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Dec. 12th, 2007 @ 03:52 pm Teachers & the public
I'll be the first to admit that the opinions in this post are going to be totally biased, as my mom and my 2 sisters are teachers. This is also a rant I've been making for several years now, but once again, some dumbass has to write into the newspaper about how easy teachers have it.

Background: the teachers in my old school district, as well as my mom's school district have either gone on strike recently or threatened to. My mom's district had filed an intent to strike, but just today or yesterday managed to reach an agreement that prevent striking. So, of course, some idiot has to write into the local paper to say that teachers shouldn't be striking, they get 2 months off in the summer, 2 weeks for the winter, and 1 week in the spring, and they can use all of this free time to take classes & training. People in the "real world" have to do all this in addition to working all of the time.

Rant #1: Teachers have it easy? Hell, no! My mom and sisters work far more than 8 hours a day! In addition to being at school, teaching for 7 or 8 hours (depending on the school), they also stay after to get work done for several hours after the kids go home. They then go home and work some more. Lesson plans, grading, etc. usually happen at home after dinner. They also work on weekends a lot of the time, either shopping for school (a lot of supplies come out of their own pocket), doing stuff they didn't get to during the week because of meetings or parent conferences, and in 1 sister's case staying at school all day Saturday for detention duty. Then there's club advising, assemblies, committee work, etc. If you were to keep track of all of the hours that they work during the "school year", then divide it up for the whole year, those teachers are working just as many hours as you are, not counting the training and classes.

Rant #2: Teachers deserve far more pay than they're getting. They're babysitting your kids all day. They're teaching them how to read, how to write, how to do math, and providing all of the basic skills that they need as adults. Parents (or at least some) contribute, I'm not saying that. But when it comes down to it, where would you be in life without your teachers? If you divide the pay they get by the hours they work, they're making a hell of a lot less than most people. I am continuously amazed that people don't see this.

Next year, I should have my mom log just how many hours she spends in a year on school stuff and see how it works out in comparison to the "real world"
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Oct. 17th, 2007 @ 12:48 pm Butts
Current Mood: aggravated
I'm a non-smoker. Not only do I hate the smell and am pretty allergic to tobacco smoke, I just don't understand why people do it. There's a reason people call them cancer sticks. To quote Adam Baldwin, "Pick up a paper! From the 60's!". I understand that people, like my grandma, were smoking long before it was known how bad for you it is, and so those people are not going to stop. But why do people who were born in the 70s and beyond do it when it's been pounded into our skulls just how bad for you it is? That's just something I've always wondered. I know there's the whole damn the man aspect, rebellious youth who got hooked. It's your choice, and if you want to deal with the effects of smoking, fine. I don't want to breathe your nasty smoke though. We're lucky that FL is a clean-air state, so I rarely have to deal with smokers inside anymore. But this so far is a rant that most non-smokers have echoed time and time again.

For some reason here at USF, there are a lot of smokers. In addition to smoking as they're walking between classes, smokers congregate at the low brick wall right outside the library. You have to walk through the line of smokers to get in and out of the library's only entrance. Annoying, yes. I usually hold my breath as I walk past because I know what to expect. That's not my beef.

My problem is the sheer amount of cigarette butts littering the campus. Those things are not biodegradable! Yesterday, walking through the cloud of smoke in front of the library, I saw a guy fling his butt, still lit, over his shoulder without looking to see if anyone was back there (there's a sidewalk right behind the wall). OK, that's bad. Even worse: he was sitting next to a butt container. It would have taken less energy to just drop it in the container next to him. Not all smokers do this; the smokers that I went to field camp with were great about not tossing their butts all over the place. They tucked them under their shoelaces until we got back to camp where they could be disposed of properly.

Worse still - I did nothing. I gave him a dirty look, but for some reason didn't say anything. I didn't pick up the butt & shove it up his nose like I should have. I didn't tell him that those things weren't biodegradable. I didn't call him litterbug. I just shot him a dirty look and kept walking. Just like when I see someone in the car next to me toss a butt out their window at a red light. I suck at confrontation. About 20 seconds after walking past him, I realized I should have said something. Then I obsessed about it for the rest of the day. Next time I see someone doing that, I'm going to try and say something about it.
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Aug. 29th, 2007 @ 04:13 pm Movin' on up
Current Mood: pleased
I started a new job this week. I'm now an adjunct professor at a nearby university, even though I haven't actually graduated yet. I'm teaching biodiveristy to bio majors, which is a big step - usually no PhD means no bio majors. Granted, I have a class full of incoming freshman, which is a new challenge for me, but they're still bio majors.

