National Book Festival coming up

The National Book Festival is coming up on Saturday down on the capitol mall in DC. One of my favorite sci-fi authors, Frederik Pohl, will be there talking at the Science Fiction and Fantasy pavillion (12:15-12:55 PM) and signing books (2-3 PM). I’m hoping that they will have advance copies of his new book, The Boy Who Would Live Forever, but Andrew and I are scouring the local used bookstores for other books that I’d like him to sign in case they don’t.

I’m also trying to think of which books I should release.

Back to Equilibrium?

The funding situation seems to have been ironed out for my thesis. I’ll be working 75% time as a contractor and 50% time as a grad student. Yup. 125% time…50 hours per week. Well, I suppose I already put that in with the evening and weekend babysitting I do for my data runs. The bad news is that my contractor vacation time accrues at only 50% time (true for anyone working anything less than 40 hours per week). The good news is that all of my other benefits are still in place.

Not sure if I’m happy with this, though. I certainly appreciate all the effort various people have made to make this happen, the upshot of which is that I don’t loose much of my salary. However, now I’m split between two companies, have to document that I work more, lose vacation time, and my tax withholdings will be all messed up (a couple years ago I came very close to owning money due to working for two different companies).

The worst part is that I’m not even sure that a PhD is what I want. I’m at that point where if I quit, I’ve wasted 2 years of my life, but if I continue, I’ll be miserable for the next 2-3 years. I’m not sure which is worse. Oh, and there’s the fact that I won’t actually use this degree when I’m finished that makes it all the more enticing.

I’m going to quietly put my resume up on monster.com and see if there are any good nibbles…

Grandma’s Auction

After some fun at the airport, I made it home again from Grandma’s auction. This trip the farm just wasn’t the same. When I visited last Novemeber, for Wayne’s funeral, the farm felt like the spirit had already left it, but the farmhouse felt oddly the same. I suppose that’s because the farmhouse had always been Grandma’s domain. This trip, however, the farmhouse had begun to lose it’s spirit, too. All of Grandma’s things had either been packed up for moving or layed out in auction boxes for the auction.

During the auction, I tried not to dwell on the fact that bits and pieces of Grandma and Wayne’s life were being scattered to the winds. I just concentrated on the few little items that I wanted to win, and bid my heart out when I needed to.

For anyone who has not been to a farm auction, I bet it’s different than you could imagine. This is nothing like the Sotheby’s auctions or a silent auction. This is fast paced, and it takes a keen ear to keep up with the auctioneer. It took me several items before I had a grasp for what the auctioneer was saying. The good news is that they keep track of who is bidding, and if they know you’re interestested, they look directly at you when it’s your bid, and usually make sure that you’ve refused before selling the item.

The first items they auctioned was a wagonful of Wayne’s old tools. Dad had heard some guys talking beforehand and pointing out a couple of Model T jacks. If we’d known they were in his garage, we probably would not have had them on the auction, but they would have gone with the Model T over to Vern’s farm for temporary storage. But there they were, so I would have to bid on them. I think I was the only girl bidding on the tools (another girl bid on a milk-testing kit against me, which was on the same wagon, but I won it, and I suspect that she, like me, was going to turn it into some crafty thing). When they did the jacks, they had us bid on a choice of one of the 6 or so jacks that were there. When I won, I went up and picked out the two Model T jacks, and the auctioneer commented that I seemed a bit young to be in the Model T business, but that he was glad to see it.

Next they started on the household items. Dad mentioned that they never seem to go for much, but I was surprised at how little some of them went for. I bid on a box of tea cups, and won. I also bid on a box of serving bowls, and later two other boxes of tea cups. I’d won all of my bids so far, but then none of them had gone above $20 (and several were less).

I went down for pie after I won my tea cups, since they were moving on to the other household items. Things like the couch and easy chairs went for next to nothing, but an antique wash stand and a pair of arch-way bookshelves (without the archway, of course) sold for quite a bit.

As the auction moved down the hill, I needed to pay attention because there was an old croquette set that I wanted to bid on. It had been found in Wayne’s old house in the 50s, and had the initials of the previous owners etched in the wood, so it likely dated from the 20s or 30s. I was expecting it to go for $100-$150. I bid up to $200, and decided to stop. The guy bidding against me was the person who we thought might buy the house, and we were pretty sure he had money enough to keep bidding for a while.

From there they started on some of the other tools and items out of the garage and sheds. I ran into the house for some leftover pizza, and walked around the grounds, chatting with my brothers and parents along the way.

When they started on the equipment, Dad ran over to the old Ford tractor, Wayne’s pride and joy, where he was ready to bid until he won. (He did.) We followed the crowd up the hill, where Dave and Jen bid on a couple of the tractors, and Dad finally won the John Deere “pop-Johnny” for them. Dave would have prefered the Allis Chalmers with the hand brakes, which he used to use all the time when helping Wayne with the farming, but the bidding went above his limit. But I think he was happy in the end; plus the Ford will be going to his place, since Dad doesn’t really have any place for it or any use for it, either.

