That is sort of how I feel about my social life right now. There is SO MUCH I want to be doing when I’m not working. And it ALL sounds just wonderful! But there is only so much free time that I have left in my life, and I can’t keep sacrificing sleep in order to do all of the fun things that I want to be doing.

I came up with this analogy/realization last night when I had to call a friend to back out of going to a local festival (an Octoberfest-like event) for supper. I really, really don’t like telling people I’m going to attend something and then having to back out due to work. It makes me frustrated and sad.
But I also know that with being tenure-track, I can’t shirk my work duties one little bit. The cloud of “going up for tenure” looms over so many of my decisions about work & non-work balance. Most of the time, work wins. Some people may say that this is one of the great things about tenure, it keeps the new faculty working really, really, really, really hard. (maybe that needs another really)

Don’t get me wrong, even if tenure weren’t hanging over my head, I’d STILL be doing my job to the absolute fullest of my abilities. I’m not one to do something at 80% when I could be doing it at 100%. But there are times when I would normally let my work slide just the tiniest bit (sort of 90-95% effort instead of 100%) if tenure weren’t a concern.

So what do I do to cope? Well, last night on my drive home, I played Lady GaGa, Taio Cruz & Ludacris, Chris Brown, Rihanna, Alanis Morrissette and other hip-hop music that I have in a mix that I created for lab really really loud in my car (mix is below).

I was feeling oddly angry about the situation, and the music helped. Especially Lady GaGa, she has some good angry, energetic songs.

Then I got home, and seeing Max (my rabbit) helped calm me down too. How can you be mad when you are petting a cute, fuzzy friend?

I ate, took a nap, and looked at photos I’ve taken within the past couple of weeks. It helped to relive some of the fun things that I HAVE been able to do with my non-work time.
I’ve been doing a LOT of fun things, don’t get me wrong, but there are times when I wish I had a job with regular hours so that my evenings were free. It was nice to look at those things.

And then here I am, blogging. Another thing that I do with my “free” time – over breakfast. Also good.

—————
Mix – I call it “Lab Fall 2010″
Bad Romance – Lady GaGa
Forever – Chris Brown
Disturbia – Rihanna
Break Your Heart – Taio Cruz & Ludacris
Crazy (James Michael Mix) – Alanis Morissette
Telephone – Lady GaGa & Beyonce
- and it continues – but by that time, I’d gotten home!

Well, I got my hair colored two days ago, and yesterday was the first that anyone at school saw it.

It was really fun. The female students noticed and commented right away about how great it looked! It was the same with the female faculty and staff. I got lots of great compliments on the change.

There was a wine and cheese reception last night as part of the kickoff for a symposium that is going on at campus this week. So, I went ahead and wore my version of a black dress with my new necklace that I got when I was out in Provincetown, MA visiting SeaQueen and going to my scientific conference. A couple of friends at that party just gushed about the change. They said it fits my age/face more. They were shocked to hear that I’m 37; I think that since my face is rounder, they were thinking that I was younger than that.

I guess I’m well preserved!

Probably comes from inhaling residual paraformaldehyde and acrolein from all of the experiments I’ve done on fixed tissue! ha!

Anyway, there are pics on Flickr, but you have to be a “friend” and login to see them. Check them out!

I found it when I read the article about parts of Japan shifting to the east by 13 feet and the earth’s axis being tilted by 4 inches.

Of course, it does nothing to show the impact at a personal level.

Well, turns out that the fashion industry considers anyone who is a size 8 up to a size 20 a “plus-sized model.”

How bizarre is that?

They basically say that anyone who isn’t a size zero or size 2 is above the norm, and thus is considered plus-sized. Note for the men out there who are confused, stores that sell women’s fashions categorize size 18 and above “plus-sized.” Consequently, you might imagine how this is confusing terminology for those of us who shop in typical stores.

Anyway, I thought I would share that info about terminology today. I think it is interesting, and it says quite a lot about fashion.

