Thank goodness it's a studio

I think I might be able to finish all the cleaning today! Vacuuming is currently more work than I anticipated, since I have a lot of stuff arranged a certain way and they are a pain to drag around (I think I may be sore tomorrow, heh). However, the clear front on the dust collector portion of my vacuum cleaner means that this is not without entertainment value. So far when I gaze into it I can see, in addition to dust and hair (gross, I am apparently still shedding a bucket), three pieces of pasta, one watch battery, and a tablet of motrin. And a small round metallic bead of around 1mm in diameter that I do not recognize at all but, so it goes).

I keep coming across new areas that I have yet to wipe down. My bathroom is still sadly in need of one of those shelves that can be erected over the watertank. I think my neighbors (those who are still in) have concluded that I've gone insane since I got all the windows open for the cleaning and Pandora was just belting out Phantom of the Opera over the clangs and crashes that I have been generating. I also think I deserve a curry for all my trouble (also because I'm trying to avoid messing up my pristine kitchen -- surely the cleaniness is meant to last more than two hours?) but am dubious as to whether or not that Thai restaurant a short walk away is still open today. For reasons unbeknownst to me the Laundromat near my place is actually closed this week (with no signs or explanations of whatsoever) so I had to take my stuff to another Laundromat, given that I don't know when this one will be open again.

Also? I smell like lemon and bleach.

Happy soon to be another decade, everyone! I'll be at Lucy's tomorrow to commemorate the occasion.

[Edit 11:08]
For the record: HomeLife brand gloves suck. They leaked while I was scrubbing with bleach and I know it's leakage, not wet hands or sweat because my hands felt like they were burning. Ironic how I never really had to do the rinse under cold water for 15 minutes thing in all the years I've been lab and ended up having to do it at home for housework. There is some sort analogy there, I think. Or possibly just the proof that the lab-grade gloves are really that much better than drugstore gloves.

Clean slate

I am home now, ditching lab after another couple of hours spent with the cryostat. I now have coronal (i.e. frontal), transverse (i.e. horizontal), and sagittal sections all ready for next week. At which point I looked outside, noted the weather (rain), the light (dark), and the people still left in lab (three post docs) and decided I'd rather go home. And eat food. I had to throw away my lunch because I made it with some of the stuff mom got me and I suspect that it went bad, because it doesn't taste right. None of the on-campus stores, save the bookstore, are open and I am not sure if I drove off campus for lunch (free parking this week) I'd still have a parking spot when I come back. The school of med parking lot is THAT full. We have, apparently, a lot of workaholics.

In other news: the PI got me a monitor yesterday! It's giant and black and made people do a double take when they first see it, because no one is used to seeing anything larger than Ivy on my desk. The process of getting the monitor involved the PI walking up to me and asking how I would like to see my stuff on a larger screen, to which I replied that that would be very nice, and then he told me to go with him and we went to the bookstore and hauled back the monitor. It's the fastest acquisition of lab tools, ever. Except for when I have to get the common chemical such as salt and formaldehyde which I can just pick up from the chem stock room.

Am now caught up on the chores that have accumulated since last week (caught up as of this morning, anyway: I was scrubbing out my microwave before I left for lab). Tomorrow is the pre-New Year's house cleaning.

To repeat what I've just posted on Facebook:

The photos are posted. There's enough comments with them that I'm not going to be doing a blog recap of the past week. I need to sleep now.

Can someone please poke Christine and let her know that I've uploaded the photos to facebook? Thanks.

'night.

Home. Drove most of the way this time (in preparation for when I get to make the long drive by myself). Will drive dad to airport soon. Will not get much done tonight. Am too tired.

Lab tomorrow.

General announcement

I don't have the camera-computer transfer cable with me and Daemon does not have a card port, so I won't be able to upload photos until I've returned to SD (and probably not immediately then either because I have a bunch of end-of-the-month chores to run and a date with the dissecting tools upon my arrival). I apologize for the wait. Please stop emailing me. Thank you.

P.S. Oh and apparently the blog comments too.
You will know when I upload the photos, there is really no need to ask / keep on asking.

Hmm

Dad's out poking at my car, despite of the fact that he knows that the wheels have just been changed, along with the oil, and that none of the vehicle's fluids needed to be refilled. It makes him happy, so I'm going along with it. Mom's just been out grocery shopping. In the general spirit of festivities I've decided to go through my closet again to see what else I get to throw away this year (before there were things I could not throw away without getting yelled at, such as the Chinese calligraphy books, now I can get away with donating them --let's face it, penmanship has never been an interest of mine; I'm keeping the Chinese watercolor books instead), since my parents were thinking that moving might be in order within the next few years (still at the thinking stage). Meanwhile, I want to make a post just to remark that my God, when did I get so much stuff?!