Finally they auctioned the house and farm land. We were all a bit nervous about this, considering this is where the money for Grandma’s new place in Red Wing was coming from, along with money for investments to live off of. All in all, though, it went very well. She not only covered her new house, but got more for the house and farm than she was expecting. Even better, the couple who bought it were people that Gram knows, at least she knows their son who will be farming the land, so she’s happy.

It all still seems unreal, though, and it hasn’t yet sunk in that I’ve seen the farm for the last time….

Darwin’s Radio

by Greg Bear

The human race is on the verge of it’s next big jump in evolution, but we don’t know it. Biologist Kaye Lange predicted years ago that dormant bits of DNA might get turned on, and suddenly finds that she’s the world’s expert on the outbreak of illnesses and spontaneous abortions that have gripped the world. Christopher Dicken of the CDC is also investigating the epidemics, but finds that the cause that he and Dr. Lang propose is not politically acceptable. They race to find definate proof of the cause.

I quite liked the first two-thirds of this novel where Bear describes the outbreaks of illness, the response of the public and policymakers, and the search by Lang, Dicken and others for the cause and cure. However, the last third of the book the quality of story and plot seemed to break down. Here the plot is more character-driven than proceedure-driven, and the writing just wasn’t as engaging.

Table Camera Pictures

I’ve put the pictures from the table cameras up on my photo album. There are a lot of great pictures there, here are a couple to whet your appetite:

Running off to Minnesota tonight — Grandma is auctioning off the rest of Grandpa’s farm equipment, the farm land and the farm house. It’s going to be a hard weekend, but I’m glad that I’ll have the opportunity to be there.

Swift kick in the gut…

I suppose I should have been expecting something bad to happen — it seems that any time something really good happens in my life, I get a swift kick in the gut a week or two later to remind me that life can suck, too.

Kim had warned me a few weeks ago that she might have trouble finding funding for my thesis work, but that the lab should be able to cover it if she couldn’t find money from her own grants. Well, her grants ran out, and the lab will have to start covering my grad salary, but they won’t pay me at the contractor salary that I’ve been making. The upshot? I’ll have to take a pay cut of 25% if I want to continue my thesis work.

So that’s now the big question. Do I want to continue my thesis work?

My intial gut reaction was, no, of course not. I quit my grad work in 2001 because I no longer wanted to life on a grad student’s salary — it was too much to have to constantly worry about how I was going to pay all my bills each month (answer: they didn’t always get paid…)

But, on the other hand, I’ve come so far, and I am at least in a different situation than I was before when I first quit. First of all, I’ll still have “real pay” for half of my work, so I won’t be dropping into the absolute pit of grad-student life again. Secondly, I have a husband who wants me to finish (if I want to finish), and will help out with expenses and cut our budget where we need to in order to make it work.

Back to the other side, though, I’ve been finding my thesis work unsatisfying and a slog for the last year. I find that I don’t necessarily care about the results, and I’ve been wondering if my choice to return was really wise. I’ve discovered that while my reason for leaving may have been primarily financial, it seems that it was also based on a true dissatisfaction with my choice of career.

I’ll regret it if I leave now.

I’ll be miserable if I stay.

Ugh.

Those weren’t clean, were they?

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

by Judy Blume

This is another book I picked up to release during Banned Books Week. Several of Blume’s books appear on the list of the most challenged books of 1999-2000, which is a complete mystery to me. I remember reading Blume’s books as a kid, and loving everyone one of them. This, however, was one I hadn’t read before.

Margaret is an 11-year-old girl with a Jewish father and Christian mother. Her parents gave up their religions when they married, and have been cut-off from her mother’s parents. Her father’s mother, however, has stuck by the family, and looks at Margaret as “her Margaret”. Margaret has grown up without a religion, which didn’t matter until her family moved to a suburb of New York where the girls talk about going to Sunday School or the Jewish Youth Center. Margaret is confused about where she belongs and her parents are no help.

We follow Margaret through her sixth grade year, anticipating “developing” and her first period. She also attends temple for the first time with her Grandmother for Rosh Hoshanna and church with a friend for Christmas Eve services.

As with most of Blume’s books, this as a good, honest coming-of-age tale for girls.

Wedding Pictures

My friends took a bunch of pictures with my camera while we were getting ready for the wedding and at the reception. I’ve posted these in on Flickr. I’ll post more pictures, for example from the disposable cameras, as soon as I get them.

Go Ask Alice

by Anonymous

I picked up this book to read and release in honor of Banned Books Week. It has been one of the most challenged books of 1990-2000.

This book is the diary of a teenager who gets caught up with drugs and struggles to free herself both from the drugs and from the stigma of having been part of “that crowd”. This is an excellent book, even 30 years after it’s first publication, and can certainly speak to teens of today. However, the book does not answer any questions, but should instead be used as a springboard for communication about drugs and their dangers.

I’m not sure why this book has been challenged so much, since it does not glorify drug use. I suppose it also talks about how great a high can be, which could make drugs more attractive; however, if anyone actually reads the whole book, including the epilogue, they will understand that the dangers far outweigh the highs.

A note from Snopes: this book is actually written by Beatrice Sparks, an author who has written several books, all purported to be true stories, about teens who’s lives are ruined by drugs, pregnancy, sex, etc.