1-0 for the good guys

I haven't written anything for so long, because my life was focused on the legal battle. That's all I wanted to write about, and of course I couldn't.

Now that it's over (well, not quite, but largely), I can finally write. And guess what?

The good guys won! That is, F1-1 won. Because really, it wasn't between me and his father. I wasn't trying to accomplish what was best for me, I was trying to accomplish what was best for him. Both parties suggested parenting plans to the court, and the judge turned both down. My attorney and I tried to put together a proposal that would give ample time for F1-1 to spend with his father, and the judge ruled that it was too much, that it would require too much travel for F1-1, and therefor be too stressful. In the end the judge ruled exclusively from F1-1's point of view, and not the parents, which was what I didn't dare hope for.

F1-1's father is leaving. Going to another country. Permanently. He had his tickets purchased, his bags packed, and he was going to leave regardless of the court's order. Then he filed a petition with the court less than 2 months before his planned departure, asking the court to change which parent F1-1 lives with, and to take F1-1 with him. No one had any clue ahead of time that this was coming.

It was a painful process. We met in front of the judge. It became clear that I was at an extreme disadvantage without an attorney. It took some doing, but just before we were scheduled to appear before the judge again, I found an attorney willing to take the little bit of cash we had as a retainer. The parties were then referred to mediation. This is where both parties meet with their attorney's (if they have any) and a court-approved mediator to try and sort out the issues. They can reach a partial agreement on some issues, and take the remainder to the court to rule on.

At first it looked like an agreement could be reached if we went on a little longer. But after 8 hours of mediation, things fell apart, and we ended in an impasse. Even the few issues we had sort of reached agreement on in the meantime were at risk.

We gave the opposing party another week to come to some kind of agreement, but it didn't work out, and we had to go to court. It's involved, but it took two days of sitting in court, with witnesses, testimony, cross-examination, and re-direct. It was pure torture. Especially considering the fact that opposing party has the dementor-effect on me, I don't know how I lived to tell this tale.

The court gave a ruling with less than 48 hours to spare. Opposing party was leaving the country with or without F1-1, and was simply waiting for the court's answer. When it came, it was better than I could have hoped for. Apparently, my attempts to be conciliatory were not appreciated, and the court found that I was giving away what wasn't mine to give. That I was allowing F1-1's summer activities to be in jeopardy so he could spend more time with his father, that I was scheduling too much travel for him to be with his father.

The court ruled that no matter what else, F1-1 gets to stay here, were he has lived the vast majority of his life, that he get to participate fully in his favorite sports activities, and that he gets to travel with his friends every summer, and that visitation with his father takes a second seat to that.

It is not entirely over yet. Both parties have been ordered to attend another mediation session in person to decide remaining issues of visitation (keeping in mind the items mentioned above). Opposing party may have to travel back here to attend one of those, because he left as planned, and didn't even postpone his trip. That was a bit of a surprise to me, because if he had, we might have been able to come to some arrangement to allow F1-1 to spend the rest of the summer with him, and he would have been able to do as the court ordered. But he didn't. He left. Very interesting decision on his part. But I'm not complaining.

I can't really provide any more detail, especially since there's still things pending, but I can't begin to express how happy I am. We've won all the major issues, and then some. I was bracing for much, much worse, but it's all good.

Now back to your regular blogging schedule.

Decision

As some of you may remember, I had to decide whether to change labs and projects at this point. I wrote about that before. I got to read the project proposal and went back and forth a number of times over the weeks. Sometimes closer to staying, other times closer to leaving. If I decided to leave and join the other lab, I had to make myself available for an all-day meeting tomorrow.

For the past 2 weeks I've also been embroiled in legal battles more disgusting than you can imagine. It's not over yet, so I can't go into it, but it's not pretty. So this morning I made my choice: I'm staying.

Ultimately, the working conditions in this lab are so good, that it's hard to leave, even if it means turning down health benefits. Also, my current adviser has many different projects, each with a different funding source. If need be, I can be shifted around from one project to the other. As a post-doc I don't care particularly which actual project I'm on.

Now that I've made my decision, and I've notified both PI's involved, I feel much, much better. I think my potential employer was quite disappointed. I wish I could take both jobs, but I can't. And I haven't been this happy in a long time. I'm sticking around.

Appropriate for Mother's Day

This link seemed appropriate for Mother's Day.

In recent paper in the journal "Science," a study claimed that there was gender-based differences in standard testing, in layman's terms: boys did better then girls. It's probably better not to get me started on the topic. My rant would last forever. I'm going to let the Feminist Chemists do the talking for me, they are much more articulate than me. They wrote a letter to the editor, which Science decided not to publish. I must say, I'm very disappointed in Science, I've always considered they wouldn't shy away from controversy. If they were bold enough to publish such a study, they should be bold enough to publish the response. I'd be interested to see the reviewer's comments too. I wonder if they sent it to a bunch a males for review.

Now the Feminist Chemists have published the letter themselves, and it can be found here (in case you missed out on the first link).

Added later:
I honor of Mother's Day, this story might seem relevant. I seem to remember when I was young that my mother didn't consider herself to be exactly a math genius. Although she always encouraged me, she probably was a result of an era in which girls just didn't do math. When she returned to college later in life, I had the opportunity to tutor her in math. Let it be known that my mother aced it! Easily. Way to go ma! Girls can do math just fine.

It's not too late yet!

To bid on your own personal genome. There is one bid right now for the low, low price of $68k, and you still have a few hours to place your bid. You can have your own genome sequenced and the proceeds got towards the X-prize foundation.
Click here if you want to place a bid.
Now if I could only find my checkbook to write out $70k, I would place a bid in a heartbeat.

Until...

the color of man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes

More at Playing for Change.

Dilemma

Ok, the dilemma has arrived. Now that it has, I realize that I was hoping the decision would be made for me by default. But it wasn't meant to be. Help!!

A position that I had applied for in another lab has become available. My current position is listed is technically as an hourly-wage position, even though I get paid for 40 hours a week no matter how much time I put in. It doesn't have health benefits though and that is a wee bit of a problem. The pay isn't fabulous, but it's average.

The position that has become available would be a regular post-doc position with health benefits. So even if the base pay is the same I get now, it would in real terms be better-paying. It involves research on a topic I worked on a few years ago, so presumably the learning curve is minimal. My current job is (at least on paper) not quite in line with the work I did for my PhD, but that hasn't stopped me from producing good-quality work. For immigration purposes it might be a good idea to take on the new position, because that one is more in line of what I studied for. It'll be easier to make the argument that I'm this indispensable scientist int he field.

The big thing is I absolutely *love* my current job. The lab I work in is large compared to the lab where I'm offered a job now. I don't think I can stress enough how incredibly happy I am here. It is so much fun to be in a large lab, with lots of great people, a fantastic PI. I get up in the morning eager to rush into the lab to get to hang out with cool people, and do cool research. I've had to learn some new things in the past 3 months, and I think I've gotten quite good at it. My boss told me the other day he has another small project using the same principles in another crop that he got funding for. I could polish that off in no time.

This is really hard. I'll be putting up a pros and cons list in the next day or so, and everyone can help me decide. I had sort of hoped that the other position would wither away, maybe not be available anymore, or whatever. At the same time it would be a good opportunity to get back into the work that I did in the past. I would actually be very good at it. Would that be satisfying in and of itself? You help me decide!

Candy corn in space

Here is a really cool video of how an astronaut used candycorn coated with oil on one end and stuck the other end in a floating ball of water. He found the candycorn ball mushy and squishy, until the waterball surface was full at which point it turned solid.