Home!

Arrived safely. Have dropped Lucy off. Berkeley tomorrow! Cheers.

The forecast for next week (up till Friday, that is) is all clear in SD and in the high 60s, low 70s. The forecast for next week in Cupertino has rain on Tuesday, but otherwise looks okay despite of the fact that it's 10F colder than SD. Also: I need to find the time to pack. (But at least all the stuff that needs to be mailed out got mailed out on time.) I had class at 8am this morning so, on campus at least, it does not feel much like Christmas' next week.

Starting the countdown.

The things I ordered from Think Geek have arrived. The packaging says:

"Your package packed with care by THINKGEEK MONKEYBOTS. ThinkGeek Lubs You! This bag is green because it's recyclable and biodegradable (both above and below ground), not because it's made of people. Free monkey breath enclosed!"

I don't think I've ever liked any one store this much before.

<3

From a former cyborg

I'm looking forward to my week of break, which I'm ridiculously excited about. I don't plan to be spending much time at home, which my mom will no doubt not be very happy about, but she understands. She even gave me leave to spend as much time with my friends as I want, which is depressing if I think about it too much, so mostly I don't think about it.

Today in the class of yours truly a PI mentioned something about screening through a genome and how, with a consortium, it shouldn't take too long with a bunch of robots, "or an army of undergrads", 'cause they're like the same thing. And then the other PI cracked a joke about how we've officially passed the bar into humanity while the class tittered.

I need to use the infrared scanner. Twice I went over and someone was using it. I'm beginning to feel thwarted.

It is now officially cold in SD. I have bananas that I need to throw away some time this weekend. I also gave Malvina the date to our gift exchange so she can call. Maybe we can put her on the speaker phone this time. The time delay between when I typed something and when it shows up in gWave is annoying.

So build me an ark

Rain's finally arrived in SD and boy did it arrive. I woke up last night from the sound of it when it started, it was pouring by morning, and by lunch time the outside looked like we're in the middle of hurricane. (I did not know we can even get wind like that down here.) The ants on the ground level have already started their emergency-flood evacuation, so that by the afternoon we have...ants. And also fruitflies. My labmates and I could not figure out where they come from, since no one on our floor works with Drosophila. The current theory is that one of the labs from upstairs had a few jail-breaks and our intrepid arthropod explorers found their way into the ventilation system (the alternative theory means that they have managed to successfully navigate the many doors and exits/entrances in the lab building, which people frequently still cannot do, so this theory is somewhat less likely). (Also, as far as I know, the flies do not have access cards.) The flies we found have dark brown eyes instead of the normal red color of the wildtype animals, so they're probably some sort of mutant.

Dorothy put up the Christmas lights in lab today. It went around the thermocycler area and across the top of the chromatography fridge. They were very shiny.

Why, life?

After the unexpected trouble with car wheels (again!) I came home today to discover that the kitchen sink was clogged and that the stress ball had somehow leaked and dripped semi-solid goo all over my shelf.

I did manage to get a lot of Christmas shopping done, but a little more transition between holiday-happy and oh-God-more-chores would've been nice.

(P.S. Anyone know what the heck is in that good and how I can get it off? It's too thick and sticky to scrape off and not water soluble.)

Dear blog, take 2

Life is suddenly a whole lot busier.

I knew, intellectually, how much time is between Thanksgiving and Christmas. What I hadn't quite factored was the fact that, despite of the three weeks period, I technically only have two days each week to do everything that I need to get done. Starting the comp bio portion of my project meant that most of my incubation time during lab is spent collecting sequences for analysis on my computer. I tried to do some work on the bus, but at 7am in the morning and at night I'm simply too tired to bother, preferring instead to stare out the bus window blankly and enjoy my hour of zen.

Which means I have this weekend and next weekend to get every thing done, since Lucy and I are leaving on the 19th. Lab event next weekend means I'll have to throw away one day. Which means I have a grand total of three days to get my cards addressed and sent out (19th the latest for mailing but I need to get the cards written before then), Christmas shopping & wrapping done (or at least 80% finished), and finish both my quarterly lab report and prepare a lab presentation. Mostly the hour I have at the end of the day this week will be spend, I think, digging through my clothing as SD finally decided that it was winter after all and dropped its temperature. It is now very cold out by the bus stop at night. Why do I not have a geeky hoodie?

So cheers. The Thanksgiving post (or the third of it I'd managed to write while I was at the airport) is on Ivy. I am on Daemon. The DEPC I requested finally came in today and its container bore an uncanny resemblance to cough syrup bottles but, still more unfortunately, to Pepto Bismo.

Dear blog

I will update later, since I started typing my blog entry that covered the past few days and the entry turned into a (battery)power sucking monster. I am updating now just to say that SD weather is wonderful and ThinkGeek is freakin' awesome (I got the catalog in the mail today).

