A decade of blogging

I started blogging 10 years ago, right before starting grad school. This blog chronicled 6.5 years of grad school (approximately 13,507 hours of work) and the 3.5 years since officially graduating. During that time, I lost 3 close family members, got married, spent over a year doing field work in Africa, got a dog, had a baby, moved to a new city, and had three different jobs as a PhD. This has been an eventful decade.

For the first few years, I blogged several times per month (or even several times per week). It was an opportunity for me to reflect on my experiences and practice writing. Looking back on many of my early posts in the writing of this, I am struck as much by the things that haven't changed as much as the things that have. I still love Small Friendly College just as much as in 2007 (and the post made me teary again). I see major parts my current self in these older writings. In some cases, I captured events that I see now had outsized importance in shaping my current career, like a workshop on science communication and an interdisciplinary project. There are threads and early hints of the ideas and concepts that are hugely important to my present work, which makes me feel like I'm in the right place now in my career.

In some ways, I don't think I've changed substantially, but I've learned so much about myself in the last 10 years. I've grown. I wrote in 2009 that I needed to be more of a badass. I most definitely am. My moments of greatest badass-ness are probably still finishing my dissertation before my daughter was born, then giving birth to her and going through (and recovering from) serious complications. To finish my dissertation, I toughed it out and kept my eye on the prize with intense focus to the exclusion of everything else non-essential. When recovering from childbirth, I refused to accept my limited mobility and searched and read until I found the right people and resources to help me heal. During grad school, and especially during field work, I became aware of my common mental traps and I'm much better at avoiding them now that I know the signs (like being indecisive). I am nothing if not resourceful, and as my personal networks and knowledge have grown, I have an ever-growing pool of ideas to draw upon. This last year in my new job has especially helped me realize and appreciate the breadth and depth of skills and networks I have, and given me many more ideas for how I can leverage them to do good and awesome things. I, too, can stand on the shoulders of giants—in life as well as in research.

My favorite genre of books is scientist memoirs (e.g. Richard Feynman), especially field biologists (e.g. Jane Goodall and Robert Sapolsky). I love reading about the adventures that happen in the pursuit of science. I love reading about how they live their science-y lives, what their families think, how they raised kids, what went wrong, and how they overcame adversity. Their stories have helped me imagine what my life could be. Blogs by scientists about their lives scratched a similar itch.

Blogging was also a community, and the other women in science bloggers were my mentors. I learned so much from them. I read blogs of more advanced students describing drama in their committees (I learned years later that managing your committee is a classic example of "managing up"). I read about postdocs applying for faculty positions. I read stories of scientists in all career stages struggling with chronic health issues, infertility, and difficult relationships. I was unquestionably better prepared to be a good graduate student and navigate the potential job market afterwards as a result of the science blog community. I'd like to throw some nonspecific thanks out into the universe to the dozens (hundreds?) of bloggers from whom I gleaned wisdom and advice. Thank you!

While blogging during grad school, I accidentally discovered the identities of a few bloggers I followed, and a few people discovered me (one person anonymously and mysteriously tried to "out" me). I made real life friends because of this blog, and it was a way to re-connect with a handful of trusted people that I invited to read it. A few of you are still reading. Thanks for following my sometimes vague and pseudonymized adventures!

I watched, always with sadness, when other bloggers decided to call it quits for one reason or another. More often, they didn't have closure and just stopped writing, or I just stopped reading. Probably kind of like this—I stopped writing so often. In part I blame the declining popularity of RSS and therefore the declining options for good feed readers. Somewhere along the migration from one feed reader to another, I lost track. It has been a long time since I regularly read other people's blogs, so my blogging is overwhelmingly an introspective exercise.

It would probably be fitting, after a decade of blogging as an "aspiring ecologist", to declare this the end. But I imagine I'll still want to blog occasionally, and I'm frankly not motivated enough to set up another blog, so I'll stick with what I've got. Those of you who are friends in real life know where to find me, and if you've been reading this for years and still don't know who I am but want to be friends in real life, drop me a note.

