my normal gym (it's closed in the am when classes are out)- I don't have a hair brush.  Try to comb hair with hands.
7:30am - Ride bike to work
7:45am - Starving, inhale oatmeal + PB + applesauce + protein powder concoction while doing work e-mail

Yes, I stir it.

8:00am - Realize project that I need to finish STAT is going to take longer than I thought.  Go get Diet Mt. Dew from fridge.  Frantically work on project.
11:30am - Finish project.  Talk to boss about project.  Have nice conversation with boss about the weather.
11:45am - Report results of project to coworkers.  Everyone is happy.  Breathe sigh of relief.
12:15pm - Go eat lunch with coworkers at Pasqual's at Hilldale.  Do not take picture of veggie quesadilla (no olives, please) or two liters of Diet Coke I drank because I don't want to have to explain why I was doing it, and because I was so hungry I couldn't get it into my stomach fast enough.  Enjoy relaxing lunch catching up with everyone.
1:30pm - Back to work.  Finish putting together a dataset for a collaborator.  Feel guilty because I still haven't finished a dataset for someone who works with that collaborator who made the request months(!) ago.  I just need one more variable!
3:00pm - Start on analyses for presentation boss will give next Wednesday.
4:30pm - Feel brain dead.  Decide I will go home soon because I have errands to run in the evening and need to do laundry.  Wrap things up at work.  Figure leaving 15 min early is okay because I was at work from 8:00-5:15 yesterday with only 15 minute lunch break.
4:45pm - Ride bike home.
5:00pm - Get mail, start laundry.  Flip through catalog.  Lay on couch.  Drink Diet Sunkist.
5:20pm - Play piano.
5:30pm - Daniel comes home.  Talk about day.  Discuss plans for necessary errands.
5:50pm - Flip laundry.  Leave home.
6:00pm - Pick up 1st CSA box.  Discover there is rhubarb in box.  Discuss possibilities for pie.

    
6:15pm - Go to target.  Spend forever picking up pie ingredients, cereal (it's too hot for oatmeal anymore), and soda for co-worker's retirement potluck Friday.
6:45pm - Decide I am too hungry to make dinner when I get home.  Stop at Panera and order turkey artichoke panini and salad.  Snap picture while Daniel is in the bathroom.  Save apple for later.  Devour remainder.

 
7:30pm - Arrive at home.  Get laundry.  Fold laundry.  Put away Target stuff.  Research strawberry rhubarb pie options.
7:45pm - Chop strawberries to help Daniel make pie.  Refuse to taste rhubarb because I'm still full from dinner and hate tasting things.  Assemble pie.

8:30pm - Brush teeth.  Remember I wanted to show Daniel something on the internet.  Grouch at Daniel because I'd told him at dinner I wanted to show him something funny on the internet and if he was going to look at cats all night I would just have to show him tomorrow because I was tired.
8:31pm - Look at cute picture of baby sloth.  Mood improves slightly.

8:45pm - Get ready for bed.  Lay down and start reading article in The Atlantic.  Decide baking pie smells really good but don't want to stay up for pie to finish cooking, cool, etc. so get up and eat a couple Trader Joe's dark chocolate PB cups.
8:50pm - Brush teeth again.  Lay down and read.  Curse downstairs neighbors who keep opening their squeaky screen door and slamming their regular door.
9:30pm - Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The bad (because it's always more obvious, isn't it?):

• Too much soda (yeesh!).  That's abnormal for a day.  Usually I have one, maybe two cans.
• Too much food.  How can I still be so hungry when I work out so much less than I used to?
• Not enough preparing my own food.  Only used delightful organic CSA vegetables to make pie.  Two fast food meals in one day = bad if not on vacation.
• Too much snooze button in am. 
• Stayed up too late in pm (which meant I didn't get up until 4:50 this am)
• Too lazy after work so I didn't get in time on the piano before Daniel got home.
• Didn't spend any time in devotion or prayer so I was more grouchy than usual when I was hungry and/or tired.
• Did not brush hair- other than with hands - all day.

