Random post
This is a random post about random things.
1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was actually a pretty good flick- and it came from Toronto. Repo the Genetic Opera was also a Canadian film, and also quite awesome. Ha- take that, Hollywood.
2. I might be losing weight, but it's hard to tell without a scale. I'm definitely smaller than I was five months ago, when I came to Sweden. Woo! Now if only I wasn't so damn lazy, so that I'd get my ass onto a regular schedule of some kind of workout, so I can regain my thin status. Because dieting is not going to work with Seth in this house... tasty high calorie treats get into our shopping bags far too often.
3. My mother has offered to crochet me a zombie Hello Kitty hat. Hooray! Now to decide what colour it should be.
4. Cabin in Fairbanks is rented, and soon Seth may have some kind of employment. Maybe next year will be a financially stable one for us, where I don't have to worry that we won't have enough money for basic bills, and I won't have to ask my parents for financial help. Alaska was a very expensive experience- one financial knock after another, which was partly my own damn fault for overextending myself and buying a house when Seth wasn't employed full time and my own salary didn't cover all the bills. In the long run, it may turn out to have been a good investment (if we can sell it for more than we paid, as I suspect will be the case), but I should have waited to buy anything since I (a) don't have a green card, and (b) only had a 2 year employment contract. I thought it would be possible to extend it, or find another job- nope. I shouldn't have bought that house. However, that's in the past, and I think Seth and I both learned a lesson there. We're doing a lot better when it comes to not buying stupid crap we don't need, and not going out much (though I think if we had more income, we would treat ourselves to a night out at a restaurant on a regular basis!).
5. I haven't written a thing since I moved to Tierp- I'm not sure why. I think I just need to get into the habit of spending time writing. All that crap about making time to write is very true. At this rate I'll never finish the projects I've started, which would be a shame, as I think the ideas in them are pretty fun. A big part of why I don't write is, I think, that I'm tired a lot of the time during the week (I commute for ~3 hours a day); and now that I'm enrolled in this Swedish course and I have a crapton of bioinformatics work to do in my "spare time" on weekends, I don't see me breaking off to spend half a day here and there writing, at least not often. Not unless I get disciplined about it. I guess it really boils down to: how badly do I want to write? How important is it to me? I don't have an answer to that. My work and Seth are more important to me, and I spend most of my time attending to them (and sleeping).
6. Swedish is hard. It's odd, the first lesson in the course we are taking is actually very difficult (two Swedes having a conversation in rapid Swedish), but the next lesson is the alphabet. Guess which one I'm starting with. Though it seems to me like the recording mumbles and I can't discern the letters very clearly. L and N sounded similar to me when the recorded voice was spelling out words. Either that, or I'm going deaf. I have trouble hearing stuff on TV and understanding Seth sometimes, so maybe I'm going deaf. Yay.
7. I've recently applied for three jobs in California, a job in Pittsburgh, and a job in upstate New York. I keep scouring Nature Jobs and Science Careers (two high end scientific job websites) for (permanent) faculty positions in my field, and if I find one and it isn't in the Midwest or the Deep South I apply for it. Sometimes I look at the Canadian academic job website, but that usually has nothing. I've written and rewritten my basic job application package several times, and right now it's as good as I think it is going to get. Every so often I reread it to see if I can improve it somehow. If I can't get a permanent job on the faculty of some university for my next job, I think I'm going to have to abandon science as a career. I just can't afford to keep moving around all the time for temporary jobs with little or no benefits. I'm not sure what I would do- Seth has plenty of ideas, but most of them revolve around selling things at ren faires, and I really don't think the middle of a recession is the best time for that kind of business. I honestly don't know what else I can do with myself- it's as if I've painted myself into a corner as far as jobs go. Maybe get a teaching certificate and teach high school science, something like that. Ugh. We need for one of us to have a steady income with medical benefits because I will need psychiatric meds for the rest of my life, and it would be better if I had the job so that life insurance could come with it (since I can't purchase any in the US for myself, thanks to my psychiatric condition). So I guess I could spend a year or two getting a teaching certificate while Seth works some job, but unless it's a good job (like getting into IATSE and working on films) it's still going to be financially tight. I keep hoping and hoping to get at least a damn interview. I know I can do it, and be good at it. If only there wasn't so much competition!
That's all for now, folks. Time to rinse the facial masque off (one small luxury, though I don't know why I bother- l look older than I should, which is perhaps a consequence of too much coffee and worrying and too little exercise), and maybe get a bit of writing done before I go to bed.
1. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was actually a pretty good flick- and it came from Toronto. Repo the Genetic Opera was also a Canadian film, and also quite awesome. Ha- take that, Hollywood.
2. I might be losing weight, but it's hard to tell without a scale. I'm definitely smaller than I was five months ago, when I came to Sweden. Woo! Now if only I wasn't so damn lazy, so that I'd get my ass onto a regular schedule of some kind of workout, so I can regain my thin status. Because dieting is not going to work with Seth in this house... tasty high calorie treats get into our shopping bags far too often.
3. My mother has offered to crochet me a zombie Hello Kitty hat. Hooray! Now to decide what colour it should be.
4. Cabin in Fairbanks is rented, and soon Seth may have some kind of employment. Maybe next year will be a financially stable one for us, where I don't have to worry that we won't have enough money for basic bills, and I won't have to ask my parents for financial help. Alaska was a very expensive experience- one financial knock after another, which was partly my own damn fault for overextending myself and buying a house when Seth wasn't employed full time and my own salary didn't cover all the bills. In the long run, it may turn out to have been a good investment (if we can sell it for more than we paid, as I suspect will be the case), but I should have waited to buy anything since I (a) don't have a green card, and (b) only had a 2 year employment contract. I thought it would be possible to extend it, or find another job- nope. I shouldn't have bought that house. However, that's in the past, and I think Seth and I both learned a lesson there. We're doing a lot better when it comes to not buying stupid crap we don't need, and not going out much (though I think if we had more income, we would treat ourselves to a night out at a restaurant on a regular basis!).
5. I haven't written a thing since I moved to Tierp- I'm not sure why. I think I just need to get into the habit of spending time writing. All that crap about making time to write is very true. At this rate I'll never finish the projects I've started, which would be a shame, as I think the ideas in them are pretty fun. A big part of why I don't write is, I think, that I'm tired a lot of the time during the week (I commute for ~3 hours a day); and now that I'm enrolled in this Swedish course and I have a crapton of bioinformatics work to do in my "spare time" on weekends, I don't see me breaking off to spend half a day here and there writing, at least not often. Not unless I get disciplined about it. I guess it really boils down to: how badly do I want to write? How important is it to me? I don't have an answer to that. My work and Seth are more important to me, and I spend most of my time attending to them (and sleeping).
6. Swedish is hard. It's odd, the first lesson in the course we are taking is actually very difficult (two Swedes having a conversation in rapid Swedish), but the next lesson is the alphabet. Guess which one I'm starting with. Though it seems to me like the recording mumbles and I can't discern the letters very clearly. L and N sounded similar to me when the recorded voice was spelling out words. Either that, or I'm going deaf. I have trouble hearing stuff on TV and understanding Seth sometimes, so maybe I'm going deaf. Yay.
7. I've recently applied for three jobs in California, a job in Pittsburgh, and a job in upstate New York. I keep scouring Nature Jobs and Science Careers (two high end scientific job websites) for (permanent) faculty positions in my field, and if I find one and it isn't in the Midwest or the Deep South I apply for it. Sometimes I look at the Canadian academic job website, but that usually has nothing. I've written and rewritten my basic job application package several times, and right now it's as good as I think it is going to get. Every so often I reread it to see if I can improve it somehow. If I can't get a permanent job on the faculty of some university for my next job, I think I'm going to have to abandon science as a career. I just can't afford to keep moving around all the time for temporary jobs with little or no benefits. I'm not sure what I would do- Seth has plenty of ideas, but most of them revolve around selling things at ren faires, and I really don't think the middle of a recession is the best time for that kind of business. I honestly don't know what else I can do with myself- it's as if I've painted myself into a corner as far as jobs go. Maybe get a teaching certificate and teach high school science, something like that. Ugh. We need for one of us to have a steady income with medical benefits because I will need psychiatric meds for the rest of my life, and it would be better if I had the job so that life insurance could come with it (since I can't purchase any in the US for myself, thanks to my psychiatric condition). So I guess I could spend a year or two getting a teaching certificate while Seth works some job, but unless it's a good job (like getting into IATSE and working on films) it's still going to be financially tight. I keep hoping and hoping to get at least a damn interview. I know I can do it, and be good at it. If only there wasn't so much competition!
That's all for now, folks. Time to rinse the facial masque off (one small luxury, though I don't know why I bother- l look older than I should, which is perhaps a consequence of too much coffee and worrying and too little exercise), and maybe get a bit of writing done before I go to bed.