Liz's Bloglet - Wednesday 27 August 2008

Look who's getting rain today _
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09:46:17 PM, Wednesday 27 August 2008

This is good: Hillary Clinton speaks at convention. The press concocts a story

I'm still not pro-Clinton. I'm still not pro-much of anybody these days. And I really appreciate Media Matters' attempts to explore the way the American media establishment shapes the frameworks through which things are seen. _
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01:33:46 PM, Tuesday 26 August 2008

So, obviously, today I'm thankful for prednisone. And, after looking around the lecture this morning, that I am not a pre-med. _
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01:30:54 PM, Monday 25 August 2008

I love walking with my big long strides. I had forgotten what it was like just to walk normally and actually feel like me. And I have energy! And so it's worth the evening nausea and emotional wackiness. _
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01:29:55 PM, Monday 25 August 2008

Although the day is just starting, I already know that today I am thankful that choir starts back this morning! We only take a month off in the summer, but it feels like a very long time. _
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09:52:47 AM, Sunday 24 August 2008

Because I have been doing so much whining lately, and because I always love it when Mike does it... Today I am thankful for watching my nephew and my dad soak each other with squirt guns. _
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07:33:00 PM, Saturday 23 August 2008

I haven't been this unenthusiastic about the Democratic nominee since Kerry got the nomination. Or since Gore chose Lieberman. Or since my big achievement was reelecting Clinton.

I get that this is (in the eyes of the campaign) a pragmatic decision. But Biden is a huge shill for the credit card companies, companies which victimize the poorest among us. He has a confusing record on reproductive freedom. And he still supports the war. He opposes President Bush's current handling of it, but he actually thinks we can "win".

There are roughly 300 people who should have been at least somewhat under consideration (recent Democratic representatives, senators, and governors). There wasn't one of them who is strong on foreign policy, has a lot of experience, and opposes the stupid war? Wasn't that what it was all about a few months ago? Weren't we supposed to ignore any presidential candidate who had ever supported the war? Weren't we willing to forget about every thing else, including reproductive and gay rights, if it would just end the war?

And I went along with it. I see all the problems that could be solved if the war were over. I want our soldiers to stop dying and the Iraqi people to quit suffering. I want our civil liberties back. I was almost even willing to wait in line for a little while, because universal health care seems like a given once we stop wasting billions on the war.

So what does this mean? I know that (traditionally) vice presidents don't have any power except their symbolic power during the election, but what does this symbolize? _
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07:30:25 AM, Saturday 23 August 2008

Sidebar editing powers...activate _
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01:53:16 PM, Friday 22 August 2008

Back on prednisone again. Not yet weepy. woot. _
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01:28:43 PM, Friday 22 August 2008

We appear to have been invaded by all 12 tribes of Israel. At least these spammers are creative in their naming instead of just giving us lists of pr0n titles like last week. _
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07:23:26 AM, Thursday 21 August 2008

Oksana Chusovitina, Uzbekistan but now Germany, age 33--silver medal, vault

Constantina Tomescu-Dita, Romania, age 38--gold medal, marathon

Dara Torres, USA age 41--silver medals in 50 meter freestyle, freestyle relay, and medley relay

As Remi says, these Olympics have shown us that "women are durable." _
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07:19:53 PM, Monday 18 August 2008

Oh no...there's another US beach volleyball team?!?! I know I shouldn't complain since I actually got to see almost all of the women's marathon yesterday, but I just had no idea Americans cared so much about beach volleyball. _
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05:06:07 PM, Sunday 17 August 2008

I'm TAing Microbiology this semester. Which should be interested, since of course I've never taken Microbiology. Obviously, I know plenty about microbes, especially how they affect carbon and nitrogen cycling. The old saying is someone with a Master's can teach any class they ever took and someone with a PhD can teach any class they never took. If I get the kind of job I'd like to get, being able to teach the basic biology classes is really important.

