Winter Weather Take 2

On Wednesday, the real snow arrived in Seattle. I had arranged to work from home that day, and it's a good thing I did.

This is what our driveway looked like,


and this was the main road:


There were cross country ski tracks on the side streets,


and the park 2 blocks from our house was full of sledders and skiers:

I was very glad to avoid going anywhere on Wednesday, but Thursday and Friday I had to deal with the difficulties of snowy driving in the northwest. Seattle has only 26 snow plows. For comparison, Boston (which is similar in population but nearly half the size in land area), has around 500. Add to that the fact that we have tons of hills and poorly equipped drivers, and you can understand how being out on the roadways might be a bit hazardous.

Fortunately, through snow, ice, and unexpected freezing rain, my trips to work on Thursday and Friday were largely uneventful. Tire chains were necessary on almost all streets on Thursday. On Friday, I needed the chains on the side streets, but the main roads were totally bare, and sadly the chains broke from driving too far on bare pavement :( But if a couple of chain links are, for us, the only casualties of what one Seattle meteorologist called "one of the major meteorological disasters of the past decade," I think we got off pretty easy.

Western Washington Winter Weather

Today it snowed in Seattle. There has been very little accumulation where I am (there's snow on the grass and the rooftops, but the roads are clear) but just about 10 miles north of here they got 7 inches of snow today. More snow is expected for tomorrow, and since it's a holiday, I hope it snows a lot! I like snow when I don't have to go anywhere, and we get so little of it here.

This fall and winter the weather has actually been uncharacteristically nice in Seattle. We have had a lot of sunny days (for Seattle), and less rain than usual. I'm also glad that we're getting past the darkest days of the year, and starting to move toward slightly more reasonable daylight hours. Last week one day as I was walking to my car at the end of the workday (4:30pm for me), it was sunny, and really bright. I actually found myself thinking "what is that bright orange light in the sky?" and then laughed out loud at myself when I realized it was the sun setting over the Olympic mountains (I can see both Mt. Rainier and the Olympics from the parking lot at work). We're relatively far north, so sunset is very early in the winter. This was literally the first time since mid-November that I could have possibly seen the sun as I was leaving work, because the sun has set before 4:30pm until last week. I can't wait until the sun is actually up when I wake up in the morning, and remains up long enough for me to jog in daylight after work, but it will be quite a while before that happens.

Last night, for the sake of fun and coziness (and because we had a few people over to watch a movie), we baked sticky buns. Jeff actually did all the baking, I just found the recipe (in this book) and "consulted."

Here they are ready to bake:


And post-flip after coming out of the oven:
They turned out to be absolutely delicious (though we made a few mental notes for next time, like pecans are a definite yes, and the cinnamon sugar filling needs some butter in it).

Time to end this post, and have some leftover sticky buns and tea! (Your cue to be jealous) :)

One year at a time

Recently (and actually for the past few years), the topic of "real jobs" comes up near constantly. Since my last year at UO, I have been planning my life one year at a time. First internship, then postdoc, now second postdoc.

And now, once again, Jeff and I are trying to figure out what comes next. Only this time, we are hoping that our next move might be at least a little bit more permanent. We are hoping to get "real jobs."

This past fall, Jeff applied for academic faculty jobs. He got an interview at a high-ranking Canadian university for a tenure-track job. Unfortunately, he did not get the job, and so far has no more interviews. But, getting an interview is a sign that he is competitive for this type of job. If he doesn't get hired anywhere this year, he will likely be on the market again next year. Which means that once again, we might be trying to figure out something to do for just one more year.

I on the other hand have decided not to apply for academic jobs. I have decided that I like clinical and administrative work a lot, and my plan is to find a job more in that realm. But for the past couple of months, I haven't been thinking much about applying for jobs, because we were waiting to see how Jeff's job search panned out. Now, I'm beginning to look more in earnest, and we're starting to think about what that means. Do I search for jobs only in places that we really want to live, or search more broadly to hopefully actually get a job? If I get a good job, will we plan to settle down wherever that is (meaning Jeff would have to settle for whatever jobs are there)?

The really scary question is, what if neither of us finds a job? Jeff's postdoc funding ends at the end of June, my position is done in mid-September. The job market is not great. For the 3rd(ish) year in a row, I'm feeling unsettled.