The child was, of course, one of my nieces. This time it happened to be the baby niece, we’ll call her the younger niece (YN) – as opposed to the older niece (ON). Hmmmm…
… ON is sort of a bad abbreviation for blogging. I guess she will have to go back to being M for Munchie.

Anyway, Texas Seestor called me on Tuesday night of last week. I was due to drive up to their home on Wednesday in the late afternoon already; we had made previous plans for me to help out while Trainwreck went on a business trip overnight and potentially into the next night too.
While on the phone on Tuesday night, she told me that YN would have to stay home from daycare all day the next day (Wed) due to pink eye. I knew Texas Seestor had at least one important meeting, but she had already started thinking about how she could call in from home. TX S’s meeting was in the afternoon, so I offered to just come early and take care of YN for the afternoon, and she decided to take me up on my offer!

Mind you, I had never, and I mean never, ever, taken care of kids for babysitting on my own. Even when I was a teen, I was absolutely not interested in babysitting. Consequently, I’d never changed a diaper. I had a cursory knowledge of how to tell the front from the back, and that wiping with baby wipes was involved, and that it is necessary to always keep one hand on their tummy and/or distract them, depending on their age.

I had fed a baby with a bottle (YN) for the first time ever the week before. Due to timing of visiting and the wealth of family around when M was a baby, I’d never fed her a bottle, oddly enough.

So, I arrived early to learn the tricks of the trade.

And just to be clear, I’d also never prepped the “solid” (i.e. mushy) food for a baby in a high chair, fed a baby in a high chair with a spoon, prepped a bottle with a bottle warmer, and what else….
… well, that seemed to be plenty of stuff that I had to learn in a short period of time.

The timing was right for Texas Seestor to show me how to prep YN’s mushy, rice/oatmeal baby food using breast milk. Then I learned how to feed her the food. YN is an exuberant eater – big surprise when you are talking about a female in our family, eh? She is still learning how to not spit out the food in her mouth by accident, but she is getting better.

The baby bird resemblance is really cute. You know what I mean right? I’m talking about the big open mouth when a baby is ready to have food put into her mouth.

And I learned how to use their bottle warmer.

And, once again, the timing was right, because YN ended up with a poopy diaper before Texas Seestor had to leave for work. So, I got to see how to deal with that too. Luckily, YN is so young, and she is pretty much only eating milk and this small amount of rice/oatmeal and small quantities of various pureed vegetables and fruits. Thus, her bacterial flora in her intestines hasn’t really kicked in yet to produce a lot of methane gas. Translation: it doesn’t smell much.

There was just enough time for me to eat lunch while Texas Seestor dealt with about 5 chat conversations at once on her computer. Then TX S. did one last run through of potential timing of eating/sleeping, I took notes, and off she went.

Thus, I was Home Alone with YN.

It was a really nice day, albeit tiring, due to my slight nervousness about doing stuff.

She napped for about 45 minutes at one point, drank a bottle, ate solids, played in her exer-saucer, played on her mat, and did her kneeling version of attempting to crawl. I was able to get a fair amount of video of her attempts to crawl, which was a fun way to pass the time.

I did have to change another poopy diaper and a couple of wet ones. But that was all easy-peasy.

One thing I already knew about her is that if she isn’t completely chipper and smiling, to check her diaper. She is such a happy baby, that it is relatively easy to guess that there is something wrong if she isn’t smiling. And it is either that she is hungry or that her diaper needs to be changed.

One challenge was that she was less than chipper at one point in the afternoon. I had just changed her diaper, and it was 0.5-1.5 hours until her afternoon bottle, so I was rocking her, b/c I thought YN was just tired. Luckily, Texas Seestor called around the same time and after we discussed amounts eaten earlier in the day, we started thinking YN might be hungry. Also, since I had YN in my arms, Texas Seestor heard YN’s vocalizations and recognized the sounds of hunger. Thus, even though it was early-ish, we decided that I ought to prep a bottle.

