Two Weeks

I came to the realization today that due to my poor math skills, I actually only have two weeks until my dissertation goes out to my committee, not three like I thought. Apparently, I will never master that whole "counting" thing. Thankfully, I married a man who is able to do math and all sorts of things that I can't do. That's a plus or a division sign, honestly, I'm not sure how math works.

I think there is the possibility that I will actually finish the dissertation, turn it in, defend it, and graduate in May. It feels as though it could happen. It also feels as if I will fail miserably. I'm a woman of extremes. I want to put out to the universe that I will do well. But honestly, it's a lot of work and I'm just getting tired. So tired.

But I suppose that's life. We all make choices. Some of us choose to get a Ph.D. and then work at a McDonald's. That's fine though. I'm still going to make everyone call me Dr. Rose. They'll be yelling, "Dr. Rose, let's get a move on, I need two large fries over here!" And I'll be like, "Yeah, you do." Then I'll launch into a little discussion of cognitive dissonance - how the people who are ordering the fast food know it is bad for them, but are still eating it so there is a disparity between their beliefs and their behaviors which is uncomfortable for humans. So the choices are to either not eat the food or to somehow justify it, "I only do this once in awhile. I got the diet coke, etc." No one will be listening to me, but I'll feel good about putting some of my education to use. I really hope that the dishwashers have master's degrees and we can all go out on smoke breaks and talk about the glory days of graduate school. I don't envision making it to manager because I don't think I could handle the stress (and I'm actually not mocking McDonald's managers- I really don't think I could deal with it). So I'll probably just work the fry-a-lator and bide my time until I can work my way up to the cash register. Although, there are two things about that job that will likely prove to be obstacles. First, I don't like touching money (germs! everywhere!) and second, as previously mentioned, I can't do math. Either people would be very happy with the change they got back or very angry.

I guess there's a lesson to be learned in all this. I'm pretty sure that life is all about the teaching of lessons. But I'm not quite far enough away from all this yet to see the lesson. I'm hoping that with all that time working the fry machine, I'll be able to figure out the life lesson from these past 6 years.

Did You Miss Me?

Hi Internet,

It's been awhile. I'm trying to write my dissertation and let me just say this about that - it's just as fun as you've always thought it would be. Because I am writing (read: not writing and feeling guilty) the dissertation, I have very little brain power left to string together coherent thoughts. In fact, if you were to look at the dissertation you'd probably say I don't have enough power to string together coherent thoughts for that either, but I digress.

I decided that I need to practice writing something that I enjoy. And as many of you know, there is nothing I enjoy more than writing romantic comedies. No, just kidding. That's not true. I'm lying for the attention. But in the shower today I thought, "I'll write a nice entry a day or something to keep my on my toes (not literally)." As a side note about the shower, I had to get back into the shower after drying my hair and then realizing that I had shaved my right leg, but not my left leg. That's how well I'm doing lately. But don't worry, it's not visual neglect*, so there's the upside.

Anyway, I think we all know that my best work comes when I chose a topic and then write about it. Well, not a topic, a letter. So without further ado, today's blog entry is brought you by the letter A.

I have a couple choice words that start with A that I could string together, but my parents always told me that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. So I'll choose different words.

A is for Abstract - an abstract is the beginning part of scientific paper in which the Author or Authors (look at me going for the bonus points) sum up what the paper is about. It's usually about 150 to 250 words and goes through each section of the paper in short order and lays it all out. This is done for anyone who is lazy and doesn't want to read the entire paper, and really, why would you? But the abstract can often be misleading. To use an Analogy, often the abstract is written as though by Cliff**. It's close to what goes on, but you probably should have read the book. Here's what the abstract to my dissertation should really look like:

Here lies the dissertation of Rose Danek. She began this research with a zest for research and a love of the topic. She ends this research with a desire to never do research again and a cynical view of the research process. The following experiments reported are the ones that worked. There were about 10 more that were run and didn't work. This is common in research. Anyone who says differently is lying. She wrote some things down and at this point can't really remember what they were. If you are still interested you should read the paper. This is the last hoop that I had to jump through and by God, if it didn't kill me, I think it made me stronger.

Tune in tomorrow when our Blog will be brought to you from the Letter B.

*That's a little joke for my neuroscience friends.

**That's a little joke about Cliff Notes.***

***That's a reference to my insecurity about people getting my subtle humor.

Hello Again

Things I Should be Doing:

1. Writing my dissertation

2. Preparing for a phone interview on Saturday

3. Applying for more jobs

4. Cleaning my house

5. Losing 50 pounds

6. Analyzing data

7. Programming new experiments and testing them

8. Preparing a job talk

9. Preparing for my Brown Bag Presentation on Feb. 17

10. Loads of other things

Things I Feel Like Doing:

1. Eating

2. Sleeping

3. Watching television

Do you see the problem here? I keep denying that there may be a problem, but I'm starting to think that maybe I should start working on some of those things I have to do. It feels so much easier to just stick my head in the sand and ignore the things I have to do. Oh, winter malaise. I miss the sunshine. But oh well, such is life. I did do some exercise today and I have a plan to make a nice schedule of my time tomorrow...and actually stick to it.