The good:

• Did a blog post.
• Completed a project ASAP to everyone's satisfaction.
• Did not grouch at co-workers while stressed (I think).
• Had nice lunch with co-workers.  We do not go out very often.
• Kept focused during the afternoon when I actually wanted to Zzzzzzzzzz.
• Got errands and laundry completed.  Finally invited neighbor out to dinner (forgot to mention that one above!).  
• Helped make first rhubarb pie.

Arhg!  Now I'm running late again.  And I'm hungry, but I have to run and shower before I can eat breakfast (but good news, I have cereal now).  

And that's me.  In Real Life.

What works

I'm participating in Sarah's summer virtual retreat (If you're not, think about it), and the theme of this week is inside/out - what practices/habits can you cultivate to feel your best.  Having come back from vacation and then spent a busy day at work yesterday, I was thinking about the best of both worlds.  Vacation is a combination of novel and relaxing.  I usually get more sleep than usual, but I tend to eat a lot more and exercise a lot less.  Work is not alway so exciting and there are nights when I stay up waaaayyy too late for my early wake up, but I tend to eat healthier, be more active, and keep up with other activities I enjoy like playing the piano.  So if I could merge all the best of vacation with all the best of regular life, what would I end up with?  Here are the 9 things I consider essential components of an ideal day in the life of Chelsea.

1. Daily exercise - I get very crabby, very quickly when I sit around all day.  I'm like that pet that you thought you could leave in its cage while you were at work.  When you come home, I will chew your shoes, destroy two houseplants, and then use my tiny claws to cling to your head until you let me out for a walk.  As a side note, I've found that not just running but switching things up and doing yoga and lifting weights several times a week makes me look and feel my best.

2. Daily devotion - While I don't feel physically uncomfortable if I don't spend time praying and reading God's word, I feel... disconnected.  Starting my day with gratitude, learning from individuals who show good (and bad!) character through adversity and having an outlet to share my worries helps me focus on what is truly important in life.

3. Daily fruit and vegetables - To me a meal is not complete unless it contains at least one serving of produce.

Sorry, Ragu, you do not count.

 4. Daily music - Yes, 7 million Chinese 5-year-olds are better than me at the piano, but only 3 million are better than me at the first 20 measures of "I heard it Through the Grapevine".  Whether it's an hour or simply 10 minutes before I have to run out the door, I'm happier when I make music part of my day.

5. Daily desert - But not as much as what is still hiding in a sack under your kid's bed leftover from Easter (and last Halloween if you're lucky).

And not for breakfast.  Ummm, can I trade the candy
corn for some strawberry jam?

6. Daily novelty - Sometimes my life is busy and exciting.  Sometimes I feel like day after day is the same and I have nothing at all interesting to say.  Even if all I do is go to the sensory deprivation gym and sit at my desk at work and make Excel tables all day, I want to keep my eyes open for something new/interesting/novel.  It's that or use drugs.

7. Daily caffeine - This is where the drugs come in.  Now stop giving me a condescending look and pass me a Diet Mt. Dew.

I love you, too.

8. Daily (enough) sleep - On vacation, I could easily do 8-9 hours.  I think if I could sleep as much as I wanted every night, my body would naturally fluctuate between 7 and 9 hours.  In real life, I think never going below 6 and sticking some 9s in on the weekend to balance things out is pretty good.

9. Daily unstructured family time - I'm the kind of person who likes to schedule everything, but it never feels right to interrupt a good conversation (or Futurama episode) because it's "time" to read 1.5 pages of April's The Atlantic before I zonk out for the night.  I feel better when I get everything done before the evening so I can just relax and enjoy Daniel's company without feeling like I "should" be getting other things done.

So how about you?  Are you participating in the virtual retreat?  What do you consider essential components to your life?  

I'm about to go work on number 1 right now.

PS - Good news!  The fan is staying.
 

Back

Thanks to Daniel for guest posting while I was away.  Check out the hat post if you missed it.

We had some long days at the conference, but I can't complain too much because they were started with beach-side runs and ended with beach-side seafood dinners.  I got to wear shorts and sandals for the first time since... last September??    

Tuesday was my poster presentation.  Unfortunately, instead of hiding out in a back corner, it was selected as a "hot topic" so I got a fair amount of traffic.  99% of people who came by were helpful and interested.

The title is so long this has to be important.

