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beccastareyesI don't know if it was the plane trip or shaking hands with half of the professors at Cal Poly, but I now have a cold. I was hoping it was allergies, so I took my allergy pills, which meant that I had a runny nose all of yesterday. Today I figured it wasn't allergies, so didn't bother... so I got the runny nose AND a sinus headache. (Brilliant, self.) Then on the way home, I stopped for gas and cold pills. (And got the fun of buying decongestants with an out of state license.)
Incidentally, this reminds me of another weird culture shock; the area stores all charge for plastic or paper bags*. I don't know if I saved most of my tote bags from Ithaca; at the least, I'll need new ones.
I think 'lack of free grocery bags' was part of Mom's list of Why She Hates California. (The bags, the drivers, the fact there is a giant hill between my apartment and my office, the price of everything, the presence of too few restaurants that serve mild food**... pretty much everything except the ocean.)
Department retreat today: basically, we went over all the policies, I got connected with the astronomers on campus, and information about who I report to for Physics 141 (because there are eight instructors for at least ten sections, so someone has to herd the cats***), and more New Faculty information.
* Not much. Something like ten cents, or maybe fifteen.
** Most of that is just that Mom's stomach is sufficiently delicate that even pizza for dinner will send it into a tailspin of heartburn and regret. Which makes eating out far less fun, especially in areas where you don't know what the hell weird thing they'll do to food, or where they think raw onions go.
*** I have 48 students in each section; that means a good five hundred students are passing through calculus-based physics. That's about as many as we had at the University of Nebraska, where I took calc-based physics, but we did it in two or three giant lecture hall classes, and weekly recitations with grad students.
Incidentally, this reminds me of another weird culture shock; the area stores all charge for plastic or paper bags*. I don't know if I saved most of my tote bags from Ithaca; at the least, I'll need new ones.
I think 'lack of free grocery bags' was part of Mom's list of Why She Hates California. (The bags, the drivers, the fact there is a giant hill between my apartment and my office, the price of everything, the presence of too few restaurants that serve mild food**... pretty much everything except the ocean.)
Department retreat today: basically, we went over all the policies, I got connected with the astronomers on campus, and information about who I report to for Physics 141 (because there are eight instructors for at least ten sections, so someone has to herd the cats***), and more New Faculty information.
* Not much. Something like ten cents, or maybe fifteen.
** Most of that is just that Mom's stomach is sufficiently delicate that even pizza for dinner will send it into a tailspin of heartburn and regret. Which makes eating out far less fun, especially in areas where you don't know what the hell weird thing they'll do to food, or where they think raw onions go.
*** I have 48 students in each section; that means a good five hundred students are passing through calculus-based physics. That's about as many as we had at the University of Nebraska, where I took calc-based physics, but we did it in two or three giant lecture hall classes, and weekly recitations with grad students.