In other news...I've failed at taking a picture of myself a day...but I did put up a bunch of pictures in my house in picture frames, so that's nice. The weather has been just delightful lately, cold, snowy and gray, very gray. I think everyone I know is suffering from it, but I suppose that at least when spring comes we'll all be overwhelmed by the beauty.

Until next time.

Clue - The Rose is 30 Edition

It's official, I am now 30. I can no longer be trusted, but it's cool. I feel pretty good about it. I mentioned in my last post that my awesome friends made me a Clue game. I believe you can follow the link below to see some pictures of the awesomeness:

Rose Clue

I usually use my birthday to make "new year's resolutions" because it feels like a new year of my life starts on my birthday. Plus, my birthday is the best holiday ever. Anyway, I decided to take a picture a day for the year...yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. Here's the last two days photos:

This is me at 30

This is 30 + 1

Arizona is Awesome

I come to you from the great and sunny state of ARIZONA. GO ME! It's actually slightly cloudy here today and there's the promise of rain...but really? I don't think it's going to happen. I think that we are safe. And even if it does rain, it won't snow, so AWESOME. I'm so happy!

My flight here went pretty smoothly. I was only delayed 1 hour and 20 minutes, which is the best I've ever been since moving to the midwest. My brother's plane came in a wee bit early the next day which was super awesome because the weather was horrible for both of us and they were predicting we wouldn't get anywhere.

Since arriving I've had some nice quality family time and some nice quality friend time. It's been awesome (guess my new favorite word). Last night my friends threw me a birthday party. Actually it was a funeral. They had eulogies and they made a Rose Clue board game. They transformed the Clue board and all the cards and everything into things dealing with me. They made little wooden figures that depicted each of us and they had a list of things that I fear will kill me as the murder weapons (mouth herpes, germs, stress, smoking, dirty needles, and clowns). Then each room was a location like friends' houses, Iowa, Penn State, etc. It looked amazing. I honestly thought that they had somehow sent away to the company to make a personalized Clue board, but they did it all themselves. So we played. In case you were keeping score at home, it was Jesse with Germs in Germany. I always knew he'd be my downfall.

Needless to say, it was an awesome night. Halfway through we turned the poster around and celebrated Adam's birthday (which is today). We're all turning 30. So crazy.

Other than that I bought a bunch of clothes, a new computer and I got my hair cut and slightly colored today. So that's the news from my world. My husband is at home plotting how to mass produce our podcast so that the world can partake. Then he's going skiing.

Until next time, enjoy this video about publishing articles. It's funny. Zach sent it to me.

Peer Review

"Christmas Eve"

Today is "Christmas Eve" because tomorrow is "Christmas" because I leave on Wednesday. So Z and I are celebrating a few days early. We have a tiny tree and some very nice decorations and a few little presents under the tree. Tonight I get to stuff the stockings (literally stockings that I painted our names on) and then tomorrow morning - viola! "Christmas". I'm even going to make a ham steak, green bean casserole and some potatoes. Truly, a magical feast. I also plan to make some food for Zach to eat while I am away. It's not that I don't think he can feed himself, I just worry that he won't.

And now, some ranting.

Today is the shortest day of the year. It's cloudy and gray so I doubt I will notice the utterly consuming darkness scheduled for around 4:39 PM. Just like it was barely perceptible when the sun rose at 7:30AM this morning. But it can only get lighter from here. So Happy Solstice, Everyone!

For those of you who have listened to our podcast, thanks! Hope you enjoyed it. For those of you who felt that 25 minutes was just "too much"...I have some choice words for you, but this being "Christmas Eve", I'll just keep them to myself. Why don't you try listening and if you get bored, turn it off. You can also do other things while listening, Zach and I are not asking that you sit immobile for 25 minutes listening to our voices. Although, you probably won't be disappointed if you do. For those of you who missed it, here's the link:

Christmas Cardcast

In other news, I am super excited about going home for the holidays. My mother informs me that it will be "really cold"....like 58. Wow! 58? Hm...what should I wear? The tank top or the short sleeve shirt? 58. Mom. C'mon.

I have been so excited that I've been packing for days now. I'm trying not to bring that much, but I'm just so excited that I want to pack it all now! I will miss Zach, but I'm super excited to see everyone else. And I know that there will be about 10 minutes when he really misses me before he realizes the joy that comes from me being away. Enjoy your freedom, Zach. Don't do anything that I will hear about later (or stain anything).

I had some other things that I really wanted to rant about, but I can't remember at this juncture, so I'll bid you all ado. Merry "Christmas Eve"!

Merry Christmas!

Hi All,

This year my husband and I decided that instead of sending out Christmas cards (as has been my tradition for many years) we would do a Christmas "Cardcast" - which is a podcast that has a Christmas greeting in it. We got some "borrowed" equipment and went to town, especially Zach who has not been sleeping for the past 3 days so that he could edit it to perfection. Here is the podcast link:

Podcast link



We hope that you enjoy our holiday cheer and greetings! Love you all...and for any random strangers stumbling on to the blog...it's not love for us yet, but maybe we can be there some day.

Best,
Rose & Zach...the Awesomes