I'm excited about the next 10 years. I've got big ideas that have been simmering for a while now. With the right combination of preparation and luck (there's always luck), it could be awesome. Or, more likely, I'll end up doing something 10 years from now that I can't even imagine at present. Let's see where the next decade goes!

Twitter!

After considering joining Twitter for many months, I finally signed up. AspiringEcologist was too long of a username, so I'm anEcologist instead. Besides, I have a P-H-effing-D, so I think I can call myself An Ecologist instead of just an aspiring one now.

Looking forward to 2014

I think 2014 will be the year of transition. We just moved, and we'll move again in a couple of months. Hopefully I'll find a job before long. Jon will probably be transitioning into a new career, too. And Adele is continually learning and doing new things.

With so much unknown about my future employment, it feels a little difficult to set goals related to my career, but I do have some.

Career
Get a job. This is a carryover from last year! A fellowship counts too. Something that will pay me on a regular basis, preferably research-related. I have research ambitions that I'm not ready to give up on, and I feel like I would be if I took a job that removed my from research completely.

Submit two manuscripts for publication. I think I can submit one before the end of January. Beyond that, I'm not sure which one I'd go for next. I've got to get my head back in research!

I'd like to go to a conference, too, but that will depend very much on my job and our financial situation. The rates go up now that I'm no longer a student, and if I can't get any financial assistance then it might not be possible. We'll see.

Health
Complete the exercise program I started at Thanksgiving and then continue to do the exercises (or similar) at least 5x/week. It is gentle and doesn't take very much time. It's a matter of making the small amount of time to do it.

Get to the point where I can run and dance again without pain. This means that I need to continue to heal from birth by being mindful of how I move, and doing the exercises I mentioned above.

Go to 2 dance workshops and go dancing at least 10 times. I am hoping that this will be a way for me to make new friends, too.

Home
Complete 4 photo books of Adele. There are two that I wanted to do before Christmas, but that didn't happen!

Give birthday gifts & cards on time! This year we were pretty bad about being on time with birthday gifts for nieces and nephews.

Go to Quaker meeting at least 12 times this year. This will also be a good way to meet new people. I went sporadically in Big City but it never fit well into my routine with all of my traveling and other weekend events. I would like to make space for it in my life again.

Blogging
Schedule time for blogging each week. This is one that I didn't meet last year, but I think I should give it another shot this year. In the process, I should also think about whether or not to move to a new setting. I'm no longer an aspiring ecologist, I am an ecologist! Should this blog grow with me? Or have I outgrown it?

Metagoals
Refer to this list when setting weekly goals. I did a great job of setting weekly goals in 2013, and I'd like to continue. However, I did not refer to this list! I can do that, and it won't even be hard.

Add to and revise this list as necessary. I didn't make any changes last year, but this year could warrant some when I get a job.

This list of goals is scattered, but these are all things I'd like to make more room for in my life this year. Cheers to a new year in a new city!

I hope all of my readers find a way to make the world a better place in 2014!

Looking back on 2013

One year ago, I knew this was going to be a big year. I didn't explicitly write "give birth to a healthy baby" on my list of goals for 2013 out of some kind of superstition or because that's not really much in my control, but clearly that was the most monumental event of the year. Adele's birth in May was followed by about 7 minutes of bliss, then the most critical 2 hours of my life completely out of my hands when my uterus inverted and I lost ~3.5 liters of blood, and then several weeks of difficult recovery, re-hospitalization, and physical weakness.

Academic/Career
Finish my dissertation.
YES! I did this. I defended successfully. Sending my dissertation to my committee was, at that point, the most satisfying and relieving thing I had ever done. It is topped only marginally by the first moment I felt my newborn daughter.

