Making a deal with the Devil

One of the major requirements of my advisor upon signing that little piece of paper that says I am done with grad school, is the promise to publish the dissertation.

Like most, I was willing to promise anything just to make the grad school hell end. And, part of me knew my diss was pretty damn good. And, frankly, I find publishing a secret addiction. I love the affermation that I wrote something worth putting in print and the possibility that someone somewhere will site me.

As a first step toward meeting this promise, I submitted a poster on a very very small part of my diss. Something that was clean and easy to write up. Something that came out as expected, but interesting to a broader audience.

At the poster itself, I had quite a few people stop to chat. Asking where this is being published because it's a great contribution. Then, running into advisor at the conference-watering-hole, I was again asked when I was publishing.

My answer was "Eventually" or "Soon" or something to that effect.

Then, I got an email from the conference folks asking to conduct an interview about the paper to be published on their website and 'selected other media outlets'.

Holy shit! Really?!?!

And that is when I caved. I emailed Advisor to ask where to send the paper to begin the reviewing process for publication. And, that is when the guilt associated with doing all the formating and eventual responses to reviewers was placed right back on my head.

Future-self is going to HATE me.

Where are your hands?

"My hands are to be in loose fists, and should just barely brush my hips as they swing. Theeere, brushing. Brush. Brush. Brush."

"Where are my hands? At my chest? No, back down to the hips."

"Wait, this is a good song. Go faster."

"Nice lake. That's kind of a cool car, I wonder what it is."

"Where's your hands again? Back down to the hips."

"How much further?"

That's what goes through my head as I'm running. I think I've finally gotten to the point where I'm not feeling like I'm going to die as I run. I now am beginning to think about form. Which, what in the hell is running form? I've been reading Runner's World for several months now (a Christmas gift to myself), and they always talk about form as if we all already know what it is.

So, I asked someone at work who has been running for years. Running form, in case you care but don't know either, is making sure your steps are straight (I tend to pigeon toe I think), and that your hands stay down at your hips. She says there's other things, but that these initial things will help.

During yesterday's run, I made a mental assessment of my foot falls. I don't think I'd know if they were straight or not while actually running. And, as far as the loose fists by one's hips...I'm guilty of not doing that. So, I made a more concerted effort to try to remember to bring them down. Allegedly, keeping your hands down there doesn't exert as much energy and allows you to run more efficiently and comfortably.

I love how most things related to running is to make it more comfortable. I think it's the nice way of saying, that running pretty much blows, we're just trying to make it blow less.

I don't know if keeping my hands down at my hips made a real difference, but it did give me something different to think about instead of my usual "am I done yet?"

Small world

I have a love hate relationship with conferences.

I love attending them, I hate submitting to them. I like presenting, I hate doing the work to prepare to present.

I also noticed that I often find myself feeling very alone while surrounded by 1000+ of my closest collegues.  I never seem to be on anyone's 'must check to see if they're attending list' or their 'must make sure to invite her to dinner with the group' list. I'm also pretty much never asked to collaborate or sit on panels without first instigating the idea myself and doing all the work to get other to agree to speak.

At the same time, I seem to have a great skill in being able to wander to various sessions, parties, happy hours, etc and strike up random conversation. It makes me question that perhaps I'm that person that seems to talk to everyone, but that everyone internally cringes when they see they are headed to conversation with the annoying person.

I spend a good deal of my time being concerned with why my classmates, or surrounding years, never ask me to collaborate or meet for drinks. Every once in a while, I recall that I don't actually like most of the people in my program. With the exception of Shorty, and a few others, I actually wonder how long until I can get away or how they got into the program in the first place.

I had a lot of thought about why it is that I've been attending this particular conference every year for 7 odd years, and why it continues to happen. About the same time I came to a decision, I was sitting in a session when one of the discussants made a related point. The discussant made the point that when people arrive to these conferences, many are overwhelmed and feel alone (really? I thought it was just me) As a result, many people that attend cling to those that they know (i.e., classmates). And, as a result of the clingage - no one really meets anyone else outside of that group.

Now, this is usually about the point I wonder why no one wants to cling with me...but this time I came to the realization, if I don't like them...and they may or may not like me...and the discussant recommends making a goal of meeting 3 new people per conference...then that's what I should be doing.

As many brilliant ideas go, it came along the second to last session on the last day of the conference.

Drat.

Not one to let go of a good idea, I did what networking people have probably been doing for hundreds of years. I took the business cards I had gotten from people that wanted a copy of my poster paper, emailed them individually, tried to add a little something about what we'd talked about, and then suggested that we keep in touch or consider a collaboration in the future. After that seemed to have gone well, and I got a coincidental reminder about updates from LinkedIn, I decided to 'stalk' not only the poster people but those cards I'd gotten throughout the conference as I talked to randoms.

Here's the weirdest part.

As I typed them into the system to link to them...I discovered that a handful of the 'randoms' I'd met had connections with a good number of other people I knew. Not just others I knew from the same program or a similar place, but really weird unexpected people in common. For example, one person was linked with someone from an old internship, first grad school, second grad school, classmate of old boyfriend in another state, and the head hunter I used when I was laid off from consluting.

In the end, I had a handful of new contacts in very diverse organizations, far flung states, and some potential collaborators. One potential collaborator even offered to let me use measures designed by her organization for free to conduct accademic research.

If only I wanted to do academic research.

Time of the Month

Despite losing yet another 1.4 pounds this week...I cannot stop eating. Seriously. I even succumbed to the delicioso Skittles which should never have even been in my cubicle to tempt me.

