May 28, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 1 Comment
Saturday morning
One of the things I’ve done in the 2 weeks that I’ve been off work – other than try to catch up on sleep – is make a little patio garden outside my front door of my apartment.
I saw that large plant at Home Depot, and was struck by the gorgeous colors of the leaves and the flowers of the one that was blooming. I chose a different one that was not blooming, but looked really healthy. And my patience was rewarded after about a week.
That is what they looked like about a week ago.
This was what actually popped up one evening.
And the next day, it had bloomed!
It is a Canna var. “Phasion” – the label from Home Depot called it a Tropicanna from Anthony Tesselaar USA Inc. in Lawndale, CA. The Home Depot cashier who checked me out told me that it is actually a bulb plant and will come back year after year! With being in a container, I’ll likely have to do something to keep it from freezing during the winter. But the price was right (I think it was under $15), so I decided to get it even if it was only good for this one year. I’ve been thrilled with it so far! It is on its 5th or 6th flower right now!
I’m really hoping that everything survives my vacation. I’ve got friends and family coming in to check on Max (rabbit) and water my flowers. Max is clearly more important, but the plants are living things too, so I’d like to see them survive. It has been really hot here; in the 90′s – but my place is partly shaded during the day, so they all seem to be thriving.
I’m headed to RI and MA for vacation to see SeaQueen and for a scientific conference! I need to go finish my packing, I fly out today. It won’t be long now!
May 15, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 2 Comments
Sunday
Look to the right! I have a Flickr badge now! Thanks go out to my blog admin (Ex-HB) for setting it up for me.
(FYI: It uses Flash, so if you don’t see it changing photos, then it is possible that the speed of your internet connection and/or the version of Flash you have on your computer is a limiting factor.)
I hadn’t realized until I went searching in the Flickr FAQs that you can make a Flickr badge be made from photos in a particular set or with particular tags. I had always thought that it pulled photos from your entire photostream. But that is not the case. You can select the set or the tag. I’ve got mine set to pull photos from my set called “some of my best shots.”
Anyway, I’ll post more real news later. For now, I’m excited about the Flickr badge and wanted to blog about it. 
May 12, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 4 Comments
Well, I have given all of the final exams and graded all of them. I have one last lab report to grade for my Genetics class – all 42 of them. Most of them are 10 pages, because of their figures, but only about 3 pages of writing that I really have to examine closely. I am hoping to finish it up Friday morning.
I did finish all of the grades for the seniors in time to submit grades for commencement. Can you believe that I gave a final Wednesday morning and had to have the grades done by Thursday at 5 pm? Normally, the rule of thumb is 2 weeks to give back assignments to students. Of course, we always aim for much faster than that. I like to try to get exams back to them after a weekend. Consequently, the exam had a LOT more multiple choice and one word answers as opposed to sentences that I needed to read.
I’m tired. We are all tired. I’m going to bed very soon (it is only 8:30 pm); but of course, I’ll probably wake up at 5 am even though I don’t technically have to wake up at 5 am. It will take a few weeks for my internal clock to shift to something that is more typical for people.
In happy news, I have found out that I’ve received all 3 internal grants that I wrote over the past couple of months to support my research and the lab experiences of the students! Each one took me most of a day. The biggest one took me over a day to write. But all in all, it was well worth it. I’m super excited. Now, I’m funded to do a small summer research project with a student!
I’m also meeting tomorrow with the development officer who is working with me to get the rest of my research funded. He has some interesting leads, I think. We’ll see.
May 10, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 7 Comments
I never know what to call my posts. There is so much that I haven’t blogged about that I barely know where to start, especially since I need to keep this short. I leave in about an hour to go give my second of three finals. Yes, we are in finals week here. Commencement is Saturday. I have seniors in my classes and senior grades are due on Thursday at 5 pm. This makes it so that I’m in a time crunch right now. I still need to finish writing my final that I’m giving tomorrow morning; I would be designing questions right now, but until I’ve had a bit more tea and am fully awake, it is really hard to come up with exam questions (it is 6:15 am as I write this).
I’m mulling some things around in my mind about faith, divorce, marriage, and relationships right now. It will take me a while to formulate my ideas, more time than I have right now. But I think that I’ll be writing something about it within a few weeks. Right now, what I can say is that I’ve been praying for something for almost 20 years, and it has finally happened. Hallelujah! However, it wasn’t at all in the way that I was expecting, and I am still processing it.
The good thing is that I’m taking next week off, OFF. I will have plenty of time to mull. I, of course, have a to-do list of things that I want to accomplish. But I also want to spend some time in reflection. I know that if I do anything related to work, it will be to clean up my office and figure out my schedule for the scientific conference that I’ll be attending in early June.
Once mid-June gets here, I’ll be back up and running doing summer research with an undergraduate student until the end of July. We’ll spend time getting the lab space cleaned, unpacked and assembled. I hope that we can get some decent experiments done this summer. I’m still trying to get the equipment I need for my experiments. But, I’ve made some progress. Then, I’ll have a week or two to prep for the start of classes in August.
In the middle of the summer, we are taking a family trip to the Texas coast again. I’m really looking forward to all of the vacations.
For now, even though my tea is still not finished, I think that I ought to finish getting ready for work and then write some exam questions.