Damn! Damn! Damn!

I am the fattest person in Korea.

I love you. You're perfect. Now change.

Ah, the best laid plans of Dame Krafty of Bitch.

This weekend didn't pan out the way I had envisioned. Hey ho. It wasn't a total loss. I got some work done around the house and made a stab at figuring out my taxes no that I get this wacko stipend. I discovered that I need yet another book for this stats course I'm taking this semester. I can get reimbursed for that. I wish I could have all of the tuition covered, but I'm still going to be responsible for 40%, which isn't going to be cheap. Hey ho.

It wasn't a weekend of wellness. Yesterday was off to a late start, mainly because I apparently fell into a coma Friday night. I didn't go to bed late, in fact I went to bed relatively early. My intention was to go food shopping early as it's move in weekend at the university. Then I would come home, do the bit of housework that needed to be done, and then spend the rest of the weekend eating right, meditating, and all that wellness jazz. ps. I didn't wake up until noon. Seriously. I didn't wake up until freaking noon. By then, I was all like, meh. So, in between the household chores, I've been watching Ab Fab and thinking. Not the plan.

So, the plan now is to get the eating back on track this week. I cooked and prepared food today for such. And can I just say, what is with food prices? I know everything is more expense here in C-ville than in the Gate City, but WTF? I think they've gone up another dollar or something. I just don't get it. My lesbian wife, who visited last weekend with her lesbian wife, pointed it out to me, but I think they've gone up since then. Crazy.

Anyway, the plan now is to get the eating back on track and ease into some fitness plan by next weekend. We'll see. The aforementioned stats course starts Tuesday and there is already an assignment due. ps. Don't get me started on the whole stats software fiasco from Friday. Don't even get me started. I'm also sitting in on another course on CAM. And now I have some real, long term tasks at work, including my first real NIH grant proposal, to be submitted next year.

Meanwhile, I want to get meditation, daily meditation in there too, as well as redoing some long-term goals and plans. In short, I kind want to upgrade or something. Not a reboot. I don't know, some more evolution, metamorphosis, or something or nothing.

Could do with a TARDIS

How in the fuck is it 22 August 2009? "Seems like only yesterday, I was Magnolia Queen." Seriously, what is with this fourth dimension known as time? Flies when you're having fun? It bloody well barrels along when you're not having fun, too, sweetie.

As an aside--which I find I actually do. You know asides? Those things they do in plays? I do those, without an audience, mind you. Maybe it's schizophrenia. Anyway, as an aside, I've eaten so many tomatoes and tomato products in the past two days that my innards must be chock-a-block with lycopene, which is a good thing really. Good for me ol' prostate. It might come in handy someday, if I can ever get a bloke around for more than just upstairs outsidies. A little 'how's your father'. Wouldn't want it going off in the interim.

The only bad thing is, at my advanced age, too much tomatoey goodness and I puff up like a zepplin, which leaves one without much chance of a poke. Sigh.

Dans la cuisine

New things are happening in the kitchen.

A Clockwork Krafty

I’m learning more and more about what makes me tick these days. I don’t know if it is the coming together of cosmic forces, environment, time to think, or what. I believe and feel that my time is arriving or perhaps has just arrived, that prime so fabled by Miss Jean Brodie.
For one thing, I’ve come to realize that I sometimes (often times) expect/want changes to occur in my life through some sort of osmotic process, diffusion of ideas and actions that will manifest in the results I desire.

Today, for example, I’m sitting in my office reading about energy therapies (Healing Touch in particular), and realized one of the things I thought before coming here isn’t necessarily valid and is part of this pattern. I had assumed that since I would be working in a place focused on the study of complementary and integrative therapies and practices that my colleagues would understand the importance of such therapies and activities. And somehow this would manifest in me taking better care of myself, because they would allow me time and opportunity to do so. That would happen and I would get everything I want and reach a state of bliss. This is how my thinking goes.

Okay, the reality is that these colleagues may or may not understand or believe in the importance of these therapies and activities, they have not encouraged me to do these things, I’ve not been forced to do these things, I haven’t been doing these things, and so I don’t have everything I want and bliss has eluded me. Therefore, the old patterns return/remain: disordered eating, wildly fluctuating self-esteem, and a terse inner dialogue that manifests itself in bitchiness. There, I said it.

I am not a sponge in the sense that if I am in a certain environment, I will take on those attributes, or least the positive attributes I outlined in my mind. The same was true for nutrition. I would become a graduate student in nutrition, I would maintain a healthy diet and wellness regime, I would become fit and have the body I want, and I would get everything I want and reach a state of bliss. That was not the reality. The same is true for Healing Touch.

