Get me out of FLA

I leave for Florida in the morning. I am going to go to Gainesville to watch my friend D defend her PhD, although I will be in Gainesville for just a few hours (sorry to have to miss seeing all my Hogtown friends). I will mostly stay in Lakeland with my folks for a couple of night, too. It will be nice to be in Florida for a few days despite knowing that I have tons of work to do here. I will take the laptop so that I can keep working on my next manuscript while there, making use of any downtime. K, my wife, will not be going along, as she is in Peru for work this week.

Taking my sweet time

Well, I am apparently taking my sweet time getting back into the groove of blogging.

Lots of things are going on here, despite my silence. Among the myriad papers and grants I am writing, I am also doing experiments. This all means that I work nearly all the time in some capacity or another. I can't complain too much, though. This is the time where I prove that I can hack the academy. Sink or swim. Right now I'm treading water and looking for dry land on the horizon, if you'll pardon the bad metaphor. To extend it further: this is the period where I am actually in the water, but still wearing water wings, which are beginning to chafe a bit. I'm trying to get my own money and a tenure-track job, but that'll take 1) more and better pubs, 2) money would help, and 3) being at the right place in my career (and geographically) at the right time. All I can do until those planets all align is wait. And work even harder.

Science! Ain't it grand?