I really like the professor who's teaching, but I also know from taking one of his classes that he's not super organized, or, really, organized at all--in that class all organizational responsibilities fell on the TA. So we'll see. _
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09:07:59 PM, Wednesday 13 August 2008

If you've been watching the Olympic coverage and, like me, been wondering who on earth Mary Carillo is, her Wikipedia page is surprisingly helpful. Summary: She's the funny tennis lady. Once, in a post-match interview during her playing days, Carillo was asked why she had lost. She said, "I blame society. _
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08:59:07 PM, Wednesday 13 August 2008

The local news just had a nice story about Cullen Jones, who just became the first African-American to hold a world record in swimming (as part of the freestyle relay last night). A few weeks ago, he visited the Durham YMCA to encourage kids there to stick with swimming by being a role model that you don't have to be a white suburban kid to be a champion swimmer. I also found out that he trains in Charlotte and in the process learned the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club finally won the war of the rival Charlotte swimming clubs which was going on when I was in high school (my friends swam for the North Mecklenburg Aqua-Devils) and is now an Olympic training site. _
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07:15:21 PM, Monday 11 August 2008

Remi is stranded in New York. All flights out this evening have been cancelled due to the weather. He is now scheduled to fly out Tuesday morning, and JetBlue has not offered anything so handy as a hotel room. Obviously, this is all less than ideal. I already checked Amtrak and all trains to anywhere near here are sold out through Wednesday. There are bus possibilities, but they are not that great, either. If anybody has any other ideas, we would love to hear them. _
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05:45:17 PM, Sunday 10 August 2008

One of my favorite things about John Edwards has always been that he had the good sense to spend his life with Elizabeth, who's both smarter and more liberal than him and a real feminist. That he would pull a Newt Gingrich (or a John McCain) and betray her while she's sick just makes me sad. It doesn't make me think he's any less qualified to be president (although it probably prevents him from ever running again--only Republicans can get away with marital infidelity). It just makes me think less of him as a person. Edwards broke no laws, as far as we can tell did not abuse power, and, as he has never been a big "sanctity of marriage" guy, he's not even really hypocritical. He's just a jerk.

And, as always, it maintains my low opinion of the media that they have devoted a huge amount of effort to investigating this non-story, which has no point except to hurt people, and will spend the weekend talking about it, but have all but ignored actual facts about lies that got us into this stupid war and all of the lies John McCain will tell tomorrow. _
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07:04:32 PM, Friday 8 August 2008

So I saw the rheumatologist again. She still doesn't know what's wrong. But I do have diagnosis codes on my chart so I looked them up. One for a positive antibody (as in anti my own body) test. One for fatigue. And one for "Unspecified inflammatory polyarthropathy" Yeah. I guess they have to have a code for insurance purposes, but wow. _
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10:46:34 AM, Friday 8 August 2008

Pre-Med Education Must Be Compatible with Liberal Arts Ideals I'm a liberal arts major who now spends way too much time with pre-meds. Pre-med students here at Pseudo Ivy have the option to take upper level classes in individual biochemical processes as well as participate in hands on biomedical research. Surprisingly enough, many of them are not even biology majors, and the ones who are frequently double major or double minor in other areas, ranging from languages to social science to history. Of all of my criticisms of Pseudo Ivy (and yes, they are many) their pre-med students really are by and large also receiving a liberal arts education that will serve them well whether or not they become doctors. But I recognize at a place without a world famous hospital on campus this is probably much less true.

And, obviously, as an ecologist, I think it's important for anybody who claims to be a biologist to at least have some exposure to the study of organisms in their natural environment rather than as cells in a petri dish. Pseudo Ivy recently cut the biology major requirement from 1 semester each of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology to a combined 1 semester Ecology/Evolutionary Biology class, co-taught by an expert in each. I do question the wisdom of this, since you don't have to spend much time on medical blogs to find doctors who don't "believe" in evolution and think ecology has something to do with hybrid cars and/or communism and are therefore opposed to it on general principle. _
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11:52:52 AM, Thursday 7 August 2008

