Bits and Pieces of Nothing Much

* Inspired by our success against the futon, we decided to change all the locks on the doors, so that they would all have the same key. We successfully changed all the locks but one, which is the front door handle. For some reason, they put that door handle in a weird place: not in the middle of the door, but probably about halfway between the middle and the outside of the door. We couldn’t replace just the handle because the shape of the shaft that turns the new handle is different than the shape of the hole it’s supposed to go through.

* We found another group to roleplay with. Our previous group broke up because there were too many stressors in the other people’s lives. So Jeff inquired around some more, and we found a group who are doing a D&D campaign. We both had a great time. The only thing is that I’m the only woman and I think some of the group members haven’t really played in a group with a woman before, and they don’t quite know what to do. But I think that they’ll soon get used to me and I’ll get used to them. In particular, I think that I will be endeared to them when I start bringing tasty snack treats. The bunch of bananas at home is just getting to the right stage of ripeness to make some really tasty banana bread!

* I love my husband’s cooking. I like his jambalaya better than I like ice cream, and that’s saying a lot, because I could subsist entirely upon ice cream if it weren’t for all those pesky nutrients that ice cream lacks. Oh, and the fact that as proud as I am of having lost all that weight, I don’t want to do it again.

* This morning I went to a meeting about the proposals our group is submitting to the gubmint for funding. I understood next to nothing. I mean, I was able to parse almost every word that was spoken, but I couldn’t make much sense of the phrases stringing them together. But it’s all good; I just need to talk to my mentor and ask him to explain how things work.

My entire experience with proposals consists of writing proposals for supercomputing time. Those were pretty simple, and I had my advisor looking over my shoulder the whole time, because it was his name going on the proposal (some pesky rule about needing a Ph.D. to be a PI). I’m not writing any proposals for this round of submissions; my mentor is writing me in to his proposals. But in the not-so-distant future I’m going to need to begin writing proposals of my own. So it was good to go to that meeting, even if I didn’t get much out of it. Just being exposed to the process is a good first step.