Wordless Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Helpful lists and idiot epiphanies

I'm a list maker.  I have been for ages.  It probably goes back to fourth grade when we had to write down in a small notepad everything we needed to do for our homework that night.  I remember having one with a bright green cover and a wire spiral at the top of the notebook.  The paper was bluish-white with blue lines.  (How can I remember these details but not my own cell phone number?)

Ever since grade school I have had the need to create lists of things I need to do, buy, make, read, etc.  Then I cross things off my list as I get them done, which gives me a silly sense of accomplishment.  Sometimes I even write things down that I've already done just for the sake of being able to cross them off my list.  (In retrospect, I think my listing habit has contributed to my unfailing need to plan out my life for at least the next five years, much like the ex-Soviet Union.  You can officially start thinking of me in terms of obsessive-compulsive behavior now.) 

Anyhoo, I probably make at least one list a day and sometimes I make at least two.  My lists are a jumbled mess of things related to work, stuff related to home, and sometimes inane, random ideas I put down on paper just to get them out of my brain.  Sometimes I will start a list at work, only to forget to take it home with me at the end of the day.  That's not so helpful when it's a list of things I want or need to do that night.  I just found one list that I started yesterday, but it must have gotten buried under the strata of papers on my desktop and I forgot about it.  This list has a couple of items I want for my vegetable garden, along with a few ideas for my talk at the Mount Rogers Naturalist Rally next month.  It also has "banana acid?" written on it, which is in reference to whether my potted dwarf banana needs an acidic fertilizer or not (it does).  Then, at the bottom of the list, is a cryptic note that reads, "SonAP."

SonAP???  This does not ring a bell for me, but obviously I thought it would mean something when I wrote it out yesterday.  What does it mean?  A different statisical procedure to look into?  The abbreviation for a scientific journal?  Some strange acronym for a molecular technique?  I was baffled by this item when it finally hit me that I had meant to Google the plot for the movie, "Snakes on a Plane."   Talk about an idiot epiphany.

Arthropod Haiku

The NC State University Insect Museum in Raleigh recently held a Hexapod Haiku contest.   Read more about the Hexapod Haiku 2009 Challenge.  They haven't announced the winners yet, but I thought I'd share a couple of my own submissions.

Stabbing pain, hot fire!

Yellow jacket samurai 

Have found my soda can.

Ancient signals flash

Through twilight as fireflies ask,

Where are you, my love?

Limulus appears 

On muddy beaches once more.

Late spring on the Bay.

For you non-biologists out there, Limulus is the genus of the Atlantic horseshoe crab.  Horseshoe crabs are those prehistoric arthropods with many legs and other flapping appendages that simultaneously fascinated and scared the carp out of me as a little girl when I found them on the beach in late spring and early summer.  They're living fossils and completely harmless, but I love the way they lumber up on the beach to mate and lay eggs before disappearing back into the water as if they were hideous monsters from a 1950's science fiction movie.

Wikipedia has a good entry on the horseshoe crab if you'd like to learn more about them.

Update, April 22, 2009!  I was given two honorable mentions by the judges for my firefly and yellowjacket submissions.  You can see the other honorable mentions posted here.

Now I have to decide how to include this on my CV.  

Wordless Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Wordless Wednesday

Seminar Cookie Update!

There were cookies at seminar.  Apparently last week's announcement was a garbled interpretation of a new university policy regarding the purchase of food for meetings, seminars, classes, etc.  This is to save what money remains in the budgets, not because the money has already run out.  (Although that must not be too far in the future given the rumors on campus.)

But there were cookies, at least for this week, and they were greatly appreciated because today's speaker chose to read his presentation.  This is unheard of for a scientific presentation in our department, so there was much twittering and awkwardness in the audience.  And while the subject matter held the promise of a very interesting presentation, the speaker's somewhat dramatic reading  with little eye contact with the audience didn't quite capture all of our attention and some of the audience began nodding their heads.  And I wasn't certain what the protocol was for alerting the very senior faculty member sitting beside me that he was on the verge of slumping over in his chair.  Do I nudge him?  Do tap his arm?  What if he jerks awake and feels embarrassed about it?  Poor soul, I would have offered him a cookie but I had already eaten mine.   

Sign o' the times

Forget what the talking heads say about the current economic meltdown, I've got a new indicator for our current economy. Last week, during our weekly departmental seminar, the seminar chairman passed on an announcement regarding the long-held tradition of having cookies at seminar. The departmental budget has shrunk to the extent that, unless people donate money, there will be no more cookies offered at seminar.

I've weathered several other budget crunches at Virginia Tech, but we've never had to cut out the seminar cookies before now.  It's a sad, sad state of affairs when we can't even afford two $2.50 packs of Kroger-brand cookies once a week.

Even worse, those cookies are an absolute necessity at seminar. I've made it through many a less than scintillating presentation by rationing a bite of cookie over the 60 minutes. Sometimes even the cookies can't save me from falling asleep, but that trick has kept me from making a fool of myself (or worse, drooling in public) on multiple occasions.  And I know I'm not the only one who depends on those cookies for the very same reason.

We have seminar this afternoon.....sans cookies.  God help us.