The rest of the time was spent at talks and looking at other posters.  I feel like I learned some stuff, especially about genetics.  I camped out in front of the poster of another young woman from the Mayo Clinic and refused to leave until I understood what copy number variation meant.  

And then no conference would be complete without checking out the freebies.

Sadly neither the cute stuffed mouse or the eyeball were free.  I'm thinking that the ratio of cute stuffed mice at an exhibit booth to the actual happiness of the mice the company works with is pretty high.  Most of the swag was limited to pens and Hershey kisses, although I did score three bags of chocolate covered coffee beans from one vendor.  Two of those kept me alive during Wednesday afternoon.

Now I'm back, hopefully slightly smarter and not too much fatter after having gorged on delicious seafood and Snickers from Genentec.  Time to hit the gym.  It's 60 degrees out at 6am!  Spring is finally here!

Thanks, Kerri, for the pictures!


   

T-minus 2 days

Until I'll be on one of these

flying here

for this

with this

in tow, and I can officially check this

1. Finish my poster, analyses for a co-worker's poster, and analyses for my boss's talk, fly to Ft. Lauderdale for a week and participate in a conference


off of this.


Whew.  


It's hard to believe that other than little things like... packing... or building my itinerary so I have some idea where I have to be and when during the conference I'm ready to go.  Even though our days are full and I do have to hope someone I don't already know comes to talk to me about my present my poster, my role once I get to the conference is pretty passive.  It's fun to be all professional and "travel for work for a conference" especially to a place where one might procure a fruity drink and sip it on the beach.  The high in Madison today is 47 with snow and rain forecast in the afternoon, and I'm ready for some warm weather and sunshine!   

Re-boot

The weekend always goes by too fast, but I think I'm ready to get back at it.

• Breakfasts and lunches are ready for the week.
• Work clothes and gym clothes are out and/or packed.
• I've got 8 minutes before I have to throw them on before I catch the bus for the gym.
• I actually made a decent dinner for us last night for the first time in awhile:

Baked salmon + asparagus ala Real Simple

• I'm pumped up to rock 5 reps at 95lbs (that's a 25 on each side!) on the bench press at the gym this morning.
• And then I'm planning to work from about 7:45am-6:30pm, which I know a lot of you do regularly, but it's going to be a long day for me.
• But at 7pm I'm going to a work dinner at a Thai restaurant down the street.
• And then I get to turn around and be back at work at 7am tomorrow for our BIG MEETING.
• Daniel's alarm is going off, which is my cue to get dressed, pack up, and head out the door.

Have a good Monday, all.

Still here

Wow, it was a busy week at the statistics ranch, and it looks like it will continue to be that way until the beginning of May.  I feel like I only have so much brain power, and when I spend all day frantically trying to herd SAS output into Excel tables, I don't have much left over for blogging.  Plus it makes me feel really boring.  So yeah... I've been a bad blogger, blog reader, and commenter, and I'm not expecting that to improve much over the next month.  But you, dear reader, I still love your blog.  I promise I'm not neglecting you, even if I'm too boring to come up with a good comment.

There have been a few fun and/or interesting things that happened in the past week.

Not my actual carotid artery, but that's
what it looked like.

1. I got to see a part of my anatomy that few people have seen before: my carotid artery.  One of our sister studies is doing carotid IMT measurements on participants, and they needed volunteers to get some practice images, so I signed up.  Basically, they ultrasound both sides of your neck to look for plaque buildup in the artery before and after it splits in two.  I'd never had an ultrasound done before so I was surprised by how uncomfortable it was.  Not painful or anything but on the order of getting your teeth cleaned.  One side went pretty quickly and easily and gave a nice image like the one to the right, but my bifurcation (where the artery splits) on my right side was really high, so the examiner had to ram the ultrasound wand up under my jaw to try to get a good image.  But it was worth it to watch the video they captured of my heartbeat and see the blood pulse through the artery.  Yay, science.

2. In what sounds like a plot from The Office, I carpooled to Appleton on Friday night to see the opening of an art exhibit a coworker put together at Lawrence University (which is beautiful, BTW).  I know nothing about art, so I don't have much to say about the whole thing, but I really liked some of the pieces and it was fun to do something different.

