The Flat Files

Obviously, I've been avoiding writing this post. It took us a while, but we finally found a doctor who would tell us what was going on with my grandfather. His heart attack was apparently triggered by low blood oxygen levels caused by advanced pulmonary fibrosis. There aren't any viable treatments for that, especially at his age, so granddad elected to be moved to a hospice. He passed away on Father's Day.

I miss you granddad.

After a week of real, nose-deep rat poo (My grandfather has been in the hospital for a heart attack and some mystery lung ailment. Yes, he is getting better, but I've spent the better part of the week in and out of intensive care.), I got this in the mail:

Your submission of the abstract titled "THE UTILITY OF CAPTIVE ANIMALS IN BITE MARK RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY OF ALLIGATOR MISSISSIPPIENSIS" has been accepted for oral presentation at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the 57th Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy (SVPCA).

Your oral presentation time is:
Friday, September 25, 4:45 PM.

...

Woot! Also, it sounds like most of the other lab mates were accepted as well, so double woot. I really needed some good news, and this fit the bill. Looks like the party's in Bristol, England this September.

I am not easy to creep out.

There is an inexplicable beeping sound coming from the air vent above one of the stalls in the women's bathroom at work.

I am now officially creeped out beyond words.

I know this is paranoid, but could someone please provide a reasonable explanation that does not involve a camera.

Thanks,
weyrwolfen

As I bet you've guessed, I am back in Tennessee. I've even managed to reduce the debris flow in our house to a manageable enough size that I was able to crawl out from under it and post.

Packing up my entire existence into the trailer took three hours, which was both a bitter triumph (certain family members had been making bets as to whether or not I would have started packing by the time they arrived) and a humbling experience (all of my worldly possessions don't even fill half of one U-Haul pack of medium sized boxes). Drove home just in time for coatl_lvr to get sick. By Wednesday, he was feeling better so naturally I was just starting to come down with his cold. Yay. I did manage to stay adequately drugged, so the Memorial Day weekend wasn't a complete loss. Now I just need to teach the fiance that more than one day's warning before throwing a cookout for the whole neighborhood would be lovely, especially when I'm sick.

Today, I'm back at the museum. I'm going to be working in collections half time and on my research the rest of the week. I will have to flog my boxes and boxes of papers and books into shape before I begin, but progress is being made. I need a copy of EndNote like whoa.

Still keeping my fingers crossed about my SVP abstract. They've apparently had a record number of submissions this year, so I'm freaking out about making the cut. Waiting to hear from a few other people on the publication front. In the meantime, the lab mates are passing around eye-bleeders of papers to make us all feel better about our lack of CV padding.

The extended family will be here today to kick off the whole moving experience. Am I finishing up my packing right now? No. I am making this:



Wee, procrastination.

Frak, I've started saying frak. Do not marathon view Battlestar Gallactica for three days while you grade. It does things to your brain.

However, now that the marathon is over, I can say that I have finished my last ever final project. I also might have graded my last ever exam and term paper, depending on whether I get a job teaching after all is said and done. I'd call that cause for celebration.

Even so, Iowa is continuing to rise to meet my previously posted challenge. I had to sleep over at a friend's apartment last night because my heat and air system was making a god-awful shrieking sound. The maintenance guys said that they thought some air had gotten into the pipes and that the only thing to do, short of ripping into my walls, was to wait it out. Wee.

I also have to pay my 'Best PhD Student' award back to the university, since getting it means that I incorrectly reported my scholarship for the year to the financial aid people at the beginning of last semester. I wish I was making that up.

What coatl_lvr is referring to as 'Operation Hawkeye Rescue' is going down on Friday. Just a few more days...

Iowa City is trying its level best to give me one last kiss goodbye.

Saturday some workers across the street from my apartment dropped a tree on the power lines, killing the electricity all up and down my entire road. The tree and wires were splayed across the entire road, and the cops were having a wonderful time directing traffic away from potential flash frying. Nice. I bravely ventured forth, seeking food and the successful conclusion of a number of errands, but instead discovered that a large percentage of the good people of the IC are blissfully unhindered by traffic laws. For example, in the rest of the U.S., a dead red light should be treated as a four way stop. Here, it indicates that all drivers, heading in all directions, should simply gun it through the intersection, because clearly all of those other idiots should just get out of the way. I'll let you fill in the blanks on how white knuckled my hands were. The trip ended with a fight with a McDonald's employee over whether I was allowed to order two breakfast burritos, but only one drink. Don't ask. Suffice to say that the stupid was hanging thick in the air.

