As some of you will have noticed, I’m scheduled to give a talk at the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference in just under two weeks. This morning, I finished (kind of) working out that talk.
A few things worth noting:
Category Archives: Personal
Dealing with a (really) local agricultural surplus.
I’ve been wanting to blog all weekend, but instead I’ve been making (and canning) lemon curd and lemon marmalade. It was either that or the Free-Ride family was going to have to face down an Exodus-scale plague of lemons.
How to make your mother sick with worry in 2007.
Don’t update your blog for a few days.
Seriously, the fact that I left a message on the machine to let her know that the Free-Ride family made it home safely was apparently not persuasive in the absence of new blog entries since our return.
I was totally offline for a few days. I got some groceries, took the kids for haircuts and doctors appointments, did a little gardening, did a little reading. I promise I’m still alive and everyone is reasonably healthy.
The prospects are even pretty good for a post on ethics and/or science in the next 24 hours.
Mini ScienceBloggers meet-up.
In the midst of a hectic holiday season (at 3 a.m. on 25 December: “Can we go downstairs and start opening presents?”), I was lucky enough to catch up with SiBlings Evil Monkey and Tara C. Smith for a drink, some traditional (unamplified!) Irish music, and some delightfully nerdy conversation.
May your holidays be similarly rich!
Holiday thoughts.
If you’re grabbing some quick blog-reading amongst your other goings on, I have a few posts to recommend.
Friday Sprog Blogging: cross-country travel and kid circadian rhythms.
The Free-Ride family was only delayed by about 8 hours in getting from California to Maryland. This was no thanks to the very unhelpful America West/US Airways ticket agent at San Francisco, who, after we waited in the line to get to the podium for nearly 4 hours, thought to put our luggage on the red-eye from Las Vegas but had to be pressed to put us on standby for the same flight rather than offering as our only option the connection-you’re-about-to-miss-but-24-hour-later flight. Luckily, Las Vegas Customer Service Guy Patrick C. got us the relevant flight information that the evil-SFO-agent did not, and we managed to make it onto the red eye, or we’d be taking off just about now rather than settling in for our first night at Super Sally’s house.
Anyway.
So, there’s a kids and science related angle to this tale of woe, in which I seek information from the scientifically educated hive-mind:
Catch you in the (near) future: another meme before getting on a plane.
Today the Free-Ride family schleps to the airport (with what seem to be crates of warm layers) to fly East. Assuming Super Sally’s wireless internet allows it, I’ll have a Friday Sprog Blog up sometime Friday.
I guess that also assumes that there are no missed connections or flight cancellations. Let’s hope.
Anyway, Dave Munger tagged me with another meme, so I’m posting my response before I officially become a Holiday Traveler.
The question:
What one sentence would you tell the future if your area of expertise was about to expire? For example, Richard Feynman, the physicist, said, “The world is made of atoms.”
Holiday meme the second: Christmas.
On the heels of the Hanukah meme, here’s the Christmas meme, as seen at Musings of a Distractable Mind:
Holiday meme the first: Hanukah.
On a post where I mentioned the eight-nights’-worth-of-gifts challenge, Liz left a comment that kind of tagged me with Flea’s Hanukah meme.
Since the Free-Ride household celebrates both Hanukah and Christmas, the Christmas meme will be up next.
Hold onto your kippah — here we go!
The busy blogger’s year in review.
David posted his holiday letter, but I didn’t feel up to composing one of those. So instead, I’m going to do this “year in review” meme I saw at Geeky Mom’s pad. (She got it from Trillwing.)
The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month.*