RBOC: Alice's March Catch-up edition

Okay, so what on earth *have* I been up to, if not blogging? I'm catching you up (rather like the recitative bits in opera - dry, dull, but advancing the action, rather than arias which are beautiful but don't get you anywhere much) with some RBOCs...

• As previously mentioned, I had a trip to Washington DC for a symposium on engineering education research. I've uploaded some photos here if you want to see the outcomes of the sticky-note brainstorm (the funnest part of the conference!). I did get a pretty awesome dinner with some attendees:
  
• I submitted an IEECI grant, my first PI experience. Read more thoughts here.
• I got my first journal paper accepted, in the Journal of Engineering Education. Single author. W00T! April 13 deadline for revisions, see the outcome in October! I'm way excited.
• I got another paper accepted (!) that I'm co-author on, in the upcoming Inclusive Science special issue of NWSAJournal. Revisions due April 11 on that one.
• I got my single-author paper rejected from the same special issue. That's okay. I am thinking about trying to rework it for another special issue coming up - if it gets rejected, then I'll just try submitting it to the regular NWSAJournal review process. But there's an April 1 deadline for the second special issue idea...
• I am planning a massive climate survey at my university, but still needed to go through IRB approval on the developed instrument. We thought it might be a full IRB review, so had to get it in by the full review deadline (instead of "whenever" like for expedited reviews). That deadline was a day before the IEECI grant was due. Massive application, put together by the awesome grad students I get to work with, and am very grateful to/for.
• A colleague and I are planning another research study, and the IRB for that is due April 9. Must get cracking on those...
• Did I mention my annual review and updated CV (in full promotion-and-tenure format) was due the Friday I was in Washington? Yeah, didn't get done. I'm working on it now, though, hope to get it in before spring break is really over.
• I finally got word on 2 abstracts for a conference - both yes, and the deadline for the full papers is April 6. Yikes.
• My parents came to visit. We had lovely weather, and my dad and my husband worked on adding a door into our garage, then building steps down, and also insulating the garage roof (which is also the floor of our guest bedroom). In the interim, we noticed our siding is rotting, and I may have mentioned our drafty windows. So we started getting (5 so far) quotes on replacing siding and windows on 2 sides of our house. Let's hope there is some $$ in the stimulus package for upgrading the energy efficiency of one's house...More photos (including the new pink ceiling of our garage) here. Also, here's a photo of Dad and my old piled-up car...
  
• I'm about to head to Kentucky for a little informal retreat where I'm meeting some other engineering education researchers, and we're hoping to figure out how to support each other better in doing this whole tenure-track/engineering education research gig. I should have some more photos when I get back, but will be offline for a while. Not that that will be a change from the last two weeks or so... :-( But I have a couple photos scheduled for you until I return. I hope the trip will be renewing, but I confess I am less than enthused about the 6 hr drive there and 6 hr drive back. Boo.

I think that about sums it up for now. Continue with the regularly scheduled arias!