A Cat Nap

Just thought I’d post a little something to say “I’m still here!” …I’m working on a post about the recent John Tierney column in the NYTimes on women in science, and I hope to have it up soon. In the meantime, I wanted to comment on the New Yorker cover with Barack and Michelle Obama - it seems to have upset many people. I’m not really sure what everyone is so bothered about - I thought it was funny.

So…time’s been passing - and I’ve been working. Playing with liquid nitrogen, teaching 10th graders about chemistry (with squishy and mushy materials like silly putty and home-made viscoelastic slime and personal care products like shampoo, hair gel, and lotion), occasionally analyzing nuggets of data, reading about things going on in the comics industry (T! relates to it), and talking and learning about business. I’ve found all of this to be on the whole enjoyable work, and that makes me happy.

Meanwhile, it’s been unbelievably hot in NYC! So hot, in fact, that the living room is regularly 92 degrees after having left the AC off over night, and during the day while the AC is working at full capacity it maybe brings the room down to 85. Yummy. Sticky. Unfun.

But it’s not all work…on Friday night I had the extreme pleasure of watching one of my oldest and best friends play Musetta in the Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music’s Summer Opera production of La Boheme. In the second act, the character Musetta gets to control the stage, and my did she! She was amazing, and I got chills. Especially notable since we were in an AC-free high school auditorium that must have been a sweltering 90 something degrees. We all felt for the characters in the winter scenes with coats, sweatshirts, and scarves on!

I’ve also been playing World of Warcraft with my husband. For hours.

Partially because it’s fun, and partially because it’s the only entertainment that fits in our budget right now (at the amount of hours we play, it’s less than $1/hour of entertainment). And taking walks with the hubby! To get outside! Where there’s air, and exercise to be had!

And finally, I’ve been thinking about babies. Cute, cuddly, babies. Can’t wait for the family I’ve been working for with the 4 month old to get back from Israel so I can go play with him again!

So for the past few months, I’ve been a serious contributor to the work being done on the company, and I thought maybe I’d tell you all more about what I’ve been up to. I always was somewhat involved and my assistance varied, but more recently we formalized my role within the company. I am the Chief Marketing Officer, as well as Manager of Operations and Finance. I work directly with the CEO (my husband) and the COO (a close friend of his), as well as of course interacting with the others on the team. I also have now been directly involved in company conference calls and pitches to investors.

I’ve started a blog for the company which is geared towards investors and people interested in the progress of the company. After the launch, the blog will be made public so that any interested site users can read about the process that created our site. After launch, I will be greatly involved in the community on the site - welcoming new users and commenting on the things they do and share. I’ll be in charge of making sure the atmosphere is friendly and fun, which I am excited about. I’m very versed in web social networks (I was involved in a smaller-scale social campus site called Campus Network before Facebook was launched at a rival school, and joined facebook within months of its launch), and I’ll be using those skills for my job. Cool, right?

Currently, my duties are primarily in business management. I’m putting to use the project and time management skills I learned as an independent researcher. I’ve always been very organized, and now I’m helping my husband and the other company team members to stay on track and reach our goals. My husband says I’ve been a big help in managing the work that’s being done and keeping us moving along at a good pace. Mostly, I’m building our business plan in all its fine details. As a guide, I’ve been using a book used at many b-schools: The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies, which I’ve found very helpful. Lately I’ve put a lot of thought into standard procedures for the company, such as ways to make sure information flows smoothly between all members. I’m finding that I can apply lessons I learned in lab group management to this. I’m excited to be helping to make the company work smoothly and I’ve been really enjoying my work!

One thing that I’ve been doing that I think utilizes some of the skills I honed as an academic researcher is the market research. While the methods of acquiring data are quite different (I scour the web’s reputable sources, like us economic census data and trade publications for our industries instead of mixing chemicals in a lab), after that it’s very similar. I compile and organize the information, and think about how best to present it. I think about how I might compare data and what stories the information I gather tells us. And then I create the web presentation or write up the document that we will share with our employees and investors.