So the weirdest thing happened. I went to the registrar's office to pick up my class role, and when I explained what I needed, the staff memeber said "So you're a professor?". I said yes, since that is my job title, and then immediately had a "whoa" moment. Not a Joey Lawrence whoa, but more of a Neo whoa. I'm a professor now. I processed that for a while, then went to pick up a book from my classroom, and it was labeled "for Professor W.". Another whoa moment. That was the first use of "professor" and my last name. I've been working towards this goal for 8 years, and I was there. Holy crap!

Of course, it will be far better when I'm "Dr.", and I know that's going to take a whole lot of getting used to, but this was a nice preview.
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Jul. 21st, 2007 @ 08:57 pm Harry Potter
Current Mood: contemplative
No spoilers here, don't worry

Today was Harry Potter day. I was too tired last night to drag my ass to Borders at midnight to pick up my reserved copy, so I got the book this morning. Besides, I really didn't want to deal with a bunch of crazed fans dressed up as various characters. Just not in the mood for that kind of drama. The book went into the trunk for the ride home, so I wouldn't be tempted to read it in the car (no, I wasn't driving).

I've been looking forward to this book for a long time. However, once I got it home, settled into my chair, cat in my lap (I swear he knows HP books from every other book I have), I couldn't open it. I sat there, staring at the cover, knowing it was the last one. Never again would I have the marathon rereading of the previous books so that I could adequately be prepared for the new one. Never again would I have the "can't wait!" excitement of anticipation. Never again will there be the "holy crap, I can't wait for the next one!". Never again would I have the first reading of a HP book and all of the laughter/sadness/outrage over the twists and turns of the book, trying to keep it quiet because my husband hasn't read it yet and I don't want to ruin anything for him. Never again will I have the bouncing impatience of waiting for my husband to finish the damn book already so we can talk about it, asking him "where are you at?" every hour or so (he's a slower reader than I am). Actually, it's probably good that the last part will never happen again, he gets annoyed after a while. So, as I sat there with the book and cat in my lap, I had a really hard time starting to read it. If I started it, I would have to finish it, and that would be it.

But I took a deep breath and read it. I had to force myself to slow down and go back about 10 times, just because I wanted to try and savor this last HP experience. A couple of times, I had to move to a different room because I was sure I would have some sort of verbal reaction to an upcoming event, and didn't want to spoil it for the husband. For the last hour of the 8 hours it took me to read it (breaks only for bathroom, dinner, and helping my friends catch some caterpillars and cocoons in our yard for a local science museum), I moved to our bedroom and shut the door, knowing something was going to happen to make me cry out some sort of curse or happy shout. And then it was done. I had finished. The story was over. I'm pretty satisfied with the book in general. I can't wait to read it again, but the husband's got it. I've only asked him where he's at twice so far.

I'm an avid reader, when time allows. Always have been. I've lost count of the number of times I've read certain books. My latest theme has been classics by female authors....Jane Austin, the Bronte sisters, etc. Stuff I never read in high school or undergrad because I was on the honors track (apparently, Bronte, Plath, & Austin are not considered important for honors students). But I haven't found myself unable to put any of those down (except maybe Jane Eyre...that was a good one). I also haven't found myself looking forward to those as much as I did the HP books. It makes me wonder if there will ever be another book like this that will captivate so many readers. Will we ever see another time where people are preordering their books 5 months in advance? Will there ever be another time where I'm so excited by a book that I won't go to sleep before I finish it? I hope so. I'm hoping I'm just disillusioned by my Harry Potter hangover.
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Apr. 17th, 2007 @ 12:27 pm Virginia Tech
Everytime there is a school shooting, it's a stark reminder that this could happen to most of my immediate family. My mom is a first grade teacher, one sister teaches K-8, and my other sister, until she can get a full-time teaching position in the fall, is a substitute teacher.