Don’t get me wrong. I truly am interested and love Healing Touch, the study of complementary and integrative medicine, and nutrition. But loving these things doesn’t just make what I want happen. That actually takes effort on my part. It’s not like this is some new-fangled thinking here either. But it seems to be coming up more and more. I’m recognizing more and more, and realizing that most likely it is the universe’s way of trying to get me to wake up and pay attention, to actually do something about it.

I believe it is time to not just put digital pen to digital paper, to not just write about and think about these ideas, but to put some new ones into practice. Time to put in the effort to achieve these most desired of outcomes. I believe that bringing myself to these aforementioned environments has lead the way. All part of the path and plan, you know.

As I’ve said numerous times, my goals for the next two years in C-ville are personal, to achieve these personal goals of mine, or at least to make some damn good headway. I’m truly going to take this weekend for myself, to re-evaluate, to plan, and to act. Action is required and desired.

So, here’s to me and the journey…and my beautiful eyes!

My great-grandmother is standing just inside my office, in front of the door, smelling of roses.

ps.

I want to blog. Really I do. But when I think of posts, when I want to write, I'm away from my laptop. I don't really want to blog from the office computer because they are über-strict about computer use at the university. Nor do I want to lug around the iBook everyday. And by the time I get home in the evening, it just doesn't happen.

But there is a lot I want to say, to express. I'm taking this weekend for me, to do some things for me. My plan is for that to include some writing. There are lots of plans, truly there are. And there are lots of blog posts floating about in my cranium. But right now, my cozy bed is calling me.

Bonne nuit.

Why are all these young male students so hot? And why do I feel like a lecherous, old cougay looking at them?

Where's the fucking bus? A bitch is ready to bounce.

ps.

Responded to my former mentor's email this morning. All's I said about the review article was that I had been wondering how all of the outstanding publications were going. I didn't mention it specifically at all since I wanted to see if he would say anything.

In his reply he said he also wanted to apologize for my name being omitted from the review. He said that his former mentor (the one who forwarded the initial request) put the whole thing together and revised it, removing my name from the final version. He said that he didn't press him on it and now he feels badly.

Good.

Meanwhile, he's known all of this since it was submitted, before I moved, and didn't tell me until now. Whatever.

Fresh hell

It was most assuredly Monday. Picking up my ire where I left off last night, I was in a right mood this morning and most of the day. That ol' heifer down the hall that's been giving me the stank-eye since I arrived was no match for me today. When she tried that bullshit this morning, her brusque attitude quickly withered with one look from yours truly. Child, don't mess with this bitch, okay?

I was in my boss' office this morning as she wanted my input on her class in which I'll being doing a couple of guest lectures. What I thought would take a few minutes turned into about an hour. When during the discussion she mentioned something about authorship of manuscripts, I told her about my recent discovery. She sympathized and proceeded to tell me that such a thing would not happen where I am now, that she flaunts me at every opportunity, and that I'm her "star". It was nice to hear, but given this latest instance of being used, I'm taking it with a grain of salt.

When I got back to my office, there was an email from my former mentor about another article which was sent back from the reviewers today, requesting a major rewrite. I never felt that comfortable about this particular manuscript anyway, but he insisted on sending it out immediately rather than wait on more data to go with it. The first paragraph of the email was all 'hope you're doing well in your new environment' sorts of stuff. Yeah, right. The second paragraph was about the review and how he agreed with the reviewers that it needed more data to go with it. Uh, hello? Remember when I said that more than three months ago?

I've not responded to the email yet, because I'm not sure what I want to say. I thought I would sleep on it and hope to wake up in a better mood tomorrow. However, I apparently have new neighbors next door, and as I write this in my bedroom I can hear almost everything the girl is saying to whomever on the phone clear as a bell through the wall. After a month of quiet neighbors, I now have to live next door to some loud, white girl.

Not sure I'll be waking up in a better mood tomorrow. Of course, according to Germerican Mavis, I'm always grumpy. Maybe I am. Maybe I....I don't feel like going there.

Absolute fuckery

I am SO fucking pissed off right now! So pissed!

So, my last semester of grad school, I was a writing fiend. Not only did I get all of my dissertation chapters that had not been published submitted, but...BUT I also wrote an invited book chapter and a portion of an invited review. I did not receive the invitation. That went to my former mentor, who passed them on to me to write, with the understanding that I would be a co-author. Or so I thought.

