kareina: (BSE garnet)
Today I actually came into the office rather than working from home, in part because our department has hired a new department head, and he was scheduled to give a "this is me" talk at fika this morning. I considered missing it, but [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar convinced me that attending such functions is actually an important part of work--there is more to being at uni than just doing my research, I must also interact with my colleagues now and then. So in I came, and did chat with my colleagues before the talk.

One of the things I discussed with them was an email set out this morning to everyone at the Uni asking us to list which journals we read for work. This had a link to a poll set up on the uni internal web, so I dutifully filled it in. They wanted to know my name, my field of research, and the list of journals I read. So I opened EndNote, sorted all of the papers I have ever read or cited by journal and paged down the list, typing the names of journals that are actually important to my research. Then there was another box for "comments" in which I typed a short rant about the one journal that is important to my work which we get in paper but not electronic and how in this century there is no reason to get it in paper at all (plus a complaint that I happen to have a personal membership to the organization that runs that journal, but for some reason logging in at their web page and pushing the "member access button" never actually gets me a copy of the article I want--instead it just throws me into a loop of the publisher's web page saying that if I want to see the journal I need to go log in on the society's page, and doing so, and then pushing the "member access" button to return to the publisher's page, which wants me to log in on the society's page...

As I left the fika after the new department head finished his talk a man I didn't recognize told me he got my mail. I must have looked confused, but he then explained that he meant the "mail" (intra-web poll) about journal access. It surprised me that he knew who I am, yet I had no clue who he is. So like me.

Therefore, when I got back to my office I looked again at the email asking us to fill in the form, and then recognized the name of the sender as person who did my new employee interview when I started here two years ago. A quick search of the LTU web page turns up a photo of him. Yup--the same guy--he recognized me two years later, despite doing employee interviews for lots of new employees, but I didn't recognized him, despite the fact that I was only interviewed the once. oops.

And now the geologic model that has been running in the background as I typed this has finished, so I have to go look and see if my last set of changes worked...
kareina: (stitched)
It is having too much to do, and not enough time to do it.

Last night we went to a dinner party in celebration of a friend completing his PhD. He is quite popular in the department here at uni, and well loved by the mining company his research was in collaboration with. That company tried to hire him, but he has decided to stay in academia, and is staring a post-doc position at our uni. I was NOT surprised to hear that my boss managed to find funding to keep him in the department; not only is my boss very good at obtaining funding, this particular researcher (not student, anymore!) is very talented and would be an asset to any department, so, of course, we want to keep him here.

But all that was just background to explain why the party was so fun--I really like most of the people in the department, and there were a few people at the party I hadn't met yet whose company I really enjoyed. The party started at 18:00, and after what seemed like a short, but intense evening having really interesting conversations with one small group or another I started noticing that I was getting tired. Eventually I looked at a clock and determined that the reason I was getting tired is that it was well after midnight, and I had been up since 06:00.

Therefore, even though we were having fun, we said our goodbyes and headed home, where I did my yoga, played nyckleharpa for a bit, and then crawled into bed at 01:45. When I was young that was a fairly normal, or perhaps early, time for me to go to bed. However, when I was young I firmly believed that no self-respecting human was ever out of bed before noon. I kind of miss those days--I always had enough sleep, and never had dark circles under my eyes.

Today I started my morning situps at quarter after nine, which translates to 7.5 hours of sleep. Which is "enough" just, but my body did explain that it would register a protest about getting up so early--it wanted to sleep till noon and really catch up on sleep! (I have been averaging 6 to 7 hours each night lately.)

But that isn't an option today--today is the "Dans Fyrverkeri" my folk dance group has been preparing for. Today most, if not all, of the different dance groups in LuleƄ are gathering at "Kulturenshus"(The House of Culture) downtown to teach workshops in their dance forms, and in the evening to do performances. Therefore, as soon as I am done here I need to go pack second breakfast, first and second lunch, and dinner, gather my folk dance costume, and my sewing bag, and head out the door.

It will be a fun day, of course. But I do miss sleeping as much as my body wants. Why don't I do it during the week? Because I have found that in order to actually do eight hours of work in a day I need to start my work day around 07:00 so that I have time to finish early enough to get ready for our evening activities. I have too many interesting things going on each day to be able to work evenings, late nights, and weekends, like I did when I did my Master's and PhD research.

Sadly, I am now out of time for typing, so I can't record any of the other fun things that have been happening lately...

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