V for Vendetta

From Reason's Hit and Run blog I see that yet another beloved comic from my Even-Bigger-Geek-Than-Now days is about to makes its transition to the big screen.

Unfortunately, it looks like this may be another failed movie adaptation. From Wikipedia: "a film of V for Vendetta is in development, written by the Wachowski brothers and starring Natalie Portman. Again, Moore requested that his name not be associated with the film. After a press release falsely reported that Moore supported the film, Moore cut all of his ties with DC, removing the last project he had with the company, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, from their lineup."

Hopefully I am wrong, and the Matrix guys will get this one right.

Land of the Lost

This evening I emerged from the cool air-conditioning of the Hobbit Hole and into pure Dampness. The sky was grey and far-off thunder rumbled like a deep & angry complaint. I thought that this must have been what it was like when the earth was new, before the atmosphere had settled into its distinct parts, when the air was hot and heavy with water, even at ground level. It was as I imagine it was before the process of seasonal change and advent of snow and ice wiped out the dinosaurs (so used to the heat and humidity that only a handful of animals survived)- just a thick, oppressive blanket of humidity filling the lungs. A glass of water in every breath.

One of the nice things about getting older is having memories of things that sucked, yet can now be remembered fondly. I remember summers in Pittsburgh in the old house, and of all five of us sitting as still as we could, with fans in every window, lacking AC. We would sit around and drink beer, keeping the icy bottles on our stomachs, our foreheads, the backs of our necks. We'd just sit and talk and tease each other, cracking up and laughing and bitching about the heat. I almost felt sentimental towards those days.

I met with friends and we headed back towards the cool oasis of the Hobbit Hole. "Watch the head!" I warned them as we walked under the awning of the porch and into my basement apartment. As I unlocked the door, I noticed that the door window resembled a glass of ice water, with condensation dripping down the outside pane. Such was the difference between outside and in. It was glorious to walk inside and inhale the cold, cool air. What little sentimentality I had for the old days evaporated immediately.

Spent a wonderful evening in the company of two very cool blog girls. Was a stellar time with stellar people (and chocolate-chip biscotti was left at my house! It won't last the night!) I would really encourage anyone to carry your identity off-blog and to show up at any one of the Meet-Ups. I am so glad that these two women encouraged me to do so- I have really enjoyed knowing them (and others) in the real world.

I have been working for too many days straight, and am disoriented as to date and time. We stopped in today to attempt to recruit two research subjects from the trauma floors.

One patient had caused a ruckus, because two bounty hunters came storming into his private room and tried to arrest him. The NP was confused and asked me, What is going on? What is a bounty hunter? I told her, and she said that she'd been getting too much knowledge of the US criminal systems these days, with our particular target population for our study. Security was called immediately-apparently you can't arrest people who are inpatients in a hospital. A security guard stood sentry at our subject's door the remainder of the day. Silly person thought that the guard was there to protect him from the bounty hunters.

Nope. The guards were there to keep the subject from running. As soon as the discharge papers came in, said patient was arrested. The NP sighed and wondered What Next? This is a scary question, because what's next is the start of Home Visits in Very Bad Baltimore Neighborhoods. Thrilling.

On the other hand, some patients are great fun. We sat and talked today with an older (+65 years) gentleman. He looked like an Hispanic Einstein with his wild hair and long moustache. I'd tried to talk with him last night, but he'd been delirious from his pain medications. Today he was sharp. He'd fallen a long way and fractured his leg in several places. We were trying to assess whether he'd had a head injury from his fall.

I stepped forward. "Hello, Mr. X. Do you remember me? I came to talk with you last night."

He gave me a good look: "Yes."

"We were talking about what happened to you. This is Dr. NP. Can you tell her what happened?"

He described his fall from a rather tall height.

"Did you lose consciousness at all?"

"I don't know."

"Do you remember falling?"

He looked at me incrediously. "Who wouldn't??"

"So you *do* remember falling?" the NP asked.

"Well," he said, tapping his leg cast. "The evidence proves that I did!"

The NP and I laughed with him.

"No, I do remember everything. Everything. Especially this," he said, tapping his leg.

"Did you hurt fall on your head at all?" the NP asked.