Submit two chapters for publication.
Ugh, no. Not even one. I have a chapter that has been nearly ready to submit since FEBRUARY. It probably needs only two or three days of my undivided attention. Between finishing my dissertation, recovering from birth, preparing a different project for a conference, applying for jobs, teaching in two places, and then moving, this just hasn't happened.

Get a job.
Not yet (being an adjunct this fall didn't count). I've applied for 18 jobs and had two phone interviews. The right thing will come along.

Present at a conference.
YES! Adele and I went to ESA with my mom in August. I had a great time and I'm so glad I went.

Update my webpage bi-monthly (and transition to my own domain name).
I did the domain name change, but not the bi-monthly updates. I updated 5 times, but not in a few months now, because with nothing submitted and no new job I haven't had much to update. It's due, though.

Fitness
Exercise 4x per week.
So, this kinda went out the window. My definition of exercise changed radically during pregnancy. I injured myself by moving a heavy box, which shifted my pelvis. This made many daily tasks acutely painful. I started physical therapy and I did the exercises they gave me twice per day until Adele was born (very low intensity but they took about 20-30 minutes each time). After she was born, I had a hard time walking for several weeks, so I didn't get much exercise. I did some kegels. Around September (4 months post partum), I could finally walk consistently at my normal speed for the first time since January. I went back to PT, where I had a variety of exercises that I didn't do consistently at all. Now I'm on a new, low-intensity core-strengthening routine that I am trying to do every day. It's been a physically difficult year! I still intend to write in more detail about my recovery.

Do a race.
No, and I don't have plans to do one in the near future.

Go dancing at least 4 times.
YES! I managed to go dancing 4 times between August and November. I still have some lingering pelvic pain, so I need to be careful about what songs I dance to and who I dance with.

Home
Improve dog's socialization and walking.
No, but as of last week she is living with 3 other dogs until we move into our own place, so that might help improve her social skills!

Do 5 more things on our Big City bucket list before we move.
??? I don't know if we did any more of them at all!

Blogging
Schedule time for blogging.
No. I have so many things that I want to write about, and just haven't made the time to do it.

Metagoals
Refer to this list when I set my weekly goals.
No, but I'm not sure it would have changed things much if I did. I might have blogged more.

Add goals to this list as necessary-- in case I think of something else important.
I didn't think of anything important enough to add!

One year ago I wrote:
"I have no idea where we'll be at the end of this year. Maybe we'll be in Jon's hometown. Maybe we'll be in some small university town. Maybe we'll still be in Big City but getting ready to move."

Hometown it is!

May your 2013 end better than it began!

Missing out

Right now there's a buzz about the twittersphere if you follow science-writer types because Science Online 2013 is happening. I tried to register, but alas, I didn't get a spot. It's probably just as well, considering that I have so much left to do on my dissertation, but it sure would have been fun!

But what I'm really bummed about is that there are at least three amazing workshops that I'd love to attend this summer that would be very helpful for my career. This summer. When I'll be breastfeeding a tiny infant. I'm pretty sure I'd try to go if I wasn't the food.

Oh well. Maybe another year.

Looking back on 2012

I set out an ambitious list of goals for 2012. How did I do?

Academic/Career
Get something published in 2012.
YES! Both papers that were submitted at the end of 2011 were accepted in 2012. And as a bonus, another paper just got accepted with minor revisions! Only one of these is a chapter in my dissertation, but I've got publications! Woo hoo!

Submit Best Project for publication
Not even close. Best Project is going to be two manuscripts. One of them has been the source of much frustration and the other isn't written yet. Argh.

Conceptualize my dream job(s).
Not really, but I did start applying- to a grand total of two. I'm out of the running on one of them already. At this point, I don't think I have time to sit around imagining my dream job and I just need to apply to anything that seems doable.

Give a talk at the big ecology conference and present at at least one other conference. 
YES! I presented at two conferences and had a blast. I still love conferences.

