Something Sweet

Hello Baby,

I was sitting through a boring talk at the end of the day at the conference when you decided it was time that we eat. You informed me of your wishes with insistent rigorous punches and kicks to my various internal organs. So we cut out early and headed out for some salad, pizza and laughs with Mr. Dave and Ms. Fonda, old friends from your momma's grad school days. You are going to have to learn baby, that everyone here is Ms. This and Mr. That. It is just polite, down here in the South.

I don't know what kind of growth spurt you are on, but suddenly while walking alone on the way back to the B and B after dinner, I needed something sweet and I needed it NOW.

Two blocks later, I came across an Argentinian cafe and went in, waltzed right up to the back counter, and asked for something sweet and yummy for desert. I think the owner recognized my demand for what it was- pregnancy craving- because not two minutes later a clearly oversized piece of Tres Leche cake showed up at my table.

I ate it all, and I don't even like cake.

It hit my singing sweet tooth. Or maybe that was your sweet tooth, but I don't think you have teeth yet.

The owner came out after to ask me about you, and to tell me about his four children and four grand children. Judging form his stories and the giant size of that piece of cake, he knows all about pregnant ladies.

Your Momma.

Books and their Covers

This story of judging books by their covers comes in two parts that happened at a conference I was attending this week. 

This morning, I gave a talk at the conference. I was excited to present some work one of my first graduate students has been doing, because I knew if the audience was right, his results would make a bit of a splash. 

But it all started off on the wrong foot. As I got up to talk, I was introduced by the moderator of the session (another professor) as a student in Professor Male Student's laboratory at Vanderbilt.  

It annoys me when I get mistaken for a student (at least it wasn't an undergrad this time) but today it was especially grating because I am trying to meet and impress my new American scientific community and peers. This is important stuff since these are the folks that will invite me for talks and review my papers and grant proposals. 

I usually chalk it up to looking young– time will fix that– but at five months pregnant and seriously round, my cynical side wonders if there isn't an underlying biased expectation that serious science professors are male and females only make it as far as graduate school.

I felt like a bit of a twit doing it, but I corrected the moderator in front of the crowd and went on with my talk. (And just so you know, the talk went very well and I think I did make a splash that will have ripples as far away as Uppsala, Sweden)

But then something else happened that made me put this all in perspective. 

At a break not a half hour later, I was waiting in a Starbucks line with my Post doc. This big guy in front of us saw our name tags asked us where we were from and I said Nashville. 

My post doc piped in and proudly added "I'm originally from Puerto Rico."

Then this jerk said "Oh wait just here, I have to make sure that my hub caps are still on my car, " laughed and tapped my post doc on his shoulder. 

My post doc just blinked once and kept smiling. I was horrified. 

The guy continued talking and my post doc just smiled politely up at his stupid ugly face and inane story. 

The moment passed and I just stood there with my arms crossed- very passive aggressive. How LAME! That was the best I could do? I regret I didn't say something to this twit, but well-timed poignant quips only happen in movies. 

How DARE he insult my intelligent, hard working, PhD toting post doc and imply he should be ashamed of where he is from! 

When the twit finally turned his back, in hushed tones I asked my post doc if this happens often and he just shrugged it off. I asked if he wanted to leave the line, and he shook his head no. To boot, I discovered he didn't even want a coffee and was just waiting in line with me. 

After getting my decaf coffee and on the way back to the session I told him that "we NEVER need to spend time around a DICK like that just so I can get a coffee." 

I just can't stop thinking about it. It is one thing to accidentally expose unconscious biases by being a young female prof, it is completely another for someone to flat out tell a racist joke to one's face, insulting your identity and expect you to laugh. 

They have my Fingerprints beacsue the DMV guy messed up. Welome to Ameruka.

For the last couple of weeks I kept calling the courthouse between the hours of 12:30 and 3 pm and I kept getting the brush off that my Citation had not been processed yet. I called on Monday and they said it had been processed and that I MUST come in by the 14th- like Wednesday. Too bad for me that I have two grants due, two classes to teach and a flight to a conference between Monday afternoon and Wednesday!

Anyway, I got up really early and was at the court house by 7 am this morning when it opened. By about 8:15 I had mug shots, fingerprints the whole bit and then was sent directly to the court room. By the time things got started at 9, there had to have been 500 people in the court room all waiting to be processed through. All the benches were full and even the back and sides were packed with standing people. I waited until about 10 am on the hardest benches you could possibly imagine. They were punishment enough!

I think today was translator day as there was a VAST majority of spanish speakers in there and none spoke English too well. I could hear the translator working hard on the other side of the room.

