Feeling Kind of Useless...

Ever have one of those days where you feel like you can't make a difference? That was my day yesterday.

As some of you may have noted from reading below, R and I will be moving in a few short weeks into our house. This will leave our apartment vacant, and as many of you know, our apartment is an absolute steal in the rental market around here.

My sister also lives around here, and is looking to move out of her current place at the end of the summer. She currently has a very cute but very expensive studio in the downtown area. By moving into our place, she could reduce her rent by more than half what she is paying now, which would be fantastic for her.

So, R and I have been trying to facilitate this move for her by talking with our landlady. The main stumbling block? One 90-pound labrador retriever. Our landlady has a rather shoddy no-pets policy (I say shoddy because both she and our downstairs neighbor have had pets in our time there). She mainly seems to have a problem with dogs, but was willing to meet my sister and the dog to see if she could be swayed.

Suffice it to say that I don't think she was swayed. She said she would 'think about it' but that if my sister found something else in the meantime that she should take it. Hence my frustration - here we have a perfectly good win-win situation. My sister needs a cheaper place to live, and my landlady needs a new responsible tenant. You'd think we wouldn't have a problem here, but try as I might, I have absolutely no sway over the situation, and I feel bad about it.

Situation #2 involves my grandfather. He has taken a rather large turn for the worse, or a least a turn for the dramatic. He has been calling my poor mother at all hours, claiming this emergency or that emergency, which sends Mom off to his apartment to deal with whatever the crisis of the day is. From her description of events, it seems like he is angling for company more than anything, since half an hour after she arrives he is happily chattering away. He seems to have given up on taking care of himself though, and isn't cooking for himself/eating anymore, isn't shopping or doing laundry, and some days isn't even getting dressed. He is expecting Mom to come after/during work and do his cooking/cleaning/laundry, etc.

This is a bad situation for Mom, since she is working full time, and pulling extra duty on weekends in addition to basically playing full-time caregiver to my grandfather. I can hear how frustrated and tired she is, but again, their really isn't anything I can do about it short of moving back home. My sister and I went home Memorial day weekend to try and help out short term, and I think Mom was grateful, but it was simply a short-term band-aid for a weekend. So, that is the second situation that I wish I could help with more, but can't.

Blech

I routinely complain that the weekends are not long enough.

This weekend was fun. R had to work on Sunday, so I decided that, given the nice weather, I was going to head over to Fenway park and try and buy day-of-game tickets for the Sox-Angels game on Sunday. Tickets go on sale 2 hours before game time, which meant noon on this particular day.

So, knowing the insanity that is Red Sox nation, I showed up at 8:30 AM, book in hand to pass the time. I ended up being 3rd in line, and learned that you really don't need to show up until about 10 AM unless it is a Yankee game.

I never did read any of the book, as I ended up talking to the two people ahead of me in line. Number 1 was a guy named Mike, who was a Yankee fan, but needed to see if he was really a closeted Red Sox fan. He got in his car at 7:30 PM Saturday evening in, get this, Halifax (yes, Nova Scotia), and drove 900 miles to come see this game. Number 2 in line was a girl named Tricia, who was from Quincy, and had stood in line for tickets the day before as well.

So, my sister meets me in line about 11 AM, and the ticket office opens at noon. Right before the box office opens, a Red Sox employee comes out and tells us that all they have for today's game is standing room only.

Now, this was disappointing, because the whole point of standing out for day-of-game tickets is that you can often get some good seats; seats that are player's family tix they aren't using, unused VIP seats, etc. But, having stood outside for a couple of hours, I wasn't about to just walk away.

So, we bought the SRO tix and went inside. We found a very nice spot along the first base line, and enjoyed the first 6 innings of the game there. Meanwhile, Mike (guy #1 in line) had gone to someone in management and told them his big story about driving all the way from Halifax, and 'somehow' they found some field box seats for him. Now, to show you what a stand-up guy Mike is, and how you can bond with people in a short amount of time while waiting in lines, in the top of the 7th, a bunch of people in Mike's row with small children decided to leave. Mike came and found me and my sister and told us, and we spent the last 3rd of the game enjoying the view from the $80 seats. Cool. Plus, we win, 6-3. Double cool.

Now, for the not-so-cool ending to the weekend.

I wake up at 2 in the morning feeling sick to my stomach, and end up spending the next two hours in the bathroom being violently and quite disgustingly ill. Around 4:30 in the morning, I am so sick that when I stand up, I almost pass out. I can tell that I am dehydrated, and that there is no way I am replacing fluids as fast as I am, umm...getting rid of them. So, R pours me in the car, and we go to the hospital, where my blood pressure is a startling low 90-something over 40-something. 2 liters of IV fluids later and battery of blood tests that reveal nothing, and I'm sent home with some anti-nausea meds. I'm happy to say that it appears to have been a 24-hour thing, but what a lousy 24-hours.