Do an outreach project. 
YES! Unfortunately, that's all I can say.

Update my webpage once a month.
Not quite. Looks like I updated it 5 times this year. I made sure to do it when I had big updates, so I didn't completely neglect it.

Fitness
Do a sprint distance triathlon and one other race.
I did the tri, but not another race. My mom and cousin did a triathlon too (first time for both), and hopefully we'll make it something of a tradition.

Exercise 4x or more per week. 
In the first half of 2012, I averaged 2.25 times per week, and since then I've averaged about 2.3 times per week. This counts conferences and holidays and being sick, so I think that's not too shabby. It also doesn't include dancing or my bicycle commuting.

Do yoga once a week. Revised! Goal: 30 minutes of yoga per week and pushups (following the level 1 plan here) if I don't do some other kind of exercise.
So I kinda sucked at this. I've wanted to do more yoga since becoming pregnant, but not even close to once a week. Pushups? My wrists just aren't cut out for it. Fail.

Go dancing at least 12 times. 
YES! 13! I went 13 times! My high school self would be so disappointed in me that I dance so infrequently. Oh well.

Home
Learn and perfect an easy, delicious vegetarian lasagna recipe. 
No, but I did find a great recipe for mushroom quiche. I should try harder with the lasagna but I have no desire to make lasagna when it's hot outside so that limits the times in the year when I can pursue this worthy goal.

No more ugly houseplants.
I bought myself some pretty ceramic pots, so that helped. This is on ongoing process.

Get the dog to walk better. 
She has improved some, but still isn't great.

Visit at least half of the places on our must-see list for Big City. 
Wow, not even close. I think we might have done 3 or 4 things on our list.

Offset our carbon emissions. 
No...

Blogging
Blog at least once a week.
Not really. I made 59 posts this year including this one, so that averages more than once a week but I had many weeks where I didn't blog at all.

Label my posts and keep them labeled.
Yep. I think I've caught up on unlabeled posts from earlier field work and I've been labeling new ones.

Metagoals
Review goals quarterly. 
How about bi-annually? I only reviewed them in June (Academic, Fitness, and others) and now. I just kept procrastinating in March and September until it was June and December.

Make weekly agendas for myself. 
Yes. Each week I send an email to a friend of mine reporting on last week's goals and the goals for the upcoming week. I keep the electronic list somewhere that I can easily refer to it to keep me focused. I've recently modified this to break my goals down into tasks for each day, which makes the big things seem more manageable. 

Overall I worked many fewer hours this year than last year (2239 hours instead of 2750), but that still works out to 43 hours/week across all 52 weeks of the year. No field work in 2012- makes a big difference! I was still able to make good progress towards my career goals (i.e. dissertation) and do plenty of fun things too. Oh, and make a baby-- that was an unwritten goal for 2012 :-)

Well 2012, it's been fun. Tomorrow I'll to write about what I've got in store for 2013!

In search of an old post

I have a vague recollection of reading a post a while back (2 years ago? 3 years?) about women in science putting the brakes on their careers for impending motherhood years in advance. I recall the advice being something like, "Go do your awesome science all-out, don't put the brakes on before you've even started, and it won't matter when you take maternity leave because your science will be so badass that they won't doubt your ability to keep it up." Obviously I'm paraphrasing here and I might have gotten part of the message wrong, but is this ringing a bell for anyone else? Was it a post by Isis? I've been searching her blog but I can't find what I'm looking for. Where did I read this???

Blogging at ESA

There's growing recognition that there are a wealth of useful tools for ecologists in the social media realm. Jarrett Byrnes just gave a great talk called Taking the ecological conversation online highlighting the usefulness of Twitter, blogging, and crowdfunding (e.g. #SciFund).

Hooray for blogging! My personal interest in blogs has always been the experiences of scientists (the stories behind the science!) and the mentoring that comes out of it, but there's something for everyone.