Now I’d already prepped a bottle earlier in the day with one hand while holding YN. But this time, I had to aliquot out a smaller portion of the breast milk in the fridge so as to not waste it; this was just in case YN only drank a small amount. And aliquotting bottles that are really sealed tightly shut is not something that I could do one-handed. I had to place YN on her mat, and she got a little fussy while I did that step. But she was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall good once she got her bottle.

And of course, she ended up drinking everything – including the aliquots.

She slept for about 10 minutes after that, which was just enough time for me to get my hopes up and think I could take a 15 minute nap too. But that wasn’t the case.

Oh well. It was fine that I didn’t nap. I was just a little less energetic that evening.

And one other thing that is worth noting, because it was fun is that Texas Seestor and Trainwreck have a fantastic backyard with lots of windchimes and things that move in the breeze amongst their landscaping. At one point during the early afternoon, I took YN out there and we looooooooooked and looked at each thing for a while. She really loves being outside, and the areas I took her to were shaded. It was really nice – for me too.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of those. Maybe later I can at least take a shot of the windchimes.

YN’s joy of the outdoors, even in the summer, is an indication to me that she is certainly a Texas girl at heart.

All in all, I’d do it again, easily. It was fun.

And that is really the end of the story.

Oh, one postscript: They had caught her pink eye early enough that when I arrived, I couldn’t even see any inflammation. Other than her altered eating schedule, it didn’t seem to be affect her at all. She went back to daycare the next day.

And now, that is really the end of the story. For real.

Just a quick update b/c I have to run off shortly to get my TX driver’s license when they first open.

I know that my family is patiently (or would that be IMpatiently ) waiting for a blog post about a day last week when I took care of my youngest niece.

I’ve had some stuff that I’ve had to do in the mornings that has cut into my blogging-over-breakfast time. And I’ve discovered that I’m not really a lunchtime or suppertime or really any-other-time blogger, oddly enough.

The quick news is that I’m slowly becoming an official, in the eyes of the state anyway, resident of TX. I got my plates on Monday. I got the rusted bolts removed from my car at the Honda dealer yesterday (Tuesday) so that my new plates could be attached. It took a while, but they did it free of charge. I suspect that the bolts really should not have rusted quite like that; one of them had to be drilled out. My car is starting to look much better. The old plates were dented from where HB had run into some stuff and/or someone had run into him; I don’t recall exactly. It was his car first.

And yes, today, I’m attempting to get my driver’s license. They open at 8:00 and I hope to be there at 7:50-7:55. The other day, I got there, and the line looked like it was at LEAST an hour long! This is in contrast to the County Tax office where I got my plates where I waited about 15 seconds.

In other news, today is the day that my colleague (fellow Bio prof) and crew (i.e. college students) are going to help get my office furniture out of my apartment and into my office. I’m super excited about it! Once it is in place, I can tackle my many boxes of files and textbooks. Eventually, I’ll get my garage cleaned out to the point where I can park my car inside!

I hope to have pictures of the before and after to show you within the week.

And then, of course, I’ll write up that other post too.

This is a very small red hibiscus that I spontaneously purchased at Home Depot the other day. It is on my front patio which has a lattice fence around part of it for privacy. I can see it out my front window when I sit on my couch.

I spent another weekend with Texas Seestor, Trainwreck and my two nieces. Once again, my arrival was quite joyous and really made me feel good. Every now and then, I get sort of blue and/or lonely during the week. But seeing everyone on the weekend always picks me up out of any minor funk. I can’t imagine being here and not having that connection.

We did a lot of random things this weekend. As always, we played playdough at least once. And my niece and I went for at least one trip around the block via some mode of conveyance. I know at least once was with her tricycle. We also got in the pool twice (? – I sort of lost track). And we played legos, tinkertoys, cars, trains, sandbox, cupcake (pretend), and went to the park.

We also all danced at some point. What did we dance to?

Do you even have to ask?

We danced to the Glee CD, of course!

TX S. has video of it that she will eventually put on Flickr for family and friends who want to see it.

