Snowbound

I haven't blogged much this month.  I blame it on the snow.  We have had snow approximately every three days.  Which, since I am still on school break and can do my research from home, means I don't really leave the apartment all that much.  I do try and leave at least every other day for some errand or other, or just to take a quick trip to Manhattan to meet Rob for his lunch or afternoon break.

We are supposed to get up to 10 inches over night tonight.  Yesterday the snow was pretty with giant flakes falling softly.  This morning, and now afternoon, the snow is still falling heavily.  Our balcony has about half an inch right now and since it is covered I can only imagine what the street is like.  I have a few goals for today, and one of those is to venture out (a short distance) and I am hoping that the snow is still pretty in the neighborhood.  Pictures will come.  That is if I mange to accomplish my goals today.

The one that is for sure.  I WILL win the battle against the dishes.  Our kitchen has become my own war zone.  You see, I really really hate to do the dishes.  So I usually don't.  Rob is awesome like that in that he is in charge of most kitchen cleaning.  BUT, since I've been home this month and only partially working, really there is no excuse for me NOT to do them.  It really started last week.  There was one pan that needed to cool.  Then then next day it was a different pan and some cups.  Then the next day, my lunch dishes.  You get the picture.  We are dirtying more than we are cleaning.  And by we I kind of mean I.  Again with the being home for all meals (and baby means no more meal skipping.)  So, sometime in the last week it's gotten out of control.  And each day one of us is washing all the dishes that will fit in the drying rack on the towel on the counter.  But we never seem to quite get all of them.  And then there is the problem of eating more.  But TODAY, today I am finally going to win this battle.  I did all but a few.  And as soon as I finish my lunch, I am putting those away and will finish the job.  And then I will have won the battle of the dishes.  And this will remind me for at least a couple of weeks not to let it get out of hand.  That is goal 1 for today.  And there are no pictures because it is kind of embarrassing.

Goal 2 for the day is to finish coding the next two moderators for my research.  I haven't blogged much about school.  But I am moving along on my, what is officially the Second Year Research Project (because it is theorized to be mostly conducted during the second year of the grad program) but what will effectively become my (enroute) Master's Thesis. (Mom, feel free to critique the grammatical accuracy of this sentence, I know it's a mess.)  I am conducting a meta-analysis looking at how video game play affects information processing, specifically visuo-spatial and attention.  A meta-analysis is like a literature review with statistics.  I am hoping that my preliminary conclusions, that video game play (VGP) can have a POSITIVE impact on certain skills will hold up.  This would give me something nice to add to the literature that says VGP and media are ruining the next generation.

I am lucky that this project is moving.  I think it will actually be finished during my second year.  And this will definitely help me progress quickly through my PhD program and that is my plan.  Baby will not slow me down.  Much.  I hope.  I am presenting a poster for this meta-analysis at two conferences this spring.  At SRCD in Montreal in March and at AERA in New Orleans in April.  What this really means is I have about 6 weeks to finish the analysis so that I can get the poster done in time.  Yikes!  Luckily I am moving along.  And I was the happy recipient of a grant this year which is paying for my travel and allowing me to purchase my very own copy of the statistics software we use.  It is a specialized software and as these things go not cheap.  I got a student discount and now have to run parallels so that I have Windows on a Mac.  But I can work from home.  Which I have been doing all month.  Probably not quite as much as I should.  But an hour or two a day looking at a ginormous spreadsheet does add up.  So today Goal 2 is to go through two more columns for the analysis.  I will spare you the detailed description of that.

Goal three is to venture out after Goal 1 is completed to accomplish Goal 2 at the cafe down the block.
Part of goal three will also be to take some pictures along the way.  This way I can get a Wordless Wednesday in to accompany this post.  I think this may be the most in depth writing on mundane things that don't matter that I have written to date.

I will post a baby update with new belly pic this week.