UPDATE:
Here's a link to the slides from Jarrett's talk.

Conflicted

I love the Ecological Society of America meeting. It hasn't even really started yet, and I love it. I want to share so many of the exciting things I'm learning, but I'm totally conflicted about the best venue for sharing. Do I blog about it here? Do I tweet about it in my real name? Facebook? G+? The problem with all of these options is that I'm stuck. I feel like I can only share so much as Karina Anirak, but I do have a voice and a story here. If I put myself out there with my real name, that makes it easier to make the connection to this blog. At the same time I feel like I should be developing a presence professionally, under my own name. I'm torn. I've got to figure this out. And soon!

Reviewing my goals: Home, Blogging, and Metagoals

Here's my last progress report on my goals for 2012! I separately reviewed my academic and fitness goals.

Home

Learn and perfect an easy, delicious vegetarian lasagna (and quiche) recipe. I've definitely got one in the works for quiche but no luck yet on the lasagna. I've made a few (3?) but none of them were my idea of a perfect veg lasagna.

No more ugly houseplants. I treated myself to some nice pots for some favorite plants and I've culled a few. More need to go, but I'd say none of the ones at home are truly ugly now.

Get the dog to walk better. In March we instituted a zero tolerance policy for pulling. The dog is doing much better! She's not perfect, but there is considerable improvement.

Visit at least half of the places on our must-see list for Big City. We aren't doing well on this list at all! I think we've only done 2 things.

Offset our carbon emissions. I've done nothing for this :-( Also, we recently traded in the car we bought last summer for a brand new car (a first for us) because interest rates are just so incredibly low (1.67% for us, which is a lower rate than my already low student loans) that it wasn't worth it to put another dime into that piece of crap we never should've purchased. I have to figure out how to work the carbon offset into our budget.

Blogging

Blog at least once a week. I've just barely averaged 1 post per week, but it's been a bit sporadic. I kind of forgot about this goal so I'll try to keep it in mind.

Label my posts and keep them labeled. I haven't gone back through everything but I think I've covered the biggest gaps in labeling, and I'm keeping the new stuff labeled. To this I'd like to add that I want to direct readers to some of my most useful posts. I just need to spend some time thinking about which posts those are and how to do it.

Metagoals

Review goals quarterly. I had the best of intentions to review my goals at the end of March and it just didn't happen. Now my goal is to keep up!

Make weekly agendas for myself. I'm doing quite well with this one. Every Monday a friend and I email each other with our goals for the week and our self-report for how we did on goals for the previous week. About a month ago I started prioritizing each goal as A, B, or C and tried to do the A-list tasks earlier in the day. I am pleased with how things are going and it's great to have the accountability to and encouragement from my friend.

Why I love FSP

I drafted this post two and a half years ago, and clearly it's long overdue. On May 31, FSP said So Long and Thanks for All the Wombats.

Anyone who's any kind of science enthusiast should read what FemaleScienceProfessor has to say. I love her blog so much, and I'd like to explain why.

1. She's prolific. She turns turned out about one awesome post per day. I wonder if she had them queued up and if so for how long?
2. She's got history. She has been blogging blogged for 6 years and been a professor for many more. She's a full tenured professor in a field without many women. Clearly this woman has her shit together.
   
3. It's never just the daily grind. She writes in a general way about her experiences, not just what she did today. Her blog is more than just some kind of public journal like mine- she writes for an audience.
4. As far as I know, she's never been caught up in any petty blogging drama. Good for her.
5. She published a book of her blog posts. How cool is that?
   

She might keep blogging at Scientopia, and her blog is still up, so you should still use it to extract some wisdom and experience while you can. FSP, your voice will be missed. Thank you for everything that you have written.

What? Where did November go?

I can't let November end without posting anything. For those of you who don't know me in real life and might have been concerned I was lost forever in Ukenzagapia, never fear! I have returned! I have a couple of posts I want to write about field-related stuff. Here's hoping my muses and my free time coincide more often.

