Just a quick one to tell you I got a visitor.

It's Stepwise Girl!. And she's making me dinner! IRL.

What to do, what to do....

Not sure what to do with this space anymore. I know what I'd like to do in the blogosphere, but I don't have time. And when I do things half-assed, it
all
goes
pear
shaped.

Especially when I have no time to respond.

I need a place to rant, but ranting over real people does not seem right when I can hide behind a pseud. Moreover, far to many people know My Real Self, so ranting about everyday work and personal stuff is out of the question too.

I'm occasionally ranting on Facebook under my real name so whoever knows me IRL can contact me there. I'm also generous with identity disclosure to old bloggy friends who gmail me.

Finally, it's the pseud itself. It's been bugging me from the very beginning. For several reasons. First part first. Funny maybe. If you don't suffer from hypoglycemia. Which I don't. So I probably sound like a huge insensitive ass for those who do. Second part. Cute maybe. If you're under 20 years old. Which I'm not. I'm frankly tired of being called cute, girl and sugary sweet and I hereby let hypoglycemiagirl aka hgg die. Or maybe hgg will just rise from the dead somewhere under another name. Who knows. It's Zombie Day today after all.

But before leaving I'll post a couple of way overdue photos. Silver Fox drove six hours each way  to meet me on my announced road trip from Canadian prairie to southern US trailer park back in January.











Since the latter is not really my style and since Transient Reporter complained

non-coastal south-west US
WTF? What's wrong with those of us on the coast?

I drove all the way to LA for another blogger [& daughter - the munchkin is even cuter IRL] meetup.



















After LA I went to Vegas, but what happens in Vegas....you know.



See y'all. Somewhere. At some point.

***

i fucking hate fridays in scotland

Purely hypothetical question

Imagine that some person you met on teh internetz were to travel with her dude to North America just before the end of the year 2009. Imagine this person would spend some days somewhere on the Canadian prairie [highly likely in temperatures down towards -30 degrees and below].

Not too many days into the new decade, this person could hypothetically get in a car with the dude and the in-laws and drive south for a few days. To somewhere in the non-coastal south-west US where they could possibly spend a week or so in maybe up to +20 degrees.

If this person were to pass by not too far from your house, would you send her a gmail and tell her where to stop to say hello?

Anthology of science writing: now almost 4 % with ovaries!

Got myself an early yule present today; "The Oxford book of modern science writing" edited by teh Dawkins d00d. A first glance of the table of contents sends happy shivers down my spine - a great collection of 83 pieces of science writing. Extracts from key classics and more recent texts as well as shorter pieces like JBS Haldane's heartbreaking but very funny "Cancer's a funny thing".

But since I can't seem to leave my gender glasses behind ever, I started counting. And that takes me to the first complaint. Of 83 texts Professor D has selected 3 written by women. That's about 3.6 %. How hard could it be to find a handful more? Like 10 %? It would still be a wiener fest.

The first of the three ladies that have been granted access to the boys club is Helena Cronin with an extract of "The ant and the peacock". I have lots of fond memories from the time I was a master student in the cold north-western Scandinavia. And one of them involves Dr Cronin. She attended a conference on hot topic that my research group organized. When one of the female professors took her sightseeing around town I was allowed to join. At some point I said something extremely naive and silly and she scolded me for being irrational. I still get a fucking she-boner just thinking about it.

The second contribution from a testicle-free human being is an excerpt from Rachel Carson's "The sea around us" which I will need to read in full. And re-read The silent spring at some point cause it was a long time ago.

Finally, we have a scientific comic verse "Said Ryle to Hoyle" by Barbara and George Gamow. And here comes my second objection to this probably otherwise excellent anthology. George Gamow was a russian physicist and cosmologist according to the section "Featured writers and extracts". We can only imagine or google who Barbara was because -guess what - she's not mentioned in the list of "Featured writers and extracts. That's funny because I can clearly see her name in the table of contents. I guess she just penned the brilliant and funny science verses her brainy husband thought out and nothing really worth mentioning in the author biographies. Duh.

A well-deserved kick in the pretty butt

Dr. Brazen Hussy provides excellent inspiration again!

November is over us soon and it's time to join the academic writing month and get those words down on paper. Instead of a word count goal, my goal is to finish six projects - some way overdue, and some not yet urgent, but if I do them now, my life will be slightly easier in February-April 2010.

The projects are

1. Finalize PWTMI (project with too many involved)
2. Revise ODBPP (over-due boring postdoc project)
3. Turning SEISP (student essay into submittable manuscript)
4. Write MFTP (my f***ing teaching philosophy)
5. Draft ENKAG (exciting new kick-ass grant)
6. Outline LNFAHTJMLC (lecture notes for awesomely heavy theoretical January master level course)

Progress meter in the upper right corner

Not the priority

I've tried for about a month to get a crucial piece of software installed on my desktop computer at work, but there's always someone with an emergeny IT issue who whizzes past me on the IT staff to-do list.

Kind of reminds me when the Goose was born eight years ago last week. I wanted an epidural but epidural never came. An emergency caesarian coming in on a Friday evening with only one anaesthetic doctor on shift was more important. Fair enough.

The last three centimetres was done in an hour anyway and voilà!* a Goose.

*well, actually, that voilà! lasted about two and a half hours. Ouch.

Any readers of this blog left out there?

hi y'all!

Too much going on at work.
Will resume blogging [at some point], both here and here.

/hgg

Reflection of the day

Having a faster computer* than you former boss kicks f'***ing ass.
 w00t!!11!1!

*or did (s)he just speed up the code?

For Jen in the Jungle

Now there are full feeds from both blogs (I didn't forget). Hope that reduces waiting time. But don't worry about commenting, I know you're there!