Fish Ponds and Dog Farts

It is August already. Crap. Where did the summer go? I was supposed to accomplish so much, and yet, I don't feel like I have accomplished much at all. In a month, I will have to start teaching again, and will be drowning in class.

But, let's just focus on the now.

Or the past week.

Some interesting things that have happened lately:

1. I got a tattoo:



Why? Good question. Maybe I should address this in a separate blog post.

2. We are making a fish pond in the yard. That is a lot of fun - the kids are going crazy working on it. We have basically finished the majority of it - we have the hole dug, the liner in, rocks around the outside of it, and have filled it with water. We would have put fish in it today, but it is pouring rain.

3. The kids went to Grandma's house last week. They were gone from Sunday to Friday. They had a great time. She took them to an amusement park, which we have never done before. So, they were extremely happy about the whole thing. We went and saw one movie. We should have gone to more movies, and gone out to dinner more, but we worked a lot and then had to come home relatively early, because...

4. We are watching someone's dog. So we have 3 dogs right now. 3. Dogs. And it is raining, so they are all covered with mud. And the visiting dog doesn't agree with the dog food that we have, so she has gas. Holy Crap is that some nasty-*ss-sh*t. And then she crapped in her crate the other day while we were at work. That is nice. Welcome home. I feel sorry for the dog. But, because I am terribly insensitive, I just want the dog to be done. I don't really care how. Gone. We have 4 more days of dog farts.

5. I am working on a huge proposal. There are major issues to deal with here, which I won't go into here. It is a painful process, since I basically have no admin support for the proposal, so I have to do EVERYTHING for it. Luckily it is a FastLane proposal, so you can sort of see what you need to do. I just have about 15 Supplemental Documents to upload, and am not sure whether I should include others or not. And I have to finish writing the proposal. And the place that I am submitting it from hasn't even gotten me their budget. And it is due on Monday. Nice.

6. I made up with my 'boss'. One of the reasons that we have so much conflict is that he is not really my boss anymore. We discussed this point and basically both of us agreed that we should act more like adults.

7. I rode my bike to work twice this week. I was hoping that I could ride more, since the kids were gone, but life got a little out of hand.

8. We launched a balloon on Thursday. It carried an actual scientific instrument, which was the whole point of all of the balloon launches that we have been doing lately - working up to carrying an expensive piece of equipment. It was a great launch, and pretty much the best landing that you could hope for. We saw it land. I think that someone got it on video, so, when they post this, I will make a link. The balloon missed a large cluster of large lakes by a very small margin. It was very close, and we were all a little nervous. After trying to ask the farmer for permission to go into his field, and finding that he wasn't home, a few students went out into the field to get it. After recovering the balloon, the farmer showed up and was a little angry that we trespassed onto his property. Words were exchanged - actually he yelled at me a fair bit and I just tried not to give not-to-smart-ass answers to his derogatory comments. It was fun!

9. My second post doc started work about two weeks ago. My new grad student started last Monday. My old grad student is defending in a week. My other grad student got back from China last week after being there for about 4-5 weeks. So, now we are all there. I have to figure out how I am going to manage all of these people and still get work done myself. This is the key - I have to admit that I won't get any work done on my own any more. Managing people is becoming the largest percentage of my time.

10. I am going to take a shower now. It is about 3:00 in the afternoon and I haven't taken a shower yet. I stink. And my tattoo itches. But I am not allowed to scratch it.....!!!