Heck, it could happen to me too. I've taught enough disgruntled pre-meds in the last 6 years, that's for sure. I've lost count of how many have told me that it's my fault that they won't be able to get into med school (or maybe it's because they can't tell an arm bone from a leg bone, but I digress). I've even had one student throw an anatomical model at me while yelling at me. I've also had some very emotionally and mentally unstable students. I've had parents call me to yell at me for giving their kid a C. Technically, I also am arming my students - all of the classes I teach here at dissection based, so they have nice sharp scalpels to wield. Only once have I had to take a scalpel from a student and send him outside to cool down; he was very angry about a test grade.

In our litigation-happy society, I often wonder when I'm going to get sued for failing somebody, or emotional distress for making them dissect a cat that looks too much like dear departed Fluffy. There's only one time that I have truly expected a phone call from my university's legal department. It didn't occur in my section, and since it was recent, I can't talk about it, but it wasn't good. Definitely an emotional situation, involving a cat. But I usually don't worry about the disgruntled student coming to seek his or her revenge until something like Virginia Tech happens.

So what am I going to do? Nothing. Try not to worry about it. I have taken self defense classes and read books on fear and instinct (recommended by Erin Weed, my kick-ass friend who founded Girls Fight Back). Granted, I can't stop bullets, and she didn't cover school shootings, but my "something's not quite right" detector is pretty sensitive and I certainly listen to it - it saved me from a mugging when I was an undergrad. I've done all I can do. All that's left to do is to remember the victims and hope that I or anyone else ever has to be in a situation like Virginia Tech.
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Mar. 21st, 2007 @ 01:54 pm misrepresentin', yo
Current Mood: pissed off
Being the sole paleontologist in my department, I keep conected with other paleontologists via a listserv. The other day, somebody posted a link to Scott Adams's blog. Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, which somehow gives him all sorts of knowledge about fossils, kind of like Tom Cruise is a psychiatrist (he's read the papers, Matt!).

The fact that Scott Adams misread an entire article about human evolution and used that to say fossil are bs is, well, stupidity on his part. However, even more frustrating for me is the comments that follow. I go a little more insane everytime I hear someone saying the evolution is "just a theory". Guess what, so is gravity! A theory in science is totally different than the use of "theory" in non-scientific parlance. Of course, there is a lot of misinformation in the comments, such as statements like "no transitional fossils exist". Then there's the uber-crazy statements like "evolution is a tin foil hat that atheists wear to keep God from reading their brain waves". Wow.

The worst though is the misrepresentation of scientists by the blog-commenters that obviously have no idea what science is about. They talk about how scientists work and what scientists are like in a way that is completely wrong and insulting. Not that scientists are much better about describing those people either, but jeez.

I'm about to be late in meeting an aspiring paleontologist that I'm going to be mentoring, but I leave this entry with another link to a blog that sums up how scientists are feeling about the aftermath of Scott Adams's blog: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/03/scott_adams_reads_newsweek_uho.php
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Mar. 8th, 2007 @ 11:30 am sick kitty
Current Mood: irritated
My poor cat. Thanks to an interction between some meds, we ended up rushing him to the emergency vet (yes, there are ERs for pets) at midnight on Monday. I won't get into the gross details. After 24 hours of vet care, he's starting to bounce back...he knocked everything off the top of the fridge at 4am and started a wrestling match with our other cat at 7am, which are all good signs. He's still kind of weak & tired though, and looks rather pathetic. They had to put him on IV, so he has this shaved area on his forearm. My boy says that it looks like a buffalo wing that someone took a bite out of (black cat w/ white undercoat, so it's a lot different in color).

