I think my dentist called me boss-eyed!?

It's not even worth saying that you hate going to the dentist. It's just understood, right? Even if you're one of those lucky people who don't have to have their jaws dislocated and cranium rattled by drills at every visit (and by the way, bite me if you are one of those lucky people....) There is still the noise, the smell, the uncomfortable plastic chair, the lights that give you eye spots, that damn plastic thing they stick in you mouth for x-rays.... I digress. It is all-together an unpleasant interruption to your day. The strangest thing happened this morning during my dental exam, I swear my dentist called me boss-eyed! It was the damnedest thing, he's not even british. And I think someone would have mentioned it before now if I was....

A kind of final draft

Drafts are never really final are they? You just stop editing them at some point. I've been exchanging drafts of thesis chapters with my professor and there's alway something new to add, a way of re-phrasing a sentence. It's not at all bothersome. In fact it's a relief to be more than two weeks from that day circled on my calendar, "Draft to Committee!" and be in a kind of final draft. I think that final drafts are really just a myth. At some point we'll say "that's enough, lets move on." we'll have the "sufficient draft". Then the committee will spend their two weeks with it. We'll all gather for the day of torture (or the defense if you like) and then my professor and I will spend another 2 weeks exchanging drafts that incorporate a selection of committee comments and edits until we again decide enough is enough and then we have the "sufficiently final draft" which will be printed, bound and cataloged in both the university and departmental libraries to take up 1 inch of shelf space, gather dust, and be universally forgotten.

Somedays it helps to work at not thinking that far ahead....

Pursuing inspiration

Productivity has been lacking this week in the writing department. It's final draft time for my thesis and after getting a head of schedule last week progress came close to stand still this week. It didn't help that I spent the last two days many miles away from my computer. I stole the husbands day off and employed him as a "volunteer" field assistant at my research site one day, doing the needed fall (and final) maintenance around my study plots. Spend the next (and significantly longer) day at my professors field sites doing that end of season maintenance. I thought today would move me forward, but it seems to be a day of delay, followed by interruption, then a dash of distraction, and a lab-mates thesis defense to round out the afternoon. Not a bad day, but I haven't been able to retreat to that place in my head that makes slogging through another chapter of my thesis a desirable prospect. In pursuit of writing inspiration I cracked open my field notebook and found the passage I wrote so many months ago after long work days spend in only my own company. It's not too bad considering the funny mental state I always get in after that much exhaustion and isolation:

Machete Therapy - Mower broke after about an hour work, so I spent the next 5 or so swinging the machete. It reminds me of a hard up hill backpacking trip. After the first few minutes the pain and difficulty make you think the task is impossible. Then your body melts into the movement, and all is fluid and possible. There were uplifted moments when I thought the task seemed at hand and then....

It really is a vile plant, this weed of mine. Oh to live to see it's pestilent form wiped from the landscape. It makes me question all the truths I've learned in ecology. Surely there can be no balance with this plant, no divine purpose for its existence. There is no ecology I can imagine where its presence would be welcome. And yet I toil in its shadow like a slave to it's robust but chaste nature. A wasteful contradictory plant that makes slaves of man, strips utility from the soil, and defaces the landscape with it's domineering monoculture. What an evil, conniving plant, this weed of mine.

I suppose it's as close to a motivational speech as I'm gonna find this late on a friday afternoon.....

Cryptic clothing requirements

I have a scientific mind. I glory in recognizing interesting ecological phenomenon. I revel in the physics observable in daily life. I unfailingly point out the difference between correlation and causation. I believe in randomization and embrace entropy in all experiences. But I am utterly ignorant about being fashionable. For me the most difficult part of preparing for a presentation, conference, or business meeting is packing clothing.

It is so much simpler to choose clothes for field work. It's all about the utility of the clothes not how the clothes represent you. Dressing to prevent sweating during high physical activity in freezing weather, no problem. Need to dress to prevent heat strain and protect against insect bites while collecting data in a swamp, I know how to dress for that success! But what the bloody hell does "business casual attire" mean? or "dressy casual"? There should be an illustrated guide book for graduate students clothing that I can take with me to the store to help me choose clothes. I can never tell if the outfit I'm trying on is trendy and cute or absolutely ghastly. I think most fashion trends must teeter on the edge of ghastly. What I need is a store without fashion trends. Just very basic shapes and colors that an apparel guide book could catalog and direct the dumbfounded grad student through. And oh, don't get me started on picking out a hair cut....

This is what's wrong with America

"Twitterature"

Let me say it again, just so we're all clear:

This is exactly what is wrong with this damn country - Twitterature!

The twits at Penguin publishing have commission two 19 year old twits to whittle  some of the greatest book even written into 20 "tweets" so the inept twits of our society have no reason to learn about literary structure and imagery.  

I hate cliff notes.  

I loath abridged stories.  

There isn't even a word for how awful I think this is.  

It's more than just giving student a easy way to get a C-grade in english classes.  Giving people these short cuts starves their mind of the amazing experience of reading these incredible works of fiction.  It's no wonder they have to focus on books with dead authors, no self respecting author would allow two teenaged twits to condense the essence of their writing into 20 "tweets"!!