"No," he said. Then he opened his mouth and strongly knocked the top of his head a few times, so that a hollow sound was emitted.

"Finally, this tough stubborn coconut of a noggin saved me. It usually gets me into trouble," he laughed.

Sadly, we couldn't recruit him. I wished we could have, though!

Only 2.5 more days to go until a few days off. Thank god thank god thank god.

Meanwhile, it's time for a little sleep!!!

Afternoon Diversion (Cheers!) 

Mountain Sunset from our Hotel Deck 

Blue Bear Art getting Installed at Convention Center 

Denver User-Friendly Art 

Slacker

Been home a few days, working, hanging out, having a lovely time. But since it's after midnight, all I'm gonna do is post a few pics of Denver. Lazy, lazy blogger.

Procrastinator...(or How I Learned to Love Kinkos)

On Round Two of traveling for the consulting job. The
Best Friend and I are happily tucked away in a downtown Denver hotel. It's a big old place, only a few minutes from the convention center. I present a poster tomorrow. I love posters- they are easy, you don't have to get in front of a big crowd. The BF is here primarily for training purposes.  I am already teaching her what NOT to do.

The abstract I sent had preliminary data. We now have updated data, with better results, so I wanted to put the new stuff on the poster. So far, so good. Except that the new data was completed only on Friday. Still not a problem. But I blew off everything on Saturday, taking a day to just do nothing. And spent all day yesterday doing data analysis on the planes to Denver, finally putting a poster together on a single powerpoint slide, with the intention of emailing it off to Kinkos

I love Kinkos. The docs I work with love to do posters this way- put it all on a nice powerpoint slide, with good color contrasts, icons, charts, etc, and send it to Kinkos. The last conference we went to, one dr. sent it to Kinkos in the conference city, and had his poster created there and hand delivered to his hotel room. No hauling around your poster, no worries.

I decided to do the same thing. But, I because I blew off working on Sat., I was sending less than 24 hours from when I needed it. I got into the hotel late last night, and sent it off, hpoping for the best. I called to confirm that they received it- they had- they said they would contact me if the had any questions.

This morning, I hadn't heard anything from the Kinkos, so I called them. They lost the file!Argh! If I had sent everything on Sat., I could have confirmed it yesterday before leaving, and would have no worries at all.Hurriedly,I resent the file about 10 minutes ago.

Thankfully, the world appears to be adjusting to better accomodate those of us who don't do things quite right. Kinkos will have my poster and handouts ready in 30 minutes. 30 minutes! Hurrah!!!

What with the internet and wireless laptops and cell phones and Kinkos, the world sure is a nice place. :)

Time to hang out and talk about Sleep. Maybe I can be a more responsible trainer for the BF (no sleeping in the meeting this time around).

Time Out!

Do you know, today we have moved into the SECOND HALF of this decade! Yesterday was the halfway mark. The party to kick off a new century doesn't seem that all that long ago, but here we are, closer to 2010 than 2000. eeeeeeek.

Blogging at 10k Ft

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind. I am on my way back to Baltimore after a very quick trip to San Jose (very quick meaning less than 24 hours long). The trip was deemed necessary only a week ago, creating the need to put together a 2-hr presentation and requiring a lot of juggling. I’ll head out to Denver for a week on Sunday. Both trips are for the consulting job, so they are also creating a backlog of work for my main job. Thankfully, the NP is in charge of my main job, & she is extremely flexible- maintaining my consulting job was part of the agreement we made when I joined her team, so it all works out. But Hay-zeus Christay, I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on.

Well, they don’t yet have internet access way up here above the clouds, although I hear rumors that it might be on the way. The current lack won’t stop me from finally getting a blog entry in, though it won’t be posted ‘til later on. Since I’m on my consulting job’s laptop, I have no Hopkins work with me (well, I did print out a project but stupidly left it on my desk), so now’s the time to just type away. It’s been feast or famine around this blog site for a while now. Time for the author to get it going.

So. What have I missed in the blogging world? Of course, the fabulous Baltimore, Hon is up and running, but that’s old news now, I suppose. Tonight is the Baltimore Bloggers Happy Hour, which I will once again have to miss, sadly, as I’m currently airborne and have a ton of domestic things to do once I’m back in [C]harm City. But, if you’re a blogger or just like to read them, do show up! It’s a lot of fun!! I will try to get to the next one.

