Tuesday morning things

* Today is my talk. I am less nervous this morning than I have been but I am also still hoping there isn't "that guy" at the talk (As in: "don't be 'that guy'") who wants to show his great intelligence and importance by asking some kind of jerk question that either I can't answer, or that makes me look stupid. (Like: correcting my pronunciation of the Latin names. I've looked up the ones that I've only ever seen in print and not heard, and I know the basic guidelines of pronunciation, but still). It's UNLIKELY but you never know at these public type talks.

I dunno. I was always taught, all through grad school, that if you have a question about someone's methodology or their background or one of their assertions, you catch them privately after the talk and ask them privately....you don't try to make yourself look big by making them look small in the talk. It's okay to ask for clarification or to say something like, "Johnson found X in his research, how does that compare to what you found?" (Provided YOU are not "Johnson," I've seen that too - someone hijack the questions section to make it about their research rather than the research just presented).

* I started the gift-mitts for our departing person last night. We have a time and date set for a farewell dinner and it makes sense to give them to her then. I have a month, almost, so I should be able to get them done.

* Working on Raven during an exam today, I found several places down in the ribbing where I made errors (knitted where I should have purled, etc.) I'm guessing they correlate with the couple exams I gave when my stomach issues were flaring up. I marked the worst of them using the stitch holder I had with me and tonight I'm going to drop each stitch down and correct it using a crochet hook. It will be tedious but I think it's obvious enough of an error (at least to me) that I want to correct it. And I know how to.

* My stomach (and intestines, which I think were really the organ involved) are still better today. My biggest hope is that it was just a virus that messed stuff up for a while (I have had that happen) and the reason I got better for a while in February was the acid blocker....and I will be better from now on. My secondary hope (if the first one isn't the case) is that this is some weird perimenopausal symptom and it either won't be every month, or, if it gets worse, when I go see my lady-doctor in May she can suggest something that will help it.

* I've been slowly adding back in foods I "suspected." IF it is a food sensitivity of some kind, it's neither garlic nor pesto - I found that the Kroger brand gnocchi (which used to be a favorite of mine but most have too much sodium) are low enough in sodium for me to be able to eat them, so I had gnocchi and pesto for dinner last night and was fine. (And yes, I know you can make gnocchi, and they're probably better, but I don't think I have the time for that). I also suspect onions but I'm going to give it another couple weeks before I eat anything very onion-heavy.

* My tax refund has reached my bank account. It's....sizable. (I donate a lot to charity and I also had some considerable capital losses in investments this year). Part of me says, "Take some of that and just go have fun with it, plan a day to actually get down to McKinney again" (If they ever finished their eternal construction or if I can find a non-75 route that isn't jammed with traffic) but another part says, "Put every penny of it into savings; you may need a new roof soon. Or you may find yourself furloughed for longer depending on what the Legislature does." So I don't know. Yes, I can do both but if I spend $300 or something on stuff I hope I don't regret that later on. (Still so much insecurity in what's going to happen with higher ed. If they cut our salaries and just TOLD us, "Yeah, there's gonna be a 10% reduction come fall" I could live with that and budget for it, it's not knowing what's going to happen, if departments are going to be merged or eliminated, what the new structure will be, etc.)

Other option is to buy a couple of those "1 foot square footprint" bookcases - I desperately need more book storage (or I need to get rid of books, but that's a lot harder to do)