Sunday was a little improved. We did have the departmental banquet where we were regaled with a variety of talks, ranging from crocoduck to morphometric analyses of the graduate student body. Very funny stuff. However, I got to meet a charming individual at the grocery store while I was obtaining food for said banquet. He apparently thought nothing of ramming a shopping cart in the parking lot, sending it flying into my car. Okay, my car isn't exactly the height of automotive perfection, but still, wtf. When I got out to look at the damage (which, admittedly, was basically non-existent), he tossed a glance over his shoulder, said, "Oh yeah, that," and then wandered off into the store. I graciously refrained from keying his car, but it was a close thing.

And then there's the issues with my certification program... That'll get posted later on in a f-locked post, because holy fecal-implosion Batman!

But you know what? I taught my last lab in Iowa, possibly ever, on Tuesday. I'm writing my final term paper ever right now. And I'm about to actually get to live in the same state, the same house even, as my fiance for more than a weekend at a time. So keep trying to run me over or electrocute me, Iowa City. You'll be shut of me soon enough.

Well, the abstract is in. I felt pretty confident about it up until I heard the final tally for all abstracts sent in this year. Usually SVP gets something like 700 abstracts and they accept 620ish. Not bad odds, right? Pshyeah. They received ~1000 abstracts this year. That means that they're going to have to chuck about a third of the entries. Arg. One way or the other, it's time to redo all the analyses and start retooling it for an actual, *gulp*, publication.

On the bright side, I won the outstanding PhD candidate award this year, which was insanely flattering. coatl_lvr told his firm, who apparently saw fit to send me flowers, which was also much appreciated, if a little over-enthusiastic.

Tomorrow, I start the long process of knocking heads together about my museum studies certification. I love beurocrats who try to change programs midstream and screw over entire sections of the student body. XOXO, asshole.

Question: How many paleontologists does it take to figure out that I misspelled Alligator mississippiensis in the frickin' title of my SVP abstract?

Answer: More than ten. After all of my drafts and lab meetings where we passed the stupid thing around and asked for suggestions, I only noticed it when I was about to hit the 'Submit' key on the conference webpage. Arg and double arg!!! Still, I did catch it, so whew.

In other news...

I am flying home to visit coatl_lvr this weekend. It'll be my last visit before moving home for good this summer. I've been a busy bee, cleaning and packing, breaking my lease and renting U-hauls. Exciting. A little stomach wrenching as well, but mostly exciting.

Biore strips are strangely fascinating. If you haven't, try one. It's a special brand of gross to be able to stare at the bristling remnants of clogged pores. I am a sick, sick girl.

People who move to Florida to "be near the water/nature" and are then shocked, shocked I tell you, that alligators live there are STUPID. That is all.

What do you call senioritis when you are not, in fact, a senior? Anyway, coatl_lvr has decided that I have senioritis. Or fourth year phd candidate-itis. Or that I'm nesting, which earned a few choice expletives from me. Either way, stupid little things that I would usually roll my eyes at are driving me straight up the wall.

My solution? I'm attempting to forcibly make myself chill the hell out and look on the bright side of things. For example, my abstract for SVP is almost done. Yay! I think it's looking pretty good, so I'm going to cross my fingers and hope the conference program committee agrees.

Lab this morning was called on account of extreme hail and sleet. That means that I only have two labs to teach this week.

I have lost 15 pounds.

I discovered a zombie!Rorschach fic.

I have completed the next chapter of Learning to Deceive. It's with the betas as we speak. I'm also going to try to finish off Going Forth By Day after the semester is over.

The Battlestar Galactica score kicks six kinds of butt. Seriously, Bear McCreary is a genius.

Turn Coat by Jim Butcher kicks another six, bringing the butts kicked up to an even dozen.

I already feel better.

