Meme

I finally got around to doing this. Here it is.

The Happy Scientist tagged me for my very first meme, that requires 8 responses to several topics.

8 passions
1. Rugby
2. Women equality issues
3. My Husband
4. Science
5. Environmental issues
6. Grocery shopping/organic food
7. My family
8. My good friends

8 things to do before I die
1. Finish my dissertation
2. Live on the west coast again
3. Play rugby with a Division 1 team (A-side game)
4. Have a child
5. Curb my addiction to all things sugar and food in general
6. Own a home (on west coast)
7. Own a car that is less than 10 yrs old
8. Save the environment

8 things I often say
1. I hate writing
2. I brought my own bag
3. Can we please leave the house today?
4. I went for a run today
5. I hate running
6. That’s what I said
7. No, no
8. What should we have for dinner?
I work at home and don’t talk to people much. This one was hard

8 books I recently read
1. I just finished the Price of Motherhood (recommend it)
2. An older yoga book
3. Taking on the big Boys by Ellen Bravo (just started it Love It, Recommend it)
4. Bitch Magazine
5. Running Magazine
6. Discovery Magazine
7. Veg Times Magazine
8. Signs Magazine (my grandpa gets in for me, it’s good bathroom reading)

As you can see I read a lot of magazines. My sister just had a magazine drive and I just canceled the newspaper so I figured I sign up for a few. I’m not renewing Running Mag. Magazine are good because they don’t require a big time commitment. I don’t usually read more than one book at a time.

8 songs that mean something to me
I’m sorry, I’m cheating, I can’t come up with eight songs so I’m going to write down my favorite bands
1. Ani Difranco. She is currently my running inspiration and I listen to her stuff when ever I’m working on spreadsheets. I could come up with my eight songs just from her work. It’s amazing how I can listen to her work years after I initially heard it and get new meaning from it.
2. Beastie Boys
That’s it. Those are my two passions. I love these artist. They get me motivated.
I enjoy most music but mostly listen to public radio.
I have a lot of Jonny Cash and Bob Marley mp3’s

8 qualities I look for in a friend
1. Honesty
2. Fun loving
3. Into being outdoors/athletic
4. Low maintenance
5. Cares for the environment
6. Intelligent
7. Likes to drink (kind of a funny one but I’m running out of things here. I wouldn’t not be someone’s friend if they didn’t drink)
8. Doesn’t like to text message

8 people who's blogs I enjoy and who may consider themselves tagged if they wish

The Happy Scientist already tagged some of these people. So it you were tagged already, of course don’t do it twice, just know, I like your blog. Also if you are reading this and wish you were tagged, feel free to tag yourself.
1. Young Female Scientist
2. Dr. Mom
3. His Gal Friday
4. I love science, really
5.Janus Professor
6. Pretty hard, dammit
7. Saturday's a Rugby Day
8. What the hell . . .

Great. Hope you learned something about me.
I'm going to yummy Italian food soon with husband and another couple. I hope I can convince them to walk the 1 mile down there but I'm pretty sure it's below freezing outside so it will be a tough argument.

Progress

I'm tired of counting words. It's getting complicated. I'm at 49% and you think I could not give up and count enough to make it to 50% but I'm done. With that said, I am really happy with my progress this past month. I didn't make the exact goals I had hoped for but I've gotten a lot of writing done, most of it revisions which makes counting difficult.
I've actually done a lot of work putting together my dissertation which I didn't think I'd start until January, but since I'm waiting for other people on my publications I thought I might as well do some of it (since I needed to increase my word count). I'd like to show my outline here and mention how much I've done (to pat myself on my back). The outline was only written in October.

Ch. 1 INTRODUCTION (isn't it always).
This is finished! Granted some was cut and pasted from manuscripts I'm working on and/or edited from my masters thesis but still. It is five pages and has three sections. It could likely be longer but each individual chapter will have have an intro. so this is just basic info and you know the summary about what the dissertation is about. The first section is background info about the hydrogeology of the study area. The second two sections are info about the two major groundwater contaminants I work with, so heath impacts, sources of contamination, ect. You can always put in more info about other peoples work but I feel like I've summarized pretty good and included the major review papers.
Ch 2. Contaminant #1
This has four subsections, three of which are going to be publications. So once those are done I'll cut and paste and format into dissertation. The last subsection I've written this past week. I didn't think it was going to be enough data for a manuscript but now that I've written it up I'm thinking it could be. It's only the second data set of it's kind on this contaminant so I think it deserves to get out there. But I'll wait until the other papers have been submitted and then think about it again.
Ch 3. Major chemistry of contaminant #1 and #2 sources.
This is more of an appendix style chapter. I've written the text, it's about a page, and will make the tables once the last of the data comes in. Part of this is the manuscript I'm resubmitting. So I refer to it but again this is more of a look at all this data, maybe somebody later can use it in a different way than I have, and most of the data has been interpreted in other sections.
Ch 4. About contaminant #2
I wrote the text for this today up until the results section. That's when things get hard :) This is a continuation of my master's thesis. Where the masters had a years worth of data this is four years of data, plus some changes to the study sites, so new data. It's really interested but maybe not publishable since I've been told it's only important locally and doesn't have a broad impact. Most of this data analysis has been done for abstracts but I need to think about it again and organize my thoughts better before I write the results and discussion. I will likely try to submit it once life has settled. There is a local journal I submitted the master's thesis data to.

