Unique

I found out today I am the ONLY person in the PubMed database with my combination of first and last name. I'M SO SPECIAL!! Lots of people with my first and middle initials plus last name, though.

On that note, I thought I'd share something super-geeky about myself (unrelated to my publication record):

When I am driving on my shockingly long commute, I often listen to my iPod and when certain songs come on, I daydream complex, elaborate choreography for figure skating to them. I am not a figure skater, never have been, but I always watched it growing up--it was our favorite part of the Olympics. I was a dancer, however, and I love to imagine dancing while going 40 miles an hour and flying 10 feet in the air. So, I get totally into songs like Britney's version of "My Prerogative," (which would be perfect for Johnny Weir) and this Avishai Cohen song called "Continuuo" (the only one I really like off that album), and a song by Bertine Zetlitz called "Broken" (which would be GREAT for pairs)... sailing away in my figure skating coach dreamland where I design the routines and get to watch the beautiful skaters carry them out.

At loose ends...

Huh. I finished everything up for my grant submission a day early... and now I don't know what to do with myself. Sure, I SHOULD get going on the next chunk of grant-related work (the transition package for my R00), but it's already in a pretty good state for its due date and I'm waiting on progress report data from my lab peeps. So now what? My lab is tired of having me lurking around, but it's too early to make going home a good idea (baby's naptime isn't for another 2 hours or so)...

The end of focus marks the onset of ennui! I need to find something to deal with my withdrawal symptoms, but at the same time, I like the idea of having a break.

A month??!!

Whoa, how has it been almost a month since I last posted anything?? Yikes. I am not doing a good job of keeping up with the blog. I have a post-it note of topics stuck on my monitor, I spend >3 hours in the car everyday thinking and philosophizing about stuff, but somehow I just can't get myself focused enough to write these things down. Maybe it's because I feel like I've been writing proposals non-stop since I got back from maternity leave (or going to committee meetings, but at least that season is over). My lab is a' hoppin', people are working hard and making lots of cool data, various unbloggable things (both bad and good) are going on that I can't talk about.

Oooh, one nice thing as an update to the story about the mythical unicorn land of on-campus childcare: WE GOT IN! Other people's maternity leaves conspired to shunt me up the list from #10 to #1 when an unexpected opening was cracked, and we jumped into the fairyland. This saves me more than an hour and a half a day, and makes my life a LOT better. Now we just have to work on the moving closer part...