Nothing momentous to report, just a snapshot of my students working in the lab this afternoon. No broken glassware, no spill, no disasters (that I’m aware of, anyway.) Hopefully the results won’t be too wacky either! The water they are analyzing for total coliforms and fecal coliforms comes from a site near the mouth of [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Personal’
Wet Lab
Posted in teaching, tagged engineering, Personal, science, teaching, water quality on 9 February, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Cooking
Posted in family, local, Personal, tagged california, food, humboldt, local, Personal, society on 5 January, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
My husband gave me a local cookbook for Christmas, “Locally Delicious”, which was just published about a month ago. I’ve been talking about cooking more often (he does most of the cooking)and we’re both partisans of the idea of eating locally grown or produced food, in season. I was raised that way — my mom [...]
I knew there was a reason I’m here
Posted in current events, environment, Personal, tagged california, canada, Personal, weather on 9 December, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Montreal, where I come from, looks like this today: The office courtyard here looks like this: The temperature here is about 7 C (45 F), while it’s -2 C in Montreal (28 F).
Christmas and the holidays
Posted in Personal, society, tagged holidays, peace, Personal, religion on 6 December, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I don’t believe that it’s Jesus’ birthday, but I do like Christmas nonetheless. I don’t believe that a baby was born to a virgin travelling to Bethlehem. Moreover, even if Matthew (or more likely a later compiler and translator of Matthew’s work) had not added this bit to tie Jesus to messianic traditions but instead [...]
Leaves on the sidewalk
Posted in local, Personal, tagged humboldt, local, Personal, photography on 26 October, 2009 | 2 Comments »
A picture I took yesterday afternoon in Eureka. I loved the contrast between warm and cold colours.
Career: Project management
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, excellence, management, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 23 October, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
As in many other technical disciplines, it’s a frequent career path for engineers — almost required — to move from on from pure technical work (design, analysis, number-crunching, etc.) onto project management. A long time ago as an undergrad in civil engineering, my course concentration was in construction project management. I learned the crunchy part, [...]
Career: What I changed
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 22 October, 2009 | 2 Comments »
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts this week, I’ve been reflecting on career matters, including what I’ve changed in the last year and a half. First, I read up on job search and career management, and the difference between the two (this is the theme of the week). I thought a lot about what I [...]
Career: Opportunity and stumbling blocks
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 21 October, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’m not one of those people that life doesn’t throw anything at you which you can’t handle, or that everything happens for a reason. I think that’s the kind of thing we say to other people to make them and ourselves feel better, but in reality things just happen without predetermination. History unfolds as we [...]
Career: Piloting, not drifting
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 20 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday I mentioned that I have noticed a cycle in my career consisting of periods of intense, feverish learning and growth alternating with slower, less focused periods. I also mentioned that my latest period of rapid growth started with my layoff in May 2008. Corollary: that must mean I was in a slow-down period when [...]
Career: Cycles and seasons
Posted in employment, Personal, work, workplace, tagged Career, Personal, planning, work, workplace on 19 October, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Having received my first annual review at this company in early September, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my career trajectory. Looking back over the last 22 years since I graduated, I am beginning to see a pattern: periods of intense, roiling, boiling learning where I soak up information like a sponge and [...]