So, when people told me that I looked really tired this week, and I tell those people why, the response from everyone with kids is "you think that's bad, wait until you have kids!". Yeah, ok, I get it. You don't need to tell me this everytime I have a sick pet. I remember my own childhood; I was sick and/or injured a lot and spent a lot of time making my parents worry. I know that it's twice as hard to have kids. The thing that bothers me most is the condesending way some people say it. Just because I don't have a small human to look after doesn't mean my worries are inferior to yours. I don't have kids, I have cats. They're my kids right now. I'm allowed to be upset and worry about every little weird thing they do after I take them to the ER. I'm allowed to have a friend babysit the cat the day after he gets home from the vet if I have to go somewhere, just in case he has a relapse. And I'm allowed to mourn just as much in the event that the pet passes (he didn't, I'm just saying this from expereince).
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Feb. 7th, 2007 @ 05:22 pm Next year!
Current Mood: sad
Da Bears lost. How disappointing, though based on the way that Rexie and also the defense was playing, it wasn't surprising. My poor boy is still heartbroken (surprising if you know him!). Yet, I'm glad it was to the Colts. My friend Erin points out in her blog (erinweed.blogspot.com) that it must be a midwestern thing, and I think she's right. It's like my hatred for University of Michigan and Notre Dame. I will cheer for any other Big 10 school but those two. When 2 Big Ten teams play each other, I'm always cheering for the one that isn't UM or ND. When U of IL loses to a midwestern team, I'm ok with it, as long as it's not UM or ND. And this is something that many midwesterns share. My friend is a huge Ohio State fan and shares my hatred, so much that when the TV pointed out that one of the Colts went to UM, we both muttered "f'ing Michigan" at the exact same time as a reflex.

So, for now, I'm just going to chant my mantra in my head: "next year".... Used to it with the Cubbies, so why not another team?
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Jan. 23rd, 2007 @ 03:34 pm Daaaaa Bears Da Bears Da Bears Da Bears
Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: The Super Bowl Shuffle playing in my head
The Bears won the NFC championship on Sunday! And it's Tuesday and I'm still elated! It's been 21 years since the last appearance of the Bears in the Super Bowl. I don't know if I can wait for Feb. 4.

In the meantime, here's some Bears links for you. Remember: we're not here to cause no trouble, we're just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Down,_Chicago_Bears
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/69344/super_bowl_shuffle/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7502961056903516603&q=Bill+Swerski&hl=en
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Jan. 1st, 2007 @ 01:46 pm See you in hell, 2006!
Current Mood: infuriated
2006 has been one crappy year. I've tried really hard over the last day or two to think of positives, since I'm typically a glass-half-empty kind of gal. I managed to think of a few: my boy and I are still together & happy, I've had some success in research depite all the bs from this summer, post-doc money has officially (in writing) been reserved for me until I choose to say yes/no.

All of those positive thoughts went straight out the window yesterday though. As a final "f-you" from 2006, our water heater broke and flooded part of our garage yesterday afternoon. We managed, after many hours, to drain the thing, get it out, and put the new one into the correct place. But, we had no water until a few hours ago because the valve on the cold water input pipe was stuck open and the coupler that would go from the old pipe to the new heater was stuck. So, we finally have it hooked up now, and have water, but we just figured out the valve is stuck open only halfway, so we can't fill the heater faster than we're draining it. Back to the Depot for more parts...

Despite this, we're still going for a good 2007. We're counting these heater problems as 2006 hangover.
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Dec. 20th, 2006 @ 04:24 pm Crafting hangover
Current Mood: blah
I've just done 3 craft fairs in 3 weeks, since the winter holidays are upon us. Oy. I will not be doing that again! I've been a slug since the last one on Saturday. It didn't help that I barely made my table fee back. It was doubly dissapointing because I did so well at the one before it! Break time for a while, but I am hopefully getting my online shop up: abudefduf.etsy.com. This is how much of a geek I am: Abudefduf is the scientific name for a reef fish (the sargent major). It'll be sweet once it's up though, because it will let my boy sell his art online.
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Dec. 13th, 2006 @ 12:44 am You've got mail....
Current Mood: cynical
Our email system has been a bit screwed up for the last few weeks due to a massive hardware failure. Yesterday, I could see emails, but not send them. Before that, I couldn't delete emails. Today was the newest one. According to the sidebar, I have 1.8 x 10^19 new emails. Before it looked like 18 billion, but then I noticed that there was a scroll bar, so I decided to see what that was about. 1.8 x 10^19. And somehow it's all fitting into my 59 MB allotment. Awesome. And in case you're wondering, that's 18 quintillion emails (I had to look that one up).
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Dec. 7th, 2006 @ 06:20 pm damn the man update
Add 4 envelopes to the damn the man tally. A disappointing few, but I suspect that some of the envelopes are in the "to shred" pile in my husband's office.
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Nov. 2nd, 2006 @ 01:53 pm Damn the man update
Current Mood: Rightous
Add 17 envelopes to the tally!
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Nov. 2nd, 2006 @ 01:50 pm What would Alex P. Keaton do?
Current Mood: amused
First there was Rush telling us that Michael J. Fox must have been faking. Then there was the backlash against Rush (woohoo!) and supporting Fox. Now this:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/01/alexpkeaton/index.html
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Oct. 19th, 2006 @ 12:40 pm stingray shuffle
Current Mood: amused
Unfortunately, it looks like what I feared came true. People have been going out of their way to kill stingrays. We've been hearing about since Steve Irwin's death. How sad! But perhaps the stingrays are trying to get their revenege:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/19/stingray.reut/index.html
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Sep. 30th, 2006 @ 05:38 pm pineapple update
Last weekend my husband was cutting the grass in the backyard and found the top of the stolen pineapple. The top had started to root, so we went ahead and planted. This made us think that maybe the pineapple theif was a crafty raccoon, because those things are amazing with their hands. I've seen them open closed 5 gal. buckets to get fish, and seen them break into coolers, grab a jar of peanut butter, open the lid, and scoop out as much as they can reach.

