A question and a boast

First off, is there something about Ig/Met Pet Question that makes it particularly spam worthy? I've been getting at a Japanese spam comment about one a day for a week now.

Secondly, I went from this (geologist office chic):


to this (over dressed for blind double date):


in 46 minutes last Friday*. Well, slightly less time actually, 46 minutes is the difference between the time stamps on the photos. I was only 10 minutes late and half of that was because I had to stop at the ATM.

I had fun. He, I'm told, had a good time and wants my number (since he didn't ask for it before I left, despite having an entire Uno game's worth of warning. But then it was really late and we were all getting tired.). Also I got to see our big snow falling. (It didn't stick here but did in Birmingham, I'm told.)


*I also went from having a dog excited to have Mom home to one pouting on my bed because Mom was abandoning her for the evening. That's why she's not in the second picture. :)

Please Note:

As I mentioned the other day I've turned on comment moderation for older posts. (I've had a handful of spam comments.) I'd like to point out that I will probably reject any comments not in English without even trying to figure out what it they says*.

Thank you.

BTW, the spambot trying to comment in Japanses on Ig/Met Pet Question - please go away.


*grammar fixed now

Thanks

[quick editorial note: I turned comment moderation on for old posts but forgot to set Blogger to email me when there was a comment needing moderation. Oops. Sorry if you're the commenter who sat waiting so long.]

In the spirit of Thanksgiving last week and today being World AIDS Day I wanted to thank the doctors, nurses, and support staff (and researchers?) at UAB's Family Clinic (or whatever it's called now). When Nettie was born (and the months leading up to then), my parents, brother, the rest of my family and I (and possibly her bio-mom, but how would anyone know?) were worried and unsure about her chances of being born healthy and getting to grow up to be the wonderful pre-teen she is today, much less to be the beautiful young woman she'll be in a few more years.*

Scientific American had a special issue devoted to HIV/AIDS right about the time we found out my (now former) SIL was HIV positive. That helped a lot. We had some current information all in one place, and it was understandable. It also helped with the OB, because while I'm sure he was a wonderful doc, he didn't start out knowing much about what could be done to help the baby's chances of being HIV negative; my brother could go in with good information to get the OB looking into it.

After the birth though we were a bit in the dark again; SA had articles on pregnancy and birth and HIV infection in babies/children but, as I recall, nothing on when you know an infant isn't infected. This is when the Family clinic came in and were just wonderful. (Not all of our experiences at Children's were wonderful, or even good, but that wasn't FC's fault.) The doctors and nurses were not only good at doctoring but had good bedside manner and were willing to answer any questions we had; the social worker, too. (She even gave Mom and me meal vouchers but we didn't get to use them -that was the Day From Hell.)

The Family Clinic is (or was 10 years ago) a group from UAB and had "clinic" at Children's Hospital in Birmingham one day a week (Montgomery and Huntsville 2 other days a week, iirc). Their goal was to treat every HIV positive child (and HIV exposed infants) and, when needed, the parents of those children in the state. (A lofty goal and one I'm sure they fell short on - a lot of people would have trouble getting to the hospitals). They also did research on HIV in infants and children. They had drug protocols, testing schedules, and stats. Just learning the statistics on when babies test positive and hearing that Nettie, at 8 days old, didn't have any of the common early signs of infection helped put us at ease. Or at least helped us not worry TOO much. And a year and a half later, knowing that she didn't have to be tested any more, was very nice confirmation that our beautiful healthy little girl was going to stay that way.

Now if we could somehow skip the middle school years, everything would be perfect.


*What? How? When? She was just a little baby, like, yesterday!

Ig/Met Pet question.

Callan's post on his new "granite" counter top reminded me of a post I meant to do while in Portland. I didn't have my camera so I had to wait until I got home, and I just drew a quick sketch of the gorgeous "granite" that adorned my bathroom at the Paramount. My petrology class was a while ago and I spend most of my time looking at the electrical properties of sedimentary rocks, so other than metamorphic I didn't get any further with this:


The biotite books in the groundmass (for lack of a better term) weren't that aligned (i.e. no preferred orientation), I was just lazy in Illustrator. The white space in the groundmass was mostly quartz with plag. The ground mass was medium to dark grey overall. The large feldspar clasts were between approximately .5"-1.25" (1 - 3cm, or nickel to Kennedy half-dollar); some had rings of biotite in them and/or inclusions of biotite, quartz, and rarely plag. A couple had rings of quartz inclusions - like an overgrowth of quartz followed by regrowth of feldspar; a few were almost complete overgrown by quartz.