I was searching articles this evening in the NIH database of such things, and I thought, 'why don't I see if any of these articles that are still pending have been published yet.' My former mentor was always lax about telling me this things. So, I'm searching, not even thinking of the review article because, as far as I knew, it hadn't even been accepted for publication yet.

Well, lo and behold, there is it at the top. And who is NOT a co-author? Me. So, I'm suitably pissed. Then I think, well, maybe my section got cut. Of course, if that were the case, then why would my former mentor's name still be on it? No, the section was not cut. It was rewritten, for the most part, which I knew nothing about, and also shortened. Put there are several sentences that are directly what I wrote. So, either my mentor didn't have my name on it and rewrote it from the start, or removed my name after it was rewritten during the review process.

The submission date is mid-June. I was still in the Gate City. In fact, I think I even went by his office that day to check-in after my trip and before moving. The acceptance is date two weeks ago, and it was published online last week.

I am furious. This is not the first time something like this has happened to me, but for some reason I thought that he wouldn't do this to me on this one. I don't know why considering I'm not a co-author on two other papers to which I contributed, but he is. By the time graduation rolled around, I realized that I had become, or perhaps never was more than a feather in his cap. Would he have gotten tenure this year without the work that I had done over the past five years? Hell no. And he knows it, all of the faculty know it, and I thought I was going to get some acknowledgment for it. Apparently not.

Of course, now I'm beginning to wonder about the book chapter. He did update me on that before I left, about how they wanted a quick, short summary of the whole thing. So, now I'm wondering whether or not my name will be on that! I just went back through my emails regarding the book chapter and rediscovered the consent to publish form, which I never signed. You would think, you would think that when it was submitted, the editors would have mentioned to him that the form had not been submitted. So, unless I get the form faxed to me in the coming months to sign, I'm betting my name will not be on the book chapter either.

This just makes my day perfect, really fucking perfect.

Weeks in review

29 July:

Nothing exiciting in the office, which gives me plenty of time to think too much. This has been going on all week/month/year/decade/life.

30 July:

More of the same.

31 July:

More of the same.

1 August:

Off to Hamlet with a plan, which is foiled instantly. The day is spent in the company of the Little Master and various and sundry other relatives, but the Little Master is of particular importance, as he well knows. You can't fool him.

2 August:

More time with the Little Master before the long, boring drive back to C-ville.

3 August:

Wake up early with a migraine that is on the verge of doing me in. We're talking top of the scale. So, I take my meds (which I hate) and go to the office. I can't look at the screen long without feeling the room spin and narrowly avoid leaving a puddle of sick on the floor. Brillo.

4 August:

Headache is now middle of the scale. No room spinning, but still a bit queasy. Biltmore Mavis says she thinks it's anxiety. I don't feel anxious on this particular day, but realize I usually have a migraine/headache after being in Hamlet. Hmm.

Go to see Food, Inc. with Davey Boy, a friend from grad school who lives here in C-ville. The woman at the restaurant thinks we're brothers. I guess this is owing to the fact that we're both tall, though he's taller, and have curly hair. He's much more fit than me. At the theatre, some random man thinks we're on a date because he tells Davey Boy "good luck tonight" with a wink when he goes to the loo. While Davey Boy is cute, he's also straight and engaged. But it's nice to think that people think I can pull someone like Davey Boy.

5 August:

Day 3 of headache, though now we're low grade. More and more I'm realizing I'm my boss' new favorite, which is good. I think others are realizing it too, which may be leading to green eyes all around. Might not be so good.

6 August:

I get my hair cut at a cool salon here in C-ville that I had found online and is recommended by Davey Boy. The stylist looks kinda like a cool version of Amy Winehouse, but without being strung out and stoned. Enjoyable do, despite the price, which is a lot when you're coming from free hair cuts for the last several years. The bummer is she's moving this winter, but by then I should know the others in the joint and should be able to switch.

7 August:

Nothing exciting in the office. In the evening I clean and prep a bit for Germerican Mavis' visit. I make a delicious arugula pesto over spaghetti for dinner.

Yesterday:

Germerican Mavis comes for a visit (later than planned) and we hit the sleepy town of C-ville. C-ville was too sleepy, as were we, so after dinner and drinks, it's back to Chez Bitch to watch a video (seriously, a video) and bed.

Today:

Germerican Mavis is an early-riser, so it's off to breakfast at a local joint I hadn't tried. The coffee and food do not stave off the headache on the left side of my head, behind my eye. Mavis leaves early and the bitch goes back to bed. A nap does not help the headache either. Is it anxiety?

Tomorrow:

Back to the office.