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Pre-Memorial Day filibuster :)
May. 25th, 2005 10:29 pmThe wind is blowing so hard right now that it makes the house shake on occasion. Not a very comforting sensation, although I'm awfully glad to be in here rather than out there.
I've had the last two weeks off...ok, maybe unemployed is the better word. :) I finished teaching two weeks ago. During June I'm going to be working for my former post-doc advisor; he's paying me to finish up our previous work on attention. I really don't like the research: our results are meager and I have a very hard time understanding what is going on. I'm tempted to let the whole thing drop, but if we can eke one paper out of it then the past year and a half of work on the subject wouldn't have been for naught.
I've been trying to be productive the past two weeks in starting my own research projects, with mixed results. It is very difficult for me to stay disciplined even when someone else is setting the deadlines; in this case, there are no deadlines, just some research goals which all came out of my little head. And I don't have a good sense yet as to how long it should take to write a paper. All of my previous papers have taken months or years to write for various reasons; now I've got an idea for a paper which might take me all of a week, and I'm worried that such a paper must be trivial. :-) I figure I'm just at that point in my career where I'm learning how to be my own advisor, so to speak.
I'm going to be visiting my hometown over the weekend; leaving tomorrow, coming back Tuesday (the benefits of unemployment). Jen still has to work, so she's staying in town. I'm going to take the train myself, which makes me anxious because I have issues about personal space. I don't deal well with sharing my seat with a stranger on public transportation: on the T, I stand if it looks like I'd have to share a seat otherwise. On planes and Amtrak etc, I have in the past turned my back to the other person and scrunched up into a tight little ball, until the pain of said posture made me stop. (Yeah, I'm a nut sometimes.) I might have preferred to rent a car and drive down to PA rather than take Amtrak, but the train will save me money, the weather will be crappy tomorrow, and...well, I gotta work on getting over this reaction somehow. I generally like Amtrak. When we lived in Chicago, we used to take the train to Harrisburg PA or Pittsfield MA all the time, which are 15-hour trips. A lot cheaper than flying, a lot more comfortable, and there's more to see out the window.
I've had the last two weeks off...ok, maybe unemployed is the better word. :) I finished teaching two weeks ago. During June I'm going to be working for my former post-doc advisor; he's paying me to finish up our previous work on attention. I really don't like the research: our results are meager and I have a very hard time understanding what is going on. I'm tempted to let the whole thing drop, but if we can eke one paper out of it then the past year and a half of work on the subject wouldn't have been for naught.
I've been trying to be productive the past two weeks in starting my own research projects, with mixed results. It is very difficult for me to stay disciplined even when someone else is setting the deadlines; in this case, there are no deadlines, just some research goals which all came out of my little head. And I don't have a good sense yet as to how long it should take to write a paper. All of my previous papers have taken months or years to write for various reasons; now I've got an idea for a paper which might take me all of a week, and I'm worried that such a paper must be trivial. :-) I figure I'm just at that point in my career where I'm learning how to be my own advisor, so to speak.
I'm going to be visiting my hometown over the weekend; leaving tomorrow, coming back Tuesday (the benefits of unemployment). Jen still has to work, so she's staying in town. I'm going to take the train myself, which makes me anxious because I have issues about personal space. I don't deal well with sharing my seat with a stranger on public transportation: on the T, I stand if it looks like I'd have to share a seat otherwise. On planes and Amtrak etc, I have in the past turned my back to the other person and scrunched up into a tight little ball, until the pain of said posture made me stop. (Yeah, I'm a nut sometimes.) I might have preferred to rent a car and drive down to PA rather than take Amtrak, but the train will save me money, the weather will be crappy tomorrow, and...well, I gotta work on getting over this reaction somehow. I generally like Amtrak. When we lived in Chicago, we used to take the train to Harrisburg PA or Pittsfield MA all the time, which are 15-hour trips. A lot cheaper than flying, a lot more comfortable, and there's more to see out the window.
