Carryover [work, mostly]

Yesterday:

- Rowing practice.
- Random rowing admin catch-up tasks.
- Finished a 3-week-overdue MS review.
- Met with students on Zoom to rework their conference poster presentation.
Home.
- Rereading a revised MS and response letter with a fine-toothed comb. This was sent over frantically by a coauthor last Thursday, although the initial attachment was the incorrect draft, leading me to a lot of ????? questions while I was scrambling to wrap up other semester tasks. Coauthor originally asked for approval by last Friday; after clarifying that I had the wrong draft, I said it would be Tuesday before I could get to it. Thankfully I'm satisfied with the revised MS. One of the reviewers provided some good, thoughtful feedback, and the response is sufficient.

I think it was 10 pm by the time I finished that.

For me, the biggest problem with working late into the evening is that I cannot immediately leap into bed afterword. I have to decompress for at least a little while. So then I'm up even later, which means any hope of a daily routine is thrown off and I'm up late the next morning.

Things I still need to do before attempting to leave town on Friday:

-Update my finances.
-Grant report.
-Hardware store run, for home, work, and rowing supplies. Oh, I need to get more clams, too, for the saltwater tanks.
-Ant housing upgrade (they're doing so well they need more space, which means drilling holes and pouring plaster, which means making enough space in the lab for these projects).
-Meet with rowing club members about an escalating situation with a homeless person who lives near the boatyard.
-Pack. (hoping to bring Princess TinyBike along for the first time, an uncertain project in terms of time demand)
-Rapid tests.

Things I absolutely need to do if/when I make it to Seattle:

-Get conference posters printed. Any leads on where to get conference posters printed in the Seattle area would be greatly appreciated. If I'd wanted to print them here I would have had to have finished them by last Friday morning before our campus shut down for the winter break. On that front: it's really creepy in the winter when the campus is shut down, because they turn off all of the parking lot lights.

Oh, did you think I would laze about? I wish. I do need to strategically rest to the extent that I can because I can tell I REALLY need a mental break from constantly making executive decisions.

And while I'm writing lists, other things I need to start doing:

-Animal Physiology syllabus, schedule, and lab manual. I REALLY want to convert my current lab materials into a LaTeX-based manual but this is not going to be a small project. Some labs are in Word documents, others I'd need to type from scratch (or Mechanical Turk).
-Animal Phys supply ordering.
-Bicycling: update the course schedule, contact the bike co-op to arrange for a class visit day, find a reasonable source of helmets.

I have, at least, figured out a topic for the Advanced General Biology honors seminar: the biology of stress. This is a freshman course where I teach students what primary research articles are, and then we read and discuss 4 of them in great detail. It is a fun course. We'll read about the biology of stress so that they can learn about neuroendocrine function, and so that we have an excuse to talk directly and think about mental health, support structures, and coping mechanisms.

Better get back to work, then.

Another One Bites the Dust / Frodo Spa Day [bicycling]

I was riding from the Despot this afternoon, headed towards campus, when I noticed one of those disconcerting new noises and feelings. When I pulled over, I discovered that the rim of Frodo's rear wheel was, once again, starting to split.

This happened in basically the worst possible place as far as route rescue options go, so I just slowed down to a crawl and managed to limp all the way to campus. Instead of working on the various lab tasks I wanted to tackle, I just tossed the little-necked clams in the aquaria, dropped off the 50-pound bag of sand and the bag of potting soil, rearranged a couple things in my lab and office, unhitched the bike trailer, and then made my way gingerly over to the bus stop.

So now Frodo is at the bike shop, getting another new wheel, and, while he's there, the full spa treatment, too. Based on how many things have corroded on the bike so far, it's best if I just suck it up and pay someone with a nice parts washer to take everything off and give it all a good once-over and tune-up.

It was nice to chat for a couple minutes with the shop mechanics, too. There's a new mechanic with a name very similar to mine whose ears perked up at the idea of a Tuesday night bike ride from Albany to Troy. The mechanic who I've talked to the most said he thinks the rear wheel failure issue might have to do with the rear fender interfering with the rear brake levers; only one side of the rim was worn down - the other side still had plenty of wear remaining. I gave him permission to reshape the rear fender, and we will see with the next wheel, I guess. A wheel a year starts to get kind of expensive.

I need to not go anywhere or buy any fancy new toys in 2022. I say that, but I'm not sure whether I've accounted for the new bike utility trailer yet or not.