Not much to say

I'm back in Big City now and it's wonderful. I'm so glad to be home. Today I finally finished opening all of the mail that accumulated while I was gone. I don't have plans to go anywhere until ESA in August, but we do have many visitors coming. I'm looking forward to this summer.

For whatever reason, I just haven't had much to say on the blog this month, which is really unusual. I'm not sure why. I guess I've been traveling so much that I haven't had much of a routine. I have a few draft posts that maybe I'll get around to finishing. Perhaps I haven't been inspired to blog because I also haven't been reading any blogs. I haven't even opened my feed reader in 2 weeks, and I've hardly read any blogs since late February. I expect once I really get back into the swing of things at work and home that I'll have more to say.

Best wishes for ScienceGirl

ScienceGirl from Curiosity Killed the Cat is expecting her first baby any day now. EcoGeoFemme is hosting a blogsphere baby shower for her.

For ScienceGirl, I would like to offer up a virtual copy of Free Range Kids. There's a book, a blog, and a whole lot of people talking about how to raise independent, confident children. I love stories like this one. I guess this isn't exactly a baby gift, but I hope that it will be helpful and inspiring as her child grows up.

Best wishes, ScienceGirl!

The Future of Scientiae

Scientiae is a blog carnival that was started by Alice Pawley. I contributed occasionally (and wrote some darn good posts when I did, if I do say so myself), and would really like to see it continue in 2010. I have a great idea for a September theme that I've been excited about since last July!

Since Alice has stopped blogging, someone needs to take charge of Scientiae for it to continue. Pat at FairerScience has a thread going about it, and since her blog gets more traffic than mine, you should join the discussion over there. You should especially comment there if you want to host!

Update (1/16/10): If you want to see Scientiae continue, please comment on the most recent post on Scientiae!

Keeping online lives separate

Warning: This post might be boring for you if you don't use either an aggregator/feed reader or a Mac, but I've included some links and a little more explanation for those of you who otherwise wouldn't understand what in the world I'm talking about.

I am in need of some advice and new ideas for keeping my blog identity from interfering with my real one. For a long time now the number of blogs I read and comment on as my pseudonymous self greatly outnumbered those commented on by my real life persona, but these days a growing number of friends and family have blogs. I need to separate my selves.

Who else has to deal with this problem and how do you deal with it? Or maybe you just have two different gmail accounts that you use for different things? Essentially, what I need is a system for separating feeds from blogs that I comment on using two different gmail accounts.

I used to read blogs from the feed reader in Safari, but Safari started crapping out all the time. I switched to NetNewsWire, but for some reason it likes to communicate with Safari (which I still use for my realname Google calendar) and is always switching up the account I'm logged into.

I would also like to start using citation alerts via RSS (web feed) instead of email. Do you use this? Do you use the same application as you use for blogs?

Maybe I will switch to an in-browser feed reader like Google Reader and use different browsers for different accounts. My default is to always use FireFox for my pseudonymous self because Safari and Opera don't get along so well with Blogger in my experience.

On second thought, I probably don't want to use a web application (in the browser) for feeds because when I'm in Ukenzagapia I'll want to read them offline. I download my mail instead of using webmail for the same reason (I can't tell you how useful it is for me to be able to read and compose emails offline). I suppose I could try the feed reader in Mail (demo video link)- do any of my readers use this? If I use Mail I'm afraid I'll always be distracted by blogs because the unread ones show up like unread emails- bad for productivity.

Please help! What's your system?

2009 in review

I've always enjoyed sitting down at the end of a calendar year and reflecting on what the passing year brought and what the new year may bring. This has been an unforgettable year.