Holiday rush

I'm wondering whether or not to bother coming into lab at all tomorrow, since I've got most of the stuff planned so that all experiments can be wrapped up by the end of today. Transit by bus to and from campus will take me two hours. I need to arrive to the airport early, also by bus, which will take me at least one hours and thirty minutes. If I have a flight at two-ish that means I should probably leave house at around noon, which means I need to leave lab at eleven, which means even if I got to lab by eight in the morning I'll have a grand total of three hours which...is enough to run PCR and maybe a gel. Purify RNA maybe if already have samples prep'ed (which I don't, since I finished a fresh batch yesterday). Do some cell culture (also finished yesterday). More likely, I'll be doing comp bio stuff, and now that the initial downloading and compiling portion part is over, I'm collecting sequences, which I can do at home just well as in lab. Which leads me to ask why the heck would I come to lab tomorrow?

Therefore, unless I forget something important (such as an incubation) I probably won't even be in lab tomorrow.

...

I got the wheels changed on my car over the weekend, since they are pretty old and while a bit of dry-rot isn't too bad on the locals I didn't want to take the chances when Lucy and I drive long distance. I also had some time to make up my Christmas list for this year and spent some time staring at the calendar, trying to figure out when I need to mail what to whom so that it arrives on time, given that the speed of delivery by USPS seems to asymptotically approach zero the closer we get to Christmas. (Well no, it isn't that bad. I'm exaggerating by a lot. The point is the speed will be slower and the margin of error greater and if I were to plot it it would probably look a little like something from the half-life decay graph.) I have not yet heard from Malvina (does anyone have her current email address? Does anyone mind checking the emails I've sent out to make sure that I am using her current email address?) but I think we're good to go for everyone else.

...

My mice had two litters last week. One of which got eaten over the weekend. Lab mice are very inbred and strange. (Read: disgusting.)

...

I went out to dinner with some of my labmates (and whichever of their spouses that could make it) last night. It was fun. The atmosphere was a lot more relaxed since the PI (who is, when all's said and done, our "boss") wasn't there. Wendy and her husband were nice enough to give me a ride so I won't have to navigate the two highways that's between where I am and where the place is. There was a lot of ribbing involved for everyone regarding lab and life. Considering the fact that it was a Monday night, it was very relaxing.

Radioactivity: day 3

Did you know that ethanol is now considered to be a toxic controlled substance? As in a) we're no longer allowed to dispose of it down the drain (even though I'm sure people are allowed to pour liquor down the drain without having to fill out a gazillion forms) and b) we can't order more ethanol without going through paperwork. Lots of paperwork. Like hospitals and many other labs around, we use 70% ethanol to disinfect working surfaces, add to that the fact that we are a genetics lab and need ethanol to precipitate DNA and such, we go through a lot of ethanol. Supposedly they changed b) because they were worried people would just order ethanol from lab and then drink. To which I say: you know, given where we are, there are easier ways to obtain better drinking-quality alcohol illegally than navigating the forms for lab reagent orders.

Silly EH&S people.

I've successfully labelled my probes and my blot is now hybridizing. The washing and the exposure starts today which means that today is the last day I have to deal directly with high beta emission before Thanksgiving. I used about 15 mCi yesterday and all went well. The sweep for radioactivity gave all clear down to the 0.1mCi level. No one will have to die from radiation poisoning. Life is good.

In between I've also figured out how to compile all the programs on Daemon for my comp bio stuff. (Had to download a bunch more packages for xorg to support the cladogram-drawing functions, and Fedora 11 put the X11 files in weird locations, but otherwise wasn't too bad.) Now off to class!

I drink from the keg of glory

Or at least the keg of geekdom. I've finished configuring Fedora and this time around with Linux I've managed to add in the configurations for my tablet including pressure sensitivity. Everything works! I have wireless! Also, Fedora continues to be super shiny and very much faster than my xp system.

That just makes my day.

My PI quoted Tolstoy at me to illustrate the process of antibody synthesis (which I will be making for my protein at some point). It is awesome, horrifying, and hilarious at the same time. I mean, Anna Karenina? Really? Was that necessary?

Sometimes I think I like my thesis advisor because of his strangeness. Other times I just wonder.

On Daemon again. Now running on Fedora (the Ubuntu CD had an error in it and didn't check out with the system). I have internet. And also a very shiny GUI that has 4 separate desktop spaces. Huh.

Hee

Daemon says its "respawning". Which isn't good, but I'm too busy being amused.

Respawning. Really.

