I am clearly not financially motivated
Feb. 22nd, 2014 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaSo, my main funding ran out in December, and the Uni agreed to keep me on 1/4 time, since there is this Master's student I am supervising this semester. In theory 1/4 of a paycheck should mean that I work only 1/4 time (or 10 hours a week), right? Nope--in January, despite several days off for holiday at the beginning of the month I still averaged 30 hours a week for the month, and this month so far I am averaging 36 hours a week. Granted, 15 to 20 of those hours is attending the Swedish for Immigrants course, so that means I am only doing other uni work 16 to 21 hours a week, which is still well more than the 10 I am getting paid for.
I just wish all these hours were resulting in the report being done and approved and we had gone on to turning it into a publishable paper. Instead we are back to making adjustments on the model, again. Sigh. Science is fun, but it sure has a way of eating more time than is available for it.
In other news, we had a day of winter, again! Friday got all the way to -7 C, it felt so good after nearly two weeks of temps hovering around freezing. It had snowed a bit in the night, so when I woke up the day was truly beautiful. I needed to go to uni--the GIS class I am sitting in on was meeting in the morning this week (usually it is in the afternoons), so I couldn't attend the SFI course in town. Since there was only a little new snow I decided to take my spark (kick sled). It was nice not to have to wear the heavy backpack full of computer and food for the day, but I mostly couldn't take advantage of actually riding on the sled, since the path wasn't hard packed enough to get a good glide, so, most of the time, I just walked and pushed the sled.
After class I sat in my office and worked there, and didn't realize how late it was getting--didn't start the walk home till after 6pm, which meant I wasn't actually home till just after 7. There had been a steady wind blowing all day, and the walk way to the house was starting to fill in with blown snow, but at that point I was too tired to deal with it, so instead I read for a while, did my yoga and went to bed early, and slept for 9 hours!
This morning it had warmed back up to -1 C, so I decided I had better get the shoveling done before the snow got too wet and heavy to deal with. Luckily for me, the guy who sometimes plows our driveway came through and did that while I was enjoying breakfast, so I only had to do the walk ways and parking area (he only drives through the driveway on his way back from clearing the short road to his brother's house, which joins the main street right at one entrance to our driveway). Even so I wound up spending a total of 1 hour 48 minutes shoveling today--my exercise log is pleased. So am I--I had expected this to be my main form of exercise this winter, but we have had so little snow it is rare than any shoveling need happen.
Today's shoveling was more wind-blown snow than new fallen stuff--some parts of our yard had small dunes aligned with the wind direction, others were showing bare grass (guess where I deposited the snow I shoveled off the walkway?). However, all of the area down wind from the hole in the ground where we are building the earth cellar has a thin film of dirt on top of the snow. The wind has, clearly, scoured away bits of dirt from the back wall of the hole and dumped it further along its path. Since I am strongly biased in favour of white, clean snow, I made an attempt to prevent it doing that on another occasion--I went out and packed snow against that dirt wall. The snow was exactly the perfect texture for packing--wet and heavy (it would have made a lovely snow man, but I thought that stopping more wind-erosion of the dirt was a better idea). There was only just barely enough snow on top of the half built stone-and-concrete walls to pack against the dirt wall (which stands a bit back from and still quite a bit taller than the stone wall). Hopefully the temperature will go back down again, and this snow will freeze into place, rather than melting away and exposing the dirt again.
Not that there is any guarantee that the wind will return. I remember last winter as being very windy, most of the time, such that I often needed to shovel on days it didn't snow, but this winter there hasn't been much wind, and today is the first time I have seen dirt being deposited on top of the snow in the yard.
I just wish all these hours were resulting in the report being done and approved and we had gone on to turning it into a publishable paper. Instead we are back to making adjustments on the model, again. Sigh. Science is fun, but it sure has a way of eating more time than is available for it.
In other news, we had a day of winter, again! Friday got all the way to -7 C, it felt so good after nearly two weeks of temps hovering around freezing. It had snowed a bit in the night, so when I woke up the day was truly beautiful. I needed to go to uni--the GIS class I am sitting in on was meeting in the morning this week (usually it is in the afternoons), so I couldn't attend the SFI course in town. Since there was only a little new snow I decided to take my spark (kick sled). It was nice not to have to wear the heavy backpack full of computer and food for the day, but I mostly couldn't take advantage of actually riding on the sled, since the path wasn't hard packed enough to get a good glide, so, most of the time, I just walked and pushed the sled.
After class I sat in my office and worked there, and didn't realize how late it was getting--didn't start the walk home till after 6pm, which meant I wasn't actually home till just after 7. There had been a steady wind blowing all day, and the walk way to the house was starting to fill in with blown snow, but at that point I was too tired to deal with it, so instead I read for a while, did my yoga and went to bed early, and slept for 9 hours!
This morning it had warmed back up to -1 C, so I decided I had better get the shoveling done before the snow got too wet and heavy to deal with. Luckily for me, the guy who sometimes plows our driveway came through and did that while I was enjoying breakfast, so I only had to do the walk ways and parking area (he only drives through the driveway on his way back from clearing the short road to his brother's house, which joins the main street right at one entrance to our driveway). Even so I wound up spending a total of 1 hour 48 minutes shoveling today--my exercise log is pleased. So am I--I had expected this to be my main form of exercise this winter, but we have had so little snow it is rare than any shoveling need happen.
Today's shoveling was more wind-blown snow than new fallen stuff--some parts of our yard had small dunes aligned with the wind direction, others were showing bare grass (guess where I deposited the snow I shoveled off the walkway?). However, all of the area down wind from the hole in the ground where we are building the earth cellar has a thin film of dirt on top of the snow. The wind has, clearly, scoured away bits of dirt from the back wall of the hole and dumped it further along its path. Since I am strongly biased in favour of white, clean snow, I made an attempt to prevent it doing that on another occasion--I went out and packed snow against that dirt wall. The snow was exactly the perfect texture for packing--wet and heavy (it would have made a lovely snow man, but I thought that stopping more wind-erosion of the dirt was a better idea). There was only just barely enough snow on top of the half built stone-and-concrete walls to pack against the dirt wall (which stands a bit back from and still quite a bit taller than the stone wall). Hopefully the temperature will go back down again, and this snow will freeze into place, rather than melting away and exposing the dirt again.
Not that there is any guarantee that the wind will return. I remember last winter as being very windy, most of the time, such that I often needed to shovel on days it didn't snow, but this winter there hasn't been much wind, and today is the first time I have seen dirt being deposited on top of the snow in the yard.