Where have I been?

Our hero awakes in a white room with two rows of fluorescent bulbs hanging from wires in the ceiling. There is no floor or furniture, he is laying on the floor, which is painted white. He has forgotten...something...something important. There is no sound in the distance. There is nothing.

The baby:

Pneumonia. Yeah, not really that much fun. We've gone through a couple more rounds of sickness, with an ear infection and a round of antibiotics. But the boy is doing pretty well. He's sleeping through the night, by himself, pretty consistently. He's actually getting big enough that I'm starting to feel sad about the transitory nature of children. In less than two years we've passed a lot of milestones, and I honestly miss the crawling a little, and the laying there looking silly. Fortunately, he is now insane. When he and I play, we spend most of our time wrestling or chasing each other, I'm sure at some point we're going to hurt ourselves.

At this age, they are so much like a little puppy that it is impossible to be around him without thinking that.

We've been doing a lot of walks in the evening. To the lake, around a wetland, down by the river, around the block, through the grocery store, around dad's work. He's fascinated by birds and cats, and has no control when he sees one. He's gotten good, though, at the grocery store of staying close when you're checking out or doing something. Those places are the ones where I can barely imagine having a second child.


Work:

My wife pointed out that all I ever talk about is my next job. Clearly, I'm not entirely happy with what I'm doing. That isn't to say my job is terrible, and I'm not actually sure I could move. Not so much because of the job, but just because judas I do not really want to move again. We've purchased a house, added new furniture, settled in, and I am terrified by the prospect of moving again. But my job is dead-end, no possibility for advancement, with no window, no research, no possibility for something more. I don't really know how to work with some of the people I work with on 'research-light' kinds of projects, just because I'm not very good at not being in control.

I've spent quite a bit of time in the last week or so doing science. Writing papers, doing data analysis, learning R. I'm not sure if I'm actually any good at that stuff, but I feel like I am. I feel like I'm good at ideas, experimental design, and interpreting data. I haven't been writing much of anything lately, because I just having felt inspired, but what I have been writing is mostly science.

So I keep thinking about jobs where I can do more of that. But there aren't a lot of those out there that I could really get into without a major life change. It has been 2 years since I was in a lab environment...as my wife said "Could you go back?" That's a legit question...I like having a sense of smell again.


Music:

NPR is single-handily keeping my job interesting, if only because of the huge number of really interesting songs they have on their website. I recommend (you'll have to find videos/links yourself) Passion Pit "Sleepyhead", Lilly Allen "Not fair", "My 45" by someone I forgot, Blitzen Trapper's "Furr", "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver(?), and some others that I've forgotten.


Dam Removal:

This is supposed to be the kind of thing that should keep my job exciting and interesting. I'm working on getting some dams removed from the Neosho River. You might recall me getting some money from the fish and wildlife service to do this. Well....that's great and all, but I can't actually do any of the science to go along with it. Like, what the heck is going on in these low-head dams as far as nutrient cycling goes? How are we going to quantify the movement of fish before and after? What's going on with the sediments?

So yeah, I mean, this is more interesting than what I spend a lot of my time doing, but it isn't really all that interesting unless you can do the science as well. And I'm not going to be doing that. I'm just struggling to get permits in order, a good design, a plan everyone can live with, and a procedure for the next one. Great.


NCAA Tournament:

I'm so sick of the Big East talk. Look, these aren't that good of teams! This isn't the best conference ever, and it probably isn't even the best conference this year. There are three 'good' teams in the Big East, and UCONN isn't even one of them (did you see their non-conference schedule?). The Big East has three of the worst schools to play in a major conference this year (South Florida, DePaul, and Rutgers). This isn't the best conference ever.

The amazing thing I keep hearing is talk like the Big East is this always fantastic conference. Really? Hell, 90% of what the Big East accomplishes it does by just having more damn teams than everyone else. The conference has 16 teams! They keep putting 7-8 teams in the tournament. Big flippin' deal. From 1998-2008, the Big East has won 3 rings and has had 4 teams reach the Final Four. The ACC has 3 rings and 10 teams in the Final Four. The SEC has 3 rings and 5 Final Four teams. The odd balls are the Big 10 and Big 12, which have 1 ring a piece and 9 and 6 Final Four appearances respectively. The Big 12 even had the era of unrealized potential, when 4 teams made 5 Final Four appearances in 3 years (DAMN YOU SYRACUSE and MARYLAND!!).

And as for the ACC...good god. How many years are we going to keep giving Duke and North Carolina home games for the first two weeks of the tournament? Does this happen for anyone else? Duke isn't even a 1 seed this year! Arggh.


KU:

For the record, I predicted KU would win the Big 12. If KU hadn't won a championship last year, I would expect this team to make the Final Four. The bracket they are in is stacked with top coaches, but mediocre talent (yes, especially Louisville). KU is stacked with top tier talent, just really, really inexperienced. However, Sherron Collins has no ceiling in the college game (he is the best PG in the country, I won't even discuss this). As he goes, so will go the Jayhawks. So far in his career Collins has been ridiculously good during big games (he's the one who stole the inbounds pass from Memphis last year and hit a quick three to give us a bit of life). However, this is his first year as a starter, and when he plays bad (like he did against Baylor and Texas Tech), this KU team could lose to anyone. There is, literally, no one else on the KU roster who can propel them into a win at this stage in their career. I'm not sure they have a second player who can even run the offense at all.

As always I predict a championship. But that first round game scares the hell out of me.