I got an email from the 5th grade teacher of the girl I'm mentoring this year (who just started 6th grade). The teacher just said that my mentee had called her and really needed to get in touch with me but had lost my phone number. So I called her to find out was wrong. What was wrong was she was upset because she had lost my phone number. I just wanted to cry. She is such a great kid. This weekend we're going to Wet & Wild because science mentoring is not just about hanging out in the lab. _
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07:02:41 PM, Tuesday 5 August 2008

How Contemplating Your Navel May Lead You to An Understanding of Why Feminism is Fundamental _
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10:08:51 AM, Monday 4 August 2008

Doesn't really fit on the dvd rack, and we already own it on dvd (and vhs), but still... _
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05:57:54 PM, Thursday 31 July 2008

In a month of physical therapy I have gained 30 degrees of motion in my hips and 15 in my shoulders. It's amazing what a physical therapist can do with "They don't know exactly what's wrong with me, but here's where it hurts and these are the things I can't do." _
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01:24:15 PM, Thursday 31 July 2008

Part of my trip to Utah involved a tour of Great Salt Lake aimed at aquatic ecologists with a state employee who works there, mostly with brine shrimp. She offered to send brine shrimp cysts to anyone who wanted them, so of course I said yes. I tried growing some in the lab last month with no success. I rinsed everything out yesterday and added new DI water and fresh NaCl and some crushed up dried algae and another pinch of the cysts. I now have little baby brine shrimp everywhere. When they get big enough to see easily, I will take pictures. Until then, if you look really closely, you can see some here:

_
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12:12:56 PM, Thursday 31 July 2008

Milton of the beautiful blog Don't Eat Alone has moved to our neighborhood and loves it. I've met his wife, the new UCC pastor in town, at a community committee meeting. I don't know how to approach internet celebrities. Remi and I saw Pam Spaulding on the street one day with her wife and all I could do was whisper "That's Pam!" _
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05:20:10 PM, Wednesday 30 July 2008

St. John's most notorious alum breaks his 50 year silence in the New Yorker

Maybe I'm just the cynical child of the modern age, but I find the outrage at "cheating" on "game shows" to be mysterious. It's television. Of course it's fake. _
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05:53:44 PM, Tuesday 29 July 2008

As promised previously, a little more detail about the work we did in New Orleans this time. Our homeowner was comfortably middle class before the storm. She and her two kids and her mother share a shotgun duplex (the most common house type in New Orleans) that has been in their family forever. She has a good job, owned her family home outright, had good insurance, had savings, lives on high ground for that particular city. Like most folks in her neighborhood, she had relatively little flooding from the storm surge, but lost her roof and so had water damage that way. After a couple of months evacuation she got an apartment as close as she could and hired a contractor. He took her money, did a bad job, didn't finish, stopped answering her phone calls.

This happened 4 times.

In November 2006, although her house still wasn't finished, she and the kids moved back in. It was done enough that they could live there and money was getting tight. But the house still wasn't done. And the crooked contractors kept coming. Finally, she was out of money. This woman who has lived a comfortable life, who works a professional social service job herself, turned as many others there have to the non-profits who are there to help. She got some money from the Red Cross. And eventually she got hooked up with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.

So now the Presbyterians are fixing her drywall, which had inch gaps at all seams and all corners and ugly textured paint used to cover up the bad work. We patched drywall and painted all week, including sanding the texture off of her trim where it had been sprayed carelessly and trying (fairly hopelessly) to patch the popcorn ceiling. We also finished the walls for her kitchen. Next week, her new cabinets will finally be put in, to go with the appliances she bought last year that have been sitting there unused (they cook on her mom's side, which is now finished). Then they will finish her floors and finally get her front and back doors which actually close all the way.