The trend of events in 2009 was very similar to 2008- the beginning of the year brought tragedies but then many wonderful things happened. I am thankful that there have been many uplifting events this year to thwart despair. If I had to pick a theme for 2009, it would be self-context. I didn't go into 2009 expecting to find new revelations about my work habits and hurdles in the field, nor could I have possibly imagined the tremendous losses in my family and my personal struggles accompanying their deaths. I have been seeing a great therapist this fall to help me unravel the interconnected themes of sisterhood, family, death, regret, religion, self-esteem, loss, health, and communication. I have come to see my strengths and weaknesses in a much deeper context of past experiences and family dynamics, and I think these realizations (and so many others) will help me overcome personal and professional challenges.

Here's a brief recap of 2009:
January- Jon and I went to Obama's inauguration and I prepared for prelims.
February- My grandmother passed away after a difficult surgery, followed immediately, independently, and unexpectedly by my younger sister's death the next day due to pulmonary thrombosis resulting from misdiagnosed blood clots. That pretty much says it all. February was the worst month of my life.
March- I passed my prelims!
April- I received the graduate research fellowship, and Jon and I got married!
May- I went to Ukenzagapia for my first real field season.
June- Jon came to visit me in Ukenzagapia.
August- I returned from Ukenzagapia.
October- I went to a conference, we visited family in Canada, saw tons of friends who came into town for my best friend's wedding, and went back to Small Friendly College.
November & December- Pretty uneventful but traveled a lot and saw lots of family at the holidays.

Since self-context wasn't exactly on my list of goals for 2009, I'd like to address some of the ones that were.

Academic goals:
1) Prelims!  DONE!
2) Finally publish the damn review paper. NOPE. Maybe 2010...
3) Collect and analyze data from my first field season. I got the 'collect' part done but not the analysis.

4) Get the friggin' NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. DONE! Thank God!
5) Continue to seek opportunities to communicate my research to non-scientists. Not really. I did a poor job of this in 2009. I need to think strategically about how to do this in 2010.


Even though I wasn't able to get that review sent out for publication or analyze my data, I am feeling pretty good about my progress. I didn't teach at all this year but did write letters of recommendation for a fantastic former student and it has been a joy to see her interest in research develop, even though it is an entirely different field of biology. I have a project underway in Ukenzagapia and several possibilities for doable projects in the field over the next two years. I submitted a big grant (still waiting to hear) and got a fellowship and two other small grants to fund my research. I am about one day of work away from submitting a short note based on observations from my first field season, which will be my first publication from grad school. I'm finished with all of the classes I have to take, and mostly finished with my interdisciplinary group project. Soon I'll return to Ukenzagapia for my next field season. Not bad.

Personal goals:
1) Exercise regularly and frequently. Could've been worse. I did well in the spring, burned a lot of calories in the field, but not this past fall. I can do better.

2) Contribute to my IRA. Pretty good. Not as much as I'd like, but we do contribute a fixed percent of Jon's income now now which I like.
3) Make monthly contributions to Small Friendly College and small monthly donations to public radio. DONE! This makes me happy.
4) Get some of the kids in our lives (cousins, nieces, nephews) to visit us in Big City. DONE! Hopefully we'll have more kid visitors in 2010.
5) Go dancing at least once per month. NOPE. Not even close.
6) Foster more discussion on this blog. Not really, but my readership has grown steadily (if slowly).

So much has happened in my personal life this year! Since I already mentioned the difficult things above, I'm not going to talk more about those here. 2009 was a fantastic year for seeing friends and family. According to our guest book, we had 51 different people stay at our apartment on at least 125 different nights (a month of that was while Jon was in Ukenzagapia), including two different grad students and a family of three who were subletters at different times. Not only did we get friends and family to come see us in Big City, we traveled a lot this year (especially for weddings- including our own). Married life for us has so far been very much like our unmarried life, which is to say that it's great :-)

I'm thankful that we didn't move this year. For the first time in 10 years, neither of us moved a significant portion of our belongings! That does mean that we have acquired a fair amount of stuff we don't need that we need to creatively rid ourselves of in January. When I'm actually in Big City, I have greatly enjoyed taking care of my houseplants, container gardening outside on our balcony, working in the community garden, cooking the fruits of my labor, entertaining friends and family, and deciding how to incorporate new art (like our marriage certificate) and furniture that Jon builds into our apartment. We love where we live and hope that we don't have to move again until we leave Big City when I finish my Ph.D.