So, it's a small consolation that I'm not the only one who's going unhinged at the moment. Truth be told, most of the rest of my department has a better reason for being nuts than me. Here's the rundown:

T.W. - Defended his dissertation last Friday.

E.A. - Comps ended Tuesday.

cambro - Defended his thesis today. (And I, like a spaz, flaked out and forgot the time until I was already too late. My deepest apologies if you are reading this.)

J.M. - Starting her comps next week.

R.B. - Defending his thesis the week after that.

M.S. - Got scooped on his dissertation topic, so he's had to push his comps back until next semester. And find a new topic. Yay.

Oh yeah, and then there's all of our advisors who are serving on these committees. There's also the applications mess, where a ton of my fellow students are applying to go to other schools, but the economy is so crummy that even if they get accepted, no one is offering much in the way of guaranteed funding. Oh yeah, and all the grant rejection letters are flooding in simultaneously. Yay. Add to that your usual tasty blend of final exams, term papers, and other end of the semester stress and there are a whole lot of people in our department who are right up on the brink.

Come to think of it, I'm peachy keen. I'll just be over here, writing a presentation and watching the bloodshed...

Preemptive apologies over the complaining, but yesterday was... kind of a nightmare.

Started off the day with hate mail from the department since I apparently failed to file some bean counter forms correctly. Ended up having to fire off a fleet of e-mails to deal with the problem. Then turned around and was immediately called by the main office because my advisor had a prospective student show up earlier than expected.

Flew to work to find the advisor swamped with a television crew who was supposed to have been there two days ago. Ended up being hijacked to help with the student all day, which was cool, except for the fact that I had put off writing two short papers until that morning. Wrote the papers during the breaks when she was meeting with professors. They might suck, but at that point, done was better than perfect.

And on that note, I really hope we didn't terrorize the student into not accepting. We none of us are any good at behaving. At least no one can accuse us of luring students in under false pretenses. We're all crazy here.

Retreated to the bar where I may or may not have been hit on by some random guy. I'm really not sure, because my radar has raspberry jam on it. Performed a strategic retreat, just in case.

And then? Hangover. Because I needed salt in the wound. Kinda wishing that I had just never gotten out of bed. Here's hoping that next week improves.

Curse you Rorschach. Curse you for being such a crazy little broken badass stinky hobo vigilante. Curse you for making me into that fangirl. I've freaking written fic about you now! I haven't written two words together in a month and now this. And I don't even know where to start looking for a beta.

And let's not mention how much time I've wasted on YouTube lately...

*cough*

Saturday Morning Watchmen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w
Marvel vs. DC - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n3VSw1XBOo
Rorschach's Plight - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8h7N2mVWjk

*cough*

Yeah... Why do I pretend to be anything other than a raging geek? And shouldn't I be working on my dissertation?!?!

It's my spring break, so to the surprise of no one, I spent yesterday driving home. However, the last leg of my trip was a little more exciting than usual. The punch line is that I might have a DJ for my wedding now. Interested? Read on.

On the interstate just outside of Lexington, KY, I saw a smoking car on the side of the road with two guys trying to move lots of heavy-looking equipment out of it. I pulled over and offered a hand. There was already one guy there when I stopped, and two more pulled over to lend a hand. One was a trucker who started tossing flares on the road to get people to stop in case the gas tank went up. We were down to pulling paper work out of the door slots and glove compartment when the fire spread to the cab, making it pretty impossible to get near the thing, much less run in and find anything else. At that point, the fire crews showed up and we all figured that hiding behind the SUV of the first guy who had stopped was probably smart, in case the fires really did make it to the gasoline.

Turns out that the guy whose car was about to explode was on the way to be a DJ at a wedding, and his car was packed with sound equipment and CDs and whatnot. The first guy who had pulled over to help was a national guardsman who was on four days leave with his family before shipping out to Jalalabad. Both of us made a few offhand jokes about trying to build up karma, me for my wedding and him for his upcoming deployment. At this point, I snapped a picture on my cell phone from our safe haven from behind the soldier's SUV.

( The Car )

By the time they got the fire out, the whole car was pretty much slag. I'm talking molten plastic and metals all over the concrete with a blackened frame left behind. It was a mess.

