What I've Been Doing

So I have been deliberately avoiding blogging for several months now, due mostly to my dissertation and partly to looking for a job. Whenever I sit down at a computer and feel the urge to blog I tell myself that I can't justify doing any writing that is not for my dissertation. So a few weeks ago I got sick of feeling like my hands were tied and I sat down and wrote 60 pages in a week, and about 10-15 pages since then. The rough draft is finally finished, and I'm just waiting on my professor to finish reading the last chapter so I can make some more changes before I declare it done. And then, after that... its Doctor Nick! Hi Everybody!

But I have been doing other stuff besides the dissertation and job hunting (another thing that has not gone according to plan). The garden was amazing this year. We had nearly as many tomatoes as our first year that we planted a garden in Provo- the garden that gave birth (a pulpy, tomatoey birth) to salsa night. We harvested hundreds of tomatoes, and more sweet and hot peppers than we could use. So after making several batches of the fresh salsa, which seems to disappear within hours of making it, we made some cooked salsa and canned it. Along the way we also canned chopped tomatoes, peaches, peach jam, spaghetti sauce, cilantro lime salsa, super hot salsa (like 100 jalapenos distributes among 7 quarts of salsa), applesauce, and hand picked and pressed grape juice.

We have enough salsa to give us over a quart a month for the next year. The grape juice (5 quarts) will be our celebration beverage for thanksgiving, Easter, and maybe christmas. We're so domesticated it makes me sick.

On the employment front, I thought I'd have a job in Seattle by now, but when you have a PhD its like the company doing the hiring wants you to have specialized in the exact project the company is working on. So I'm looking into some of the national labs that like to hire physicists with broader backgrounds. In the meantime, I'm a substitute teacher for the local high schools in the southern half of the salt lake valley. Last thursday was my first day- I "taught" AP european history, and by teach I mean I showed a movie for all three periods. Substitute teaching has taught me several things in the one time I have done it so far:

1. Movies get boring after watching just 85 minutes of them, then starting over and watching the same 85 minutes, then starting over and watching the same 85 minutes...

2. Especially if the movie is "A man for all Seasons" (which was great the first time, but not after the process described in 1.)

3. I don't like most teenagers.

4. I especially don't like teenage girls. If Lucy turns out like some of these girls that were in my class, she will go to a military school.

5. I'm glad I'm not in high school anymore.

6. High school bathrooms are worse than old, run-down gas station bathrooms. I already knew that, but it was sobering to see it again after 10 years.

7. Teenagers are for the most part evil little plotting liars who despise doing anything that resembles learning or acting like an adult. This might be responsible for numbers 3 and 4 above. 4 is there because for some reason the girls were just really *itchy about it.

8. This experience has only strengthened my resolve to get a job, even if its in Iraq, or Mississippi.

That is all.