Wait, I think I made a mistake

1. Enter a "1" if you are single or if you are married and no one claims you as a dependent: 1

2. Enter a "1" if you are a married head of household: 0

3. Enter 1 for each dependent child living with you if your total household income is greater than $20,000. Enter 2 for each dependent child living with you if your household income is less than $20,000: 2

4. If your household income is greater than $50,000 AND less than $50,000, enter a 5: ?

5. Enter the number from Table 2, Column B associated with the income range of the primary earner (found in Table 2, Column A): 3

6. Enter the number from Table 3, Column B associated with the income range of the secondary earner (found in Table 3, Column B): 1

7. If Page 2, Line 5 is less than Page 2, Line 6, skip this section and proceed to Line 15. If Page 2, Line 6 is greater than Page 2, Line 5, enter a 2: Uhhhh

8. Multiply the number in Line 7 by the number of dependent children, then divide by the boiling point of water at sea level (in Kelvin), then think of a number between one and ten: 8?

9. If a train leaves Cleveland headed eastbound at 60 mph and another train leaves New York headed westbound at 30 mph on the same track, write where they meet on line nine: Scranton-ish?


It goes on like that for several more pages. My witholding category comes to √15π. I'm going to let HR figure that one out.

You can thank Nablopomo for this shimmering piece of coherency.

You guys are the BEST.

Thank you for being so excited with me. You guys mean a lot to me and it was SO MUCH FUN getting all the virtual back-pats and hugs yesterday afternoon. Thanks!!

I knew about the job early in October after I gave a seminar on campus. I didn't want to say anything until I got the official offer letter. It came yesterday in the middle of a particularly trying week of teething and colds and Ryan having to work a lot and let me tell you I practically danced up the sidewalk to the church to pick Charlie up after school after getting the letter.

I will be teaching Physics II (God help us all) Lab Tuesday afternoons in the spring at a small liberal arts college. One day a week in the classroom! I cannot think of a more ideal situation. My dad is going to be our "manny!" Charlie can stay in his awesome school, which meets on MWF. It's PERFECT. And I did not expect to be called "Assistant Professor (part-time)." I am blown away.

ANYWAY! Moving on! Today was very much back to the nap-resisting, tantrum throwing status quo. We left bilingual storytime at the library in disgrace after Wesley threw a head-banging tantrum in the middle of the circle and Charlie got up in the middle of one of the stories and noisily ran over to my place by the window where I was trying desperately to keep Wes quiet post-slamming his forehead into the floor in protest. It was a bad scene.

We walked up to the coffee shop afterwards because I figured if I did the work required to get everybody out of the house I was going to get more than ten freaking minutes of enjoyment out of it. I needed coffee! I texted Labmama to let her know (her kids are slightly older and more capable of behaving like human beings in storytime) where we were. She called shortly after to say that they were going home because her kids flipped out too. Must be the moon or something.

That's all. Thanks again.

Happy Mail Call

Dear Dr. Academomia:

I am pleased to offer you the position of part-time Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics for the 2010 spring semester.

(yadda yadda yadda)

We'll pay you and you can call yourself a professor [paraphrasing here]. Of Physics (Holy kamoley).

I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Dr. Provost

Now I'm hungry for eggs

I've spent the afternoon attempting to condense a chunk of my 166 page dissertation into a technical paper. It's a little disheartening watching multiple pages of hard work collapse down into a succinct three-sentence paragraph, but at this point in my career if I want to get anything read it's got to be short and snappy. Here's what I'm talking about (and my dissertation was not about omelettes!).

Dissertation writing:

An omelette was made based on the work of Davis (1997). The eggs for the omelette were Grade A organic eggs, size Large, purchased from the Whole Foods grocery store. The egg size "Large" was chosen based on the work of Smith (2002). Also based on the study conducted by Smith, sharp cheddar cheese was selected. Table 2 lists the various brands of cheddar cheese available. Ultimately the Kraft Fancy Shredded Cheddar Cheese was chosen, both due to it's low cost and its similarity in consistency to the cheese used in the Smith omelette. Although the Davis study omelette featured green onions, a more appropriate choice for the region in which this study was conducted was cilantro. Furthermore, Roma tomatoes were chosen, rather than Beefstake, due to regional and seasonal availability (Parker, 1974). Schmidt (2007) compared the relative merits of Roma and Beefstake tomatoes and found negligible difference between the two.