We loaded as much equipment into the soldier's SUV as we could, but it wouldn't all fit. I shuffled my spring break luggage around and we put the rest in my car. Once the fire crews and the cops have us all the go ahead, the DJ piled into my car and we all drove over to a hotel where the wedding reception was going to be held. It was maybe 20 minutes out of our way. The poor guy was on and off of his phone the whole time, calling his boss and various family members whose cars he was trying to borrow once all this was said and done. He just kept thanking us and trying to offer us gas money and all that. I told him no, showed him my ring, and said I figured I was working up brownie points with whatever higher being might be watching over my own wedding. At that point, he gave me a business card, said that he was part of a nationwide franchise, and said that he might be able to get me a discount on a DJ for my wedding. Wait, twist my arm on saving wedding money, ouch, okay. I think this is what The Once and Future Boss calls 'instant karma.'

We got him unloaded at the hotel and I was off again. Called various people, because wtf lol. coatl_lvr berated me because I could have been blown up. Or the guys on the side of the road could have been serial murderers. Or I could have been blown up while being serial murdered. Okay, he might have had a point, but it wasn't like we didn't hide out once the flames got pretty bad and any hypothetical serial murderer would have had a hard time of running off with me once the cops and soldier showed up. Plus, I think I'm a pretty good judge of character.

Got home a little late, smelling like burning rubber and melted plastic. Hot. I had added headache and an even more messed up throat from smoke inhalation to my list of health woes for the evening, but coatl_lvr stuffed me full of cold drugs and sent me to bed. Still feel like death this morning, but it's only four day old, not week old. Still, more meds and back to bed. Catch you all later.

Last week was an exercise in chaos. Suffice to say that I was out of town on a research trip that was supposed to last three days and turned into a whole week. Truly, that was not necessarily a bad thing. I did get to meet with a few of the other people who actually work in my field, which was great, and it is looking like I'm going to get a few publications out of the trip, but I also spent a fair amount of time running around like a mad woman, trying to rebook flights, get formal specimen requests booked, etc. Nuts. I think my brains are still leaking out of my ears.

Crawled back to Iowa late on Saturday and woke up Sunday with a cold. Joy. The guy I was staying with on my trip is an SVP buddy who is defending his dissertation today. I really hope he doesn't have this too, because that would blow. I couldn't chump out on school though, because I had to teach on Monday and Tuesday, and I had a huge presentation due last night. Survived all of that passably well, even managed to make it through the hour long talk without hacking up anything too vital, but I still feel like week old death.

Now I need to get my butt in gear taking photographs for those hypothetical publications I mentioned, knock together an abstract for SVP, and start working on that manuscript.

And perhaps sleep. Sleep might be a good idea at some point.

In other academic news, congrats to athenewolfe for being a beacon of scholarly hope in a world of crappy job prospects and a crap economy.

I'm up to my eyeballs in black humor at the moment. Call it a coping mechanism.

First of all, I was sent a letter from the museum studies department asking me if I was still pursuing my certification. Yes, I said. No, said the actual, living woman on the other end of the return e-mail. Bwhuh? And while we're at it, WTF!!! I've been in this program for four years and they're only now telling me that only undergrads can get certified? I, the other handful of geo grad students who had been involved in the program, and our professor are all pissed. We'll see how this goes, but it might get ugly.

On the other hand, I got to go home for Valentine's Day via a Friday the 13th flight. Capped the holiday off with a meal mostly consisting of red meat and red wine, and a double feature: Halloween (the original) and Halloween (the Rob Zombie remake). Because that's how we roll.

(P.S. I respect that some people do not like Valentine's Day. I even agree to some extent that it is a very commercialized holiday and smacks of consumerism. If you don't want to celebrate it for whatever reason, that's cool. However, please stop attempting to pee in everyone else's kool aid over what can be a fun excuse to send your parents a mushy reminder that you are grateful they didn't smother you with a pillow during your youth, splurge on cooking your significant other a nice dinner, etc. Thanks. In the meantime, I await any thrown rotten fruit you might like to send my way.)

On Sunday, I was taken to church, which usually ends in violent frothing at the mouth and the like. This time, I simply demonstrated why I should never, EVER be allowed in public. During the service, the man leading the children's sermon brought out some cleaning products and asked the kids what they were all for. He went through a rag, Mr. Clean, some stain stick, etc. etc., each time asking them what they were all for. When he asked the same question of a broom, I leaned over the coatl_lvr and said, "Flying." That was bad enough. He started chortling in the middle of the service.

