{"id":189,"date":"2008-07-31T11:53:15","date_gmt":"2008-07-31T16:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stringpage.com\/blog\/?p=189"},"modified":"2008-07-31T11:54:45","modified_gmt":"2008-07-31T16:54:45","slug":"head-meet-desk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/?p=189","title":{"rendered":"Head, meet desk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Busily working through my negative exponentials, looking at the pretty brightly colored graphs (I think my favorite part of science might just be the pretty pictures), I started assembling conclusions for the paper I&#8217;m writing. But wait&#8230; these numbers just won&#8217;t do. I skipped a step way back at the beginning, and now must start over. <\/p>\n<p>Pardon me while I bang my head into my nice oak desk for a few minutes.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s worse, I realized this morning that in the the fuss over the work stuff that has to get done this week and won&#8217;t, leaving for Pennsic on Friday, the incipient visit of my inlaws, and the new dogsitter, I did not call my mother last night. I&#8217;ve known for decades that July 30 is her birthday, and yet&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Mom, I&#8217;m dreadfully sorry. I am in possession of a blank card with the words &#8220;Happy Birthday&#8221; written on the cover, as yet unwritten and unmailed. I am in possession of a working telephone that I did not use. (I also have some pretty but useless graphs of negative exponential distributions that I could send you.) Come visit and I&#8217;ll buy you apologetic Farmer&#8217;s Market flowers! And I&#8217;ll call you tonight. I mean it this time! I probably won&#8217;t send the card, though. <\/p>\n<p>It is not my week in many other ways. Nick called me this morning to inform me that we&#8217;d forgotten to turn on the dehumidifier in the basement, and, in his words, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know some of those things could grow mold.&#8221; Lovely.<\/p>\n<p>If I finished two projects, I could go on vacation happy and relaxed, and return to work without major deadlines looming. When I made this plan a month ago, it seemed quite achievable. Heh. Neither one will be finished, of course. But neither is going on vacation with me.<\/p>\n<p>One very large thing has gone right, though. I got word today that my professional review was successful, and I am to be promoted. Hooray!<\/p>\n<p>I was sorting through some old photos recently, and came across a few worth sharing. Here&#8217;s the first, demonstrating very clearly who was in charge in my house, and who <i>wasn&#8217;t<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/photos\/boss20080731.jpg\" alt=\"The Boss\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Though Ghost the Boss hasn&#8217;t <i>lived<\/i> in my house for a year and a half, she&#8217;s still very much present. That&#8217;s right, I&#8217;m haunted by the Ghost Ghost. Nick and I frequently hear the distinctive sound of a cat jumping onto the kitchen counter, while Morgan is firmly ensconced on the couch. Or we&#8217;ll see a black shadow slipping away silently, while Morgan and Grendel are at the other end of the room.<\/p>\n<p>Ghost was the advance scout for the alien invasion force, here to spy on us and report back, so it&#8217;s no wonder that she is still keeping an eye on things. I&#8217;m just happy she likes me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Busily working through my negative exponentials, looking at the pretty brightly colored graphs (I think my favorite part of science might just be the pretty pictures), I started assembling conclusions for the paper I&#8217;m writing. But wait&#8230; these numbers just won&#8217;t do. I skipped a step way back at the beginning, and now must start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,6,38,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disorganization","category-pets","category-the-ghost-ghost","category-whining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}