In which I burst forth fully formed

We've been doing a lot of thinking about The Future around here. Not just the part about robot nurses and solar power, but the more mundane family stuff. Do we stay? Do we go? Where? How long? How much will I be paid? What am I doing with my life, anyway?

I'm pretty sure I'll do a residency program, though I'm not sure where or in what. I had always thought I would do a "pure" residency - no research associated with it - which would be (relatively) faster and then I'd get to the part where I get paid (better) faster. I recently went through a spastic episode where I realized if I did that, I'd be looking for a job but not have any grants to my name. And don't (academic) employers want to see some money? Do I have to do a research-residency so I have some time to write grants? Am I going to be a student forever?

After weeks of speculation, I finally actually talked to someone who knows something. And also told me to interview there, which was nice. He said a research residency was ridiculous. It's called a start up package and time to get some money. And that I'd be competitive with 3 first-author publications. If I actually get my act together and get my papers out (any day now, I promise), I should have 6. Go me - I will burst onto the (employment) scene fully formed in a mere 5 years! I will only be 34 years old!

Someday . . .

Someday soon I'm going to have to move out of my office and find somewhere to store an entire bookshelf worth of books. Yikes.

Then, after that, I'll move into an office somewhere else. Someday. And I will want a bookshelf like this:

Spoon sucking good

Huxley has passed from "food is a fine excuse to sit with everyone at the table, but, whatever" to "OMG MORE APPLESAUCE (and sweet potato)". Go Huxley. We've also set up the crib in Turing's room and they will start sleeping "together" and, well, they're all grown up.

It is going better than I thought. Sure, it took 2 hours to get them both to sleep the first night, but then it was 30 minutes, and now just about 15 . . . Good thing they like each other so far. I'm back on my bending-over-the-crib yoga plan. Not as good as real yoga. But I also get to hear Turing talk to himself as he falls asleep. It isn't all about chocolate milk - he tried out the ABC song today.

It has been above freezing for two whole days in a row so we promptly ran off to the zoo. It turns out everyone had the same idea and the parking lot was half full. Turing is all grown up and has enough stamina to walk/jog/run the entire time. Just last summer I'd have to carry him back to the car.

Huxley continues to be giant and ahead of Turing. I hauled out Turing's cloths from last winter to get through the last bit of the cold. They're a bit big (18 month old size on a 6 month old), but they're not that big; about one foot-length too long in the footie pajamas. It looks like we're actually going to have to buy him some summer cloths . . . the first thing he'll get that is his own. He even had to use Turing's car seats.

Click, click, click

Two weeks ago, I wrote a little program in one of the statistical packages to randomly sample from a posterior distribution and randomly draw groups from a population and spit out some group level statistics and do some other stuff. It only takes 20 minutes to run where Trouble's equivalent program written for me would take a couple of seconds . . . but, whatever, I'm a free woman, now; I can do it myself. And whenever I need it.

I had blocked off an entire week for this task because it would have taken me a week a few years ago. I got it done in an afternoon. It's like I've learned something, at some point.