Mostly, I’ve just missed blogging. So let’s get to it.

Flying Southwest
When I first found out I was going to California, I was just under one week away from the trip. I wasn’t sure if it would just be me, or if one of the engineers, or maybe even the Best Friend, would be coming along for the ride. I lost a critical day waiting for this determination- once the flights we within six days of booking, the prices jacked up.

Now, when it’s just me flying alone, I love Southwest. They are fast, cheap, relaxed, and occasionally even fun to fly. Their stewards and stewardesses are generally non-conformists. Once, while sitting with the NP in the very last seat on the plane, we watched a steward lead the entire plane in seated stretching exercises just before descent.

“Reach Up, Up, UP!”
“Reach Left! Good! Reach Right! Good”
“Roll your neck around!”
“Reach down! Get your head to your knees and touch the ground! Good! And while you’re down there, pick up any trash you see, we are coming around to collect it! Good!” And so the entire plane cleaned up the floor, sparing the flight attendants for the next trip out.

The NP and I-possibly the only people on the plane who didn’t engage in the exercises- looked at each other. It was brilliant psychology, we should only hope to get people to do our wishes so easily. (We’d never have Lost to Follow-up in our studies again!).

Anyway. Once it was decided that I would be the only person going to San Jose, I checked out all the usual travel websites, but none beat the prices nor good timing for available flights on Southwest.

I came across some realizations on this trip. Since I’ll be airborne for another 2.5 hours, I will share them with you.

1. If you are taking Southwest into or out of BWI, you are in luck. Southwest now has their very own brand-spankin’ new wing, Terminal A. It is all glass, it is lovely, and it has great shops. Most importantly, it has a brand new Borders Books right next to a bar. I will never gripe about having to get to the airport early again. A brand new Nicholas Sparks and a Bloody Mary will chase away any travel hassles. Yum!

2. Unlike other airlines, Southwest is not hurting for business. The first leg of my flight yesterday was to Las Vegas- the flight was almost completely full. The second leg was, of course, to San Jose, a mere 1.5 hr flight. I’d hoped that a mid-afternoon flight on a Tuesday might be a little less packed, but I was dead wrong.

3. However, there is a way to ensure that people don’t want to sit next to you: wear a stodgy black business suit. Yes, on a plane full of people going into Las Vegas, yours truly performed the unforgivable faux pas of wearing a black dress and jacket with heels (no stockings though, rebel!). All the beautiful people in their sundresses and shorts and tube tops took a horrified look at me, Ms Hair In A Bun with Laptop Open, and decided to find someone less stiff to share the flight with. The second-to-last person finally gave up looking elsewhere and sat in the aisle seat, leaving one empty place between us as I settled into my window seat. Perfect. The same thing happened on the flight to San Jose, too.

(As an aside, I was also the only person in a suit in the San Jose airport- outside of Southwest, even in the Baggage Claim and Rental Car areas. What is up with this? Granted, I did get into Cali in the early afternoon- but so what? Don’t other people have presentations and meetings after 1 pm? I just knew that my luggage would end up in a different time zone if I stashed the suit away and went with more comfortable travel attire. Am I the only paranoid traveling??)

Today, the flight to Phoenix was packed, and this final leg back to Baltimore is also full. Today I fit in a little better, wearing a jeans skirt and a tank top. Consequently, I have a lot of company in my seating row. Next time I have a six hour flight, I will don the suit and enjoy a roomy ride.

4. As you fly over the Mid-West, there are perfectly square plots of land. As you fly over the Southwest, some of the boxes have circles in them: big, large circles that are sometimes multi-colored by halves or thirds. What are they? Part of this country looks like a polka-dot dress when viewed from the sky. Odd and a little disconcerting.

5. Unrelated to flying or business trips, I did have a really cool experience last weekend. I hung out with some people from Prague, and got a real Czech meal, and had my first taste of Absinthe. Absinthe looks and tastes like green Listerine. One of these days, I will get to Prague!

Well, I still have another 1:45 hours to go, but my blog brain is done. I am out of shape and unable to seek inspiration on other blogs until this here plane touches down. Time to look out the window, work on my knitting (sock is in process), maybe have a Bloody Mary in honor of the meet up tonight.

