When I heard about the new airbus...

this was the first question that came to my mind:

Singapore Airlines: They'll take you there, but they won't let you come.

A boy tries skimboarding, part II

And stay tuned for still photos, also!

Cary Tennis is back!

Oh Cary Tennis, how could I have ever replaced you? Here he is writing about Halloween:

For just one night we let go of our precious, obsessional hold. We let go of the ringing cash register and the heavy, silent till.

A boy tries skimboarding

Tough week

It's been a tough week of cold surfaces and hard edges. Of bleak futures colored in grays and browns, and satisfaction found only in little droplets of blue, every now and then. True satisfaction is nowhere. The possibilities are passionless. Nothing matters.

I am eating too much, and I can feel the fat congealing around my middle. The food fills my belly but not my soul.

I had a job interview which I think went well. It's work I could do and do well, but do I want to? But if I don't do it, what would I do? How can I move forward in a way that will make me happy, when happiness is nowhere? It seems foolish to choose a possible future when all are equally palatable, but none are what I want to do. How to choose between mediocre choices?

Move over Cary Tennis, my new love is The Manolo

Sadly, Cary Tennis has just not been doing it for me this week. Where is the lyricism? Where is the poetry? The Manolo is my new go-to guy that's been picking me up. When you can't get what's good for your soul, at least you can get what's good (well, pretty) for your sole. My latest Manolo favories are this image, these shoes, and this column with the following quote:

“Oh, this tattoo of copulating unicorns? I got it when I spent the summer after law school working as a carny.”

Worry and distraction

We had a nice weekend in Santa Cruz to celebrate my last 30s birthday. By we I mean me and the hubby. My parents flew up to watch the kids for us, but now I'm terribly distracted from working on my job talk as they flew back into the fires of SoCal, and will possibly get evacuated. My sister is also near a different fire and is close to voluntary evacuations. I thank God that it rained here all last week, but worry about the SoCal people.

More Agressive Undergarments

Who knew women's undergarments could be so powerful? From Broadsheet:

For all the United Nations' diplomatic deliberation during the regime's violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, it just never considered sending panties to Burmese embassies. Oh, but the Panties for Peace campaign has -- that's exactly what they're urging women the world over to do.

There is some logic to this underwear offensive -- apparently junta members believe that women's panties (regardless of whether they are clean or dirty) will leech them of their power. "Not only are they brutal, but they are also very superstitious," Jackie Pollack, a member of the Lanna Action for Burma Committee, told the Guardian Unlimited. "Condemnation by the United Nations and governments around the world have had no impact on the Burmese regime. This is a way of trying to reach them where they will feel it."

Agressive countermeasures

From today's Broadsheet:

But I can't help yearning for a more aggressive solution like the the Security Bra, a garment "capable of returning the male gaze and electronically defining one's personal space" by setting off its own alarms.

What I'm doing instead of working on a job talk

I'm at home with a sick boy supposedly working on a job talk. The net result is I have a quote of the day, from a CNN.com article on a Maine middle school handing out contraceptives:

After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11.

The part I like is where they talk about being pregnant as if it were an illness, like chicken pox or measles - after an outbreak of measles among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make vaccinations mandatory before reentering school (I seem to remember reading something about this also in a New England town last year, although I can't remember if it was measles or whooping cough. What is it about New England?).

We are what we remember

I found this article at CNN.com (which lists occasional articles from Time magazine). The article made me cry (partly hormonal, yes, but it would have made me sad at any time). It highlights how ephemeral memory is, how chemically malleable and chemically based. It's also a well-told story, and I don't want to ruin the punchline any further, but I highly recommend reading it.

UPDATE: I got into a discussion with the hubby about what conclusions I draw from this article, where the upshot is that I'm kind of nuts (okay, I view the world in a very different way than he does). Here's what I draw from the article:

1. I start with the opinion that, for the most part, a lot of what makes a person an individual person is the sum of their memories. Memories and our interpretations of them often govern what actions we take and how we react to different situations. You can also call this experience.

2. From the article, we can see clearly that memories are highly malleable and manipulable by outside agencies, especially by chemicals. From experience, I would add that memories and interpretations of actions can also be affected by internal emotional states and also physiological states (injuries and illness clearly alter internal biochemistry).

3. Given 1 and 2, experiences and memories are subjective in such a way that is often unverifiable (given that external verification is often dependent on other people whose own memories are also subjective). This brings me to the very buddhist conclusion that everything may be (or is) an illusion.

4. Finally (and here's the part where I'm nuts), given that everything is an illusion, my ultimate conclusion (which is what I just told the hubby, and not the intervening thought processes) is that everything is meaningless. Which I don't always mean in a hopeless, despair-y kind of way, or in a there-is-no-cause-and-effect kind of way, or finally in a nothing-is-valid kind of way, just in a there-is-no-larger-story-arc, no-underlying-meaning-to-it-all kind of way. Again, in a very buddhist way of thinking - the only thing you can know is true is the moment you are in. And then it's gone and you are in the next moment.

