Before I go...

Seeking Solace over at Thoughts from the Waiting Room was kind enough to pass along a bloggy honor.

Thank you! So nice to think of me! I had seen this going around but didn't expect to be so honored =)


A lot of folks already have been tagged so I will try to nominate some that are not...

First the usual rules:
1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog.


And now the nominees:
Unbalanced Reaction
Karina at Ruminations of Aspiring Ecologist
LuckyBuzz
EcoGeoFemme
ScienceGirl
Hypoglycemiagirl
Wayfarer Scientista

Enjoy!!

Music meme

I got tagged for this now! Thanks to ScienceGirl!

Seen so far at Luckybuzz and Addy N......
Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike through (or italicize) when someone gets them right
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is cheating.

I skipped songs without words or not in English and it turned out a pretty good mix of my music...
Good luck!

1. I don't wanna waste your time
2. I know a girl who thinks of ghosts -Flaming Lips
3. I'm in love with the world/ through the eyes of a girl /who's still around the morning after
4. This is a calling card
5. Ooohh baby, I'm not a mindreader
6. No matter how hard I try/ you kept pushing me aside - Orginially Cher, but my version is by Bedhead Loves Macha
7. There's a destination a little up the road
8. All the modern things like cars and such -Bjork
9. Someone elses' day someones elses' door
10. I want/to be a good woman
11. When I call you up, your line's engaged -The Beatles
12. Here I dreamt I was a soldier/ and I marched the streets of Birkenau
13. I could be sleeping I could be dreaming
14. Words and guitar/ I got em
15. I was born a unicorn
16. I'm on a roll, I'm on a roll this time
17. As I walked out on the streets of Laredo -Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson in my library
18. Traffic in my city turns my head around
19. Crab if you want her/ she won't be coming down - Weezer
20. He was just a working man
21. Evening star struck one
22. It's all a waste of time again
23. It's the perfect time of year/ somewhere far away from here - Barenaked Ladies
24. Left uninspired by the crust of railroad earth
25. Early one morning while making the rounds

The Album Cover Meme

(seen at Monkeygirl and ScienceGirl)

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result in your own journal.

Gee, another meme

I'm feeling very meme-y these days. Frog-o-phobic tagged for this one and I had never seen it before! Digging into the archives for this one...


Link 1 is a little bit of FAMILY: My big brother just got a new job as a co-pilot for a commuter/feeder airline connected to one of the major airlines. He should be flying his first flights within the next week. With people on the planes and everything! Quite a big change from the last time he came to visit me.

Link 2 is a little bit of FRIEND: I don't usually blog friend related events because, well, I usually can not be bothered to find my camera cord to upload the pics in a timely fashion. Pictures from "RockBand Night" aren't as exciting a month late. Instead, my super awesome best friend/college roommate/maid of honor came to visit last fall!

Link 3 is a little bit of YOURSELF: This post covers a number of my grad-student neuroses.


Link 4 should be YOUR LOVE: The ol' wedding from May.

Link 5 can be ANYTHING YOU LIKE: This blog started as a knitting blog although knitting gets very little blog-space anymore. I am still purling away and am actually working on my first sweater.


Since I didn't really tag anyone specific yesterday (although am happy you are going to do it Field Notes!) tag LuckyBuzz, Geeka and Field Notes (again)!

