wife, mother, ph.d. student, hot stuff.

Friday, January 29, 2010

derailed!

Amazing how getting the (possibly H1N1) flu can throw plans and good intentions up in the air and scatter them to the wind.

/cough hack cough

nothing to do but plow on through to my committee meeting. That's in a week and a half. We've got all kinds of plans for afterwards, including:

- Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with my brother, his girlfriend, and J's friend from school (and his parents)
- Robin's week off (scheduled work shut down)
- long weekend in Tahoe

and, of course, catching up on my sewing, and J pictures.

All after my meeting. Starting to get nervous now.

Monday, January 18, 2010

mental prep for the week

Today, Robin ran some errands while I stayed home with the napping baby. And, bless his heart, not only was he willing to go into Joanne's to look through the scrap bin for me, but he even argued with the cashier because she was an idiot and ringing it up wrong. That is even more heroic than pawing through Victoria's Secret Semi-Annual Sale underwear bins.

Dressmaking got stalled a bit, but I do finally have more thread of the right color. By the end of the week, I hope to have finished the blue pinafore, altered the pattern, and at least cut out the pieces for Rae's dress. I also plan to cut out the pieces for another dino hat, that perhaps I shall list on my new etsy page. (Link coming up when it's actually got stuff there.)

Turns out throwing pots IS a bit like riding a bike; a certain amount does come back to you. I managed to throw two cups on my first time back at the wheel last week. I'll probably cut one in half to look at the profile, and then add 2 handles to the other to make J his first hand made mug. I'll start in on bowl making this week.

J's page continues to be woefully neglected. I uploaded new videos tonight, and will have to link them over the next few days to the blog.

My initial pilot experiments at work have done well, so the goal for this week is to shift gears a bit, do some reading on B cell subsets, and hoe in on a separate line of experiments.

Friday, January 08, 2010

various items

Over lunch, I attended a seminar on love and logic parenting. It was not an unfamiliar concept; I'd read some very similar strategies in the happiest toddler on the block. The basic concept is to get on the kid's side by immediately empathizing with him when he makes a mistake or misbehaves, and helping him to own his choices and mistakes without any anger on the parent's part. What really strikes me is how applicable the strategy is in dealing with anyone, really, no matter the age, no matter the context.

After lunch, I attended a safety training so that I could become a member of the Stanford Ceramics Studio. I now have a key to the studio, a designated shelf space, and will be taking evening class there twice a week. I am SO SO SO excited about this. I learned how to throw pots in college, and did 2 semesters worth of ceramics at MIT as well. My goals for the quarter are:

- remember how to throw a pot. I imagine I'll end up with lots of funny looking mugs that I'll give away as gifts.
- make a set of rice bowls for home
- make a set of bowls and maybe plates for my brother in law and his girlfriend
- make a teapot and teacups
- make something for a wedding present (another teapot? sushi plates? vase? a pretty serving bowl? a pitcher? I dunno. Maybe I'll ask the couple what they would like most.)

progress

School:
- a major chunk of my data from the past 2 years is now in presentable form.
- need to incorporate the fall's ICC data into my summary as well, but that's less formidable of a task.
- there will likely be movement on three different interesting fronts, so it's looking good for having preliminary data for new projects for my February committee meeting.

so school = good.

hobbies:
- First attempt at pinafore is almost complete: I ran out of one color thread, went to the store and procured it, then promptly ran out of the other color thread and stuff got busy with lab data crunch... so there are 5 more inches of hemming to do and it's done.
- to keep myself from sinking tons of money into this sewing thing, I am only getting fabric scraps (which are a small fraction of the original cost). So most of my projects are pending until I get the requisite colors.
- got into the ceramics class with one of my friends, and that starts Monday. So. Excited.
- updated J's photos up to November. God I am so behind on that.

so hobbies = potentially good, but stalled. Gee, sleep and school are taking priority? I would never have guessed.

Friday, January 01, 2010

a few short term goals

a) start on the dress that I've been meaning to make for Rae.
a.2) stop by Joanne's this weekend to look for cute fabric scraps om sale to snag for various sewing projects

b) start drawing out ideas for other kid's stuff. these include
- crocodile hat
- thor, batman, the flash hats
- appliques for girl dresses
- the snap on bib thing (a la bibsandmatch.) Gotta figure out what material to make the bibs out of, though.

c) update Julian's Blog. I am months behind on photos, and I have more videos stashed on Youtube to post on there.

d) figure out a good etsy shop name. Maybe if I actually do this, and I could justify re-subscribing to WoW if I actually sell stuff.

e) finish reanalyzing all my ELISA control data and put it in presentable form for my February thesis committe meeting. Yikes!

Some Resolutions

I've neglected this blog for quite awhile, and I think I will start it up again, with the intent of keeping track of a few resolutions.

- never leave data uncrunched longer than a week. From here on out, Friday is reserved solely for crunching numbers from my week's experiments. ALL OF IT MUST BE DONE BEFORE THE WEEKEND.

- Go with my gut feeling. This applies to Everything. I think a large number of my problems this year can be traced back to me not following my gut, and refusing to ...

- Speak Up.

- Pick up and put away at least one thing every day before leaving a room. This applies to my desk and labspace as well. I've been resolving to do this every year for, oh, half a decade. Let's see if this one sticks.

- Listen. Especially to Julian. Now that he is learning to talk, and is so much more communicative, I don't want to tune him out. There's a reason that people (toddlers) get irritated and cranky; they need to be listened and validated. Myself included.

- Talk. Cultivate those friendships that have been neglected the past 2 years.

- Enjoy. Specifically:
- get cracking on the photography
- make a set of bowls in ceramics class for us, for the brother-in-law, make a teapot
- explore that sewing kick I've been on the past few weeks, and think about starting an etsy shop.