A Weekend's Worth

This weekend was the Sneak Preview for the Avengers expansion of UDE's VS TCG system. I haven't judged many of these because, in the past, I was quite busy with volunteer work for Decipher and just didn't have the time. Now I do, and I enjoy the game, so I offered to judge for our local TO. Now, I should mention that I do enjoy judging. I like organizing events, being part of a team, and making players happy. Still, when all is said and done, judging is a lot of work and for these events it pretty much means you give up a weekend, or at least half of one. I've been judging Magic for 5 years now and my TO for that is great and I've been compensated very well by him, but now that I started judging locally for Versus, well, I was asked what kind of compensation I would like. Since I had never thought about what I'm "worth," I basically said I'll take whatever. After the weekend I sat down and did some calculations and realized that my Magic judging gets me more per hour than my Ph.D. work (which is my main source of income). I also realized that what I got for working this weekend's Versus event was a few dollars less per hour than when I judge Magic. The fact is that 1) I have quite a lot of judging experience 2) my tournaments run smoothly 3) I'm trustworthy and 4) my weekends are precious and I need to feel like my time spent indoors on sunny July weekends is well worth it. So, I need to figure out what hourly rate I'd be comfortable with, and I will, but I'd be curious to see what other people think I'm worth in dollars per hour...and I mean as a judge people...get your minds out of the gutter!

Beach Bum

Last year I managed to go through the entire summer and not visit the beach once. Such an act is totally unacceptable in my opinion, especially given my proximity to any number of beaches. Well, I'm happy to say that this past weekend I made it to the beach. I went up to the Sherwood Island State Park and spent Saturday playing in the sand and the surf (albeit there was a lot more of the former). Although I enjoyed the beach tremendously (it's one of the few places I can really relax), I'll tell you what I don't like about the beach. Yes, I hate it when I misapply my sunscreen and get burned in very sensitive areas of my body (joints, tops of feet, etc.) as I did on Saturday, but more than that, I hate the overweight 40-50 year old guys wearing bikini briefs that stare at me the entire day as if I'm some piece of meat they want to devour. There really should be laws detailing who can and can't wear such swimwear and there should be some sort of law to protect damn sexy folk like myself from being oogled at by people old enough to be my parents.

What Do I Do?

Last night at Neutral Ground I was yet again asked that infamous question, "What do you do, like for real?" What really gets me is that friends who have known me for quite some time will ask me this and I lose track of whether or not I've actually told them. But I must have right? So, maybe they just forgot...and if so, this is proabably because what I do isn't mainstream enough. Well, I'm a soon to be 4th-year Ph.D. student which means I'm doing research full-time and will eventually have a Ph.D. and the right to make people call me "Dr. Courtland"...which sounds dumb, so I'll never actually enforce that. I'm doing research that in the long-term (and by long-term I mean LONG-term) goal is to "cure" osteoporosis. My lab is hoping that by studying genetically distinct mice we'll help accomplish that. Now for those of you who are itching for more details, here are the three hypotheses and aims of my Ph.D. thesis proposal:

Hypothesis 1: Genetic variation in mouse femur mineral content is associated with a specific repertoire of mineral traits and tissue-level mechanical properties in adult mice.
Aim 1: Determine which femur mineral traits and tissue-level mechanical properties are characteristic of adult female A, B6, C3H/HeJ (C3H), DBA/2J (DBA), and SJL/J (SJL) mice.

Hypothesis 2: Genetic variation in adult mouse femur mineral content and adult tissue-level mechanical properties is achieved through differential regulation of mineral traits during growth and development.
Aim 2: Determine femur mineral traits for female A and B6 mice during growth and development (1 day, 2 weeks, and 4 weeks).

Hypothesis 3: An intercross of mice with different femur mineral contents and tissue-level mechanical properties will result in heritable and predictable changes in adult tissue-level mechanical properties and in the repertoire of femur mineral traits expressed during growth and development.
Aim 3: Determine mineral traits during growth and development of B6AF1/J and AB6F1/J female progeny (from an reciprocal parental cross) and correlate them with the femur tissue-level mechanical properties found in these progeny at adulthood.

Circle of Friends

A certain G$ in Norfolk feels that I'm not posting to my blog regularly enough, so here we go. In high school there were very few people that I really liked and got along well with. By senior year I had a very small group to go out with. I kept in touch with them a little bit through college, but somewhere after my Masters in Canada and before arriving in NYC I lost track of most of them. Well, recently, thanks to the awesomeness that is Friendster I reconnected with them. My friend Amber is working as an elementary school teacher and part-time bartender and Brian is working in the business district (both in NYC). I saw both of them this weekend and actually went out drinking with Brian who had Alix visiting (yet another member of our old group). I kept thinking to myself how amazing it was that these people stepped out of my life for a while and are now all of a sudden part of it. This comes at a very good time for me, because with my abandonment of a lot of my volunteer work, I don't see my local gaming crew much and have a lot more free time on my hands...which is now coming in handy for hanging out with these friends of old.

Recently Watched By Single H:

Collateral: I enjoyed this movie much more than expected. Tom and Jamie were quite good. (4 stars)
Win a Date with Tad Hamilton: For what it was, it was a decent teen romance flick. It really only has two original scenes, but they were worth it. (3 stars)
Possession: A complicated look at relationships highlighting that one really just doesn't "know." However, it dragged tremendously in the beginning and I found myself begging for someone to end the pain. (2 stars)
Firefly TV Series: Recommended to me by Brian as a really good Sci-Fi series and I have to agree with him. (4 stars)

Keeper!

I never played soccer that much in the past, but when I did, I always played defense of some sort. Of course, goalkeeper is always the least desirable position for people to play in the world of less than competitive soccer, so when the job needed to be filled, everyone looked around for the tallest guy - and that was usually me. Simply put, tall guys cover more of the net when standing, and have a better reach when diving for a block/grab. So, yeah, I played enough causal games to warrant buying goalkeeper gloves. Let me tell you they make the job a lot more bearable (especially for my lanky scientist hands).

I recently joined a soccer club and it's definitely been one of the best things I've done in a while. I'm meeting quite a few people as a result of it and, well, I love soccer and it's just so great to be able to play on a regular basis. Of course, in our club we have the same problem...not enough goalkeepers. So, I've been brining my gloves and helping out here and there. Tonight, though, was particularly rough as we only had one goalkeeper. After 1.5 hours of intense 7 on 7, he was wearing thin. So, I offered to help out...and was in goal until the end of the tournament. At the end of the night everyone was throwing me compliments left and right. Apparently I was a superbly skilled goalkeeper that had been holding out on them for too long. In reality, I'm just "decent" at it. But I guess when everyone else is God awful... So, I'm not sure what this all means, but I think there will be a lot less "Defense!" being yelled my way and a lot more "Keeper!"