3. But we got home really late on Friday night and I decided to skip going to race in Black Earth.  It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to chill and enjoy the sunshine and just do my normal long run around town.  Between travel and other commitments, I don't have any other races on the schedule for this spring, so I'm going to let my training happen as it will and take advantage of the opportunity to do more yoga and strength work.

4. Despite the snow storm we had on Friday (nature's cruel April Fool's joke) it seems like it's genuinely trying to be spring now.  We are forecast to crack the 60s this week and are finally getting a meaningful amount of sunshine.  Little green things (flowers?  I think I remember what those are.) are starting to sprout.

Time to get moving!  Hope you have a relaxing Sunday.        

  

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Raise your hand if you are still having a hard time adjusting to the time change.  Every part of me from my brain down feels tired.  This week at work has been super busy getting ready to send out materials for a big meeting we have in the beginning of April, and I've been busy the last two evenings* so as soon as I get home it's time to turn around and do it all over again.  We have a furlough day on Friday, which means one less day to get everything done at work, but man, I could really use an extra day of sleep past 4:30am.

But- there have been good things going on outside of work.  Yesterday we had an impromptu dinner out at Hubbard to celebrate Daniel being offered a summer intern position at the Google office in Madison, and - as it turned out- Pi Day.  Hubbard makes delicious pies and the restaurant was slammed because they were offering a special $3.14/slice price.  We had to take our slices (one key lime, one mint Oreo) to go because we were late to a meeting, but I can confirm that my half of the mint Oreo slice was delicious even a day later (and I'm sure key lime will be the same way tonight).

My motivation to exercise has been low since the race.  I ended up taking Monday completely off except for some stretching, but yesterday I had a good upper body lifting workout despite feeling like I was going to fall asleep on my feet.**  I rocked the assisted pull-up machine, working up to a set of a few with only 10lbs offset, so I think I'm ready to start doing some less than full range pull-ups on the regular bar.  I rearranged my lifting schedule for the next few weeks, and I need to update that on my weight training page.  This morning I'm going to go out in the dark again (why did we have to go back on DST so early????????????) for an easy run of undetermined length.

I want to start posting about cooking again- we've made some good stuff out last month's Real Simple- and about the fun spring clothes I bought last weekend (thanks, Mom and Mom M.), but I only have so much brain power and it seems my body is hording it for use between 8 and 5.  

*Ugh- it took my almost an hour to get home yesterday because the bus is on recess schedule for spring break and I missed the last one before it went on the every 45 min schedule after my piano lesson and I had to walk all the way home from the music building.  Bascom hill 2x in one week is at least 1x too many.

**or on the reverse fly machine, which I actually saw someone do once

On Wisconsin!

To the Clock Tower hotel in Rockford.

At least that's the rumor about where all our state assembly democrats are hanging out while the capitol continues on it's trip straight to Crazytown.

And crazy it has been.  I started writing a post about the conflict, but it got long and rant-y pretty quick, and I know you don't want to read about how my heart bleeds for the children and the teachers and my paycheck.  You can read about it from your new source of choice, but it's definitely been interesting for me because I've never experienced anything like this wild shut everything down, go protest, Democracy with a capital D before.

Unfortunately I've had a ton of work to do all week, so I haven't been out to the capitol, but I have asked my coworkers who have gone to shout things for me.  Everything has been peaceful and orderly so far- the protesters have even stayed off the capitol lawn- just a lot of yelling and signs and stuff.  Daniel has been twice, and he said the highlights from yesterday included two people dressed as Captain America, some high schoolers with their band instruments, and a guy who was sitting on a bench yelling, "And while you're at it, legalize marijuana!"  Which is not to say the situation isn't serious.  It is, and people are truly worried about the consequences if the bill passes.

It will certainly be interesting to see how things play out.  A lot of other states have budget deficits, and I think the results will indicate whether other legislatures try to take on the unions or see if they can live without adding another lane to a highway. 

In other totally unrelated news, I had a great 6-mi tempo run yesterday.  It started off a little slow at 8:45, but the following miles were 8:33, 8:32, 8:23, 8:23, and BOOM 8:03.  Looking forward to another good run tomorrow.

Happy Friday!

