Scientific Ink

Category: Life

  • Calendar

    Everybody is cheap about different, weird things. I’m cheap about calendars. I balk at purchasing a calendar in December when one can be had half-price or better in January. I am the calendar-buyer in the house. Each year I pick up a few in January, one for the house, one for my husband’s work, one for my work…

    A couple of charities sent me tolerable calendars this year – the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, the Nature Conservancy – so the only calendar we needed was the one for my husband’s office. Well, I have been fooling around a lot with taking aerial photos while my husband enjoys his pilot’s license. And I have been posting some aerial and some candid photos onto Flickr.

    Flickr has all sorts of relationships with vendors who will happily slap your photos onto business cards, mugs, t-shirts, calendars, and whathaveyou. So I decided not to cheap out this year; I’d custom-make a flight calendar for my husband for Christmas.

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  • Wanderlust hangover

    We went to my former employer’s holiday party last night. Even though it has been two years since I worked there, my husband and I still go to catch up with the people and enjoy the celebrations.

    My old boss’ wife is a trained opera singer, and each year she brings in live music. She sings Christmas carols with the pianist and bassist in that rich voice of hers that finds you wherever you are at the party and invites you to join her. The food is spectacular, the drink plentiful, and the company whip-smart and funny.

    From pretty much everyone, I got the inevitable question, “so where are you working now?” and bemused surprise that I’m actually on my second place since I left, 1/year. I learned they’re again advertising my old job, and some of the wives asked me if I was thinking about returning. I hadn’t known, and I’m not, but, it was great to catch up and feel the warmth and affection of the very familiar group. Maybe it was the Christmas carols, those bittersweet songs of longing and hope for holiday perfection, or, maybe it was all the champagne they poured me, but I got nostalgic.

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  • Colleagues

    So, a week ago already, I met two friends/former colleagues for coffee/tea. I joke that we’re all refugees, having left the same place when it had very little work. The three of us caught up on our current situations, shared a few successes, and commiserated over challenges. It was great: it helped me gain some perspective on what had been a challenging week at work, on the old place, and the transitions we had all made.

    Two of the three of us are on long-term contracts ending in December. I remember my own uncertainty last December, while there’s a part of me that misses that feeling of potential and that feeling of freedom, a larger part is relieved not to be revisiting that particular set of anxieties.

    Two of the three of us are maintaining some relationship with the old place. One is a current client, and I was fascinated to hear about life on the other side.

    None of us expressed regret about having left that particular set of problems

    • not enough work
    • no path for advancement/growth if there was work (cog mentality)
    • non-scalability of certain essential pieces of the process/team (we were all interchangeable and replaceable except for those that weren’t….)

    for our new problem sets, variously

    • insufficient process maturity
    • too much work/too little time
    • unrealistic expectations

    It’s not as if there are fewer challenges now, but I think that, at least for me, the new set is more palatable. Why is this? The only thing I can think of is that we each in our own way have a bit more agency in these new situations, and that we’re growing and learning different things, so it feels better.

    Anyway, it was great to catch up and feel the support and understanding of old friends.

  • Dead Composers

    So, on a lark I attended the Dead Composers Society event on Saturday evening. It was dinner at Cottage Inn followed by tickets to the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra‘s concert at the Michigan Theater. Husband was otherwise committed so I went solo. And though I’d planned to meet a friend there, I saw only strangers when I entered the downstairs banquet room at Cottage Inn. (Gulp, flee!!)

    Happily for me, the strangers were quite friendly and not unusually strange, and there was a non-goofy ice-breaker that got the tables talking and got folks mixing, so by the time my friend Dara arrived, I was doing just fine.

    I am embarassed to say that before Saturday morning, I had no idea that Ann Arbor had a professional orchestra. The program was interesting–the first piece was a world premiere composed by a current UM music student, two of the other three were by actual dead composers (Beetoven, Gershwin), the last was by another living one (Peter Maxwell-Davies). The bagpipes in the Maxwell-Davies piece were affecting (first time bagpipes have ever made me tear up, ever), perhaps some of it was just the surprise of them coming from the back of the Theater. Overall a nice evening, and nice folks.

    Anyway, I have twisted Dave’s arm hard enough that he’s coming with me to the next items in the series. The more the merrier if anyone else wants to join. The next one is January. Let me know if I should arrange additional tix.

  • Depressing

    Been dipping back into ecology recently, reading two pop-sci books: Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and E.O. Wilson’s The Future of Life. In response, I wrote a much longer post that was basically a bunch of whining about it all. Feel grateful there is a delete button.

    I am looking for something more constructive to do instead of whine online. Beyond upping my check to the Nature Conservancy, I am currently thinking of volunteering for the Sierra Club Inner City Outings as a way to get out of the house and do something concrete….

  • Minneapolis

    We traveled to Minneapolis to my college friend Betty’s wedding. It was a joy to spend some time with Dina (left) and see Betty (center) and finally meet her previously mysterious fiance/hubby, Ted.

    Reunited!

    Before and after the wedding, we basked in warm hub-bub of Dave’s uncle George and aunt Karen’s family, attending the Minneapolis State Fair with the kids, playing on the downed tree in the back yard, and reconnecting.

    Mini-Farm

    Chickie meets the chickens