I also put my niece to bed for the first time ever. Trainwreck had to help bribe her to go potty by telling her that she could feed the bunny afterward; so I didn’t quite do the whole bedtime routine on my own. But I did most of it this time. I also just realized that I forgot to have her brush her teeth. oops!

Speaking of teeth, my younger niece still doesn’t have any. But she is getting close and loves to play with just about anything that she can get in her mouth, including my thumb and knuckles. In addition, I had her on my lap by holding her up under her armpits so that she was standing and she just griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinned and grinned!

The challenge right now when I play with my younger niece is that my older niece is used to being the only one with whom I play. So, when I play with my younger niece, the older one has to be right. there. too.

Every now and then, my older niece is wrapped up in playing with something else and doesn’t care that I’m playing with my younger niece. But she is definitely having to learn to adjust to not being the center of attention.

Other than that, I had some nice time conversing with Texas Seestor and Trainwreck. And we had some really good food between going out and stuff that TX S. made! They sent me home with leftovers too, so I have at least 3, if not 4, meals all set up! yay! It is such a pain cooking for one; it never really seems worth the effort. However, there are times when I feel joy after cooking something. When HB and I were married and he would be gone for a week or more for work, I would make more complicated dishes on the weekends and then eat those leftovers during the week. I suppose that I will have to get into the pattern where I cook during the week.

In general, baking chocolate desserts is still my favorite cooking activity. However, it isn’t so conducive to maintaining my weight and/or losing weight. I may end up baking a little bit this week if and when I get my office furniture moved from my apartment to my school office. We’ll see.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. I feel content right now. A bit tired, but content.

Here are a couple of photos that I had promised from when Texas Seestor, Trainwreck and my two nieces visited my apartment last Saturday. This was the trip to deliver my new TV and for Trainwreck to assemble my TV stand, as well.

Here he is hard at work

And here is my baby niece playing on the stack of blankets we put down on the hardwood floor:

The others are on Flickr – since they show our faces – they are set to private for family and friends.

Back to the update on my move-in:

Yesterday, my original plans for the day unexpectedly changed – in a good way!

I emailed my department chair to let him know that I’m in town now and could come in to choose my office. I had assumed it might take a couple of days to find a time when he would be free. Instead, he was available right away! So, I ate lunch and headed to school for the first time since I interviewed.

My office space is really exciting, I think. When you enter, the wall across from you is 9 ft across and 7.5 feet of that is a floor to ceiling window with a view of the courtyard and a lily pond that is almost right there next to my window! (I’m on the ground floor)
It is really beautiful. I’m already figuring out the best way to keep the view very open and not block the sight lines.

Another positive development is that one of my colleagues suggested that we round up “a couple of cowboys” (his words) to help move my office furniture from my apartment to school. He was referring to the male students who own pick-up trucks.
He headed off to talk to the students who are around for the summer and sure enough, he found someone with a pick-up who has various links to the school and is trustworthy.

Perhaps I hadn’t mentioned this, but I had decided a year or so ago that wherever I got a tenure-track position, I would move my home office furniture to my school office. Basically, even when I was writing my thesis, I never used my home office except for storage. But I really love the furniture and it is a shame for it to just sit there unused when I could be enjoying it everyday at work. So, off to school it goes!

The other nice thing about this arrangement is that I really can turn my second bedroom in my apartment to a guest bedroom; I may have mentioned this already.

My hope is that once I get my furniture in place, I can start taking boxes out of my garage and sorting the books, files, and various office supplies in order to make space for a storage arrangement that allows me to get my car into the garage!

In other news, we talked to the administrative assistant and she had already started the balls rolling on many fronts for things like email, phone, phone number, copy code, parking pass, ID, HR stuff, business cards (my first ones ever!), as well as other things that I’m probably forgetting. She is extremely proactive, efficient, and definitely organized, which is just terrific! I know that I will be in good hands with her.