This week's been a lot more productive, lab-wise, than I have been in a while (read: before qual took over). I finally got an in situ to work, got some qPCR data, and some E14.5 mouse embryos (the dissection of which is truly nasty). My radioactive reagents have also arrived later in the week, which means that I'll probably be shifting my focus to that the next two week while the material's still fresh (beta particle radiation, in case anyone's wondering). I've also had to collect material from adult mouse brains and got bitten many times in the process, since my strain is, unfortunately, one of the most aggressive (I call them bloodthirsty) strains. Mostly I feel bad though, because Wendy got bitten too while she was helping me scruff the mouse (she's been working with mice for years and years, after all) and she bled a whole lot more than I did with my multiple bite marks. Eventually Dorothy had to rescue us and I learned one more thing to add to the Unexpected Uses for Tweezers list.

We also had to defrost a freezer. The ice build up in it was preventing the door from closing properly and so things weren't freezing like they were supposed to.

At the home front...well when I last posted it was already this week, and not much generally happens during the week. Plane tickets have been ordered. I will be flying out Wednesday afternoon and returning Sunday morning. Christmas plans are in the making. For those of you who haven't heard yet, Lucy and I will be driving up for Christmas. I wonder how well cookies travel. (All of my baking material are here.)

Okay, time to head into lab briefly, and then do the grocery run.

Knock on wood

I've called ATT and things seem to have sorted out on that end. I've also called my mom and found out that my grandpa's officially stabilized. It seems like I've reached a resolution of sorts with life.

At least, for the first time since August, I'll be able to go through the mental run-down of recent events in my life without the knot of dread in the bottom of my stomach. I will not miss it.

I feel very cheery now. The sun's out today, without the foggy haze, and the sky's so blue that looking at it gives me an afterimage that tinges everything yellow. It's warm enough that I'm sitting around in my shirtsleeves with my sleeves rolled up. I should get tea. Then it'd be perfect (though I probably will not have the motivation to finish the experiments I'm currently running) (am boiling an enzyme while waiting for the reagents for my next two reactions to thaw).

Also: holiday emails. "If I'm an emoticon right now my symbols would be colon capital 'd'."

Someone should be enjoying this

I went and got the tire changed yesterday (it had been sitting too long with a flat + it was old = tire was beyond repair) and then ran my chores. Afterwards I felt so cheery and productive that I went and cleaned my apartment, made lasagna, and put in the new extension cord so that the lamp in the corner of the apartment will be actually usable. Unfortunately that meant unplugging and then re-plugging my wireless, which then promptly stopped working.

By which I mean the DSL was on, my computer was connected, by neither the ethernet or the wireless were connecting me reliably.

After some phone calls I was told that this was because I didn't register my new internet connection when I moved (leaving me to ask, indignant and more than a little confused, why on earth did my internet work for three month without registration and probably would have kept on working had I not unplugged it?) (the agent didn't have an answer). (Also she was just...unhelpful. Somewhat less than competent. I like the other guy I had to call in the summer better.) Then it came on that for whatever reason, I could register, because the connection was intermittent even with ethernet and so the agent unhelpfully told me to keep my computer open and see if the page ever loads and scheduled me for a technician on Monday, from 12 to 4pm, without telling me that she'd scheduled me for a technician. (I discovered this from another phone call, four hours later to try to figure out why the hell she had't called back like she said she would, and had to reschedule the appointment for Wednesday because they need a date and time when I'll actually be home.)

(Meanwhile I finished two books, made food, backed up my files and finished season 2 of Due South.)

But yeah, this morning, for whatever random reason, I've managed to register, without downloading that hideous help program that the other times the att page keep insisting I need (which would then take forever to load and my connection would always cut at sometime around 76% done). I appear to have internet now. I have no idea what happened. But I'll go and see if this lasts and if it does, then I'll call on Tuesday and cancer my appointment.

That was my little adventure (read: frustration) this weekend. I've a peach pie baking in the oven. When it's done I think I'll go and walk to the beach. Too bad my mp3 player is still broken and no amount of troubleshooting on my end seems to fix it. (I need to get a set of those small tools. You know, like the one you use on watches?)

Well, cheers. Fingers crossed on the internet!

[edit 10:21]
Verified: both ethernet and wireless now works. What the hell, 2wire? What the hell?

Passed. (Then went home directly afterward and slept.)

Well, onwards and upwards.

I...just...

Got a flat tire today. In addition to not knowing how to change a tire (someone really should teach me that, one day, before I try to navigate it on my own based on some print out from Google) (which will not end well) I know for a fact that I don't have the tools I need to change a tire.

Annie used to say, when these sort of things happen, that this just proves that there is a God and that He hates me. Although I, for the most part, remain agnostic, sometimes I have to wonder at fate's sense of humor.