Bad Project

I don't work in a lab, but this video expresses my feelings about a project I've been working on:



I inherited it from my predecessor (who fortunately does not speak Thai), and it has been nothing but grief and frustration for everyone involved.  We sent out the paper to coauthors and had a meeting yesterday where it was determined that we needed to run the analysis differently.  This is a complicated project, and we are on about our 8th different way of running the analysis.  I've been awake since about 3:40 with low grade stress about running this paper- again- and getting to all the other work I need to finish before the first week of May.  I guess at least it gives me time to catch up on blogs before I have the bus comes.

Workout:
Hitting the gym for weights and probably some elliptical.  I need spring.

Thanks

To everyone for helping me test out the new comment system.  It looks like the only "feature" I need to work through is that you can't see the "Leave a comment" button unless you click through the main page to the actual post.  At Sarah's suggestion, I'm going to uninstall IntenseDebate (Why couldn't they have called it NiceConversation?) and re-install it a different way.

A special "Hi" to TurboNurse.  I saved your blog in my GoogleReader and look forward to catching up on your NICU nursing and Tae Kwon Do adventures!

This is the first day since I began my everyday posting resolution that I haven't had much to say.  I started writing a paper at work yesterday, which turned into a exercise in how many times I could go to the bathroom to procrastinate on writing a paper at work yesterday.  Actually, I think it's starting to come together in my head, and I have some ideas of some reading I can do to help me think about how the paper should be organized.  I have a "Get out of vessel measurement jail free" card this morning to give blood, so from 10:45- noon or so I will be pondering the mysteries of the cataract surgery-refraction-axial length relationship universe while squeezing the squeezy ball and feeling my ears sweat.

Workout:
Planning on 8mi on the treadmill.  Exciting stuff.  I didn't have to watch the State of the Union speech last night because I'm going to get 1:12 to 1:13 of it this morning.  The forecast is looking good for a warm (high 20's- woot!) run outside on Saturday morning.

Tomorrow I'm going to take a yoga flow class at a local studio.  They offered a Groupon last week for 5 classes for $20, plus your first class there is free so it's a pretty good deal.  I have to leave early to get there so look for another guest post courtesy of Daniel tomorrow.    

Better

The pile of stuff in the living room (and my "to do" list) is still pretty large, but my existential angst* from yesterday has gone away, and I'm already feeling better about returning to "normal life".

Continuing the theme of focusing on the positive:

• I had a slow but relatively warm 8mi run yesterday.  Nearly all the ice on the sidewalks and streets has melted and we only got a light dusting of snow last night.  We are expecting more snow this week so that may be the last one for awhile.
• I didn't return to 23098439 e-mails at work.  I have two new projects that are interesting but not overwhelming.
• Because of an unusual thaw/freeze cycle, Lake Mendota froze clear, and I got to walk out on the ice and could see all the way through to the bottom of the lake.  I have pictures but they were taken on my phone's camera so today's lunch time internet project will be to figure out how to get them on the computer.  
• Even though I was tired from not sleeping well a couple nights ago, I had a fun with our church small group, eating brownies and playing Sporkle.  

I'm headed to the gym this morning for weights.  We don't have any plans for this evening so I'm hoping that I make a dent in the mountain 'o Christmas that's hanging out in the living room tonight.  Have a good Tuesday!

* I love putting terms like this into Google Image just to see what comes up.

Day 4/30: Better

This has nothing to do with the post,
but I thought it was kind of cute.  My other
option was a picture of a bulldog with an icepack on its head.

I'm happy to report that Wednesday's maladies seem to have been data driven.  Like I said, I started working on a project using a data set that has- in the past- caused me great distress.  I was really really worried because I was supposed to recreate an analysis based on reading a paper and without having access to the original coding or data used.  As of Wednesday afternoon, it was not working.  However, I was able to come in fresh on Thursday morning, go step by step through everything, and had a great celebration to get up and go to the bathroom and get a drink of water at about 10:30am when I got results within about 0.1 of what was shown in the paper. What a relief.  Needless to say, everything felt better and more relaxed for the rest of the day.

Do you have a ritual or way to "celebrate" mini accomplishments when you are working on a big project?

It's Friday and I'm headed to the gym.  This should be a pretty chilled out weekend.  I need to do some grocery shopping and cooking for us and (later) cooking for our church's international Thanksgiving Dinner.

