Rebuilding the pond: Day 5+

Too much excitement. Spent so much time staring at the fish in their new, pumped, oxygenated and non-leaking pond that I completely forgot to attend to my basic bodily blogging needs. So it's done. And except for a few ferns that will go in at the weekend, there's not much else to do. So that's it. I can go back to my usual erratic blogging.

So what else did I accomplish this week? I cleared almost all the emails associated with the journal, but that took me all today, so my weekend will now have to absorb my target of 10 papers.

Next week: Edinburgh and London. The week after: Washington, DC (NIH grants review). And another zillion papers to process. Am beginning to sound like a broken record. My next post will be exclusively positive. I promise. But don't hold your breath...

Rebuilding the pond: Day 5+

Too much excitement. Spent so much time staring at the fish in their new, pumped, oxygenated and non-leaking pond that I completely forgot to attend to my basic bodily blogging needs. So it's done. And except for a few ferns that will go in at the weekend, there's not much else to do. So that's it. I can go back to my usual erratic blogging.

So what else did I accomplish this week? I cleared almost all the emails associated with the journal, but that took me all today, so my weekend will now have to absorb my target of 10 papers.

Next week: Edinburgh and London. The week after: Washington, DC (NIH grants review). And another zillion papers to process. Am beginning to sound like a broken record. My next post will be exclusively positive. I promise. But don't hold your breath...

Rebuilding the pond: Day 4

After an enforced weekend of inactivity, the working week started in the way that only us Brits can truly understand - under a deluge of water. But the skies cleared mid-morning, and the new liner went in, together with a bunch of stones, and all the fish. Pump and filter will be connected tomorrow, and paving stones and edging will be done - would've all happened today except that the skies clouded up and disgorged their contents all over us again...

On the plus side (as if transferring the fish back to the pond wasn't plus enough) I processed 5 more manuscripts, read half an NIH grant application, and went to Karate for the first time in ages (through being away or ill) - it was a great session (thanks, Nigel!).

So tomorrow there's more pond to look forward to, and then it's back to reality, the office, and my other day job...

Rebuilding the pond: Day 3

Progress on Day 3 (Friday): Zero. It rained all day. Am going to abandon rebuilding the pond as it seems now that it would be more useful to build an ark... But on the plus side, I did process 24 papers on the 'manuscripts to be sent to review' queue. My hope is, over Saturday and Sunday, to process a further 10 on the 'manuscripts with all reviews complete' queue. And you know what? I feel guilty that that 24 wasn't 25. And that that 10 will, in all likelihood, be just 5 or 6. Guilt flows through my veins too freely...

[UPDATE: I in fact turned the 24 into 25, and processed a further 12! Do I feel guilt-free? No... because I didn't deal with any of the journal-related email that I should have dealt with. If it's not one thing, it's another... guilt knows no bounds]

Rebuilding the pond: Day 2

Not much to report. Liner was taken out, together with two toads and one frog. An assortment of reasons for the leak (which was the reason we were doing this) were found, although the leak itself wasn't. Not helped, of course, by the fact that to fully drain the pond, we had to puncture the liner in several places to let the last few inches of water out. By the end of the day, the pond was reshaped (the deep end was moved, and it was widened in places) and a concrete rim was laid around the edge. We estimated the new volume at around 50% greater than the previous volume (though the previous volume was a bit of a myth, seeing as we never managed to fill the pond completely, as the level would drop so quickly). Most of the increase in volume is due to additional height - the water level will now come right up to almost the level of the surrounding grass.

And it didn't rain, well not until the night, when it bucketed down like there was no tomorrow (there was, as that's when I'm writing this). Despite the lack of rain, the very bad cold I've got - since yesterday - meant that I stayed indoors most of the time while John and Steve, the two guys doing the hard work, did the hard work...

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd post before, during, and after photos. They'll have to wait until the during's done, and the after's settled in...

Rebuilding the pond: Day 1

Today was a good day. I finished my administrative chores for this academic year, and took the afternoon off to start on rebuilding the pond (with help). So this afternoon was spent emptying the pond of its fish, plants, toads, and water. I'd anticipated around 100 baby fish, so I decided to count them as I scooped them out with a net and transplanted (translocated?) them into a couple of paddling pools pre-filled with ridiculously murky pond water. I lost count after around 150, and judging from the numbers that came out after that, there must be 200+ baby fish swimming around the two paddling pools (and around 9 adult fish, including one sturgeon that amazingly survived a pond to which it was quite unsuited). The pond plants, three large toads and one baby are in a third paddling pool.

