Random and disjointed.

I didn't finish anything this weekend (worked on the newest Clapotis, worked on the crocheted blanket, worked on the Landscape shawl but they're all so long-term that they're still a ways from being finished).

I did, however, finish a good rewrite of part of a paper, and I now see where I need to go for the discussion. (That is, once I analyze the data and have some results - and that is also given that the results aren't something totally crazy and unexpected). And I see what I need to do as a next step of research, and it's something that could probably be started this week, even though the field site's not ready for field type stuff yet. (But I have to go and check the field site to see if it's getting anywhere NEAR ready...)

I'm back to using notecards again to take my notes on from research reading. That's what I used to use (for years and years, even when I was in grade school) and laziness and a sense of "I should know how to do this by now" pulled me away from it the past year or two - to the point where I was just underlining stuff in copies of papers I was reading. And my memory is NOT good enough for that. (And with notecards, you can put letter codes on them to remind you of where they need to go in your paper).

And here's where the craft-crazed part of me comes in: I was trying to design, in my mind, some kind of "notecard cozy" that I could use to store the notecards for each of the several projects I have going on. Didn't come up with anything useful and I think in the end I'll probably use the little plastic boxes (like recipe boxes only cheaper) that I used to use.

I'm grateful that this is one week where I only have to be out one evening. Too many late-afternoon and night meetings the past two weeks.

While I was taking a little time off of writing and reading yesterday, I watched a couple episodes of House on dvd. (I bought the first season; probably will buy the second season when I've watched all these). It's funny but it's one of the shows the consistently will have a moment or two in it where I tear up*

(And yeah, there will be kind of a spoiler for one of the season 1 House episodes below)


(*Of course, that could be because most of the other shows I watch revolve around cooking, blowing things up in the name of disproving urban legends, and cartoons aimed at the under-12 set)

But the episode I was watching - it was one where a woman had contracted sleeping sickness. Turns out it happened because she had an affair. Her husband had been 100% faithful to her and he couldn't accept - couldn't deal with - the fact that his wife had (probably, at that point, it wasn't "proven") had an affair. And Dr. Cameron (the young woman doctor) has just told him, and she chews him out for not being able to forgive his wife, who may well be dying at that point.

And later, she's standing in one of the labs, her back to the door. House walks in and says something to her. She turns around, her eyes are red. He remarks that she's crying. She denies it, claims that she's just rebalancing the centrifuge, but goes on to talk about how she was once married to a guy who died. Turns out, she must have known he was dying (thyroid cancer) when she met him and fell in love. And House says to her something along the lines of "No one can both be that good [to marry a man who's dying] and be well-adjusted."

And she responds somehow, and he says, "And you wind up crying over a centrifuge."

And she very quietly says, "Yeah, or you wind up hating people."

(That's a rough paraphrase; I'm good at remembering the gist of conversations but not what's exactly said.) But that struck me - not only because it gives somewhat of an insight into the interaction of those two characters (both, in some respect, perhaps too idealistic, but House is better at insulating himself and pretending not to care) but also I do think there's somewhat of a truth there. I do tend to vacillate between "crying over centrifuges" (where little things get to me because they're a proxy for the big things I don't want to deal with) or claiming to "hate people" (which I don't, really, and I'm more prone to go into a people-avoiding mode than I am to walk around snapping and grouching at people). Not that I make any claims of being particularly "good" or even "well-adjusted..."