Are you kidding?

My adviser just emailed me and asked if the paper she was editing was the most recent draft. Mind you I sent the most recent draft about 2 1/2 weeks ago and was expecting it back any day now. No, no it can not be, she was reading the earlier version. The version I had corrected per her requests and sent back to her. I label all my drafts as such... .1, .2 etc. Did she lose the last one? What happened? I know she is a busy person but really she reads the current draft and saves it w/ her initials with the same number so that should have been on her computer already, making her realize this was an old draft!!! Things like this would be unexceptable if coming from me. But if it is an adviser it is ok? This stuff really bugs me sometimes. Often times I get requests, "I know you already explained this, or printed this out, or emailed me before, but can you just re-email me this phone number, info, paper citation etc." Why? Why can't you just go look up your old email?

Does anyone else's adviser habitually do this sort of thing? I know people forget things, I know people make mistakes, but why do I make revisions if you aren't even going to read them?

ok sorry for the rant, back to lab work.

sleepy day

I got up at 3 am last night to view the lunar eclipse. Of course that was just the beginning so the moon was still very bright and full. E grumbled at me. We reset the alarm for 4:50 am and then got up to see the complete eclipse. It was humid and I could see moisture rising from the earth around me but the sky was very clear. I stood there to watch the small crescent of the bright moon disappear, E went back to bed. I've always enjoyed eclipses. I can't imagine seeing something like that and not being amazed if I was an ancient person. The moon is so bright and then it is blotted out almost like magic!

As a kid my mom pulled me out of school for an afternoon so I could see a solar eclipse. We made our own cardboard viewer and went to the park. They happened to be debuting Fruitopia at that time so I got to try that for free. The only down side was somehow a reporter took a picture of me and my older sister looking at the eclipse sharing a viewer and it ended up in the paper, so much for skipping school undetected!

Random moment of the day:
I was headed out to lunch when I was bumped into by an animal care guy with a huge cart of dirty rat cages. The pungent smell of rat pee accompanied me down the elevator even after he had gotten off. I always worry, if someone is waiting to get on at a lower level, if they think the pee smell is associated w/ me. Ew. Luckily, today no one was there when it stopped. But that smell really has some sticking power, it seems to get stuck in my nostrils for hours.

Resort life

I have never had a resort vacation before. We opted for the all inclusive. Which was wonderful in that you can go to any open restaurants they have and eat whatever you want and get drinks too! But because they make so much food by the end it really gets old. It all started to taste the same the salad, bread, fruit, meat whatever and all had some sort of weird mildewy aftertaste. Even the pizza. ew. So food was fair, edible but not really great.

The beach was fabulous and you could just swim out from the sandy bottom straight to some patch reefs with lots of fish. I enjoyed that immensely and bought a fish identifier/ checklist to try and figure out what I was seeing. The staff was very courteous and they were constantly cleaning. But it is strange for me to have so much service. I also enjoyed seeing the native birds and wandering the grounds. There was a pair of pelicans I named Frank and Estelle. They came everyday and fished in the shallow water by all of us swimmers. They would glide overhead and then just dive down, 2 feet from you. I got splashed once and could see all the individual feathers and the fish as the bird swallowed.

There was also lots of Europeans at this resort so everything came in English, Spanish, French and German. There was one topless French woman we would see everyday. She would be at the beach in the morning and stay there all day. She would slather oil all over her skin, smoke and lay out all day long. It was pretty hot so after sitting in the shade for about 20 minutes I would get hot and tell E adios and go for a swim. She would only wade in up to her ankles and then go back to the sun chair. Her companion was a large man with a barrel chest and lots of thick black chest hair. He put on a wet suit, but couldn't zip it because of his massive stomach, and went snorkeling. Most of the time he sat in the shade away from his pretty lady. I saw several pairs like that. Older, larger, hairy men with younger, cuter, bikini clad or topless women. Maybe the men have wonderful personalities but it just didn't fit.

E and I swam a lot and swimming against the current gave us a good workout. All in all a great vacation and honeymoon!

Escape from Hurricane Dean

We were on our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic enjoying the beach, snorkeling, eating, drinking etc. All great until Thursday morning. I'm in the hotel room, I've been making multiple trips to the bathroom, I feel like I've been punched in the stomach and E is flipping through tv channels keeping me company. CNN is on and they are chattering away about Texas and tropical storm ERIN, blah blah, then they say ever so enthusiastically and the first hurricane of the season! Hurricane DEAN is in the Atltantic and gaining strength and headed to the Carribean. What-say that again? They show the projection path. First estimates, say it will hit the Dominican by Saturday morning. We are to fly out then. E begins calling around, can we get out earlier? Maybe but probably not. We decide to leave our resort on Friday to be sure we make it to the airport. Our resort is about 2 hours from Santo Domingo and we don't want to get stuck at the resort. As we check out and arrange rides to the airport everybody seems confused. Why do we want to leave early? We keep explaining about the storm, all the staff say, "Don't worry, it won't hit us!" European's are everywhere and still making plans for snorkel trips for Saturday. Um I don't think so....

We get to the airport and can't fly out so we stay all night there. I tell E to pretend he is on the Amazing Race. The ticket guy says, "You plan to stay at the airport?" and then just shakes his head. We do, we play cards, read, eat burger king, seats are comfy but not designed to allow laying down. The airport is very modern and nice. The cleaning crews work hard throughout the night. But it is right on the water and there are windows everywhere. By 4 am the AA airlines ticket window opens, by 6 am the Spirit airlines opens, people begin to trickle in. By 8:30 our Delta man is back to check our bags. We go and wait at the gate. The incoming plane lands and the pilot comes in, he speaks to the man at the gate, I think we need to get this plane off the ground as soon as possible. People come and buy out the first class and all available seats. A man describes driving to the airport, the huge waves crashing over the highway, boulders being pushed onto the road, a washed out bridge. I'm very glad we left the resort when we did! It has started to rain and the wind is just starting. We actual leave an hour early. I sigh with relief, good bye Santo Domingo! We fly to ATL and then Chicago. We stay overnight with his grandma there and she has a bottle of good Oregon pinot gris open for us. In all E says were up for about 40 hours (minus a couple small cat naps 15 minutes at a time). We drove home, finally we are home. I feel so much better and it is just the best feeling to be home. I enjoy traveling and seeing new places but it always nice to return to home.