The omelette was cooked in a medium-sized, Calphanon non-stick frying pan purchased at Target over a gas burner on a Kenmore 5600 series gas range. The temperature of the burner was calibrated as in Miller (2008). Historically, toast has been served as a side to the omelet (Davis, 2006, Edwards, 2004, Dean et al. 2002, Howell and Chu, 1998), however more recent work by Quinn (1999) has shown rice to be a reasonable alternative when toast is not available.

Paper Writing:

The authors cooked an omelette and served it with a side of rice.

Not so bright

Yesterday at 4:30 I just couldn't. take. the. screaming. and. whining. anymore. COULD NOT TAKE.

Wes had been a giant grouch since he woke up (when he was not sleeping, which, thank goodness he took normal naps). Charlie did not nap, though I knew he was tired by the way he nearly fell asleep in the car on the way home from school.

And it was Friday at 4:30 and I had just completely had it with the whole SAHM thing for the week. I wanted to be DONE. And then Wes started fidgeting with his ears.

Oh.

I called Pediatrician Man and told the nurse that Wes had been SUPERSUPER fussy and was playing with his ears, should I bring him in or wait it out?

Bring him in? Oh. Because I really just called so I could talk to another adult and he doesn't have a fever or anything, but OK. Sure. 6:20 sounds great, thanks. Bye!

Then I called Ryan and repeated my tale of woe and asked him to meet me at Pediatrician Man's to help with Charlie.

We were in the exam room when the nurse asked if Wes had "any other medical issues" and I suddenly remembered that he had gotten his seasonal flu vaccine the day before. Of course I didn't say anything because I didn't want this total stranger whose only interest was in the well-being of my child to know what a total idiot I was for bringing a child to the after-hours clinic for TOTALLY NORMAL VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS.

Not surprisingly, Wes was the picture of health.

I apologized PROFUSELY to Ryan, who had to leave work early to meet me, being sure to carefully spell out the word M-O-R-O-N so Charlie wouldn't learn it.

On the plus side, we did score a totally awesome plastic vomit basin that Charlie took with us to dinner and then used as a plate for his burrito.

Dilemma

I had to take an ethics class in grad school where we would be presented each day with a situation in which something ethical or unethical had happened or could happen and then we would have to debate whether or not the outcome or potential outcome was "ethical" or "unethical."

For example: "You see a guy come out of a coffee shop and drop a $20 bill on the sidewalk. You pick it up, but before you can give it back to him he gets on a bus, the doors close, and it drives away. What do you do?"

Some potential answers include

"Check inside the coffee shop to see if he is a regular, leave the money with them so they can give it to him next time he comes in."

"Donate the money to charity."

"Eh, you tried. Buy yourself the new Avett Brothers album and a latte."

The best part of the class was when we would argue about what the right answer was, knowing that there really is no right or wrong answer in many of the simpler situations (like the one above). There were only five people in the class, all good friends of mine, so it was kind of fun.

Anyway, I present to you an ethical dilemma I encountered today and you get to duke it out in the comments.

"A woman and child back into a parking space at a Panera. The woman gets out and notices that she has parked with two wheels on one of the parking lines. Since the parking lot is completely empty, with at least two open spaces on each side of her car, and since she is planning to just run in and buy a giant cup of coffee and twelve-hundred calories of delicious sugary goodness, an errand that will take only a few minutes, she decides against reparking the car in a more courteous fashion. Upon returning to the car, goodies and small angry child in hand, she finds that another car has self-righteously parked her medium-sized SUV approximately twelve inches away from hers, despite the two other, equally desirable empty parking spaces, centered perfectly between the guide lines causing me, err 'the woman,' to have to walk sideways to the back door, open the door approximately thirty degrees, wedge the child in sideways, then fasten the carseat straps remotely using two sticks I found nearby."

So class, in this dilemma, who is the giant bitch whose behavior was ethical or unethical and why?

W is for Wesley and Willful

We had about two minutes today before it was time to leave for a doctor's appointment. Wesley was working on a bowl of yogurt and not making much progress on his own, so I helpfully took the spoon from him and scooped some into his mouth.

Bad idea.

He screamed as though I was ripping off one of his limbs and then refused to swallow the mouthful of yogurt. He just screamed and screamed with it sitting there on his tongue until it slid down his chin and into his lap. And this wasn't his boring plain yogurt. It was Charlie's vanilla yogurt! He refused one of his favorite foods out of SPITE!

He then screamed through being cleaned up, screamed while I got him out of his booster and into the car then screamed for a few more minutes while I rounded Charlie up and got him buckled in. And this was right after a long nap! This was our toddler in his MOST RESTED STATE.

I think we are in for a challenging few years with that one.