This seemed to be the end of the great pineapple mystery, until we were at the grocery store yesterday. A woman in the checkout lane next to us had a pineapple plant with a fruit about the size of your fist. My husband pointed her out, and I said (a little loudly) "hey, I didn't know they sold pineapple plants here". The woman turns to look at us and says "This is my second one. Someone stole the pineapple out of my front yard." I immediately get all shreiky with disbelief. Apparently some stole the ENTIRE PLANT out of her front yard, not just the fruit.

So now the hubby and I are completely convinced that there is some sort of produce bandit in our neighborhood. I may need an attack dog to guard my veggie garden next.
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Sep. 22nd, 2006 @ 11:28 am science
Well duh...this explains a lot about my students...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/09/21/science.education.reut/index.html
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Sep. 6th, 2006 @ 11:36 am pineapple stealing bastards
Current Mood: pissed as hell
A friend who moved gave me one of her pineapple plants, and right after she did, it had a tiny fruit on it (each plant has only one). I've been growing this pineapple for about 6 months now. The fruits take a really long time to mature to the point of being edible. The thing finally turned yellow this weekend - a good sign that my first homegrown pineapple will be ready any day now. The only thing I was waiting for was for the fruit to tip over, which is when you know it's ready. So, I look out my bedroom window this morning, and there's no pineapple. Score! It's tipped over! Fresh pineapple for dessert tonight.

I can't help myself, and I run to the backyard before I get in my car to leave this morning. When I get there, no pineapple. It's gone. Cleanly cut off the stalk. WHO THE F*@& STEALS A PINEAPPLE FROM SOMEONE'S BACK YARD?!? Seriously? And of course, because it's a bromeliad, it only fruits once. My only hope is that the plant pups before it dies. I was planning on planting the top of the fruit to get another plant (and I guess I could go buy a pineapple and do this), but dammit, it's not the same.
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Sep. 4th, 2006 @ 09:22 am Crikey!
Current Mood: sad
Well, this has got to be one of wierdest things. I wake up this morning, turn on the tv, and see breaking news: Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, killed. So, like everyone else who probably saw that headline, I figure that he probably got taken out by a croc. Oh, no, no, no. Stingray barb to the heart. Here's the link.

Now, I've been swimming with plenty of stingrays. Big southerns that easily have a barb big enough to do it. I've NEVER even considered that that can happen. Granted, I give them enough distance and I don't mess around with them. That's just smart research karma. But good lord! I should email the head of the International Shark Attack File (who I know) and ask him about this one.

The new question in my head, now that I've come to terms with this freakish accident is this: will there be a mass erratication of stingrays like there tends to be on "man-eating" sharks when people get attacked? There are places in Brazil that, everyday, send people out to kill the stingrays on the beach to make it "safe" for tourists. A mass stingray hunt would be ironic, since one of Steve's messages was conservation.
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