Ok, then there is a nice conclusion/summary chapter and of course the abstract of the dissertation. These are things that will be completed last so they aren't on the radar yet.

I feel great. Thanks InaDWriMo.

Samples

Ok, so I’m really upset but can’t help but partially blame myself. Here is the deal (I may give some things away about what I study but oh well). I needed samples analyzed for organic nitrogen but we can only do inorganic nitrogen in my department. We found a contract lab near by that another student had used in the past. We called and told them what we had and what we needed done and they even said that 50mL would be enough sample even though the usually require more. Ok the lab chief knows about us let’s get things ready and send out the samples. Below is a portion of their fancy Chain of Custody report. As you can see there is only 10 lines. Look at this image before you read on and tell me how many samples you think I’ve sent them for analysis and remember that we spoke with the lab chief.

Ok. Did you really think about it and not just skip down to cheat?

What number did you come up with? Was it four or was it twenty seven. I’m pretty sure those are the only two possible answers but again I thought there was only one answer to this question. I guess it would also help to open the box and see twenty seven 50mL vials clearly labeled. What are on these labels? Well each individual vial has a different identifier, so for example, you wouldn’t see 13 vials that say “W40-W52”. Nope you’d see W40,W41,W42,W43,W44,W45,W46,W47,W48,W49,W50,W51 and W52.

I always thought “-“ was universal for through. If I had written W40 through W52 maybe there still would have been the same confusion.

Before I rant on too far I should say that when the data finally came back to me and I was expecting 27 values I received four. Hm, I thought that’s strange let me e-mail the lab chief and wait during the long holiday week-end for an answer. Her answer was that the samples W40 THROUGH W52 were compiled into one sample and that samples W70 THROUGH W81 were also compiled into one sample. She said something like, “the technicians were confused and thought I wanted compiled samples so just send us some more sample and they will run them.” THAT WAS THE LAST OF MY SAMPLES WHICH IS WHY WE ONLY SENT YOU 50 mL.

Now I keep kicking myself because I wasn’t clear enough and I didn’t attach a separate sheet listing every sample. I send my samples out to a few different labs and they all ask to have things written like this, for example, 1-100, instead of writing out 100 numbers. And their stupid little sheet only had room for 10 sample but I had 27. And I thought well it says number of bottles here so that can’t be confusing. And we talked to the lab chief. And we never said compile the samples. E-mail me if you are confused.

You think, “I’ve sent out hundreds of samples before. This is so easy.”

It always seems to happen when it’s the last of something. So instead of 27 values I have two usable ones. I haven’t gotten an invoice yet but we sure as hell aren’t paying them anything. Oh, and my response to the lab chief. “This is horrible news. We don’t have any more sample.” That was all I could muster. I was in such shock.

**update. I spoke with my adviser today and he is also amazed that the lab made this mistake. tisk, tisk

Giving credit

I noticed that I was linked to on The Happy Scientist so I immediately felt bad and decided I needed to be more honest in my side bar. I've listed the blogs that I book mark. Some of them are pretty new to my favorites and I guess it took me a while to put them all up there because I'm fickle. I will book mark blogs until it gets to the point where firefox tells me that it will take a long time to load all the pages in my blog folder, (There is a cool option if you don't know about firefox to "open all in tabs" in a particular folder). When it gets to this point I delete the ones I don't feel I read often enough. This magic number seems to be 13. Of course I have to book mark myself in favorites. I moved a lot of the food blogs I read into a different folder to create more room for women scientist ones. The reality is I read a lot more than 12 blogs but I usually get to those from other peoples pages, and example is Profgrrrrl, and it use to be that FSP didn't get her own special book mark but I've decided I go to her page everyday so she deserves one.
While I'm giving credit where credit is due I should thank my newsletter of AWIS which had an article a few years ago discussing the importance of female science blogs. I don't remember which newsletter but it was at least a year ago, and they profiled a few blogs. The one that caught my eye was YFS, and I would read her page maybe once a week. It wasn't until I moved to the Midwest that I really got into reading blogs and now it's part of my morning routine. I gather this is because I now work from home, leaving my scientific community back on the East Coast. So maybe I think of the blogs now as my community?
So thanks AWIS and thanks YFS. I really get a lot about reading what other women scientist experience.

I'm the crazy bag lady

I hate going to the really close big box grocery store near my house. I go to that big box store vs. the little box store because they have a bigger organic section, and by bigger I mean they have an aisle and a frozen section. The nice big box organic store is a 20 min drive and my list today were items I couldn't find there on Friday plus some new things to the list. A small co-opt with only bulk items is my dream store augmented by a local, organic farmers market but another town another life. . .
I do appreciate the big box organic selection, although really no produce is organic, but they even have organic wine and beer (and vodka), really cool. And so many things were on sale.
Anyway, it's just a little depressing when you think about how far all these items have traveled so I can eat them and I get depressed when I see the fat people buying mayonnaise. And I get depressed when I think about how most of the people in this store choose items based on cost and not quality. Think of all the people on Thursday who will be eating twice as many calories as there bodies need and way too many preservatives. But I digress, my main reason for not liking to go to this big box store is the funny attitude I always get about bringing my own bags, and even though my bags are there they love to start putting things in plastic and then act all forgetful when I remind them. I really just want to preach about how bad plastic is, but I just smile and say "I don't like plastic." My bags are big sturdy canvas bags, fill them up!! I usually just go to the self check out but was feeling particularly lazy. I even drove to the store instead of walking or biking because I wanted to buy lots of said organic beer and wine.