bintlog v2.0
Saturday, January 31, 2009
 
Fundraising
I wish I could raise money for my research by selling something like Girl Scout cookies. Hubby and I made spectacles of ourselves when the Girl Scouts came to our door the other day. I need a scam like that! Maybe I should start selling M&Ms outside Barnes and Noble like the basketball players do.

In high school we sold donuts to raise money for prom. It was like printing money. I purchased rather a lot myself. The donuts may have been more memorable than the prom itself.

In related news: I'm down to N-2 already. I've been very good and not terribly unhappy so yay me!
Monday, January 26, 2009
 
To-do list
I don't make New Years resolutions anymore. I am definitely the sort to take new years, new beginnings to heart, but my years typically start in September, not January. I do like to reflect on the past year on January 1, to put it behind me if it was not so good (e.g. 2007) and to recall and reinforce the positives (e.g. last year). But empty vows to improve myself... if I really want to make the effort, I don't wait until January to do it. And I don't tell anyone that I'm trying, either. It's personal. I'm resolving stuff all the time.

However! All that being said, I do like to set goals for myself, things to do in the next 12 months. My end-of-the-century resolutions worked out very well so I hereby resolve (!) to set annual goals, publish them so the two people who read this can keep me honest, and then achieve them. Here we go!

1) Read On the Origin of Species. It's the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, 150th of the publication of Origin, and I'm an evolutionary biologist who has not read the book that started it all. In my defense, the science has come an awfully long way since then, and Darwin didn't know a thing about genetics, so I haven't missed anything scientifically. But still.

2) Do a scientific talk at a meeting. Scary! Should happen in July at the Botany meeting if all goes as planned. Don't want to think about that right now. *shudder*

3) Bring my weight down to N-8, where N is what I weighed this morning. Yeah, a weight-loss thing, but it's really more about getting healthier. I eat fine but I could stand to exercise once in a while.

4) Edge the gardens, do more planting, and essentially bring the existing gardens into neat and healthy condition. Also, plant containers and hanging pots. I've totally let the garden go over the last two years because I wasn't around much. I have a craving to reacquaint myself with the babies. Also, the Garden of Live Flowers blog keeps me motivated to plant, photograph, and fuss with the babies.

5) Get a little brother for Foley. Or a sister, but I really want a boy.

Easy-peasy!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
 
OD on TV
I had the television all to myself this weekend and I'm afraid I may have gone a little nuts. In the past two days, I have consumed:
-Part 1 of PBS's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (it's literature so thus excusable)
-5 episodes of House
-1 episode of Monk
-Movie "The Queen" (boring - sometimes I forget that such things as royalty still operate in the Western world and it boggles my mind)
-Movie "Enchanted" (surprisingly good, esp. in its send-ups of Disney princess movies)
-Movie "Regarding Henry"
-Movie "The Jane Austen Book Club" (not bad, needed to be about twice as long to do justice to its six plots; also made me want to read the books again)
-Movie "Pride and Prejudice" (the Keira Knightly one... not nearly as good as the Colin Firth one, of course, and Donald Sutherland drives me crazy and makes a TERRIBLE Mr. Bennet; also, literature, so not really TV, right?)
-Chicago's Lakefront Tour on PBS (and now I really wish spring would come because I want to visit the Stephen Douglas tomb at 35th St.)
-Season 1 summary of Damages; Battlestar Galactica webisodes; an hour of news and two hours of pointless sitcoms

Another point re: Pride and Prejudice: the actors, at the end, felt the need to say some extraneous dialog so modern audiences Got the Point. "Because, see, I was proud, and pride is bad, but I got over it! And then there was prejudice, but we took the time to actually learn what each other is like and that went away. Hence the title!" And then an excessively drawn-out scene of kissing and cuddling that would have made Ms. Austen stalk off the set in disgust.

Tess, however, is very good, and part 2 is on the Tivo right now. Ooh, I should watch it!! Or perhaps I'll just go to bed. And lest you think I'm a total slacker, I also edited a couple hundred DNA sequences, shoveled multiple times, took the dog in for her shots, and cleaned the kitchen and the tub. So nyah.

Speaking of the dog...

I don't think she was amused by the foot of snow we got.

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