The Blog

 The drafting process...

I was feel in love with astronomy as a teenager after a trip to a remote ghost town in central Australia where they’d never heard of light pollution. Late one night in an empty field I saw the Milky Way for the first time, and in the silence of the night I found myself wondering at how exactly all those stars worked and where they all came from.

Bleh, too girly.

I have wanted to be a theoretical astrophysicist ever since I first realised the power those two words have over mere mortals.

Too maniacal.

I dislike talking about myself and everything I have written within this document is complete bullshit.

Accurate, but you'll never get a job like that.

I’m just starting out on a career in astrophysics, so I haven’t developed a broad set of research interests yet. I have worked on star formation, looking at the problems of gravitational collapse and on molecular clouds, simulating the emission of shocked hydroxyl molecules in clouds that are interacting with supernova remnants.

Eh, it'll do until the boss tells you to write it more formally.

Labels: grumpyCat, jobs, Oh help I dont speak spanish or portuguese, writing

 'Twas a week before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, except Catherine who was swearing like a banshee...

The Christmas present I had ordered entirely too late arrived this evening. I opened it and was amazed to discover that they'd sent the wrong bloody thing: something I could have easily picked up in store without paying an eight dollar shipping charge. Crap!

The recipe I was following to make everyone else's Christmas presents gave me chocolate powdery mess, rather than something "with the consistency of frosting". I had to use my emergency supply of non-vegetable-fat dairy milk, which I was saving for a really bad day, rather than gifting. Crap!

In random linkage: this is how I feel about blogging.

And in much less rage-inspiring news, just in case anyone missed it, my Heidi had a baby, Nicholas Demetrios Demetriou. He's gorgeous.

Labels: baby-nick, christmas, fire pretty, grumpyCat

   Beto said I sounded too happy in my last blog...

So here's grumpy-Catherine in full force.

In my few free hours a week I tutor people. It's a grand and noble profession, and I get to charge $50 an hour for it. Which is $20 more than the university pays me for teaching, so it's worth my while to tutor. And I like the thrill of seeing someone's eyes light up as they finally *get* something. It's a rush.

But the problem is that the people I tutor expect me to be on call. They email me at all hours, and expect immediate responses. Sometimes they will email me five or six times an hour, regardless of whether or not I'm responding. I don't get paid for any of the time that I spend reading and replying to these emails, but that's okay, because when you get right down to it, I like what I do.

The problem I have is that I'm not appreciated.

Last night I got six emails from one of the students I tutor. All in netspeak, with terrible grammar and spelling. One sentence ("If I can get quest 6 and 7 out then imp rob ok…") had to be read eight times before I could translated what he meant ("If I can get questions 6 and 7 out then I'm probably okay"). He included attached scans of the working he had done on the assignment, but he hadn't even bothered to rotate them so they were all upside down.

Please people. Show me some respect! I'm good at this stuff, but I am not going to put up with being treated that rudely.

And to get your mind off my rant and (possibly misguided) sense of entitlement, here's a brilliant political essay by Charles P. Pierce: Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

Labels: grumpyCat, imp rob ok, politics, tutoring