[edit 11:09]
AND I just found out that the ATT account I thought I'd closed when I moved is still open and they are, apparently, still billing me. In addition to my current address's billing I mean. The phone system at ATT claims my number doesn't exist (no doubt due to the fact that I closed it) and the actual people who are in charge of this sort of thing work normal M-F hours.

[edit 12:13]
AND I think I have termites in the walls of my apartment. What the hell, life?

This is apparently how it works

Wendy told me the other day that "if you haven't gone insane yet, you haven't been in grad school long enough". After the general up-spike in panic the past few days (how is it that the PIs managed to do that, long after I'm convinced that I just don't have the energy to panic anymore, I'll never know) I'm beginning to gain a new appreciation of that sentiment.

On that cheering note, my defense's next Tuesday. It was scheduled for next Tuesday (confirmation of rooms and everything) by Wednesday, because due to the schedule of the professors and the rooms (which we do need to schedule ahead of time) the only weeks that are available are either next week or, it seems, the last week before Thanksgiving (which is also my deadline for this). Then of course it's juggling the times until the PIs said, okay, this time will work. (In between all this I've gone through my slides twice already and found a photo where people are monitoring the circadian rhythm of lobsters, of all things, by putting a wheel in their aquarium that's hooked up to the computer and seeing when they'd run. On wheels. The photo was titled "Lobster In Wheel". ) Then yesterday one of my PIs emailed me and said that she had an eye appointment at the time of my defense, and could I reschedule, please. Of course, the person who is in charge of scheduling the meeting room for my building was gone for the day, so I ended up frantically looking up room schedules for other school of med buildings and discovering that, within the next few weeks, there is apparently only one hour when all the PIs will have time for me. (The qual is designed to be 90 minutes long, with 40 minutes for my presentation and 50 minutes for questioning afterwards.)

At which point I might have said, "Oh my God" and banged my head against my desk a few times. My labmates seemed concerned.

But the problem (sort of) resolved itself. One of the PIs is still going to leave early, but the other two will make it. (Or at least, after I scheduled the new room I sent out an email which said "IF YOU CAN'T MAKE IT, LET ME KNOW ASAP!" and no one has replied yet.) It is still on Tuesday. I still need to figure out what food to get for the PIs. ("Cookies," suggested Wendy, "And bottled water. Because even if they don't like water, if they're thirsty enough, they'll still drink it!") In between all this I need to figure out how to explain the math model behind my comp bio stuff (yep, I ended up doing that for my third aim, after all) without confusing the people even more. My PI is of the opinion that I should put in the math equation so at least even if the other PIs are still confused, they can at least see that I know what I'm talking about. I'm of the opinion that as soon as I say "For the function, rho, of X and Y at residue position i" their eyes will glaze over. But that may be my inherent cynicism speaking. (Or possibly what I know from my time explaining my written qual to my committee, but I'm trying hard not to think about that right now. A healthy dose of denial seems to be how most of my upperclassmen handled it, after all.)

(I seem to spend a lot of time lately thinking "this, too, shall pass". Did you know that in order to schedule a meeting with the thesis committee, which contains more people than the qual committee, my upperclassmen have to start the scheduling process two months ahead of time?)

Thank you, everyone, for your comments. I will probably take up the offers (practice is good; practice is always good), though it'll be a little sad since the movie of my mice will only play in the slides if it's .odt. (The original movie file is .mov and it converted weird, but since it's a mac thing I guess Kate, at least, should still be able to see my twitchy mice if I mail it as a separate file.)

Christ, it's Saturday. I need to find the time to wash my car sometime this weekend. The amount of dirt on it is approaching critical mass. Or at least, approaching the level where I might consider starting a roof-top garden.

Cheers guys. Happy Halloween. Eat some candy for me. Or something.

Volunteers needed

Anyone interested in going over my qual presentation with me, over the phone, this weekend? I need as much practice as possible. Please email if you've 40 minutes free this weekend. Thanks!

Dear Diary,

Today I discovered that my laser pointer is, in fact, a ball point pen as well as an old fashioned pointer (the pen end pulls out). As I was extending the pen-cum-pointer link by link and marveling at it, the PI happened to wander by. He asked if I was planning to thwack someone with it.

Sincerely,

S

[edit 17:08]
Fedora or ubuntu?

Am mostly better by now, just feeling a bit wrung-out and exhausted. Still on schedule for qual though. (Did end up having to drag myself home Tuesday afternoon because I got too sick.) Practice talk next Tuesday. I've taken to carrying a bottle of acetaminophen in my backpack and I am all out of cough drops. Also, my transcript hasn't been received by the right place yet despite of the fact that it was sent on the 14th and my mp3 player broke this week.

All this all this has been a very crappy week and I look forward to having it end, soon.

Bad timing to the power of x

Caught a cold. Or a flu. Augh this is so stupid.