Welcome Back Meme

1. Will you be looking for a new job?
I pretty much always look for new jobs. Postdocs, tenure track positions, non-academic jobs, heck, I even know that the new Mexican place in town is hiring servers. In actuality, yes. I will be searching for a postdoc. Or at least funding for a postdoc.
2. Will you be looking for a new relationship?
Nope. We are full of marital bliss here at chez fish.
3. New house?
No. V seems to have succeeded in fixing the roof so our current house may even continue standing all the way through 2008.
4. What will you do differently in 08?
A lot of things.
5. New Years resolutions?
Eat better. Stop reading celebrity gossip.
6. What will you not be doing in 08?
Spending more than 3 months of the year away from my home/husband.
7. Any trips planned?
Two conferences this spring, going to NM for research this summer, another conference, possibly going to hometown for my 10 year reunion, to hometown for a wedding.
8. Wedding plans?
None of my own.
9. Major thing on your calendar?
V's qualifying exams and finishing research in NM.
10. What can’t you wait for?
Having all of my side/old projects submitted for publication.
11. What would you like to see happen differently?
It would be nice to see more acceptance emails rather than rejections on submitted papers and grants.
12. What about yourself will you be changing?
I want to
13. What happened in 07 that you didn’t think would ever happen?
I submitted a paper to (a journal that rhymes with) Schmiance.
14. Will you be nicer to the people you care about?
I will certainly try.
15. Will you dress differently this year than you did in 07?
I started dressing nicer for teaching. I hope to keep it up despite not lecturing.
16. Will you start or quit drinking?
No.
17. Will you better your relationship with your family?
Sure. My brother and I don't really talk very often.
18. Will you do charity work?
Probably not. Except maybe knitting for charity or raising money for a run for a cause sort of thing.
19. Will you go to bars?
I drink more at home but I have been known to frequent a happy hour here or there.
20. Will you be nice to people you don’t know?
I usually am.
21. Do you expect 08 to be a good year for you?
There is no reason not to.
22. How much did you change from this time last year till now?
I got married, lost some weight, and due to my time away from my lab/advisor/university, became more independent and confidant in my abilities as a researcher .
23. Do you plan on having a child?
Nope.
24. Will you still be friends with the same people you are friends with now?
I hope so. Some are moving so I hope the distance does not alter our friendships too much.
25. Major lifestyle changes?
None that I can foresee.
26. Will you be moving?
Back to NM for a few months.
27. What will you make sure doesn’t happen in 08 that happened in 07?
Let the useless parts of the Internet suck up so much of my time.
28. What are your New Years Eve plans?
A party at my office mates house.
29. Will you have someone to kiss at midnight?
V!
30. One wish for 08?
Health and happiness for family and friends.

I tag anyone who hasn't done this one yet!

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme

I was tagged by Monkeygirl for a meme. It was started by PZ Myers at Pharyngula as a means of demonstrating evolution in cyberspace.

First, the rules:
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
* You can leave them exactly as is.
* You can delete any one question.
* You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question.
For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
* You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
* You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions. Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.
So, without further ado:
My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-great-grandparent is Primate Diaries.
My great-grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
My grandparent is a k8, a cat, a mission.
My parent is Monkeygirl.

The best young adult novel in SF/Fantasy is: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The best teenage movie in comedy is: Clueless
The best uplifting song in country music is: We'll Meet Again by Johnny Cash
The best cult novel in contemporary fiction is: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
The best high-carb food in Mexican cooking is: Flour tortillas
The best dissertation-related words I ever received from a scholar are: Do the project that you will be most passionate about.

I am propagating this meme on to:
Hamster_grrl
Sneks
Dr. Brazen Hussy
Geeka
Anyone else who wants to participate!

You're it.

I’ve been tagged by Chris over at Spinneret …
Here are the Rules:* Someone Tags you* You post 5 things about yourself that you haven't already mentioned on your blog* You tag 5 people about whom you'd like to know more

I wish I could dress differently than I do. I would love to wear nicer clothes and have a wardrobe that could actually exude some sort of style. I know exactly what I WOULD wear- very stylized vintage stuff. I just can’t pull it off because of what I do. Cleaning fish tanks in a skirt is not fun (I have done it but it isn’t fun). Even if it were fun you’d ruin all your cool clothes pretty quickly. Even jewelry and actual hairstyles are pretty impossible. A ponytail is really the only way to avoid wet fishy hair. And all jewelry will get ruined. I managed to wear a simple bracelet for the last 3 years but have now switched to a more useful watch. I have all put given up my old habit of wearing cool (fake) glasses and even my engagement ring comes off when I am doing lab work.
I end up in a jeans and t-shirt rut that is hard to climb out of (Although, I do an ok job with my selection of band and actual old t-shirts I think. Of course, so does every halfway decent indie rock kid living near an Urban Outfitters). To make matters worse, I don’t really think that the type of style I would like to have is particularly professional for the academic setting. I guess my jeans and t-shirts aren’t either though….

I am horrible about sending things in the mail. Cards, presents, anything. I never go to the post office and if I do it is always months after I say I will. There was a period of time when I couldn’t find stamps for the life of me and if it isn’t stamps it is a box or something else vital to packages. I still haven’t sent a scarf to a friend whose birthday was in September. Currently, I am making a concerted effort to send things. I already sent a card to V!

I love pickles. On sandwiches, by themselves, slices or chips. My favorites are the ‘Bread n’ Butter’ ones.