And someday soon her life will not involve getting out of the house early so strangers can come in and cover everything she owns with plastic. Her kids will have privacy in their bedroom, vital for a twelve year old girl and for the very first time in his life for her 4 year old son. And these folks, who did everything you're supposed to, who got ripped off by private enterprise and ignored by their government, will have their lives back
_
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04:15:43 PM, Tuesday 29 July 2008

Has anyone tried Scrivener? I've been pretty frustrated with Word lately. Unfortunately, as all of my dissertation chapters will be multi-authored (and my advisor adores Track Changes), I'm stuck with at least having Word around. But I could compose in something more pleasant and then save into Word format at the end. _
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03:59:55 PM, Tuesday 29 July 2008

No adequate words for how the shootings in Knoxville make me feel:
That could have been us. Our church is well known for welcoming gays and lesbians. Our kids do a musical at the end of the summer. That could have been us.
Real respect for a group of peaceful people who managed to stop the shooting without using guns themselves.
Terrorism is trying to force others to conform to your political agenda through violence. _
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04:43:44 PM, Monday 28 July 2008

Back from another trip to New Orleans. Things are...better. There are fewer blue roofs and fewer FEMA trailers. Which is not to say that there are none of either. And also some blue roofs are gone because the tarps rotted away completely, not because the roof got fixed. And some FEMA trailers are gone because people gave up.

I ended up not taking pictures this trip. This was mostly due to feeling weird about the homeowner's privacy while working in a currently inhabited house. Working in an inhabited house in a whole nother story, which I will try to tell tomorrow. Besides that, pictures just don't help anymore.

My health held up at what is my new normal--pain, stiffness, mostly functional except for Thursday afternoon (No matter what I'm doing, Thursday afternoon always gets me for some reason). No raising my arms over my head, walking slow, being more careful than I used to, sleeping and resting and generally being less gung-ho, but I'm still the best drywall mudder of our bunch.

Went by a few houses we've worked on on previous trips. They were done and looked beautiful and we could see obvious improvements in their neighborhoods as well. But there are plenty of houses gutted down to their studs with a FEMA trailer out front and no sign of progress.

Drove through the Lower 9th and it's just surreal how little has changed in 3 years. Mostly, the vegetation is taking over, swallowing up foundations and twisted bits of porch rails and plumbing. A few remarkable green houses on concrete piers are being built, as well as a very small bit of reconstruction of traditional houses.

Met some nice college students from New Jersey and got to know some new people from my church, an extremely liberal lawyer and an extremely conservative (by Durham standards) public school teacher.

I also realized how much I've fallen in love with the city and its people. We ate here and it was just everything I love all put together in one place. _
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11:01:23 PM, Saturday 26 July 2008

Michael Berube's got a Jamie story up at Pandagon This has been your every few months Michael Berube sighting update. Stay tuned. _
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03:11:44 PM, Saturday 19 July 2008

I'm not the only person who never thought the 2002 Georgia election results made any sense. It was the first time we voted with those horrible black box touch screen machines. And our Democratic senator and governor who were expected to have clear wins lost. And it turns out the Diebold CEO himself flew in to personally "patch" machines in the two largest counties in the state, which just happen to also be Democratic strongholds. I guess I should be glad that he didn't swing by Athens-Clarke, too, and "fix" our machines. My votes may have actually been counted. It just didn't matter. _
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11:32:30 AM, Saturday 19 July 2008

A leading U.S. trailer manufacturer failed to disclose to Hurricane Katrina evacuees or the government its internal findings that formaldehyde in some units exceeded a federal health standard by as much as 45 times in 2006, its chairman acknowledged to Congress yesterday Their defense seems to be that there was no federal regulation against it, so what were they supposed to do? _
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10:53:24 AM, Friday 11 July 2008

There's now a Mac version of MindHabits available for those who might need some positive thinking mini-games in their Mac-using lives _
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08:52:00 AM, Friday 11 July 2008

This is one of my favorite sermons I've heard in years and it actually made me want to see Lars and the Real Doll _
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09:31:54 PM, Sunday 6 July 2008

A message from the recently elected stated clerk of the PCUSA, the retelling of a story from Luke, and also a message for a struggling church in a struggling world trying to figure out how to move forward after years (decades) of standing still: Get into the boat. Go across the lake. There will be a storm. You will not die. _
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09:43:16 AM, Saturday 5 July 2008

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