Alright, back to work! We got a small investment from a investor who is also a family member today, so we can stop running on fumes and focus on work instead of how to get our next meal. Tomorrow, we will be showing him what we’ve done recently, and I’m making a presentation for that. I’m off to make a flow chart of production stages for new features!

The last few weeks have seen an interesting hodgepodge of demands on my time, but I think I’ve managed to secure enough babysitting hours to stabilize the financial situation a little bit until we get our next cash influx, which should be a few weeks away now. Financially we’re in what Husband is calling a “famine cycle,” but I think I’ve succeeded in keeping it from getting as bad as it has been in the past. I pulled in all the cash from any savings account we had, enough to bring our bank account in the black again, and now I can put enough cash from babysitting into the account to keep from bank fees and bounced payments when some of our unavoidable bills are processed. This feels a little better, although it’s still really stressful as a significant portion of our bills are going unpaid, and thus our debt is just growing further.

I found a new occasional baby sitting gig, watching a 2 month old. I’m happy to be around a baby again, as the toddlers at my other gig are now 20 months and 3 1/4 yrs old. And so far, the baby seems to be a pretty easy baby, although I haven’t spent too much time with him yet. His parents are both musicians, and I’m going to be helping out while his momma gets some practice time in. So I get to listen to some great classical piano while I’m working, too! It’s pretty soothing. So far the baby and I seem to interact well - he likes my smile and my laugh.

So this is what my weekly schedule is shaping up to look like: 5-10 hours with the 2 month old, 10-15 hours with the toddlers, unknown number of hours in the lab (I’m a “part-time staff associate” for the summer), and 10-20 hours on the startup company. I’ve been taking time off from lab work the past few weeks to focus on helping to get the business pitch ready for our next attempts to secure funding, but I begin lab stuff again this week. We have some new summer undergrads who I will be meeting on Thursday and begin training on Friday. I’m looking forward to new potential mentees!

As for my mental and physical health, I’m struggling, but fighting hard. I’ve been a revolving door of various infections, viruses, and other stress-related sickness. I feel the pull of the bed, with the comfy covers and the promise of sleep and dreams, but I’m managing somewhat to get myself to do work. Last week I felt myself wanting to sleep an awful lot, but on Thursday I fought hard against the desire to stay in bed, and it was a good step. I went out and ran some errands in the neighborhood and then went to Starbucks and did some work there, and by the time I returned home I felt somewhat rejuvenated. When I get stressed out too much, I try to meditate and relax. When I feel like sleeping but know that I’ve had enough sleep, I try to get out and just do little things to get myself going. It’s these small skills that I’ve been cultivating to fight depression, and I’m definitely getting better at it. These struggles with depression and anxiety haven’t been easy, but I am definitely able to see progress in my ability to deal with everything and to fight my way out of the depressed state. I know that I’m dealing with everything that’s going on now in a much, much stronger way than I would have even two years ago, and for that I’m proud.

As I mentioned previously, among other things, failing the quals and being kicked out of the program has left me suddenly without health insurance after the end of this month.  For the summer, I have work lined up, but it is without benefits.  After that, I hope to be able to work for Husband’s company, which would make us both self-employed.  (For stability, I’ll get a real job if we don’t have a solid amount of funds in the company account).  After I found on e-health insurance that a medical plan with prescription (and maternal) coverage for Husband and I combined would run $700 a month,  Sara from Yellow Ibis shared with me this great NYTimes article on finding health insurance for the self-employed.

From the article I found this great resource, healthinsuranceinfo.net, which is hosted by the Georgetown health policy institute.  From there, you can get a free state-specific consumer guide on getting and keeping health insurance.  I haven’t completely delved through my state’s guide yet, but I’m glad I found this great resource!

