2009 High Fives

I was nominated for an award last night over at Inkpots n'Quills: the 2009 High Fives. If I understand this correctly, I'm supposed to list five accomplishments from last year and nominate five more blogs. This took some thought, but here are my accomplishments:

IFT

IFT stands for Institute of Food Technology, a professional organization. They hold a convention every year; food companies give out samples, and scientists present their food-related research. Last June, I flew out to California to present some of the research I'd done for my company at a poster session. Although it's relatively easy to have a poster accepted, it was still the first time I'd done something like this. Overall, the poster session went well, and we made some new business contacts.

JAPAN

Since I was transferred last year from research to Quality Control, I was sent to Japan for two weeks to our parent company for training. (There are a series of posts discussing my trip, which was in late September-early October.) I'm still trying to perfect the assays I need to do, but considering I don't speak Japanese and not all of the QC people spoke English very well, I'm glad it went as well as it did. They praised me for my ability to use chopsticks, and I made it to the lab in the aftermath of a typhoon. I also got to see the John Lennon Museum near Tokyo.

Parenting

One of the hardest parts about my business trips last year was leaving my family, especially my toddler son. Last year, we finally got him to fall asleep on his own and in his crib, instead of on us or with us in his room. We had to force him to cry it out, which was hard for all of us, but now everyone sleeps better. (Except for me, but I'm at the point where I need medical help to cure my insomnia.) I'm also pleased to report that while Alex isn't completely toilet training, he does use his potty. I think being in daycare and seeing the other kids use the toilet got him interested in it.

Writing

I didn't finish revising my current project as I'd resolved to, but at least my opening survived a public flogging.

WisCon

I was part of three panels at WisCon last year. The topics were keeping up with science, the science of time travel, and keeping science in science fiction. I contributed more to the first and last panel than I did to the one on time travel. That was a busy time of year for me, as we also had to plan for Alex's second birthday party and my trip to IFT. Adding preparation for the WisCon panels on top of that made things stressful. I'm glad they went well, but I think I won't sign up for so many this year.


I also have to nominate five other blogs for this award, so here we go:

Deathday Letters
Don't Think Twice

H. L. Dyer's Weblog
Mindless Musings
Working My Muse