While doing that, the real pond experts (John and Steve) dug out the larger plants around the edge of the pond, so that tomorrow we can lift out the current (rubbish quality) liner before rebuilding the edge of the pond in preparation for a new (high quality) liner. To help us along, the UK weather did its bit to ensure that we all got soaked through with the first rainfall in weeks. Apparently it will now continue raining until we've finished; so once we no longer need to work in the outdoors, the sun will come out, the birds will sing, and I'll be nursing a bad chest infection...

By the way, when I wrote that a baby was in the third paddling pool, I was referring to a baby toad... there are no human babies in the paddling pool. At least, not any more (they didn't like the pond water so they scuttled off...).

my new pond...

I should be working, not playing (see my earlier post today)...


Move your mouse over the pond, and the fish will follow. Click, and you drop food into the pond which the fish will eat.

state of play

No time to play, sadly. This last week was spent preparing for a session I had organized at the British Association for the Advancement of Science. This is a once-a-year event at which non-scientists get exposed to a whole bunch of science. So I thought it would be a good idea to organize something on eye movements, so me and three others stood up and did our thing to an audience of around 100 people, which was exactly 88 people more than we had expected!

So you'd think that this would leave me with a warm glow of self-satisfaction. Nope.... it left me with a ton of papers still to process on the journal's queues. So yesterday afternoon (Saturday), and today (Sunday, for those of you still hungover from the night before...) were/will be spent on the journal. I have an image in my mind from one of those old B-movies in which the angry villagers march up a hill with pitchforks and flaming torches. Replace the word 'villagers' with 'authors' and you'll have a sense of my anxieties...

Things to look forward to this week:

• re-writing whole sections of the Graduate (i.e. MSc.) Handbook
• preparing for, and chairing, the graduate examinations committee meetings
• reviewing at least two NIH grants
• working on the journal (that's a given, 24/7)
• re-building the pond

Things not to look forward to this week:

• re-writing whole sections of the Graduate (i.e. MSc.) Handbook
• preparing for, and chairing, the graduate examinations committee meetings
• reviewing at least two NIH grants
• working on the journal (that's a given, 24/7)

So all in all, not a bad week...

virus alert

Norton AntiVirus is all well and fine, but it's not much good when it comes to the real, non-cyber, kind. Whatever it was that I picked up on my travels is still with me. I didn't manage much this week, and I'm falling behind. I've got to prepare a talk for the British Association for the Advancement of Science later this week, and I've done nothing towards it. And I've done almost nothing for the journal this week (and editorial guilt knows no bounds). But each day brings some new symptom - some new ache, pain, strain, mild fever, and nonspecific feeling of pessimism.

And to compound the bad with the intolerable, I've been banned from buying a new iPod...

What I miss most about August...

10 days in Italy. No computer, no journal, almost no psycholinguistics. My parents were there, one of my brothers and his wife and half their children (the lower half), a friend of ours (sleeping on the couch), a couple of friends from the US (psycholinguists) and all their children (both halves - parents and children sleeping in another apartment), and various other friends and jellyfish. The shiatsu massage on the beach (thank you, Anhui), the ice-cream, the food, the excellent cappuccino, and the fried fish were the other highlights.

What isn't there to like about 10 days' vacation in Sperlonga? I can tell you: getting back to around 70 papers waiting to go out to review or requiring an editorial decision. I've been back a week, and have got the queue down to just under 40... It was almost worth going on holiday just so that I could have the satisfaction of working my rear-end off to process all those papers...

The other major highlight of August: getting back after my travels (Nashville, Sperlonga, Potsdam, Berlin) and feeding the fish. I expected a few baby fish to come up for food; I did not expect a feeding frenzy akin to starving piranha. But that's what I saw - the surface of the pond bubbled with baby fish (each about an inch long). Not the 20 or 30 I thought there were, but at least 100! So given that we have to empty the pond towards the end of the month (to re-line it, and make various changes) it's going to be a challenge to get them all out! Can't wait. A frying pan, some salt, flour, hot oil, and a few of those fish... and so long as the sun's out, it won't be so different from Italy!