This is a little appalling, but

I think I've had too much tea today, as that I am currently exhausted, unable to sleep and harboring a strong urge to scrub out the kitchen and the bathroom. Unfortunately I do not have bleach, which, in my current state of mind, seems like a minor tragedy. (No, you do not understand. Detergents contain bleach won't do it. I'm at the mindset where I need to pour liquid bleach into a large container and soak things in it so they'll be nice and disinfected.) Clearly what I need to do tomorrow morning, in addition to going to the lab to put away my in situ stuff and stow my slides at -20C, is to buy bleach. And tea, since I'm running low.

I'm on the 6th draft of my qual now. Not counting all the v3.2, 4.5 and so on that I've taken to doing (because the comments between the PIs on what I should change are almost always different).

Oh God. I've wanted to sleep since 8 this morning. What is wrong with me?

Yes that's rhetorical.

On the bright side, my current bout of insanity should end before Thanksgiving?

(Admittedly it's not just qual right now so much as qual + four different experiments of mine that keep on failing + Stuff In Beijing. It's a lethal combination that managed to do what GRE + grad school app + scholarship app + senior thesis + classes failed to do two years ago.)

(And you know what? I still think grad school is most likely the best thing to have ever happened to me. Clearly I am insane.)

D:

My qual has a vestibular dysfunction.

It's going around in circles.

Prognosis, anyone?

This is sort of a wtf_nature type post

I found out what a tenrec is, while going through the cladogram again for my protein of interest.

Have I ever mentioned that my lab has a rubber duckie in the 37C waterbath?

Hm, a new phase

I'm experiencing a sudden and inexplicable urge to eat hotpockets and do system maintenance sort of stuff to all three of my laptops. I think it's a sudden spike in geekiness level, which is more fun than spike in hormone level, but less predictable. However, this spike did not in anyway increase my desire to work on my qual right now. It's a shame, since I think my enthusiasm for the qual has reached an all time low around this point. The fact that the people on my committee are giving contradictory advise could have something to do with it, though more likely it's just that I've reached the inevitable low point all large long-term project-type things must reach and I will spent a couple of evening on the floor with my laptop, surrounded by far too many piles of papers and abandoned mugs of tea.

(I've incidentally discovered that black tea that's been left to steep for too long, without the addition of any kind of sweetener, is actually quite vile. They remind me of those meds I used to take when I was four that usually resulted in me throwing up.) (Mom claims that the smell of those those will even make her nauseus. Then again, of the two of us, I'm the less squeamish one. Got nothing on Annie of course.)

The seminars and talks have started again for this quarter. I am still trying to average at least one seminar/talk per week. Yesterday there was a talk by a student who reprogrammed skin fibroblasts (cell type) from Alzheimer's patients back to being stem cells so he can differentiate them into neurons to study patient specific phenotype & genotype changes for Alzheimer's. It was pretty cool. Afterwards I had lunch with my labmates and Wendy and I (via a long, somewhat convoluted line of conversation starting around lost wallets) ended up reminiscing about Davis. The post-doc in the lab looked at us askance when we said that yes, Davis weather is nowhere near as nice as SD, its water can be toxic to plants and fish (and humans), and the allergen level has a way of giving people who never had allergies before allergies, but we still miss Davis.

What's in a place?

Dry ice in ethanol looks just like Sprite with ice.

Way too many mugs of tea

I'm re-writing my qual. Again.

This time I'm changing one of my specific aims -- getting rid of the comp. bio. one and adding in one where I directly look at the central vestibular system, because that is apparently more cogent.

I find that the amount that I care is inversely proportional to the number of drafts I write (and I haven't even started on the powerpoint yet), and directly proportional to the mugs of tea I've ingested during the writing process. Though admittedly the latter might be correlation without causation, since the amount of tea is probably an attribute to the number of papers that I've had to read for this stupid thing, which does lead to diminishing enthusiasm. (I cannot claim diminishing marginal utility any more than those of you applying to grad school right now can claim diminishing marginal utility over the days you spent on your application. Maybe increasing marginal cost, in terms of sanity?)
(Though I also suspect, given the news lately, that it's a buyer's market on sanity out there right now. See: pirates and Nobel prizes. It's a crazy world out there. Therefore selling sanity would be like, selling air -- unless it comes with some property not found in nature / super shiny packaging, it's a no-go.)

(Can you sell pressurized sanity?)

(More importantly, I suppose: who'd want to buy it?)

Dear Diary,

Today I noticed that there is a lone, life-size stone statue of an owl on the roof of the apartment building next to mine. I am having a little trouble thinking up reasonable explanations for its presence there.

Sincerely,

S

Someone called me at 10:40pm last night. It is a 408 number that I don't recognize off of the top of my head & it isn't stored on my cell phone either. Did anyone who got a new phone number recently called me?