So anyone know what it was?

"It's a terrible thing when gneiss is taken for granite"
-J.C. Pashin (and probably others)*

* Speaking of puns, check out Callan's Halloween costume

Why do I bother?

2 dances/hour, $1.20/dance, 1 out of every 6 songs, or 5 miles (roundtrip)/dance* - That's how tonight's dance works out. Still one dance better than the last TBDC dance. I have lots of fun at class, because I actually dance. I don't have much fun sitting by myself at a table watching everyone else dance.

I sit forward in my chair, no slouching or arms crossed over my chest; I sway/seat dance to the music; I make eye contact with people; I don't sit at the far end of the table in the dark - so why don't I get asked to dance? I'm starting to think it's the same reason I don't get asked out on dates(other than an apparent dearth of single, age appropriate men) - something just wrong with me. What I don't know, but small children don't like me, store clerks ignore me, and guys don't ask me to dance.




*this is not counting the line dances: Electric Slide, Peabody, or Cupid Shuffle

50/50?

Short Geologist asked about male/female ratios where we work. My answer was going to be a bit long, so I'm making a whole post.

At the engineering consulting firm (where I did UST and SWPA work) I was one of 4 women "professionals" (a geologist, an engineer, a chemist, and an environmental scientist), so total for "professionals" was about 4:12; there were far more women then men in the office but the rest were drafters, secretaries, personnel manager, office manager, book keeper... As far as I know there were no women on the survey crews (those crews probably brought the total male/female back up to 50/50).

Back in grad school the ratio was close to 40:60ish, a few more males than females (students only).

Where I am now there are 9 female geologist and chemists (iirc, she actually does programming for us) and 50 male geologists, biologists, and engineers. My division is 3:4 and our building (next door to most of the Survey) is 4:9, plus one volunteer lady geologist*. When I counted up my co-workers from the phone list I was kind of surprised there were actually that few women scientists. It always seems like there are more women here but in my mind I'm probably including all the support staff (accounting, personnel,...), which is mostly female. Lots of the men work either for the OGB or on the 3rd floor where I rarely go and so usually only see all those folks at holiday luncheons.

I've noticed a difference in conference attendance. When I went to the American Association of Petroleum Geologist's meeting there were definitely more men than women but at the Geological Society of America meetings I've been to (all 2 of them) it was more even. There's a small (200 people?) symposium here every spring on coalbed methane and shale gas. When I was a student my (now) boss' wife and I would be among the very few women there. (No line at the bathrooms!) now the numbers of women are creeping up. That meeting is probably still in the 25:75 range. The field trip my boss runs for that meeting is the only time I've seen men crash the ladies bathroom (1-holers at a gas station). Not uncommon for the van drivers and I to be the only women.

At the consulting job I spent most of my time in the office writing up other's reports because the guy (an engineer, who once described a sand as "well sorted, fine to coarse grained") could help our drill crew lift augers, 70lb bags of sack-crete, etc. and all I 'could' do was describe the soil. The only time I really was uncomfortable about being a lady geologist was the job with the driller who hit on me, obnoxiously, for 3 days straight. My (then) boss and his mostly thought it was funny and were laying bets as to when I'd slug the jerk. (It's surprising he managed to get the hole straight because he spent almost all of his time looking at me - and I'm not terribly attractive in field clothes and a hardhat.)

Male/female ratios aren't something I've ever worried a whole lot about. That is partly due to the fact that I've had good role models, also, with 5 brothers it doesn't bother me to be "one of the guys". Besides, I have it so much easier than it used to be. My boss' wife (a geologist) was once denied a job because they didn't have a ladies room in the building. At that time, she had a job where she had a 10 minute walk to the closest ladies room.


*with only 2 one-holers, one non-climate controlled, for us ladies!

Baby Pictures!

Because I know the whole wide internets is dying to see pictures of my grand-nephew:




I'd like to take this oppotunity to point out how unfair it is that my brothers (except the half bald one) and nephews have better hair than Kate, Anna, and I. (Ok, John and Pat can keep the receeding at the temples bit.) Also I can't remember the others, but Scott and Nathan have about the best eyelashes I've ever seen - it's just not fair. I'll forgive Maddox.