Then, the sermon took a turn for the slightly more spiritual and the man started asking the toddlers which, if any, of the products could be used 'to clean the sin from his heart.' After he had been through the rags, the Mr. Clean, the broom, the stain stick, the toilet bowl cleaner, and most of the rest, I again leaned over to coatl_lvr and said, "Hey, I think they've already done most of this to my dad," to the expected results.

Endgame. Hope the pastor agrees to marry us anyway. At least dad thought it was funny.

Flew home last night. Back at the daily grind.

I'm throwing dorky confetti in a very dorky paleontologist way. Not only because of the date (we paleo people need very little provocation to party), but also because I'm going to be serving on one of the main committees in my professional organization in the coming year.

More dork confetti!

In all seriousness, it's a huge honor to be asked, so I'm being overly cheery about it.

Yesterday was weird. Good weird, but still weird.

Over lunch I got the form departmental e-mail asking if I would be asking for funding from the department next year. Since our pay is linked to either a T.A. or R.A. position, I returned it marked no. First wake-up call that yes, I really am leaving. Huh.

Then that evening, I found the form letter from my apartment slipped under my door asking if I would be renewing my lease. Marked that no too. That required another introspective moment of silence.

Guess I really am moving back to Tennessee and getting married this year. The times, they are a'changin.'

As a totally unrelated aside, I've lost 4 pounds since restarting the South Beach diet. Booyah.

Hmm, where to start?

coatl_lvr and I went on a quick trip to visit family and tour Colonial Williamsburg before I jetted back out to Iowa. It was over his birthday, so much fun was had by all.

Got back to Iowa and immediately caught some variety of nasty disease. I spent most of the last few weeks flopped in bed, wishing I was dead. I even lost my voice there for a while, which made teaching for the first two weeks exciting.

Was nominated for best Harry Potter WIP at the Crossing Over Awards. Sadly, I did not make the first cut in voting, but hey, a nom is a nom and I can still pet the banner I got for that. Congrats to all who did pull down a win, the list held more than a few familiar (and formidable) names.

Going to Chicago soon to photograph more croc skulls for my research. With any lick, I'll be able to turn this project around into a talk and maybe a paper. We'll see. Even so, I've been a wreck lately, because I don't feel like I'm making any real progress.

Other than that, I'm just plugging along here at school. I might be starting hot house yoga with a friend up here soon. Sounds like torture to me. Still, I need to do something to get out of the apartment. My current activity level is in the shitter and my social life consists of Friday beer at Joe's and guild chat in Warcraft. Yeah... Yoga-torture it is.

Hmm, I think the title says it all, really. It's not that I don't have a lot of things to get done this year. I mean, hell, I'm finishing my course work for my phD, moving home permanently to live with coatl_lvr, and getting married to the poor bastard. (That's in temporal order, not order of importance, for any touchy types out there.) However, those things have been in motion for months, if not years, now. So resolving to do any of them is kind of a foregone conclusion. A self-fulfilling prophesy. Boring.

What about my old standbys? Lose weight? Already working on that. I'm down five pounds. Get published? Working on that too. I have some croc skulls on my laptop which are churning out the fun data. Fix up the house? My busted knuckles and coatl_lvr's frayed temper attest to our opinions of the new light fixtures in the house, but damnit, we got them up, didn't we? And the door jams. And the new desk. And you get the point. Take over the world? Whoops, wasn't supposed to mention that one.

Anyway, my point is this: other than somehow finding a way to convince my subconscious that wedding-related nightmares are NOT HELPFUL, I'm fresh out of ideas. So I guess I'm just going to resolve to keep putting one foot in front of the other by plugging away at school, work, and God help me, wedding planning. (If I have to start our guest list over one more time, I might snap.) And that's not really a resolution at all, is it? More like the old Pride of the Southland mantra, "Don't suck," or my not-always-joking variant of it, "Don't die."

So here's to advancing all of my little pawns just a little further in 2009. And not sucking. Or dying. Cheers.