transposable_element

 Yeah, I can't believe it, either....

Preparations for a weeknight dinner celebration (translation: not too much booze) are underway. 

So, I missed the email that said that I have to get some burlap or brown cloth to complete the tule (yes, tule, not tulle) skirt that Filia made for "simulation day" at her school (they are simulating a day in the life of the Ohlone Indians). They have been researching the Ohlone for a couple of months. Her school has simulations every year, different ones for each grade. Last year she had Old Palo Alto (circa 1900); next year will be Colonial America; the year after that will be Goldrush.

Simulation is on Friday, so I have plenty of time, but I'm confused about exactly what I'm supposed to do to the skirt. The burlap is just to make it modest, since the Ohlone didn't cover the same parts of their bodies that we do. She's going to have a tattoo painted on her, but luckily not by me.


Meanwhile, I'm feeling pretty blue the last few days, for no obvious reason. Things that might cheer me up include:

good news
gratuitous praise
cute, whimsical, or beautiful images
silly jokes


There are a pair of Hooded Orioles nesting in the palm tree in our front yard. I see them more often in back of the house, because that's where the big windows are. I don't know if they're still building their nest and are in our back yard for nesting materials, or if they're finding food here. I haven't been able to get any pictures of them, but the male is a bright yellow-orange while the female is drabber, but still very pretty.

 Filia (aged 9): "I had a pastry and lemon-rose tea for a snack. I'm obsessed with lemon-rose tea."

I was planning to write a trip report about my recent visit to Maui, complete with thoughts about island ecosystems, the tourist economy, and birds. (Summary: To see any endemic birds or plants in Hawaii you have to deliberately go looking for them because nearly all of them have been wiped out and/or are endangered; also, the tourist industry's exploitation and caricaturization of native Hawaiian culture is appalling; on the other hand, it's an astonishingly beautiful and varied place, especially if you can get to some of the more remote areas; but it's kind of wasted on someone who sunburns as easily as I do.)

I was planning to write about my conflicts with my mother-in-law, who was with us during the trip. (Summary: I'm an introvert, she's an extravert. Oy.)

I was planning to write about some of the fanfic WIPs I'm ready to get back to now that I'm essentially finished with my thesis. (Summary: There are several, and I'm stuck on all of them in one way or another; they are all basically world-building and/or character projects, and I'm running into problems coming up with plots; I wish I was better at plot.)

I was planning to write about all of the books I've been reading now that I have more time. (Summary: I'm catching up on the most recent books in several fantasy series, which often requires me to go back and reread the earlier volumes because I can't remember crucial details; plus I am backlogged on several of my favorite authors, which is nice because it means I have many things to read that I've been looking forward to forever.)

I was planning to write about Filia throwing up at our friends' Passover Seder last Friday, less than 24 hours before we were due to fly to Hawaii. (Summary: She threw up multiple times that evening and once during the night -- in my bed, not her own, clever girl! -- but felt much better the next morning; we managed to get on the plane on time after taking her to a doctor and ruling out appendicitis; she was completely healthy during the trip but when we got back we discovered she has head lice again, though luckily Maritus and I seem to have escaped them this time.)

I was planning to write about all the neglected chores I need to get to now that I have the time. (Summary: My office, our bedroom closet, and the garage all need significant overhaul; I also have to do some work with Filia on her room to get it back into a state she can manage on her own; we have a number of maintenance issues that have been dragging on for way too long; right now I'm still working on the delousing protocol, which involves clothes, bedding, furniture, car, etc.)

And I was planning to apologize for getting behind on reading/responding to many things here and on AO3. (Summary: I'm sorry.)

However, I'm not sure that anybody actually wants to read about any of this, so I thought I'd summarize and move on. (Summary: See above, although I'm sure I've forgotten something.)

I just sent my thesis to my committee. The die is cast.

Here's my all time favorite April Fool (warning: there's audio). It's so inspirational.

ETA: I was very careful about the formatting of my bibliography.

Today's Google doodle celebrates the 133rd birthday of Emmy Noether. I had never heard of her until a few years ago (not a math/physics person), but since then I keep seeing discussions of her and her work, so maybe she is starting to be better known outside the fields in which she worked. According to my in-house source, one of the remarkable things about her is that she is known for different work in physics and math; in other words, she made a key contribution to modern physics and also completely unrelated key contributions to mathematics.

I am pleased to say that Maritus, who has a physics background, was one of the people the artist consulted with while designing the doodle.

Okay, it's not quite champagne time, but I just sent the last piece of a complete first draft of my thesis to my advisor!

Still a lot of work to do, but now it's all editing and clean up (unless my advisor asks for any additions or expansions, which I don't think she will).

ETA: Apparently it's champagne time, after all. Maritus bought a bottle while he was out shopping for dinner.

Ha! I just realized that I can take a couple of paragraphs out of a research paper I wrote nearly two years ago and use them in my thesis with only a little condensing/rewriting!

[Note: Edited to fix broken links.]

The Three sentence ficathon is over. That means no more new prompts, although rthstewart has kindly left the thread open so we can keep filling the prompts that are still languishing. Thank you again for hosting!

Here are the new fills for my own prompts:

For my prompt Star Trek: TOS, the Horta, beauty,
archersangel explored one of my all-time favorite Star Trek moments, Spock's mind-meld with the Horta.

And for Howling Commandos/Narnia (rthverse), Peter, the unit could use a few Narnians, syrena_of_the_lake wrote of Peter adapting to the limitations of working with humans.

edenfalling gave me fills for two Oz-related prompts: For Oz books/Narnia, any, flying monkeys, Lucy and Susan express their differing approaches to adventures in Nasty, Disturbing, Uncomfortable Things. For Oz books, Glinda, not such a good witch after all, Glinda is very bad indeed in Usurpation.

Thank you all!

I've also written a few more fills.

I wrote a contribution to a series of fills written in response to my own prompt, Narnia, any, Marsh-wiggle courtship. I've added that one and three other fills to my Narnia collection.

And I've added a fill for Greek Mythology, Hades/ or & Persephone, Lethe to my collection of Greek Mythology fills, here.

And finally, here's a fill called A Very Small Animal for the prompt Weasel / Woodpecker, fly me to the moon, because the apposite episode from Winnie-the-Pooh was literally the first thing that occurred to me when I saw this photograph.

And that's... well, not quite a wrap because in my copious free time I may go back through and see if there are any more unfilled prompts I want to tackle. But that's all for now, at least.

I decided to post about this because I feel like I need some motivation to get it done.

So far:

I have a clean final draft of three sections: introduction, literature review, and methods. This afternoon I made what I think is a very pretty figure on inverse PCR for the methods section, and I need to go look up some primer sequences so I can add them, too, but that ought to be just cut and paste.

I'm about to start my second round of edits on the results section, but I still have a chunk (about 20% of the total) still to write.

The discussion section is outlined.

The bibliography is done (thanks, Refworks!), except that I will need to go through it and take out any references that I haven't actually cited.

I'm planning to write the abstract when I'm done with everything else. Oh, and I need to come up with a title. And then I need to go through and look for semicolons, because apparently one of the people in the graduate studies office who will have to sign off on the thesis hates them. I hope s/he understands that semicolons are used in genotype notation for Drosophila.

My goal is to finish the results section and complete a first draft of the discussion by March 15. That's really the hump; after that it's just editing, and my advisor is pretty quick with that. The whole thing is supposed to be submitted by April 1, an ominous date.