By the end of the afternoon, I actually had done some of the initial employee paperwork with HR, received my school ID card, and acquired my faculty parking pass! I also found out that I have free access to the fitness center and pool, which has a couple lanes dedicated to laps that I will not use, but another portion that is just for fun. Yay for the pools of TX!

In non-school-related news, I tried out a Zumba exercise class last night. It was free so that I could see if it was something that interests me. I had heard that it was more dance-like than your typical aerobics. My main concern with taking classes is that I tend to lose track of my heart-rate and end up with a migraine when my heart-rate goes too high for too long. 150-155 bpm is about as high as I like to go. I caught it going up to 162 and 167 a couple of times, but I slowed down and got it back to the high 140′s. Today, I don’t have a migraine, which bodes well.

As for the class, it was a lot of fun. There is a lot of cha-cha, salsa, and/or other Latin dance steps in it. We did do the requisite grapevine at one point, which was sort of good for slowing down my heart-rate too. There is a lot of shaking of one’s booty with which I’m not quite comfortable since I was in the 2nd row and there were about 4 rows behind me. Lest you think the class was huge, I should clarify that there was about 3 people per row. The class was mostly women in their 40′s and 50′s, I’d say. But there were two women – one in her 20′s (or maybe even a high school student?) and one in her 30′s – which was enough for me to not feel awkward.
I’ve decided that I will buy a monthly pass and try to go to as many classes as possible. They are on M, T, Th, which is pretty reasonable.

And now, I don’t have much other news other than we had really severe thunderstorms through the night and into this morning that made the power flash off multiple times and then go out this morning for about 30-45 minutes. Yay for flashlights. But it reminds me that even though candles are officially not allowed at my complex that I should go ahead and buy a lighter and/or matches so that when the power goes out, I can light candles. I will likely buy extra batteries too.

To pick up where I left off, I did manage to get all of the heat-sensitive boxes into the apartment and back into my closet on Friday mid-morning. I realized Friday night that I sort of strained my back muscles in the process of turning all of the boxes in the garage so that I could see their contents, and in moving the CDs, DVDs and photo albums into the apartment. But it was worth it; exhausting, but worth it.

Yesterday (Monday) I also finished putting all of the linens away. I pulled out some cloth placemats to help protect the wood of the dining room table from the heat of dishes when I eat there. The set I want to use right now are sort of wrinkly from washing and mistakenly putting them in the dryer several years ago. I may see if ironing them helps at all.

But back to Friday. I collected all of my stuff for the weekend and headed off to Texas Seestor (TX S.) and Trainwreck’s (Tr) home that afternoon. I arrived before Trainwreck brought my nieces home, which was really great, because it gave me time to unpack the car and return things that I’d borrowed to the correct locations in their home.

When they arrived home, it was so nice, because I was back in the bedroom unpacking, and I overheard TX S and Tr. telling the older of the two about how I was there. As I was leaving the bedroom and walking out to the living room, I called out that I was there. My niece came RUNNING around the corner with this HUGE GRIN on her face. I squatted down and she hugged/tackled me. It was such a wonderful moment, even with sort of getting her arm slung into the side of my head.

I stood up to greet my baby niece and she also looked at me with this biiiiiiiiiiiig grin!

Now, this isn’t to say that it isn’t special to see TX S and Tr. after a week of not seeing them, but well, I talk to them on the phone and such, so it isn’t quite so dramatic. Also, they tend to not tackle me when I see them.

As for the weekend, some of it was sort of usual. We played a lot inside, but also in the kiddie pool out back. There was at least one ride around the block with my older niece.

The unusual part is that we all drove back to my apartment after breakfast on Saturday to put together the TV stand that I purchased Friday night (with TX S’s advice) and to deliver the TV that Mom and Dad bought for me (with TX S and Tr. chipping in part of the cost too).

In the end, it was Trainwreck who was the super-trooper to put together the TV stand while we introduced my niece to my “‘parmen” (apartment) a.k.a “Danu’s house.” The steps for putting it together were, of course, in diagram form. And step one required about 26 parts to be put in place. But, when he was done, he told me it was super sturdy.