I don’t think I’ve talked about this here, since it is usually a big love fest with our cats. I used to be deathly afraid of cats. Hated them! I stood on a chair for 2 hours when I was a sophomore in college because there was a kitten on my porch. All my roommates also hate(d) cats so they were no help. I am very happy I got over this.

I started SCUBA diving when I was 12 (both pics in my title header I took myeslf!) and am a certified Rescue Diver. I haven’t been in years and I miss it. I used to dive for work (marine education programs) and loved the feeling of being so familiar with a coral reef that I knew what species of fish were where and could see them week after week. It is because of diving that I got interested in fish behavior and research as a whole.

I tag….Ok, I don’t really know who reads this here blog regularly so if you are reading, consider yourself tagged. (And leave me a comment so I can learn more about you!)

iPod/Tunes meme

I saw this over at Dr. Brazen Hussy and thought it was super great.

In honor of the new hard drive V is getting for his pod and the new battery he order for my pod.... The iPod meme!

3rd Generation 20 gig , over 3 years old.
How many songs: 4639
First song: 'Cause I Love You by Johnny Cash
Last song: Zone Doubt by Sebedoh
Shortest: "It'd be nice if you could pull me into town" from Napoleon Dynamite (3 seconds) Shorest music containing piece: "One last "Whoo-Hoo!" for the Pullman by Sufjan Stevens
Longest: The Tain by The Decemberists. I have a Robbie Willliams song that goes long (28 and change) but that one has a hidden track at the end so it is mostly silent
Five most played songs: I have a bad habit of not listening to things on itunes (at work I tend to listen to KEXP through itunes radio). Or I don't let the song finish so it doesn't count it. I also let me battery TOTALLY die on the pod so bad that it resets and doesn't keep count for more than 2 weeks (see NEW battery V ordered me!) That said the following all have 2 full plays...
1) Sons & Daughters by The Decemberists
2) Bullet and a Target by Citizen Cope (and a post title from a few days ago...)
3) By the Time it Gets Dark by Yo La Tengo
4) Modern Girl by Sleater-Kinney
5) Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson (I had my run so was rocking this in the gym)
First song that comes up on "shuffle": Everything Hits at Once by Spoon
Number of items that come up when searching for:
"sex": 5
"death": 74 (lots of Death Cab for Cutie and a double album called Death to the Pixies)
"love": 235
"you": 537
"me": 1149
"cry": 20

Help a grad student...

A grad student is doing a pretty cool experiment about memes on blogs and how fast they are picked up and spread throught the blogosphere. Have you helped out a grad student yet today? It is almost as honorable as helping an old woman across the street.

[Short Version: Link to this post in the name of science. Ask others to do the same. Results to be announced during the "Meet the Bloggers" panel at MLA 2006.]

What is the speed of meme? People write in general (typically truimphant) terms about how swiftly a single voice can travel from one side of the internet to the other and back again, but how often does that actually happen? Of those instances, how often is it organic?

Here's what you to do:
1) Write a post linking to this one in which you explain the experiment. (All blogs count, be they TypePad, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, &c.)

2) Ask your readers to do the same. Beg them. Relate sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances. Imply I'm one of them. (Do whatever you have to. If that fails, try whatever it takes.)

3)Ping Techorati.

Camera still charging...

Since I am busy grading and I never did 100 things, here are a few somebody else thought of... (stolen from Craft Pirate a few months ago but recently inspired to finish it after seeing it by Kate about a month ago)
Bold the ones you have done.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said 'I love you' and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg (kayaking in Alaska- I caught a little one and used it as a kayak hood ornament)
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby's diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states (Damn Oregon!)
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country (Most of fall semester 2000)
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your cds
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Posed nude in front of strangers
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites- that one is a little odd sounding for some reason...
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married- (Soon!!!! Yippee!!!)
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days (I got really sick after getting my wisdom teeth out)
77. Made cookies from scratch (Although they are better when V makes them!)
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an "expert"
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Had a one-night stand
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror.
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Created and named your own constellation of stars
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an illness that you shouldn't have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane - not by myself but I got to steer for a few minutes
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone's heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours- easy to do if you are sick!
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school - You have to LEAVE school to be able to go back....
131. Parasailed
132. Petted a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions (haven't had any yet...)
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146: Dyed your hair
147: Been a DJ
148: Shaved your head
149: Caused a car accident
150: Saved someone's life