Okay it's time to update. Of course, the busier I am the less likely I am to write...probably because I have a lot less time to fester, which is good!
Last weekend was awesome - I went to Gold Wall Friday and Sunday, and spent Saturday at Stanford presenting a tui chub proposal at the Bay Area Conservation Biology Symposium. Friday was mellow, it was only my party (Drew and Beth) and one other party. The left side was pretty wet, so we stuck to the middle. I sent President's Day, which is an awesome route. It's long - tons of different kinds of moves, jugs, crimps...and the crux is not a one move wonder. It's thin and pumpy and long! I was kind of sad to finish it.
On Sunday I tried Luther, and was a little concerned about the big moves until I saw Lyn CRUSH them. I really like climbing with smaller women, because often when I am climbing with taller people, and I come up against a big move, I'll just give up. Seeing smaller people do the bigger moves is really motivating. Not to mention the fact that I think I'm going to start bouldering more - Lyn pretty much ONLY boulders, and still crushes routes. Maybe if I start bouldering more, the crux moves won't seem as hard on routes.
Other fitness stuff: 30 mile ride on Monday, bouldering at PW on Tues, Pilates class (my first) in Sac on Wed...jack shit yesterday, and I'm planning on doing the Rocknasium comp with Sarah and Renee tonight. Last year I won 200 bucks!! Definitely incentive to return, especially with the weekend forecast looking a bit grim. Next week I'd like to spend 4-5 days in Bishop with Nunley. I hope that Siemay and Noah will be there - I haven't seen them in ages!
Mostly work has been consuming me lately. I was hoping to get this manuscript (Joint estimation of admixture and effective population size in a hybrid trout population...otherwise known as "the trout paper") fleshed out a bit more, but I didnt' reckon on how busy I'd be with other "thought stuff" this quarter. I feel like grad school is divided into "thought stuff" and "do stuff". Lab work, which I haven't done in over a year, is "do stuff". You can feel pretty accomplished when you are doing lab work. And it seems as if I can spend more time doing than thinking. Thinking/writing/reading/data analysis takes up a lot more energy, you aren't moving around, and it requires real concentration. I can't seem to do as much thinking stuff as doing stuff in any given day.
Anyway, I have a lot of thinking stuff to do these days. I'm teaching a section on population genetics software on Feb 19. I'm working the fishes of the Tuolumne River book (which is taking a LOT of time). Plus the trout paper, plus getting together an abstract (and a coherent talk) for the Western Division American Fisheries Society meeting in May, plus potentially participating in another course next quarter on the Tuolumne River.
I wonder how much I should be doing work that is not related to my actual research...if I was not participating in the TR course, I could probably be getting a lot more done that moves me towards publications/graduating. On the other hand, participating in these other projects allows networking, it's fun, and you learn a lot of cool stuff.
Another problem I have is with absorbing and organizing information I glean from primary literature. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up a paper that I haven't read before, made it to page 2 or 3, only to see that I've written a bunch of notes in the margin. WTF? How do you a) remember the shit that you read and b) somehow organize the papers so that you know WHICH paper to go back to if you remember something that you read? Spreading them out all over my living room floor is NOT working. I have an Endnote system, and files in a file cabinet in my cubicle, but I think that the perfect (or even better) system is still out there.
Balance. It's hard.