Discuss.

Being a mother and a scientist

I'm very excited about the upcoming book on being a mother and a scientist - a collection of essays by scientists (including me) who are also mothers on the different ways they manage to do both. It's slated to come out in the spring of 2008, and they are currently looking for images for the cover. Here are the ones I submitted:

Often when I bring the girls into lab with me, they draw little pictures and tape them up everywhere. This is really fun as I sometimes don't notice them until the next day. This flower is one example of a drawing I found after their visit.



It's impossible to remove those aspect of me that are a Mom, the skills that I've learned mothering, from my other non-Mom interactions and it's impossible to remove the scientist in me from the non-scientist interactions. This is why I feel that this photo embodies what it is to be a scientist and a mother - a lot of being a scientist is a curiosity about the world, and here I am sharing that curiosity with one of my children.

Daring to go with Dangerous

I'm excited to see that a version of The Dangerous Book for Boys targeted towards girls, The Daring Book for Girls, will soon be available, and has at least one good review (I haven't looked for any others). I know targeting towards a particular gender is basically a marketing ploy that preys upon a societal emphasis on gender roles (good, bad or whatever), but it's nice to see that the girl version doesn't sound like it's all fashion dolls and home-making related activities.

Poem of the day, little girl style

I love you Mom I love you Mom
I love you Maya I <3 u
I love you Paco I <3 u
I love you Papa I <3 u
I love you cats
I love love cats
I love you bats
I love you Mom

(Note who gets the "most I love you"s (not that anyone's counting or anything))

I was home sick yesterday (really)

The kids needed rainboots. Honest.
(Please note how nicely they match my nailpolish! And only $7 at Payless! I couldn't afford NOT to buy them. Also, I didn't realize my feet were so veiny - ew.)

It's all about perspective and taking a step back

CNN.com has an article on job stress leading to health problems that I really enjoyed and wanted to share. What I found particularly helpful (and, yes, obvious but that doesn't make it any less valid or important to read every so often (or frequently) for those of us who are memory challenged and often live in the heart of the flame) is the advice on how to deal with difficult bosses and coworkers.

Elizabeth Cohen: In addition to being authors, you're consultants -- people come to you when they're stressed out about work. What's usually bothering them?

Katherine Crowley: Bosses!

Cohen: OK, so let me throw a few stressful bosses at you. Let's say a client tells you, "My boss doesn't appreciate me."

Kathi Elster: You have to detach and depersonalize. You're not going to turn this person into a caring, loving boss. You have to accept you're not going to change this person.

Crowley: That's right -- the stress comes from expecting something you can't get. If you need appreciation and acknowledgment -- which everyone does -- we suggest you find another way. Get colleagues to band together and acknowledge each other. Find other ways within the company to get this appreciation.

Cohen: Here's another one: How about the boss that explodes -- she just yells and screams.

Elster: This is where people take a lot of medication! You have to detach and depersonalize again. Accept that it's not about you, and watch them scream. Act a little bored. You have to see it as the other person's problem.

Note of the day

We need HELP! MOM!

What more is there to say?

Sidewalk ephemera

One of the cliches about kids is how close they are to their emotions, how on the surface everything is. And you know what - there is a reason for the cliches. I give you "Devotion, Little Girl Style":




You I love, tree! (Please note the inspiration for the chalk drawing in the first photograph - a calamansi tree (type of citrus). We love to drink the juice from the little fruits, which, I think, is the source of the devotion.)

Oh no! Long and lean is in

I was reading The Manolo and have discovered, to my horror (horror!), that in a review he linked to, long and lean is in! Long and lean is nice. Long and lean is sleek. Long and lean doesn't really work when you are short and kind of, well, not lean. Womanly. Perhaps curvy is the nice way to say it. But definitely NOT lean.

Irritating quote of the day

I was reading an article at the NYTimes on antidepressant use to treat menopausal hot flashes (not that I'm anywhere near there, but it's good to keep an eye out on what will come next), and found a supremely irritating sentence:

And while the drugs have been used safely for years in people with depression, there’s no long-term data on their use in healthy women with healthy brains.

I'll have you know that I'm quite healthy, thank you very much! It should have read - there's no long-term data on their use in healthy women not suffering from depession. Seriously. Did the author really mean to say that people who are depressed are sick? Is it really a sickness? I do not believe that I am sick, my internal chemistry is just different than some people who like to call themselves normal. But I function, I work, I am productive, I contribute.

Poem of the day

Eyes stare at me
Like stars blazing bright in the night sky,
so many...
so many...

