Time of the Month

Turning blue in June

Ah, the end of June. Wherein the summertime sadness hits, every year, and yet it's somehow still a surprise to me.

Highlights:

My humble little challenge, "The One-Line Lyric Challenge"  was nominated for best new activity in the Quill Awards!! It was originally nominated for "best contest" (which it's not), but our Quill Mistress Lilli 🧿 ☕, in her infinite kindness, moved it to a more appropriate category instead of just throwing the nomination out. Thank you so much to whoever nominated the challenge and to everyone who's participated or shared the challenge in the newsfeed. It's the first activity I've run on WdC and the first Quill nomination I've received.

At the beginning of the month, I went on an intense two-day department retreat at a resort a couple hours away. I was on the planning committee, and still couldn't convince the director that 25 talks, a 3-hour poster session, and two 90-minute round tables was simply too much to fit into a two day "retreat". In fact, he started off the retreat by talking about all the fun things to do at the resort... when he'd given us only an hour of free time the entire 12-hour scheduled day. 14 hours if you include travel time. I did get to swim in the lazy river on the second day, and lounged in a hammock for about... 9 minutes. I call that a win. At the end, he announced that next year's retreat will be 3 days, so people can actually enjoy the resort. If things go to plan, I won't still be here at the institute next summer. However, things usually don't go to plan.

I signed up to present again at the big annual Neuroscience conference in November! The reason I've never been able to attempt NaNoWriMo before, and I guess this year will be no different. I feel like I have to play rock-paper-scissors between writing and work and life. Unfortunately, work wins. Work always wins. But don't get me wrong, I'm already excited. It's in DC this year and the whole lab is going. It's always a lot of fun, a lot of people, a lot of science, a lot of schmoozing, a lot of time. It's just a lot. But the timing should be perfect, right before I go on the job market. In fact, this conference is where I got the job I have now. It may well be where I get the next one.

Lowlights:

It's 85º today with an AQI of 161 and an air quality warning. And I walked home about a mile in it. Maybe don't do what I do, if you're also in an area downwind of the Canadian wildfires.

I thought for sure I'd left this behind when I moved here. In Northern California, we had "smoke days" instead of snow days. They once cancelled classes for an entire week, distributed N95s and told us not to go outside except for emergencies when the AQI was over 300 (hazardous). I remember headaches, dry throat, and a consistently bloody nose. And that was indoors. I only left my apartment once that week to get groceries, with an N95 (this was pre-pandemic), and I regretted it. Smoke is no joke, folks.

At least this is manageable. I'm just sitting here with an air purifier running and all the windows closed with my asthmatic cat on my lap. My eyes are already irritated from being outside for about 25 minutes. I can't imagine how she feels.

In a completely unrelated note, I'm just gonna leave this here: "Earth" by Imogen Heap
No reason.

Here's the “Myth of the Month” for June:

 

“The bible says that Adam and Eve ate a forbidden apple.”

In the story of Adam and Eve, the bible mentions "forbidden fruit" but never explicitly says that the fruit was an apple. The original word used, "peri", could refer to any hanging fruit. However, most stories and visual depictions use an apple as the forbidden fruit. This likely comes from a mix-up when the bible was translated from Hebrew into Latin by a scripture scholar named Jerome in the 4th century A.D. He decided, probably as a little pun, to use the word "malus" which translates to both "evil" and "apple". And from then on, the forbidden fruit was an apple.

I'm not religious, but I still find the history of these things, especially language, interesting.

Read more here.  .