My camera was back at their house, but we took some photos to document their first visit to my apartment with their cell phones. At some point, I hope to share the photos.

As for my niece and I, we played playdough for quite a while, colored, and walked/jumped/skipped to the gazebo that is around the corner at my complex. When we arrived at the gazebo, we jumped up and down inside of it for a while. She is really into jumping right now.

Toward the end of their visit and back inside my apartment, I pulled out the Sesame Street stuffed characters that I own along with Garfield. I made them a house on the couch out of some pillows and a blanket. I was inspired to make that when I remembered that one of the things we used to do as kids when we played inside was to make tents in our bedrooms. It was a hit.

They also unpackaged my new TV and plugged it in to make sure that it at least started up correctly. And it did! I have my very own, beautiful TV now!

The cable people came yesterday evening (Mon night) to set that part of it up. I have already set the DVR that came with the cable package to record the Glee season finale and the So You Think You Can Dance series. I imagine I will watch the shows live, but it was fun to learn how to set it up. It was similar enough to our TiVo that it was fairly intuitive.

Other events over the weekend and yesterday were that we went to their local park that has a free pool. This was the first time this season and the first for my baby niece to go to a pool; this was also the first time ever for me to go there.

Another great moment is that we went out to supper and I had a fantastic jambalaya. I love andouille sausage. I think that I need to try to find a recipe for that so that I can make it myself sometimes; maybe a low-fat version, if I can manage it. I’m sure it is the sausage that makes it fatty, but perhaps there is a spicy turkey sausage that could substitute….
… I guess I’ll have to see.

Yesterday, I continued my pattern of trying to locate some new business or such each day by finding the way to the Best Buy near their house. It was sort of a mess for me to get home from there. Frontage roads are hard to navigate when you are new to a road, because there are a LOT of lanes that become the type of lane where you HAVE TO do something like turn when you don’t want to turn or go straight when you want to turn. There are signs, but they are often too late to be useful. Thankfully, TX S. was available for me to call a couple of times to get me to the interstate. I don’t know that I can consider that trip a success, BUT I did GET there without making a phone call to her.

Later in the day, when I was back at my apartment, I got in touch with the local parks and recreation department to find out about their Zumba exercise class. I’ve never done it, but I read about it in the newspaper a while ago. I had wanted to try it out last night, but the cable guys came too late in the day and it interfered with the time of the class. I’ll go tonight instead if my head improves.

Again, the directions to find it were really bizarre, so I drove there yesterday afternoon to find it in advance. That turned out to be a wise decision, because I did take a wrong turn at one point.

Some portions of the park look like a LOT of fun, because there are sections that are on a river. There were a lot of people swimming and people hanging out in rafts. I will find out more about that too. It would be nice to take advantage of some water activities this summer. And floating on a raft is one of my absolute favorite things to do. I will just have to be careful to not get my Minnesota skin-tone sunburned right off the bat! I don’t float around to tan, but just because I find it so enjoyable and relaxing. Tanning/burning is just a side effect for me.

I guess that is it for now. I have a lot of random things that I hope to accomplish this week.

I’d like to get my office at school chosen so that they can prepare it for me. Since a lot of my boxes are related to school stuff, it will take a while to do all of that.

I also need to find places for my decorative things which are currently taking up the space where I need to put my DVDs and CDs. And I ought to make a concerted effort to put my fun books into bookcases. The only snag with that is that one of the shelves of one of the bookcases is missing. This means that I can’t really put books into that shelf. And it probably does not make sense to put books into the matching shelf until I know how I will place the bookcases in the apartment. I imagine that the locations will change if the moving company cannot locate the shelf and I cannot find an exact replacement for the bookcase, or one that is at least pure white again.

Anyway, with that, I feel the need to read a chapter or two of the Endless Forest and then put all of my tea away. I have a surprise with regards to my tea. I look forward to showing it to you!