Husband got home from pitch #2 and it also went really well! There are a lot of things this could mean for our future, and it’s all very exciting and we both like to dream about it, but most concretely, in the here and now, this means that likely very soon Husband will have a reasonable salary and hopefully some health insurance, and that will be secured for the next year, during which time he will be able to work from home, full-time, doing very nearly his ideal job. I’m so happy and proud, this is really what I want more than anything else that might come from it - just the chance for him to be his own boss and also be financially comfortable and doing what he wants to do. Yay!

For the tides have turned already. Husband finished his first pitch a little while ago, and he totally nailed it. The angel investor has expressed interest in investing the entire amount that we’ve said we need for the next year, including hiring needed employees to get the whole project out there as fast as possible. Husband has basically planned all of it in very fine detail, but it’s a huge undertaking and we need help to get it done, and soon we’ll be able to hire that help. He has another pitch tomorrow and I’m sure it will go quite well too. In fact, it looks like he’s going to need to sell the shares at a higher price than he originally thought he’d offer to these first people, who are friends, family, or longer term business connections. I’m so proud of him, and so excited for us both and for the company! And you should all be excited too, because you’re all going to love what he’s bringing to the web!

Go check out the April Scientiae at Peggy’s Women in Science blog.  The theme is fools and foolishness.  And for next month, the Scientiae host will be none other than yours truly.  Soon I’ll announce the topic, which I’ve been thinking about.

Also, posting will likely be light in April, as the supernatural beings that live in the skies have conspired to make my qualifying exam and Husband’s first pitches to possible angel investors coincide.  So when I’m not busy studying my butt off for the exam, I’ll be busy listening to husband’s ideas, providing valuable feedback, helping him to create a great pitch, and otherwise calming him and myself down as we plow through the incredibly busy and stressful month that April will surely prove to be.

In honor of the hard work I expect both of us to be doing, I present this week’s quotation, by Maxine Hong Kingston:

The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear to be favored by the gods.

Wish us both luck!

5 - minutes that I just kneaded pretzel dough for
45 - minutes that I must let it rise for
2.5 - hours I spend in class each week
11 - hours I spend on the subway in an average week
18 - approximate hours I spend while listening to my iPod in an average week
14 - hours straight I slept last Friday night
17 - approximate hours I babysit during the average week
2 - children I watch during aforementioned time
55 - total months old they are, combined
19 - months separating their ages
11 - months I’ve been working with this family
30 - number of times I wiped the wee one’s nose today.  Poor thing, he’s sick!
1 - month since I was awarded my MS degree! Yay!
45 - days until my qualifying exams (gulp)
3.5 - theoretical number of years until I get my PhD (my program sets a five year limit on funding for grad students)
1 - number of years until I think we might be around ready-ish to maybe start trying to conceive (with the huge variable of Husband’s start-up company…)
3.75 - years since I met Husband
17 - months I’ve been married
14 - months since Husband quit his salaried job to build a really awesome (and well-developed) website
3.5 - years since the first time I encouraged Husband to quit a salaried job in order to pursue his dream career path (which he was not on when I met him)
20,000 - dollars our angel investor promised us to start the company with
12,000 - dollars we actually received
5,000 - dollars we need to raise in the very near future
150,000 - estimated dollars we hope to find investors for in the not so far off future
3 - number of cofounders with my Husband
38 - days until Comic Con 2008, at which Husband and I hope we will have a booth, which will be a big step for us as we prepare to launch his website.  Check out the huge list of exhibitors already! It would be an awesome venue in which to start getting people excited about our website (which I won’t describe here but is relevant to the comic industry), which we then hope to pitch to investors (friends and family first, then angel investors).  I have a ton of confidence in Husband’s business plan and the applicable skill set of him and his co-founders (although Husband is the one who came up with the idea and the only one who works on it full-time, at least for now), as well as the amount that the market it’s targeted to is thriving right now, so I really believe this could happen.