I may never purchase a book published by Penguin again.  Whoever is responsible for this decision clearly has no respect for literature or education.

We should all be screaming right now.

Treatment effects

So how's the food experiment going?  Quite well actually.  Like most experiments, it began by building momentum like a snowball rolling downhill until it seemed unmanageable, and then suddenly it all seemed ordinary and easy.  Maybe eating well has been made simple by the spring harvests starting, or the local farmers market, or because of our CSA basket, or maybe anything would seem normal after enough weeks.  But we are closing out the third month of eating a whole foods diet and it doesn't feel like experiment anymore.  In fact diet is all together the wrong word for it because there is such a temporary sense to the word diet.  It's just the way we eat, and I can't see that changing much.

What is really funny as time goes on you rinse through all the rocks in your head that clattered together to form these ideas is what floats to the surface of the water and what sinks.  I guess by that I mean what things have turned into the really important issues for me, and what things I've decided are not important.  Food convictions you could call them.  Things like: do not eat corn syrup in any form.  This doesn't take ice cream or even soda pop of the shopping list, but just forces you to ready the ingredient lists and chose the brands made "naturally".  

Another unexpected conviction is eating things in season, and waiting for that season to come.  I think it just tastes better when you eat this way.  Gives you something to look forward to, and removes the american idea that we can eat any food any time we like.  While out shopping the husband occasionally mentions fajitas, and 'oh how good they would taste'.  And I have to say, 'think how much better they'll taste if we wait for our peppers to ripen' instead of buying the ones shipped to us from some southernly location.  As with most experiments, I'm convinced that I'm right and he's not ready to concede the point.

Something interesting I also discovered is that while making my own bread regularly is an easy routine, tortilla and pasta making is more of an event and paying a little more for the fresh "natural" versions of these at the food coop is worth the time (and mess) I save myself.

So to the meat of the matter, have we been successful in our experiment thus far?  All around I'd have too say yes, though neither of us are by any means perfect.  But this isn't a conversion to some orthodox religion, just a return to the roots of how we were meant to eat food. What are some of the positive results so far?  

The first and, arguably, most important is that neither of us have turned into those irritating people you meet a the super market or farmers market that discuss food choice in a holier-than-thou tone.  In fact very few people outside of our families have any idea just how drastically our eating habits have changed.  

The second big result for me in the loss of 17 lbs while still eating wonderful desserts and never cutting the fatty bits of my meat.  

The third, and most surprising to me, is the change in the speed of my eating.  Even when I'm at my desk half-way-working through the meal, I eat so much more slowly.  Chewing bites longer and resting in between.  I never made a point of it, just realized one day I was doing it.  And funnily enough I watched the husband, and he's doing it too.  I think maybe the food just tastes so good we eat more slowly to make the flavors last longer, without even realizing it.  

Somethings I expected to see changes and haven't were in some little skin and allergy issue we each have.  It's common to hear how connected these issues are to diet, so I expected to see some changes, and haven't.  Perhaps it's still too soon.  

Some of the best surprises to me have been the memories from childhood this has brought to the surface.  Smells and tastes and sounds.  The entirely green flavor of fresh peas eaten in the garden, smell of hot baked bread and pie, sounds of clanking canning jars, burst or sweetness biting to fresh picked strawberry.  Thing I heard, tasted, and smelled many times since childhood, but the memories of them have been repeatedly triggered by some unknown cause this spring.  

Maybe it's this feeling that neither of us seem to be able to shake.  That what we're doing, how we're changing is really important.  Don't know why, there is no reason to need to know how to make food by starting with a few simple ingredients, or with seeds, in this world we've made.  Perhaps I should feel foolish when I see bags of pre-sliced bread, chicken breasts wrapped in styrofoam and cellophane, and pre-washed bags of salad greens.  But instead of feeling like the world's having a joke on me, I feel how important it is to know how long it takes a loaf of wheat bread to rise on a cool morning compared to a hot summer afternoon, the proper way to butcher and de-bone a chicken, and what the right soil temperature is for starting lettuce seeds.  Important too whom?  just me I guess, but still important....

Failing to repeat failure

Does failing to repeat a failure result in success?  Nope, it's just failing twice.  I've been frustrated for the past few weeks since determining that the most exciting part of my field experiment had failed.  I know the adage that negative results are still results and should still be published, blah, blah, blah.  So I planned a field day to set up a duplicate experiment under the same field conditions, essentially repeating my failure so I'd have enough negative results to publish.  And what do you know, I failed again!  Monday I was shocked to discover that the plants at my experimental site had put on two months of growth in two weeks.  The end effect of this mammoth growth is that the field conditions in no way matches the conditions of last springs experiment, so it's not at all possible to repeat my failed experiment.  

I had to scramble to deal with these unpredicted conditions, and have decided to throw logic and methodology into the wind and start a new and different experiment, which I also wont be able to repeat based on my program schedule.  So, the end result will be multiple unrepeated field experiments with uninteresting and negative results.  Yeah for science!