What's up?

[Thumper]

I miss my work calendar. It had all my personal appointments on it.

[geonuc]

I miss my work calendar. It had all my personal appointments on it.

You may find yourself missing a lot of stuff you didn't think you would. You may find yourself dreaming of your old job. A while ago I dreamed I was back in something like my old engineering job but it sort of morphed into being back on the submarine.

[SciFiFisher]

I usually cannot make a personal appointment without first consulting my work calendar. I usually regret it when I don't.

[pumpkinpi]

Do y'all think I'm anxious about something?

Two nights ago I had a dream about having open heart surgery. It was a very vivid, graphic dream. From the stages of the anesthesia starting to work (body numb below the neck, like I'm paralyzed, but still awake), to the incision, to very carefully starting to walk around after it was done.

And last night I dreamed about being in an airplane, hearing the pilot say "Flight attendants prepare for landing now. Engines are fine," then plunging straight down. The dream didn't go as far as the crash/landing stage.

I'm actually less stressed at work than I have been in a long time. Some big projects/hassles are behind me, and I have some big chunks of time to sit down and get some work done.

At home things are generally ok. It's a new school year so we're getting into the groove of our schedule and new activities. Rooster is still acting out, but no 7 year old is perfect.

MrPi's job situation is awful, though. He's working from 7am to 9pm most days, sometimes until midnight, and going in to the office most weekends. I usually get the kids for their activities, but when he has to, he then has to go back in or work from home until late. He's got a couple positions open under him that aren't getting filled, and his bosses keep throwing things at him. He's seriously trying to find another job, but he can't just quit. So he has to stick it out for now. So, it's not directly affecting me, but it's definitely affecting our home life. But it's been like this for a while, so I don't know why these anxiety dreams would be surfacing now!

[SciFiFisher]

Short answer: yes

Short explanation: Don't expect it to be logical


The situation you describe is stressful. It would be normal to experience some anxiety and distress in relation to it. Especially with your spouse being almost totally consumed by his work situation.

[geonuc]

I'm no expert but that Mr Pi situation seems very stressful and it has to be affecting you. So, yeah, you're anxious.

[Rommie]

So, this is funny. We have thin-ish walls in my new office space, and I share one with a rather famous astronomer (she basically decided to map all the galaxies, and discovered the large-scale structure of the universe with all the voids and streams of galaxies). She is in her 70s and briefly introduced herself, and it was obvious from the chit-chat of a minute that she's somewhere on the spectrum. Cool!

Now as y'all might have heard, they awarded a little thing last week called the Nobel Prize, and one of them went to a cosmologist at Princeton, and none went to women except for one in economics. And oh my gawd. I might have heard a long, involved rant from her to a colleague about how terrible the Nobel Prize is the day the physics one was awarded. Which yeah, she definitely faced misogyny in her career from what I heard via the wall, and the Nobel Prize is a whole can of worms of stupid in many ways. But then! She's doing it again today! And it turns out the root of the problem is she's been nominated, she thinks, but isn't getting the award herself!

I dunno, I guess I am sharing because I am vastly entertained by the caliber of person I'm sharing a wall with, and entertained that there are legit people who care about not getting the Nobel prize enough to rant about it more than once. That and my office mate and I are wondering if there's a polite way to say "huh, thin walls around here" to her.

[pumpkinpi]

Yes, that's entertaining! I spend quite a lot of time around the office of astrophysics academics so I know a bit about the environment you're in. No one very famous though.

Of course I had to find out who this famous astrophysicist is, so I googled your office directory to see who had an office next door to yours. I haven't heard of her. But I was excited to see Lisa Kaltenegger on your directory! I know exoplanets don't quite overlap with your work but do you ever overlap with her? I'm a fan of her work.

[Rommie]

Huh, that's interesting, particularly since it appears that she's now Cornell based? No, I haven't run into her. I've noticed though there are often these little cross appointments when one astronomer is in a relationship with another or some such, requiring frequent visits, but they tend to not be spelled out explicitly.

I did go to the exoplanet side of the building last week though for a champagne toast of the exoplanet, which was fun. The best part was we were invited over by a passing astronomer while we were discussing the Prize that morning over tea, and I gave my opinion about exoplanets to him. (Namely, pointed out the first ones were actually discovered by radio astronomers around a pulsar.) After he left I had to ask the group I was with who that was, and received the look people give you when they can't believe you are that clueless, and was told it was David Cherbonneau, the astronomer who pioneered the transit technique to find exoplanets. Oh...

[SciFiFisher]

I suspect that Astronomy is a very small world.

[Ikyoto]

I found a group on Facebook where people don't act like utter assholes to each other.

Yeah... that'll last

[geonuc]

I found a group on Facebook where people don't act like utter assholes to each other.