If you can't blind them with your brilliance...

be like Calvin here:

(Credit: Bill Watterson, of course)

I spent the better part of the work day yesterday trying to turn the statement, "I'd like to go to Conference X because I've been working on some cool stuff this year, and I wouldn't mind presenting it 5 minutes away from the beach" into a four section grant proposal about why the university should fork over some $$$ to help us pay for it.  Fortunately the BS machine wasn't totally out of gas, and I managed to crank out some answers that I can revise today.

It was absolutely beautiful out yesterday afternoon but kind of chilly this morning.  Not for running- I was fine in a long sleeved shirt, shorts, and mittens, but I was pretty cold riding my bike in to work in the morning.  I definitely could have used some heavier mittens and something to go over my ears.  One of downsides of not getting on the computer before work is that I didn't know it was only 39.

Running has been really good.  Yesterday I did an easy 8, and the day before I did 7.5 with 2x(3x800) and all the interval paces (even the first, which is always slow) were sub-8 min/mile.  I'll be curious to see how I do at the 15k this weekend because I feel like I'm in pretty good shape.  However, I know nothing about the course so I'm not going to put any time goals out there.

And with that, I'm out the door! 

 

Yay, yay, yay!

I have three "yays" to report.

1. My knee is feeling completely better.  I'm excited and ready to run.  I can't believe the race is only two months (exactly!) away.  Between the Mississippi trip, Restaurant week, and my general lack of willpower when it comes to treats in the break room, July wasn't exactly a testament to healthy eating, but I'm dialing it back down this month.  Plus, August is my monster month of training.  Hopefully by Sept 1 I'm going to start feeling confident about the marathon.

2. A paper we submitted back in May was accepted with glowing reviews and very few changes.  As anyone who does this kind of stuff knows, reviews of academic papers (which are done anonymously) can be pretty scathing.  I put on my Hazmat suit before I opened this one, and surprise! they liked it.  So now I'm at 4 publications (2 published, 2 in the works- not as first author) after 2 years at my job.  Considering I have a lot of other responsibilities, I think that's pretty decent.  And there are 3 more papers I'm working on that should be out the door in the next few months.

3. We got a new camera!!!  I bought my old camera back in 2004 after college graduation, and I'd been getting frustrated at how long it took to turn it on and take a second picture and how hard it was to see the LCD screen or take a photo in low light.  Well, after some shopping around last Sunday, we selected this guy

I've taken a bunch of pictures with it, but I haven't gotten the software set up to load them into the computer.  So maybe you'll have some new pictures tomorrow.  It is everything the old camera isn't (sorry, old friend Kodak EasyShare), and I can't wait to take more pictures with it.

Well, it's time to get out and take that run I was talking about earlier.  Have a good Tuesday!

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

I wish I could tell you all about how productive I'm going to be on my last day of work before vacation, but truthfully my mind is already on its way to Minneapolis.  It's even harder now that D is officially done (his last final was last night) and my work buddy is taking a half day today.  There's one project I *should* wrap up today, and one I *could* start.  Hopefully the chatting/internet demon that sometimes likes to perch on my left shoulder will be counteracted by the angel on my right shoulder who likes to have everything done, clean, and well documented before I leave.

I'm headed out for 6 easy miles this morning and have a 15-miler planned for tomorrow.  It looks like the weather has finally decided to behave itself, and I'll get to enjoy two beautiful runs, slightly breezy in the 40's.  'Bout time.

And last, but certainly not least, a special surprise came in the mail yesterday.  Well, it wasn't really a surprise because I knew it was coming, I just didn't know when.  It was the Subway gift card I won in Dr. TriRunner's giveaway.

Yay!  I ate a lot of Subway in college.  Brings back memories of 2-for-1 six-inch sub coupons in the Gator Greenbacks.

Did you know that it's really hard to take a picture of yourself kissing a little plastic card?  I was not going to post these, but since it's Friday, I'll share the outtakes:

Have a good day, all!