My Lawyer -great man to do this on such short notice- zipped over from attending court in another county and found me in the crowd. He took my paperwork and two drivers licenses, went and had a chat with the DA and clerks and about 20 minutes later I was out of there. Charges dropped.

He is filing the paperwork petition the court to have it all expunged from my record this afternoon and that will take 2-3 months to get processed.

He also thinks I should complain to the uppers at Vanderbilt Police and thinks the guy shouldn't have bothered giving me a ticket. The whole thing was a waste of my time and the court's time. Maybe next week when I get back from the conference I'll go over and speak to the supervisor.

All in all: two trips to the court house and one to the DMV, a lot of wasted time, 150$ for the Lawyer, mug shots, humiliation, a few tears, a lot of stress, a bevy of Chicken hugs and several large bowls of ice cream.

Law and Order takes a Commerical Break.

So I  went to the court house. Met my lawyer. He handed in my Citation and I waited with all the other sheep to be booked. I could hear the conversations around me and it was clear that no one EVER did anything that was their fault.

Anyway, they wouldn't book me because the cop hadn't handed in my citation yet, even though he had distinctly told me to go downtown on Monday. Lawyer said, "come with me" and took me to the court room. While I waited at the back, he went and had a tete a tete with the DA with my warrent and two driver's licenses in hand.

While I was waiting, the security guard in awe asked "Is that your attorney?" When I nodded in the affirmative he said "You know he is one of the top ten attorneys in Nashville." Yahoo! Apparently my google-fu worked out.

Long story short: I have to wait until next week for the cop to file the citation and for it to be put in the system. However, at that time, the DA said she would drop the charges with no court fees.

So it isn't over yet, but I feel a lot better about it all.

How do I get myself into these messes?

As I was leaving campus to go and have dinner with today's seminar speaker, I got pulled over for not having my headlights on. The cop told me he was going to give me a warning as long as I had no other ticket history on my driver's license. And that was when it really went down hill.

It turns out, that when I dutifully went to the DMV this summer to have my license renewed, the DMV guy didn't change the expiry date from my old license. He essentially gave me a three week driver's license and told me to my face I was good for a year.

So tonight when the cop called in my license it came back expired. My warning for no headlights has turned into a misdemeanor driving-without-a-license charge, complete with mug shot, finger prints and court date.

To add insult to injury, this took so long to work out and I was sitting in my car with the headlights and blinker on, the battery on the car died.

James had to come pick me up and we had to leave my car in the parking garage. I held it together for another 15 or so minutes and then burst into sobs on his shoulder in a parking lot.

Did I mention that I am 5 months pregnant too? A pregnant mug shot just makes me feel that much worse.

Notice anything funny about the expiry and issue dates?  I didn't. That is, until the cop pointed it out.

Chemist and Art Speculator

My favorite website of late is an online auction site that liquidates the surplus equipment of companies around the world including transportation companies, high tech companies, manufacturers and several large pharma companies in the US. I frequent the bio-pharma auction, where all sorts of random stuff comes up like two dozen rotovaps, scads of analytical balances, glassware and my personal favorite that I have seen: "lot of 6, Primate restraining chairs"

In some ways it is creepy since you know that this equipment is from research programs that have been shut down and likely chemists layed off. I feel like I am buying at the estate sale of people's careers. All the same, I have to run my program on a fixed budget and I have gotten some sweet deals on lab equipment like vacuum pumps, manometers and circulators.

So the other day for a laugh I checked out what was in the auction for the HP office in Dallas. Amongst hundreds and hundreds of laptops and scads of fancy office furniture I came across something odd for this website: a painting. Not at print, but a real painting. It probably would have hung in one of the offices with the fancy furniture.

It was a really nice and large painting of a cowboy scene in Texas. Not exactly my taste, but clearly the artist was talented. And no one would ever go to this website looking for art. A centrifuge or even a front end loader, perhaps but not art. So there was a really good chance I could buy this painting for the reserve price.

The auction had been open for a few days and no one had bid yet, and the reserve was set at 1500. Eeek. Kinda pricy for new home owners.

But for kicks, I looked the artist up and found a gallery selling his work online. And I was shocked to find out that paintings of that size were going for 7500-10000 dollars.  Holy schmoly!

So I asked around, got some advice from a friend of my brother who buys art for a living. She suggested that I check art auction sites to make sure his "used" paintings were selling and for what price. Sure enough, two of his paintings had sold at auction for 4 and 7 k since January.

This is AWESOME. I could make some serious dough!

By this time, the online auction had been open for near a week and no one had bid. Only one day was left .

