Toddler naturalist

It was only 45 minutes until dinner and my girl was antsy. We decided to head out into the woods and see what we could see. We got on a bike brought along an almond and raisin snack, a water bottle, a doll, and stuffed orangutan. Five minutes later we were standing in the woods outside of town looking at this piece of wood. "This is a perfect cover object," I told Tigerlily. It was flat or even slightly concave underneath, it was on the soil but not in the soil, it was broad, and it was in the sunlight. "I want to look under it," she said. We lifted it up and found this shiny black toad.

We talked about toad poison and washing hands before eating. She hadn't finished her raisin and almond snack so only I held the toad.

Next we went for a little walk in the woods. She said she wanted to find insects. Instead, we found blackberries.

Or rather, she stumbled into them and I recognized what they were. I tried one just to make sure they were good, and they were. I didn't use my hands. Toad poison.

She left only the underripe ones. On our way back to our bike, she said, "what's this? An insect?" It was a beautiful dragonfly that I had walked right past. I couldn't get a good picture of it but you can get a sense of how colorful it was. 

Now it was dinner time and we walked straight back to our bike. My girl was tired and hungry but learning about the woods and was ready to come home.

To-write-list

I keep a running list of papers to write on my whiteboard.

This list currently has 15 entries.

Two of these have been accepted for publication this year but not yet taken off my list because it is nice to see them there.

 

Another was submitted, rejected, and is waiting rewriting.

Two have nearly complete manuscripts written and have been sent to colleagues for comments.

Five more are actively being worked on by me or co-authors and will hopefully be finished by the end of the year.

Four others are collaborations that are currently not moving. One of those is a project died for some specific reasons (like the data couldn't answer the question) and I just haven't entirely decided what to do about it. The others are things that neither I nor my collaborators are currently prioritizing that I hope we will get back to.

Finally, I have one project on my list that I want to write, but I don't even know exactly what data I need or the approach I want to take. I just know it is an important paper to write.

There are roughly a million other ideas I could put on my list, but I'm having a moratorium. I have decided I am not allowed to start on anything else until my list gets a lot shorter. As I have mentioned, I am applying for jobs, and I'd like to have most of this backlog cleared up before I go.