Home > Blog

Oh goodness…here’s a summer job for you!

Ben come home a half hour late from his Friday night appointment and I was pretty disappointed. I mean, it was Friday night! I didn’t have great week at school and I wanted to relax and have some fun! I was pretty mean to him when he came in.

BUT…the reason he was so late was that he went to Blockbuster and picked out a movie for us! We watched Seabiscuit. I had a wonderful time. We tried to make popcorn but we burned it and the kitchen got smoky, so we switched to ice cream. No problem :)

We played the Chinese Team in GSC soccer this morning. We lost but played better than last time, and I had an assist. Cool beans. Then I went food shopping and started getting ready for our Superbowl party tomorrow. Now…laundry, shower, and homework.

Ben’s still asleep. He went to bed at 7am.

Today was not such a great day.

I had to be in class at 10. That felt early because I stayed up until midnight working on my program. I got back my first fluids assignment — not so good. One of the grader’s comments was, “The problem with using canned formulae is that if you get them wrong, you haven’t really shown any physical understanding of the problem.” Ouch.

Then at 11 I had a hour free so I called J-P to see if I could meet with him, but instead I got his secretary who said “He’s in class.” I was like…”What class??? I’m supposed to be IN that class!!!” Apparantly I didn’t get the email. Maybe I should be used to that by now. So I showed up 20 minutes late and hung around aftewards to try to get a syllabus, but people cut me in line to talk to J-P so they could whine about lawyers not wanting them to go to Nepal. They said the State Dept’s travel warning is “obviously unwarranted” and issued solely because “our government doesn’t like the Communists” and they’re vying to get on the short-list of “researchers” who will still get to go under the pretense of doing work.

Then I went to the tectonics lunch meeting. High point: free lunch.

Then I started my tectonics lab, but left to go track down Jean-Philippe. No, he hasn’t heard from the lady in France who has the data I need. No, he has no idea what’s up. So I suggested he call her on the phone, right then and there, and he did; her number has been disconnected. He said sorry for not showing up yesterday. I give my planned super-polite speech about “What is the most convenient way for you to keep in touch with me?” and he said email was good, he always trys to respond to email within a day. Right. And that I could always make an appointment. I shot back, “And you’ll BE there?” but I think maybe I just should have stayed quiet. I went back to lab and stayed until five, when I FINALLY finished.

Then I came home to see my husband. He’d just woken up. He said he needs to spend the night programming and he scheduled an 8pm meeting with a student. So much for ending the day relaxing with Ben. He said maybe later we could do something but that really he has to work continuously until our Superbowl party on Sunday.

I went to pick up the car and then watch Rich and Carl’s soccer game instead. Carl is a beast.

Sam come over for some more DDR action this evening. It’s nice to have a girlfriend :)

Today wasn’t an exceptionally exciting day. I went to class, waited around for my advisor until I realized he forgot about our meeting, came home and finished my Ge140 set, had dinner, worked on my program, played DDR, worked on my program. Ben’s back into his program-till-4-am routine and that makes me sad. Also, my program is making me sad. It still doesn’t work and I thought I had fixed.

Also, I’m frustrated that I can’t get a hold of my advisor. After he forgot about our meeting, I emailed him my questions. They will only take one line to answer; the only reason I made an appointment to discuss them is that he wasn’t responding to my emails. This time he actually wrote back, but he only read the first line — about the meeting we were supposed to have today. He said if I emailed him my questions he would review them and we could meet tomorrow. But my two questions were RIGHT THERE! NUMBERED and TAB-inated! Plus, I CAN’T meet tomorrow — I have lab all day. This has happened the last three times I’ve emailed him. If he DOES write back, he doesn’t read the whole email, and ends up inviting me to meet at precisely the times I’ve said I have class. I keep telling myself that he’s just really busy and it’s not personal — his wife had a baby a month ago, he’s trying to plan a field trip to Nepal, and he’s busy with regular professor-stuff, too. I wish he would just tell me how much time he needs or what the most convenient form of communiation for him is; I’d be happy to do whatever.

I got to talk to Jason today. It’s not the same as a hug from him (he’s so cuddly!) but it’s close. He is a great friend and I miss him.

I talked to my sister, too. I wish I lived closer so I could be more of a friend instead of just a (literally) distant relative. If she liked hugs, I’d give her one; she’s going to have to settle for odd packages in the mail instead.

I had four hours of class today. By the time I got home, my brain was fried and I didn’t accomplish much. I worked on my geochemistry problem set, but once I get an answer I have no idea if it’s right; I can’t even tell you order-of-magnitude if I’m close or not.

BUT, I think I Ben is coming to bed at the same time as me tonight for the first time in a week! I hope to get a good sleep so I can wake up tomorrow, finish my problem set, and fix my program so it does something at least remotely interesting.

Weird day today. I had to take the WRX (my dear, beloved automobile) to the dealer because its check-engine light came on (and no, it wasn’t the gas cap). They, of course, need about 5 hours to “diagnose it”, so I took the courtesy shuttle back to my house instead of waiting around. After they forgot to call me about five times, I finally found out that it needs a software update for which they must take out the computer and send it off to Subaru. Why??? Anyway, they gave me a rental car to drive, so I had to take another shuttle back to Monrovia and pick up my Pontiac Sunbird or whatever — all I know is that the seat is so low I can barely see out the windshield! Car dealerships are so complicated.

All the hassle might have been a useful experience, however, because it reminded me how much I HATE getting up early. (I had to be there at seven.) I can’t believe I used to get up at six thirty every day for high school. For a while, I thought that I could “fall back on” a career teaching high school…but I’m starting to think that a PhD might be worth the trouble just so that I can arrive at work at a more civilized hour, like nine or ten. Preferrably eleven.

So I went back to bed until noon. I guess I can’t complain about being overworked today! I worked on my stupid program the rest of the afternoon. I got it to stop giving me imaginary river-bank heights but it’s still giving me values of 10^38cm. Something’s very wrong. So, I gave up and patched the church’s external audio recording into our wedding video. I’m starting to understand the intricacies of Final Cut Express and it’s very fun.

I am going to go back to work! I am determined to figure out this program!

I went to soccer today and nobody was at the field. Apparantly my name hasn’t made it onto the phone tree yet. The sprinklers came on wouldn’t turn off and the field is flooded. Fiddlesticks.

Ben’s dad called today. I cheerfully asked how things were going and he said something like, “Well, we just don’t have much good news today.” My heart jumped into my throat and I felt horrible for sounding so cheery — maybe even patronizing. Ben’s grandma was in the hospital last week because she had a mini-stroke. I feared the worst — maybe the blood thinners hurt her (they’re dangerous and are only administered under close supervision) or maybe she had another stroke. Dad sounded positively awful.

Well, Grandma is fine; the distress is due to an ice storm that hit South Carolina today. LOL :) I guess ice is really bad when you don’t see it very often, just like rain scares Californians. I remember a winter in New Jersey where there was so much ice I went skating on my front lawn and instead of sledding on the toboggan hill, people strapped on hockey skates and SKATED down it.

I have to admit it’s harder to handle ice in South Carolina — they lost power and they have an electric stove and oven so they can’t cook, and their house fan doesn’t work so they don’t really have any heat. Not that it gets all that warm in their house when the electricity IS working. On the up-side, they won’t have to pay to heat the house during the cold spell…

Ben, in response to my “I love my husband!!!” entry yesterday: “We’re just so compatible. We’re like firewire.”