It was nerve wracking. Do I do this? Can I really justify 1500 on a painting I only kinda like? (Then would have to pay for shipping and buyers premium- so more like 2 grand). But think of the possible sale price! And equally important for me, the story I could tell!

So with permission from the Chicken and 1 hour to go, I bid. 1500.

Then silence.

Waiting.

Checking Email.

Waiting.

Eating Apple.

Waiting.


With 10 minutes to go, I hear a ding from my email. Someone has out bid me! At 1525!

I can totally go a little higher for ta 4-7k paining, so I go up to 1550.

And wait.

Bite nails.

And wait.

The clock is ticking down.

And with 30 seconds to spare, the dude out bids me at 1600.
Obviously, this guy is a newbie with the "last moment bid" trick since this site automatically adds on 10 minutes if you bid in the last three minutes.

Anyway, the bidding war starts, and we go back and forth a couple of times.  But I set myself a limit that was appropriate for a new home owner and a painting that I only liked.

So when my competition started going up in hundreds, I opted out at 1900.

Nice try, No cigar for this cowgirl.

But that other guy got a real deal. I hope he loves it rather than just like it, like I did.

Never Dare a Dutchman

Since my home life is simple these days, and my work life not appropriate for a blog, I have decided to put some of my old favorite stories to the page. I promise they are all true and only slightly tall after many tellings. It is appropriate then that I start with a fish story, which like all fish tales involves a fish that got away. But this fish was peculiar in that it was in the middle of Southern Ontario farming country outside the supermarket.

Still living in the small town where my mom grew up is an old friend of my mother's who immigrated to Canada from Holland many years ago. I have known Renske and her husband Lawrence my whole life and spent happy times on their farm milking cows, playing with their son and daughter, and snowmobiling through the fields.

When I was about 20, their similarly aged nephew Gerben was visiting from Holland who I had only met once a few years prior. Since that time, Gerben had sprouted into a tall lanky fellow who towered over us all. He seemed normal and nice enough, but clearly keen for adventure as he was touring Canada alone.

Gerben asked me to drive him to get flowers for his aunt and uncle. It happened to be the 25th wedding anniversary of Renske and Lawrence and we were getting together for one of our big two-family dinners, where there is heaps of food and heaps of laughter but never enough time.

I hopped in our k-car, Gerben folded himself into the passenger seat and we headed to the Zhers supermarket, which I had recalled had a passable floral department.

On this particularly sunny day at the supermarket, there was a foam mascot tuna by the front door, hawking his wares, waving his stubby fins at the entering shoppers and turning back and forth awkwardly with his whole body as people in mascot costumes tend to do. This was keenly true for The Tuna who's feet were constrained inside a narrow fake foam tail fin. Close by, his keeper passed out coupons and made sure The Tuna stayed upright.

I waved to the tuna imagining it being a local teen trying to make a few bucks, and then passed through the sliding doors with Gerben inside.

On the way out, with Gerben now wielding a giant bouquet, we passed The Tuna and his diligent keeper again. To this day, I don't know what prompted me to say it, and especially to a near stranger, but halfway to the car, I jokingly suggested with these fateful words:

 "Dare you to tackle the tuna."

Gerben looked at me,
looked at The Tuna,
looked at me,
cocked an eyebrow,
pressed the bouquet into my arms
and promptly started running full tilt in his lanky way towards The Tuna.

The Tuna must have noticed Gerben and thinking there would be some fun, bent slightly forward in a menacing manner and started running – or rather shuffling as fast as his tail fin would let him towards Gerben in response.

The two came to a screeching halt in the parking lot within three feet of each other and stared each other down like gladiators: The Tuna with the glassy eyed look of death and Gerben bent forward ready for attack.

I'm sure the Tuna thought this would be the end of it, but no. Our Dutchman had other plans.

Gerben hoisted the shocked Tuna up and over onto his lofty shoulder and started spinning.

The Tuna's keeper and myself, bouquet in arms, watched with mouths agape not knowing what to do  as the fish madly slapped Gerben on the back with his short feeble fins.

Gerben finally relinquished his hold on The Tuna and set him back on his feet where he waved dizzily for a few seconds before his keeper ran up with a steadying arm.

Gerben simply turned and sauntered back to me, grabbed the flowers out of my arms and simply said:

"Never dare a Dutchman"

It finally happened

I knew it was going to happen at some point. I just didn't expect it to be on the shuttle from the depths of the economy parking lot to the airport terminal.

I met my first country star.

And since I don't listen to country, If I've heard of a band, they must be pretty big.

