bad news, good news, & no news (mostly about other people)

• Remember that PhD student I told you about? Well, she has cancer. Thyroid cancer. She just found out this morning and told me right before class. I am just sick about it. I offered to give her extra time to finish everything for my class, while she deals with the shock. I don't know anything about thyroid cancer, but she said that they remove the glands and she has to take meds for the rest of her life. If you know anything reassuring I can tell her, that would be great. 
  
• Awesome Female Colleague has ruled out a digestive ailment (for the most part), so now has been told that it is something reproductive- either ovarian cysts or cancer (which is how her mother died). I am hoping it's just cysts. This is so f---ed up.
• My friend's daughter has been trying to get pregnant for over a year and they finally succeeded! I'm not even supposed to know, but my friend was so excited she told me anyway. I'm so glad for them (this is their first), but of course- always a twinge of pain for me, too.
• We haven't heard from Dr. Nice or his family, but I am assuming that everything went fine with his surgery last week. I hope he is doing OK.
• I got in touch with a casual friend from grad school on FB and heard about his pending divorce (which I had heard about from another friend a while back). He and his soon-to-be-ex are in the same department- and have kids, so he doesn't want to move away from them. What a crappy situation. I feel terrible for him (especially knowing the story of why they are divorcing that I better not repeat here).
• It looks like I will be teaching 5 days a week next fall. It will be my first semester teaching three classes since fall 2006 and I still can't figure out a way to fit all of my classes on MWF- even having just labs on T/Th. So I will be teaching MTWThF. God damn that sucks.

Hurricane in the midwest!

Just a quick post to say that I think we have power back now after almost 24 hours (I'm on campus although classes were canceled today, but H said that is back on at home). We lost some siding and I think our little maple tree may be damaged beyond hope. We were almost hit by roofing material and light fixtures from our campus athletic center yesterday, leaving D's swimming lesson, too. There are an unbelievable number of downed trees in our area, so it's no wonder so many people lost power. I heard estimates that 1 million people in my state were still without electricity this morning (including us). I hope it stays on, because I still need to catch yesterday's episodes of Entourage and True Blood (which were not DVR'd as usual!) I guess it was bad here, because it wasn't just the remnants of Ike, but also a cold front coming through. I wonder if Dr. Crazy is OK and other bloggers in this area! Yikes!

Walking field trip & bloggy birth news

Last Friday, I went on a walking field trip with D's class (and the other 2nd grade classes). It was hot and humid, but still fun. I posted a couple other pictures here.

Her last day of school is Thursday and we're leaving that afternoon for Cheap-Airport-City-in -Neighboring-State to spend the night before our morning flight on Friday to Blazing-Hot-Desert-City. We'll only be gone a few days, but it will be a fun family reunion. 

In other news (or non-news), it's looking more and more like we are not going to H's Home Country this summer, because we are STILL waiting for his naturalization ceremony notice to arrive. While it's entirely possible that they just haven't sent it yet, I am also a tad bit concerned that it was lost in the mail. It's been four weeks since he passed the test, so I thought we would have heard something by now...

One last thing- luckybuzz is apparently in labor!! I'm very excited for her and hope that things go smoothly and quickly!!

Sad

 'Killing Fields' journalist dies

I'm no political blogger, but...

this makes me laugh:

Maybe this is why Hillary Clinton's campaign hasn't said anything about Obama's connections with Reverend Wright.

Ironic Anniversary

Peace.

I've been quoted!

I'm glad to know that I am such an authority on tenure!

Thanks to Mommy/Prof for pointing out the link...

"Ethnic Cleansing" in Kenya

For those who don't know me well, H is from Kenya (a country with 43 different ethnic groups*). His family members are OK, but his uncles all lost their businesses in Western Kenya (they were burned down).

clipped from observer.guardian.co.uk

Seeds of genocide were sown a decade ago by Moi

That was the scene in Kenya last week. It has happened before, not just in Rwanda but a decade ago in Kenya. And there is very little time to act before Kenya's tribal tensions explode into more widespread massacres. It is no surprise, or accident, that up to 50 Kikuyu were murdered in the western city of Eldoret last week in revenge for alleged rigging of the elections by the Kikuyu President Mwai Kibaki over Christmas.

*They generally do not use the term "tribe" as it is considered derogatory by some Kenyans.

Kudos to them...

More reflections on *the* grant

I hope that am not making my blog boring by only talking about this grant, but I am still coming to terms with what this all actually means. H doesn't think that I am acting nearly excited enough about it. He keeps calling me the "new star of the department", although only a few people have heard the news so far. I am starting to realize that it is even more significant than I first thought, too. My collaborator (who just made full professor) has had a grant from the same program, but never for this much money (almost $400K). Another colleague who has had several grants has also never had one for this much money. I was shocked to hear this and assumed that they routinely received grants in the half million range, but apparently I was mistaken. Of course, the kind of research I do requires more money, so that is probably the biggest factor in the dollar amount.

I had a phone conversation with my collaborator yesterday and he told me that we need to make this project a priority and not expend a lot of time and effort pursuing other projects for the next few years. Once he said that, I knew he was right, but I hadn't really thought of it that way. Now I really need to finish this paper and get it submitted before the grant officially kicks in.

I've been through the grant proposal process MANY times in the last five years, so I am familiar with the procedures and paperwork. All of the procedures and paperwork for an award are new to me. I'm glad my colleague is the PI and has already dealt with the forms and bureaucracy of this agency! We're also scrambling to revise our budget since they didn't award the entire amount we requested (although it's 95% of what we asked for).

A colleague (who is on the P&T committee) shook my hand and said that I had guaranteed myself tenure. Really? I guess it would be ridiculous of them to dump me after I've gotten a big grant (which isn't even required for tenure in my non-PhD department), but I never really thought of it that way.

The other side of all this is that this also puts a LOT of pressure on me. I am in charge of significant parts of the project, I need to recruit a graduate student, purchase large quantities of expensive data, carry out the research, and get published. I am excited about this and don't feel that I've gotten in over my head, but I am also a bit freaked out about it. I should have lots of blog-fodder for the next few years as I struggle through all of this. It should be great- I am excited about the research and I'm going to be working with some great people.

I think I should go update my CV for my web page!

Can this man please be fired?

I hope you have all seen the great things coming from NASA today...