I blame TOM, which has finally arrived.

While we're blaming TOM, I'd add a couple other things that TOM made me do today.

One, not letting go of an argument with my mother. She was wrong. Very wrong. This isn't even just an interpetation of her being wrong. And, I'm tired of it.

I feel like we've been fed this bullshit were we have to accept treatment that we'd never accept from anyone else, except family. I called her on it. You could say, I'm not picking up what she's putting down.

She went the low road and blocked any further emails from me.

I see it as win-fucking-win.

Right, the Skittles fiasco.

Oh, the other thing TOM did. Freaking got me all melancholy about my job.

My job is ok. It's safe. I make pretty good money. I seem to be pretty good at it even though I'm not usually sure what I'm doing. But, it's not what I love. It's what I did when I needed to pay bills after getting laid off. It's what I rationalized would round out my experience to prepare me for a nice high end corporate job. However, it's not rounding out my job skills. Or, at least not ones I desired. It's distancing me from the type of work I wanted to be doing. It's making me be a less productive person.

But it's safe. The hours aren't bad. I get a lot of vacation time.

But, is 32 the time to be safe?

TOM thinks not.

Hoppy Easter

Today we're hosting our first Easter dinner at the castle. We've got the usual bickering about how much cleaning is needed and how quickly it needs to be done...but more importantly, I'm pleased that PC is into it. He drug me to Pier One last night, purely so we had classy Easter decorations. Including springy placemats, a table runner, and some fuzzy chicks. And, thought to buy us fresh flowers (this is something I've been trying to train him on, and it seems to be taking hold a bit) for the table.

This is a completely opposite experience from the ex, Youngin, who explained to our Easter dinner guests how religion was assinine and religious people were a bunch of followers.

Yeah, that went over really well.

Also interesting is a trend I'm noticing on the popular networking site. I seem to have more religious friends of late. Not that that's a bad thing. Just interesting. Several people have Bible verses quoted. One even talked about how she explained to her kids how the Easter Bunny is fake, that Jesus was the reason, and then gave them "Easter" baskets. Granted, I've recently friended more of my middle school friends, and I'd say that's partially more of the religious leanings. But I see it too in the highschool friends to some degree. Perhaps it's that I went to a Baptist middle school and a Catholic highschool?

Dunno.

Skinny on the horizon

I've taken up running outside. I've been running for years, but generally preferred the treadmill because 1) better mileage estimates, 2) air-conditioned, 3) tvs, and 4) don't have weather/time of day limitations.

However, last year, I started running with a friend in her neighborhood. Then, I started occasionally running with PC in his neighborhood. And, then I started doing some 5ks. Running outside was ok, but, I still did a fair share of treadmill running.

Oddly, I've moved to almost pure outside running in the last few months. The idea of going to the work in-house dungeon gym just makes me dread running. And, the gym that work pays for makes me nuts - wherein I pretty much only go for spin classes.

To support this new propensity, and to support my competitive tracking nature, PC bought me the Nike-plus running thingy.

Dude, that thing is totally cool.

Not only does it track my mileage*, it talks to me. When my goal is distance, it tells me periodicially when I've reached X miles. When it's a time goal, it periodicially tells me how much time I have left. And, at the end, it has built in encouragement like "Congratulations, that was your longest run so far!"

Add to this wonderfulness is WW activity points. For those not on WW, activity points are basically that you get credit for exercising and get to potentially eat more. So more points are better.

I discovered that once you move into 40 minutes of running, you get an additional point. Up to this realization, I usually did 30-35 minutes of running. And generally speaking, I usually run about 2-2.5 miles.

So, earlier this week, I decided to set my goal at 40 minutes. The plan was to run as far as I could for 20 minutes (Nike thingy tells me I'm at my halfway point), and then run back.

And, you know how far I went?

Nearly 4 miles.

How the hell did that happen?

I'm retrospectively exhausted.

To reward my awesomeness, I just bought the most expensive running shoes I've ever considered. Based on the 2010 Running Shoes review by Runners World, I think I'm going to love these new little guys.

*Truth in not-advertising, I think the mileage tracking is inaccurate. It generally thinks I go farther than I do. I've tried calibrating it, but that doesn't seem to have fixed it. I usually use mapmyrun to estimate actual distance when I want to know...otherwise, I just assume reliable measurement error and focus on whether I've been increasing my distance.

Freudian?

Here's some interesting psycho-Freudian fodder.

I have an incredable ability to remember dreams. Sometimes that's good. Other times it just makes me wonder what the hell is going on in my head.

Dream scene:

I'm addressing envelopes and having to choose which of the envelopes to mail first. As is true in my real life, I never have enough stamps and have to determine which envelopes are most important.

A weird kind of ranking system that I go through every time I do Christmas cards.

So, I finish addressing the envelopes, and toss them in the mail. Only to realize, the 'envelopes' are really wedding invitations. I go on with what I'm doing, and mention off-handedly to random 'dream friend' that I'd sent out some of my wedding invitations.

Dream Friend says: "Oh, when did you get engaged?"

I then realize, Wait I'm not engaged!

OMG, how do I know PC will propose before the wedding date in the invitations? And, what if whoever I sent the invitations to tells PC that I'd already invited them to our wedding before he even asked? And, worse yet - I can't remember which people's invitations I'd already mailed...and how does one call those people up and be like "Um, yeah - just ignore those invitations..."

End dream because it's freaking stressing me out.

To my credit, I'd just sent out like 4 big mailing packages for my side business...so it might have made me think of postage. But, there just feels like something Freudian going on...