The replay button's stuck

I'm being very productive today. I have been very productive all weekend. I am becoming astonishingly zen about the whole qual thing. It's either that or something like the mechanism (forgot what it's called -- maybe Anna knows?) that people use to train other people out of their phobias: after a month (and a half), I've simply run out of energy to keep panicking. My energy can be better spent elsewhere. Such as washing my car the next weekend around.

Pragmatism is reassuring.

Random list of things, in no particular order:

I spent half an hour yesterday trying to figure out how fruit flies can tell which side is up / down when they're flying, then another half an hour figuring out that fish have really bad proprioception -- but it's okay, they don't need it. Much. Most of the time. Either way they seem to live perfectly fulfilling lives. For fishes.

Today I discovered that gummy worms (or at least the CVS brand of gummy worms) have eyes. And a smile. At which point it officially joined my list of "food that are creepy to look at." (There is something very disturbing about eating something that is SMILING AT YOU.) (Yes I have a problem with chocolate bunnies around Easter time, too.)

Anyone know what, if anything, will happen if I mixed formamide with paraformaldehyde?

I miss my Intro to Genetic Analysis book (yes Annie, that green one from BIS101). I think it's the only book that I sold back that I regretted.

I currently have "Henry Martin" stuck in my head. It feels weird to be pipetting things and hear in my head "Hello, hello pirate Henry Martin...&c." I suppose, though, that it's no weirder than yesterday when I had the Log Song stuck in my head. Ms. Seidl apparently taught me more than I realized.

Have called Beijing so now at least the guilt's gone.

... ...

I thought I heard "I'll be your scarlet letter" as part of the lyric in one of the Taylor Swift songs. Taken literally, I translated that to mean that the person is going to be someone else's sign of adultery.

...what?

Gah

Yesterday's Mid-Autumn Festival. Mom's managed to ship me a small tupperware full of mooncakes, wrapped in more tape (the tupperware, not the pastry) than even my anti-serium shipment, which had to be sent on dry ice in a box inside another box. But hey, food. It was nice of her. I also had grapes, and didn't call my relatives in Beijing like mom asked me to, for which I feel extremely guilty about but I just can't bring myself to, even after I remembered. ...and it's hard to feel happy after that. Even with the mooncakes.

I also forgot to mention that I did, in fact, finish Persuasion during the retreat, and liked it better than Pride and Prejudice. There's less of the witty repartee, but also less of the Prince Charming On A Horse Of White feel. (Oh come on, Bennet was marrying into wealth and class. Even Darcy had said that her family is way below his but he loves her anyway.) (Well, maybe not in those exact words.) Mostly though, I just like Anne Elliot a lot more than I ever liked Elizabeth Bennet, or the Dashwood sisters for that matter (those two seem to spend most of the book moping, if I recall correctly).

Now for something completely different: I nearly got in a car accident with someone this morning. I was going down Grand (post grocery shopping), when a car shot out of one of the small side streets (Grand, Balboa, and Garnet are the three main streets in Pacific Beach, and while they're not quite El Camino they are still the main roads). I'm guessing he didn't see me, because by the time he saw me, he was right in front of me already and of course he stepped on the breaks, because that's sort of the instinctive response. Unfortunately, vector math indicates that means his car is therefore also spending more time directly in front of my car. At that point I was slamming down the breaks but the cars are so close that there was no way I could've stopped in time and so I ended up executing this wild swerve (successfully, thank God) and left some rubber, I think, on the road. (Just to point out that I was close enough to see his head turn and to use the pronoun "he" even though he drove off right after.)

I was very thankful that it was early enough, that the car density was low enough, that I could swerve without crashing into anyone else.

People would've been shocked if they'd heard the stuff that was coming out of my mouth. Even I was somewhat surprised, after I realized that I was, in fact, swearing under my breath. (In my defense my mind was doing that whole slow-motion-before-collision-thing and I was 95% certain I was going to crash.)

I do not like driving. At least, not in urban areas. Affirmative.

Because destruction is not part of the limbic system.

I have been assigned a committee member. Due to the two weeks delay in assignment, we were given a one week extension. The math seems a little sketchy there, but trying to complain means a long list of emails being shuttled back and forth between PIs inevitably resulting in a loss of information to the black holes of cyberspace where all lost emails go to die, so my classmates and I just sigh and carry on.