Highlights

• Indian buffet "cat's away" lunch
• New projects on the horizon at work
• Serious progress on my conference poster
• Finally, after almost a year working on it, hitting slightly below my goal weight this morning.
• No rain during my run
• Beautiful weather and two good walks
• Light out early and late
• Forgetting what -5 feels like
• Cooking my first fried egg

• And only breaking one yolk

• Tempo run this morning
• 7 more work days until vacation
• Big plans for the garden this weekend

Blogs + work

Finally my computer life and my real life collide.  Yesterday I went to a talk in the public health department about health-related blogs.  The presenter had a pretty broad definition that covered everything from informational to advocacy to people living with an illness to medical students trying to survive to the "healthy lifestyle" blogs that many of us read.  The talk itself was not that interesting.  It was mainly descriptive (ie X% of our sample of bloggers were women, X% had a site meter, X% had advertising, etc), but the presenter raised some interesting questions about the potential for health related blogs.

Some suggestions were:

1. When a patient is diagnosed with a chronic disease that will affect his or her lifestyle (especially one that can still have a stigma attached to it like HIV/AIDS), the physician can provide a list of (vetted) blogs by people who are also dealing with this disease.

2. For some diseases- say autism spectrum- people who are affected with disease (in this case, usually caregivers) will form "blogging communities" and share experiences and information.  How does that affect the way the individuals obtain care and interact with the medical community?  How do people who act in a more advocacy role affect these relationships?  What about people with an ax to grind?  How do you measure the impact one blog has on others?

3. How does sponsorship (which he defines as working for an organization like WebMD or a newspaper) or advertising affect what appears on the site?  Does advertising follow content or does advertising direct it?

4. The presenter didn't bring this up, but, as older people are more comfortable navigating and getting information from the Internet, what about scam blogs?  How can we teach people to discriminate between what's real and what's the same old snake oil in digital form?

Obviously I'm not a heath care provider, but I am interested in the impact of disease on quality of life, and I think this is an interesting area for potential study.  There are HUGE methodological problems to overcome.  It would be pretty hard to form hypotheses for the above statements and even harder to test them.  But all the same, I think/hope we'll see more about this in the future.

But back to 100% real life:

Yesterday was a trip to the gym for some strength training to get in one more recovery day after the race.  I feel like I'm back in action and ready to run again this morning.  The plan is 6mi with 5x hill repeats.

Last night we had an unintentional 3 course meal.  Spinach salad followed by

roasted sweet potatoes

and salmon coated with brown sugar and chili powder.

Time to head out the door.  The hills are waiting!

Once upon a time

Obviously I like writing or else I wouldn't have this blog, I wouldn't have been a journalism major as an undergrad (bet some of you wouldn't have guessed that!), and I wouldn't crank out big long family Christmas letters.  However, there's one kind of writing I haven't had much practice at: scientific writing, and it's the kind of writing where I notoriously get writer's block.  At least with the blog, if I don't have any good ideas, I can post a picture like this

and be done with it.  Because you can't tell me that's not entertaining.

That won't work for my poster, though.  So despite spending several hours looking for good images to punch up my layout, I don't have much done.

A year or so ago, I read the book A PhD is Not Enough, and even though I'm not getting and never will get a PhD, it had some helpful things to say about working in research.

The author spends a big chunk of time discussing developing good research projects and presenting them... because you won't get a good job if you don't do a good job presenting your work.

One of the points he emphasizes is that a good presentation tells a story.  To paraphrase:  Your background introduces the characters, your methods section sets the scene, the results and discussion are the climax, the conclusion ties everything together, and the limitations lets the reader know to stay tuned for a sequel.  The introduction, he says, is the most important part because it tells the audience why your work matters.  One of the biggest problems new researchers have is that they don't understand the bigger picture of their research (or it doesn't have one), which is why writing the introduction is the hardest part for many people.

Fortunately my topic is contrast sensitivity and visual quality of life- pretty easy for anyone to understand why both of those things are important.  But I still find it hard to tell their story in poster form.  That's my project for this afternoon, though.  We'll see how it goes.

On a totally different note, I did not have the opportunity to conquer my fear of sauces last night as life got in the way and we ended up eating dinner out so D could work late.  It worked out in a way because I got to have an extremely chill night at home involving changing into my PJ's at 6:30pm and reading until bedtime.  Ah, the simple pleasures.