I love blogging, and have found the blog to be a great way for me to process and share my life experiences. Thank you to all of my readers for sharing in it.

Happy New Year!

Farewell ScienceWomen!

Yesterday Alice and SciWo announced the retirement of the ScienceWomen blog. The archives will still be around, but I'm sad to lose such influential women from my feed reader. I wish them both the very best in their non-bloggy lives.

Blogs I am thankful for

I am thankful for all of the bloggers out there from whom I have received insight, entertainment, wisdom, and food for thought.  The least I can do is thank all of you and hopefully send some new readers your way. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Blogs by scientists of one sort or another
FemaleScienceProfessor
Sciencewomen
Uncommon Ground*^
Professor Chaos*
On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess
Janus Professor, My Travels in a Two-Body Life
Wondering Albatross*
The Happy Scientist*
Liberal Arts Lady
Twice
Bug Girl's Blog*
Whoop*
What we don't know is A LOT
Muddy Misadventures*
Working Through the Blue*
Postcards from an intellectual odyssey
Pondering Pikaia*
More Than A Permanent Student*
A Lady Scientist
Gravity's Rainbow *
Transient Theorist*^
There's a War Under the Bed*
49 Percent
Academia and Me
Penn*
Journeys of an Academic
Mistress of Science
Ph.D. To Be
All of My Faults Are Stress Related
A Natural Scientist
Grad Ovaries
Academic Ecology
Towards a Ph.D.
The EBB and Flow *^

Other awesome blogs by people who may or may not consider themselves scientists
Bitch, Ph.D.
The Clutter Museum
Professing Mama
Pretty Hard, Dammit
Free-Range Kids

I'll post this in my sidebar in a few days. If you're not on this list and you want to be, comment on this thread.

*= blogger that does some kind of research/education/blogging related to ecology or evolutionary biology (to the best of my knowledge)

^= dude (at least one if the blog has multiple authors- apparently most of my favorite bloggers are women)

Weird spam?

Today I got an email titled "Award Acknowledgment for sharing great CHEMISTRY information to the public" for this blog. Have I ever blogged about chemistry? The weirdness goes on (emphasis theirs).

Dear Blog Owner,

Our website Science.org is a informational databases and online news publication for anything and everything related to science and technology. We recently ran a poll asking our website users regarding what online informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. It seems many of our users have labeled your blog as an excellent source of Space information. We have reviewed your blog and must say, we absolutely love the information you have made available to the public and would love to make your blog a part of our top science blogs. After browsing your blog, our research team has decided to award you a Top science Blogs award banner.

It is a distinction we offer to the blogs that our team feels is ahead of the curve in terms of content.


Thanks again for the great information and we look forward to the great responses your blog will receive from our site. Your blog presence will be very effective for our users (top science blogs).

We have put great efforts in making this decision to give deserving with award acknowledgment. For listing please reply to request banner.



Sincerely,
--
William Lee
Research team
Science.org
1 international blvd
Mahwah NJ USA - 07430
201 247 8553
editor.science@gmx.com

SPACE information? I'm quite sure that, while fascinating, I've never blogged about space (you should check out Mrs. Comet Hunter for astronomical interests). Upon visiting the aforementioned science.org it looks ok at a quick glance. Then, none of the links worked. None that I tried at least. What's the deal? I deleted all of the cookies from the site and blocked them. Has anyone else gotten this weird "award"? Any ideas?

Oh! Ambivalent Academic got the same message, "space information" and all. I'm not alone. Who else?