Where are you?

Beach walk at Dillon Beach

My Dad was asking about where we stayed in Dillon Beach - our friends rented this house (includes pictures of inside the house, which was airy and light and had an amazing view of the beach). The highlight of our first night was a midnight hot-tubbing. We were far enough from civilization that the stars were plentiful and bright, with the milky way a lighter stripe across the middle of the sky. I even saw two shooting stars. There's nothing like talking about what you want in your obituary or how you approach religion, at midnight, in a hot tub, under the milky way and with several glasses of very nice red wine sloshing around in your tummy (I forget if it was zinfandel or pinot noir or both). Although it does sound so incredibly stereotypical of what you do in your midlife in California (Marin, no less).

The next day we actually made it into the water. The beach has nice long breaks suitable for longboarders and not that bad for wimpy little body boarders like me. I couldn't stay in the water too long, unfortunately, as I had to get out once I stopped being able to feel my toes. The kids frolicked in the sand and the sand dunes (which always makes me uncomfortable - EROSION!! MUST. SAVE. THE. BEACH!). After lunch, I enjoyed a long walk along the beach by myself. Here are some of the highlights:

1. The view of the town of Dillon Beach from the actual beach. I really like the color of the cliffs.


2. There were lots of cool things washed up on the beach.


Including a spot that looked like a crab graveyard.




and many, many jellyfish with both red structures inside,


and more purple-ish ones. Very pretty.


I also went on a walk up the hill to the general store with the boy. He's so cute!


The trip was way too brief!

The new bunk bed

Here are the pictures of the new bunk bed and the new bedding (finally!).

1. The initial excitement:


2. the reality:

Little girl list for the week

As I've finally downloaded the pictures off of the camera, there should be a flurry of kid stories soon. Here is an example of one of my favorite things to find at home when cleaning - a list made by one of the little girls (yes, there will be years of therapy in her future - sorry kid!):



UPDATE: There was a request for a transcription:

1. pool.
2. rest.
3. story.
4. nap
5. go find flowers
6. lunch.
7. resess. (recess)
8. fashin show. (fashion show)
9. ??? podirrer. (may be putter)
10. play games.
11. sing soing (sing song)
12. go to bed.
13. go to hoem (go to home)
and something about packing, I'm not sure what, between the two rows.

Dillon Beach

We've had a wonderful weekend at Dillon Beach at the mouth of Tomales Bay (just north of San Francisco). I'll write more tomorrow as there is much to be done around the home, but here are a few pictures from the weekend:

I met a guy on Craigslist...

had a long, two-hour phone conversation with him last week, and finally had a three hour fancy dinner with him two nights ago. I am back in the biofuels start-up game! I should be very excited, but it's not nearly as much fun as the old company with my friends, frustrating as they may have been. I'm really hoping I can find a way to bring them on board. Somehow. I miss them.

And to top it all off, I had another one of those you-really-should-be-doing-academia days that I'm hoping is really just me pining after that which I cannot have. Let's just say that the Genentech life looks amazingly beautiful.

I have to love myself (desperately, beyond reason)...

And, as I've mentioned before, Cary Tennis:

I have to love myself because loving myself is the only thing that stands between me and suicide....I love myself because I have to. I love myself because suicide is not an option. I love myself because other people love me and I've got no right. So I love myself immoderately and without delay. I love myself without recompense, without reason, without state sponsorship or licensing, without writing a proposal first or getting a grant, without getting dressed up first and taking a shower, without calling ahead to find out what time I should love myself, without buying a bottle of wine and some flowers first, without shining my shoes and clipping my nails...The murderous voice says do you, Cary Tennis, take this life to be your lawful welded life and I say, I do. And do you, life, take this man to be your impoverished and humble obedient slave, to breath in and out until God knows what unholy combination of stress, disease, cell mutations, poison, decay and entropy force him finally into one last dark half-breath? And life says, Yeah, sure, why not. And so we go on, me and my weary bride of life, two ragged beggars hiding behind the Safeway looking for cans and cigarette butts...But in our hearts, if we are artists, we are hungry and desperate. That is utterly normal. That is our condition. That is the condition of the creative person, to be hungry and desperate without moderation. Our job is to continue in our crazy journey with immoderate and unearned joy in our hearts and keep creating things, immoderately and without delay, desperately, beyond all reason.

Perfection costs $15,000

I think it might be that streak of perfectionism coupled with the shrinking and homogenizing of the world as mass media brings a small number of ideals to a wide number of people. From today's NYTimes:

Many women struggle with the impact of aging and pregnancy on their bodies. But the marketing of the “mommy makeover” seeks to pathologize the postpartum body, characterizing pregnancy and childbirth as maladies with disfiguring aftereffects that can be repaired with the help of scalpels and cannulae.