Maybe we are getting good at figuring things out one year at a time, but I hope that this particular skill set becomes obsolete soon :)

I can do better than 7

In all of 2011, I only wrote 7 blog posts. For 2012, I am resolving to do better than that. Since I have only posted once in the past 6 months or so, I'm not likely to be able to catch you all up on everything, but here are some random bits:

1. Yesterday I received a package in the mail with a CD full of photos taken during a visit from my friend Marina (who was my internship roommate) over labor day weekend. It also happens to be her birthday today, so Happy Birthday Marina! These are two of my favorite photos, taken while we were kayaking around Lake Union (and foraging for blackberries):

2. Jeff and I got lots of great Christmas presents. Today, we used many of our gifts: We used our new super peel to transfer homemade bread loaves in and out of the oven, cut the bread with our new bread knife, and used soft butter from our new butter keeper to butter the bread. We made soup for dinner in our new pressure cooker. Last night we had a very comfy sleep in our new flannel sheets, and I stayed warm and cozy in my new wool slippers. Over all, a fabulous day :)

3. I severely miss all of you dear friends that I haven't seen or talked to in a while. I love spending time with the few friends I have in Seattle, and at the same time, I have many more friends who are far away than I have here right now. So I just want you to know that I miss you and have been thinking about you ! (FYI, I have only given the link to this blog to a few people (and when I post on facebook that I have a new blog post, it is only visible to a select group), so when I say I miss you, I actually do mean you :)

Bureaucractic comforts

It's been a couple of months since I posted, and my intention was to make a post entitled "my summer vacation," full of pictures and fun. I will post that one, but not today. Today I'm posting from work, because although I have work to do, I am unable to do any of it due to administrative holdups.

Yes, that's right folks-- I'm working at the VA again, and for better or worse, I'm loving it. This is the end of my 3rd week in my new postdoc in telehealth and rural outreach at Seattle VA. As should be expected when starting (or re-starting) federal employment, I have encountered seemingly innumerable paperwork issues and bureaucratic messes. But somehow there is a nice sense of familiarity to all of it, and I find it oddly comforting. Even though this VA is about 1200 miles from where I worked before, I sort of feel like I'm coming home. Perhaps to a dysfunctional family holiday, but home nonetheless.

Today I should be seeing patients in my telehealth clinic, but I can't because I have to complete several computerized training modules in order to be certified to use the telehealth technology (which basically amounts to skype, but even easier to use). I can't complete the training modules because after waiting two weeks to get a log-in ID (because all training system log-in IDs have to be issued by the national office), it turns out that I still can't log in because somehow someone in the HR department put my organizational code as "PUG.NVA" and it should obviously be "PUG.(T&L code)." Obviously. And unfortunately, the only person who might know how to change that is out today, so I'll have to wait at least until Monday.

I could at least be calling patients to let them know why there is a delay, except that I have not yet been issued a phone. There is a phone in my office, but it is not *my* phone, and I therefore cannot make long-distance calls on it (since I work in telehealth, many of my patients are at long-distance numbers), and I have no voicemail access (so if I call and don't reach the person, I have to leave a message saying they can't call me back). I have been pushing hard for the last couple of weeks to try to get the work order for my phone to be a priority, but no luck. And, unfortunately, I found out this morning that the person who is in charge of issuing me a phone is *retiring today*. I can only guess how this is going to impact how long it takes to get a phone now, but I'm not holding my breath.

I also found out today that while I am trying (and failing) to work, the VA is trying (and failing) to pay me. So it all sort of evens out. For unknown reasons (possibly the same reasons that led me to spend hours in HR during my first week trying to clear up the mystery of the wrongly checked box), my direct-deposit didn't get set up for my first paycheck, which should have gone through today. I talked to someone in payroll, and when he opened my file, the first thing he said was "oh no." The good news is that my paycheck was mailed yesterday. The bad news is that even though everywhere else in my file my address is correct, there was a typo in one place and my check is being mailed to the wrong address. So now it's a gamble as to whether the mail carrier will notice and deliver the check to me, or whether I can go meet my neighbors up the street and ask them to hold it for me if it's delievered there. Because if neither of those things happens, and it gets returned to sender, it takes a minimum of 30 days to get sorted out.

However, system dysfunction aside, I do really like it here so far. I may change my mind once I actually start doing my job, but I don't think so. So far all the people here are very welcoming, friendly, and as one co-worker put it "there are suprisingly few personality disorders among staff here." So far everyone is great to work with, and even the people I don't work with directly are friendly and want to get to know me. And besides being genuinely friendly, my co-workers all appear to be very smart and competent.

I will gladly deal with all the ridiculous bureaucratic issues if it means that I get to work in a place that is interpersonally and profesionally functional :)