I like Mondays off as much as the next person, but I can definitely think of better ways to accomplish it than that.

Bad Afghan Food...

Hung out with G+J+E tonight. We had emailed back and forth throughout the day, figuring out a plan for dinner tonight. Since R and I will be moving soon (see house discussion below) we decided that it was a good time to check out some of the local restaurants in our neighborhood that we have been talking about for a while (years, in some cases).

So there is this Afghani place up the street from us that is about a year old, and it has an interesting name: "Buzkashi". Buzkashi is apparently a game in Afghanistan, and is loosely translated as 'goat pulling'. Already sounds like a great name for a restaurant, huh? Apparently Afghanis ride around on horseback attempting to capture a headless goat carcass from each other. Think polo, but messier.

Anyway, we had though this place looked interesting for a while now, and so suggested it to G+J+E. 6:30 was the plan.

Well, G is much more industrious than most of us, and actually took the time to look up some reviews of this place. They were astonishingly bad. One gave it 1/2 a star out of 4, and all commented on the bad service, mediocre food, and general lack of menu descriptions matching the actual food. They also both mentioned carrots that were white, spotted, and desiccated. I don't know about you, but 'desiccated' is generally not a good word in a food review.

So, long story short, we bailed on going to Buzkashi, and instead went to an Italian place down the street where we had a good meal, but felt oddly formal in doing so. Maybe it was because of the nice tablecloths, because it wasn't due to our waiter, Mugsy.

After dinner we returned to our place and broke out a game of Clue: Master Detective. For those not in the know, it's the same as regular Clue, but with more suspects, more rooms, and more weapons.

Watching G try to play this game was hilarious. He is seriously the smartest guy I know, but you'd think I was explaining nuclear fusion to a 5 year old when we were trying to explain the rules of this board game to him. G, if you're reading, you know I love you man, but that was funny.

Anyway, that was all for tonight. It was good to see everyone. :-)

A good day...

Ah, today was a good day in the grand scheme of things.

First, some background. When I was in Graduate School, my Ph.D. work was funded by a Big Semiconductor Company. They were often a pain to work with, both because of cultural differences, and some of the inherent differences and clashes that arise out of industrial-academic partnerships. Industry is often not interested in the 'how' or the 'why' of a process -- they just want a process or recipe that works at the end of the day and that they can make money on. This is especially true in semiconductors, where the entire industry seems to spasm every 18 months with something new.

Anyway, I finished my degree two years ago, and started my academic job. I was glad to be finished with Big Semiconductor Company. Now, as some of you may know, being junior faculty in the sciences or engineering is 'all about the Benjamins'. When I go up for tenure, very few people will care about how good a teacher I was, or how many mind-numbing committees I sat in on. No, the real metric that will be used is how many research dollars did I bring into the university.

Now, to be honest, I have been here going on two years, and I haven't brought in dollar one yet. I could bitch about extenuating circumstances, and the fact that I didn't have a lab until 3 weeks ago, but the fact is, the administration won't care about excuses, they will want results. So, my apparent lack of progress in the grant-securing arena was starting to become increasingly worrisome to me.

Re-enter Big Semiconductor Company. My former advisor calls me up last week, and tells me BSC is interested in continuing some work that I did my thesis on. Thing is, she isn't all that interested in it anymore, so she calls me up, and asks if I want to take the project. Funding! I cannot tell you how incredibly cool this is. My former advisor is one of the greatest people going. She has given me space when I had none, thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and now funding opportunities. If I screw up and don't make tenure, it certainly won't be for her lack of help.

So I went over and met with her and the rep from BSC this morning, and we are going to set it up, and I will end up getting some initial funding that will hopefully bolster my position here and kick-start the career. All thanks to my generous former advisor.

So, that was this morning. Pretty damn good.

This afternoon was better, in a way. I had a ticket to the Sox-Orioles game at Fenway, so after the meeting I hopped on the T and made my way to park just in time for the opening pitches. This was a perfect baseball day in Boston -- sunny, about 70 degrees. The game was a rainout make-up from about a month ago, when it was pouring and about 40 degrees.

It was a good game, but it looked like we were going to drop it, as the birds led 4-3 in the ninth. BUT, the home town team strung together a couple of hits, and David Ortiz, doing what he always does, hit a 3-2 pitch over the wall in center field (with 2 outs, no less) to give Boston the 6-4 walkoff win.

Not a bad ending to the day...