Endings & Beginnings

So it's official: Crablogs is done. Oh, I do miss Crablogs! Thankfully, tomorrow, Blogtimore, Hon takes off, and we can all get back to our regular Baltimore Blog reading. Hurrah! Definately a beginning to look forward to.

Jumpin Jesus on a Pogo Stick

OK. So, I went into the office for a few hours today to work with the NP. It was lovely and quiet and we got a lot accomplished in only two hours.

We were getting ready to leave when she checked her email, and oh-so-causually said, "Oh, wait, do you want to stay a little longer and we can take care of this?"

I looked at the email message. Confusing. I re-read it. It was a publisher from a journal asking us to send corrections to the attached proofs ASAP.

"What proofs? What is this? Did you get an acceptance letter?" I asked.

"No. But I think this qualifies," she said with a smile. "It's for our sleep paper."

"OOOH! Lets print it out and see!" I opened the .pdf files- one was a set of proofs with only four questions, and the other was a request for reprints of the published article. The reprint flyer read, "You will get 25 free reprints, but can purchase more before your article goes to press."

I thought, They don't do that, do they? They don't send proofs, AND a request for reprints, unless they are going to publish?

I started hopping up down a little, and the NP laughed with (okay, at) me. "YAY! Finally! FINALLY!!!"

By now the NP was chuckling, "Boy, you're excited, Jenn!"

"[NP], this is my FIRST ONE! You're a pro! I'm a novice!"

"Well, it's the first of many, my friend," she smiled. (See why I love working with her?)

Holy Christe. I am so stoked. This is my analysis, my write-up for the methods & results sections, and the parts of the discussion that relate to the results. The NP takes care of the Intro and most of the discussion, and adds in the references. I have "published" many, many abstracts, and thanks to the NP, I am last author on a chapter, but this is the very first (hopefully NOT the only!) data paper PUBLISHED in a good journal. Woo-hooo!!!

I have to really enjoy this now. We have been the Chronically Rejected when it comes to manuscripts. Encouraged, today we sent emails to the publishers who have had other manuscripts for months (one since December), asking for an update. Of course, if they've had it since December- and we got a confirmation of receipt letter- and they haven't said anything, it's not good. So surely soon we will get another round of the "Thanks, but No Thanks. Don't Even THINK of Sending it Back Here. Even Revisions Can't Save This" letters. (There is one journal that we won't send anything else to for a while, because they have flat out rejected all FIVE manuscripts we've sent to them.)

This manuscript came back with a request for revisions. I guess the revisions were acceptable.

So we answered the queries and sent everything back to the publisher. We were all smiles. I am second author on this baby. Hurrah!

As we were departing to go to our separate ways, the NP said, "Jenn, three things!"

"Okay, [NP], line 'em up, " I replied with a grin.

1. You're supposed to write the next sleep paper, remember? This next one is yours. Start next week.

2. Have a great weekend!

3. It's time to get yourself into Grad School!!!"

Dang, it IS time to get my ass into grad school. But first there is a weekend to enjoy, and just a little time to savor this small victory before it's back to a new paper on Monday.

Bits and Pieces

It was a short week that didn't seem that way. Thankfully, it's a lovely, quiet, rainy Friday evening.

Lessons on Womenhood Learned: I will never, ever, EVER let myself run out of B-Complex vitamins again. I tried them out over the past six months, as they are rumored to help us chicks maintain some semblence of sanity the whole month long. Stupidly, I decided to see how things went without them, since I've finished the bottle. Now its back on the hormonally-fueled emotional rollercoaster. Never. Again. Only Naproxen, knitting, good walks with great conversations, and a whole lotta chocolate has helped. From here on in, I'll add the B-vitties and just be happy.

Anyway, all else pales to this:

This is so, so sad. He also tended bar at the Rendezvous. I could count on one hand the number of times that I've been to the Vouz in the last two years, but he was there most of those times. He seemed like a nice guy. Jesus, it's scary that this shit happens. Courtesy of eebmore, here is the write-up, complete with police contact information. If you're into prayers, good thoughts, candles, etc. please join me in getting to it, for him and for all who knew him, especially his girlfriend.