Yeah... that'll last

It has so far.

[Swift]

Speaking of Noble prizes, I have to mention this about the chemistry one.

This one is in inorganic solid-state chemistry (I'm an inorganic solid-state chemist) and I know one of them (though he won't know me from a hole in the wall): John Goodenough. He was a friend of both my undergraduate and graduate research advisors and I met him many, many years ago when I was in grad school. Congrats Prof. Goodenough.

M. Stanley Whittingham is also very famous in this field, and he worked for Exxon at about the time I was in grad school (our group had a lot of funding from Exxon). I think I might have met him too, but I'm not sure.

[SciFiFisher]

It appears that the 6 degrees from almost everyone in the world theory is still holding up.

[Thumper]

Wow I haven't been here much. I was hoping to hang out here for a bit this morning and catch up, and post a bit. But I have to leave in 5 minutes to go help my buddy. So short post. I like helping my buddy. It gives me something to do during the day and make me feel a little useful. I need to get some discipline and work on my projects here on the property. But I find myself sleeping in, watching Air Crash Investigations in my underwear, and drinking beer too early. So I go help my friend for now.

[SciFiFisher]

Wow I haven't been here much. I was hoping to hang out here for a bit this morning and catch up, and post a bit. But I have to leave in 5 minutes to go help my buddy. So short post. I like helping my buddy. It gives me something to do during the day and make me feel a little useful. I need to get some discipline and work on my projects here on the property. But I find myself sleeping in, watching Air Crash Investigations in my underwear, and drinking beer too early. So I go help my friend for now.

Drinking beer in your underwear gets boring after a while.

[Rommie]

Yeah and to be fair, Air Crash Investigation is a pretty awesome show!

I'm pretty sure it's ok to spend the first few weeks of retirement chilling out and considering options, and then getting more into the swing of things. Beats my dad's version at least, where you stress about retirement so much you get a heart attack in a month, and then are forced to chill out.

[Thumper]

Thanks for the support!
And I agree ACI is an awesome show. Sometimes they draw it out a little too long for dramatic purposes, but I find the forensics and the thorough investigations fascinating and amazing. There is a reason why air travel is so safe. It's the individuals at the NTSB and their counterparts around the world.

Anyway, getting ready to head out and help my buddy finish up a bathroom renovation. No underwear and beer this morning.

[geonuc]

Anyway, getting ready to head out and help my buddy finish up a bathroom renovation. No underwear and beer this morning.

You know, I kinda figured that after you retired, you'd be on here a lot more. But nooooo. Seems the opposite.

I guess we now know what you did at work!

[geonuc]

Australia seems to be having a time of it with raging wildfires in the east.

[geonuc]

No Thumper in over a month?

[Sigma_Orionis]

Yeah, really.

[Rommie]

I guess the retirement is going well? IRC, he used to pretty much check in from work mainly.

[geonuc]

So I'm sitting at the bar in my favorite brewpub by myself. When alone, I tend to bring reading material. This time it was an issue of Geology magazine. I try to keep up with the science even if it is slowly tending to go over my head. Two folks - a man and a woman about my age - belly up to the bar next to me. The guy sees my magazine and asks if I'm a geologist.

*As an aside, I sometimes struggle with how to respond to that question and even more so whether I'm a lawyer (if I'm reading or talking law) or even more than that what I do (did) for a living. Having three unrelated degrees and working in another field altogether where most people don't understand the job tends to make me think too much about my answer lest I tell a fib. Here, I fortunately answered it straight - "No but I do have a geology degree so I like to keep up with the science". Sometimes I tell a fib anyway as a convenience, as I did to this guy later when he asked about my former job: "nuclear engineer". I'm not and never was a nuclear engineer. I was an engineer working in the nuclear power industry.

So I say it was fortunate I answered that way because it turns out that they're both retired geologists - he the chair (formerly) at CSU Fullerton and she a professor who taught geology educators how to teach geology. Turns out because Fullerton is very close to my BS Geology alma mater of CSU Long Beach that they knew several of my professors. Geology is a small community, it seems. So we had a good talk. They were even newer to Bend than I so I could offer some helpful stuff there.

The last person that chatted me up at the bar was a car salesman. Nothing wrong with that but then I tried hard to break off the convo and get back to my reading material.

[SciFiFisher]

Kind of like the question "have you done this before" that I used to get when I first became a nurse and still looked young enough to be asked that question. Of course, I am not going to tell anyone that they were my very first attempt at something fresh out of nursing class. Well, there was the prison inmate who was my first attempt at starting an IV while I was in school. He definitely knew he was the first real patient I had practiced on.

I usually faked a severe tremor in my hands and stated rather drolly "I never really understood why they wouldn't let me take the brain surgery class".