Mike was on his way to Portland to play a show and after a few minutes of chatting about being a musician in Nashville and if his kids played instruments yet (They won't really want to until they are teenagers and they realize that they can get chicks), I asked him if he was a session musician or played with the same band all the time.

"The same band," he said and added that the band was called Lone Star.

"Hey, that's great!" I replied. "I know nothing about country and I have totally heard of you guys."

Apparently, this was the correct un-awkward response when meeting country stars because he still continued to chat with me up about the unexpected stature of the best song writer in town, his favorite restaurant in my new neighborhood (root beer on tap!) and my research at Vandy.

Oh and he thought it was pretty funny that Shania Twain is stealing away my parent's mechanic.

Conference Notes

This week I attended my first scientific conference as an assistant professor. Being from the academic linage of Canada and Israel, it was my first foray into the US scene and as a result, I didn't know a single person – except  I did run  into someone I had done my undergrad with and hadn't seen in a ten years (How depressing. I can now measure my life in decades!).

ON the first morning I started I randomly introducing myself to people, including another brand new professor. We politely asked each other how things were going with teaching and setting up the lab. She decided to trump everything I said. I had one grant submitted, she had four. I just had my two grad students start, she already had three that were doing productive research. It made me feel slightly panicky. Thankfully, the talks started so I could escape this painful conversation. I sat down, calmed down, and got absorbed into a fantastic lecture by a Big Cheese.

You know how they say there is no such thing as a dumb question? Well, I asked a question early in the first morning to one of the speakers. Although the overal question was valid, I made a fundamental chemistry error and the speaker corrected me in front of 200 people: people that will review my papers, grants and eventually my tenure package. (Stupid resonance structures of amides. If it isn't sp3 hybridized, why draw it that way?!)

So the morning did not get off to the best start.

A little embarrassed, shaken and intimidated, I escaped to the bathroom at the coffee break. The loo was easy to spot; there was a large snaking line heading out of the men's, but I sailed right past into the ladies' next door. I finally discovered one of the few advantages to being in a completely male-dominated profession! Once alone and feeling a little defeated, I took a deep breath, rolled my shoulders back and decided there was nothing to do but pull my pants up (literally), roll my shoulders back and soldier on.

At the sink, another professor smiled at me in the mirror and said "That was a great point you made after the talk. The guy beside me was in that lab and he said it was really important even though his boss hadn't mentioned it." Well frick! Turns out no one cared about my mistake.

That evening at the poster session/mixer, I presented my post doc work on a big 3' x4' poster in a room crowded with 60 other posters and mingling folks using up their drink tickets. To people that stopped by and asked questions, l told them about my previous research and mentioned what tack my own nascent research group was going to go. I expected people to poo-poo the poster since it since my nano-star-of-David paper is already a shocking year and a half old and I thought it was old news.

Nope. I had a crowd at my poster the whole session. I had to talk until my voice became hoarse and started to give out. People were genuinely intrigued. I was delighted. 

The only bummer was when one dude decided to elbow his way through my fans, and without really grasping the bigger picture of my research, informed me that my idea was a waste of time. It took me a while to figure out what he was saying, as I sometimes have a difficult time with Chinese accents, but with the slurring drunkenness on top of that, it was near impossible. No amount of explaining that the idea and the research was only half complete world convince him that there was merit in it. Finally I gave up and with a self congratulating smirk he waved his drink at my poster and quipped "nice try" and weaved off through the crowd.

I spent the weekend meeting people, chatting science but more often chatting lamely about the climate in our respective cities. I had breakfast with an animated  and amusing older professor who introduced himself as Bob. It wasn't until later that I realized what his last name was and it turns out "Bob" literally wrote the textbook on inorganic chemistry and is rumored to be shortlisted for a Nobel. 

I hobbed with the nobs. I hobbed with the peons. I hobbed with whomever had the fortune or misfortune of sitting next to me.

But you know? I wasn't the only one looking a little lonely and uncomfortable. Like me, some of those folks were relieved just to have someone to chat to instead of standing awkwardly in the corner at the coffee break, self-consciously nibbling on a brownie.

In general, the folks I met were pretty nice regardless of their position on the scientific echelon.  One must always remember, that even the most renowned scientist is still just a regular guy when he goes to the grocery store. And the more experienced were more than happy to dole out advice to a new assistant professor.

It may seem a little cold hearted to shamelessly hob-nob, but this is a big part of how I need to succeed. The advice I am getting from my advisory committee is that I need to get my name out there and meet people in order to have my grant applications get more than a cursory glance. Folks are much more comfortable recommending to giving out a 750k grant to someone they have actually met.