Second years traditionally host a welcome party for the first years, and this took place yesterday. I left lab early and provided peach pie and three types of cookies (including that weird modified mocha thing I made at Christmas that everyone seemed so fond of) in addition to copious amount of experience in untangling streamers and spreading out table cloth. ("You're good at this!" Exclaimed one of my classmates in astonishment, while she wrestled with tape -- the tape largely gaining the upper hand. I think she's under the expression that anyone who's as socially inept as me would naturally be equally inept in all aspects of social occasions. "Think again," I thought, and allowed my self thirty seconds of smugness while reminiscing back to the days when I built a castle out of cubed fruit and toothpicks. Those were the days, my friend.) Also, I taught my classmates how to cut watermelon, thereby confirming that there is some truth to the myth that the girls in grad school are there because they're horrible at normal girl-type things. (Myself being a key example of the different aspect of impairment in achieving normal girl-ness.) I left about an hour in, once the place (one of the conference cottages down by Scripps Institute of Oceanography) became packed full and no disaster seemed eminent, confident with the knowledge that at least there was enough alcohol supplied so that no one will notice if the decorations were hanging crooked.

(I've come to realization that I am infinitely more comfortable behind the counter, wielding a large knife, than socializing. I am better at the former than the latter, too.)

( I bask in the fulfillment of my annual obligation to the departmental social events. Now I can be anti-social for the rest of the year without feeling guilty.)

Orientation to working with rabbits was this morning. My mentor is a girl from Bulgaria (discovered when she was on the cell phone and answering things with "Da!". "Do you have Russian friends?" she asked later. I laughed). The rabbits are cute, though they are currently shedding enough to make their own twins in fur. I was told that unlike the cats and dogs, the adoption fee for rabbits here remains fairly consistent at 25$. There rabbits don't seem to particularly care for me, preferring their hay instead. I suppose it makes sense since the hay is quieter and less likely to scruff them if they refused to go where they are supposed to.

Well, should be fun anyways. Cheers.

Turn the spotlight on

Still haven't heard back from the committee people yet, but somehow, in between all the crazy grant panel things, my PI found the time to read over my draft and sit down with me to talk it over (right before he had to run off to another meeting, as a matter of fact). It gives me the warm fuzzies. There's nothing quite like a PI who will make time for you. They're always supposed to, but very few will tell you "Okay, I'm kinda busy the next two weeks so you might have to wait until right after that" and then still somehow got it done for you within a week.

I think it made my week.

Lab next to ours is sonicating things this evening, causing me to flee lab early. The sound made me feel like my brain is being sonicated. Perhaps all my brain cells are disassociating. Wendy and I ended up putting on our ear phones, taking them off every once in a while, hoping that the others'd be done, but they never were. I ended up aliquoting over 100 tubes of antibody on dry ice while wearing my XKCD shirt. Clearly aliquoting antibodies is a dangerous sort of business and requires other people to stand back. Well, maybe the dry ice, because if you inhale too much of it it can burn your nasal epithelium, so don't snort the dry ice, folks. (Not that you should snort anything in the lab. Even if it's a bio lab.)

Forgot what else I was going to say. Oh well.

7 photos posted from the retreat. Very scenic they are.

Now: off to lab, and then groceries! Second years traditionally host a welcoming party for the first years, so I'm going to be making tons of different cookies for next Friday. (Only problem so far is how well I transport them on the bus?)

[edit 12:36]
Finally printed out a year's worth of photos! And officially ran out of album space! (There were 100 new photos.)

Finally, an update

I was originally planning on sleeping. In fact, I had almost fallen asleep when an extremely loud car passed outside of the window. While half awake, I started thinking of the things I need to accomplish this weekend and so find myself now, at 11:19pm, blearily awake and with a tentative of list of 15 for tomorrow scribbled on the back of the page, pondering whether or not starting the list for things to do on Sunday would constitute a direct descend into madness. The alternative explanation is of course, that I'm already there and so should just give up and...twitch, or something.

Anyway, I'm updating this blog now, so that's one down from the list.

The department retreat was nice. We went to Warner Spring because moving our retreat to merge it with orientation meant that we can't go to Lake Arrowhead, since the biology department has theirs booked there in the fall. Warner Spring is a very (surprisingly) lush area in the middle of nowhere. By "nowhere" I mean surrounded by miles and miles of chaparral land, where the land isn't so much hilly as mildly ripply, aspiring to be hilly someday. September in Southern California is the wrong time to go hiking in the chaparral land, as everyone will see when I get around to uploading the photos (hopefully tomorrow...oops another thing to the list there). Our arrival coincided with the heatwave, which was much more unpleasant that far inland. However, being in the middle of nowhere had its advantages: the stars there were amazing. I saw the milky way in the first time in what felt like forever, and the nights there were dead quiet. I slept very well. My roommate (possibly due to the notable lack of a certain male classmate) was also quiet and most considerate.

Of the three branches of trails that I've explored, two converged & overlapped so I found myself standing back at where I've started, thinking "Huh." The third one deposited me, via a very squiggly detour, behind the horses. They were very nice. One came up to me and put its head on my shoulder, so I petted it. Then it tried to eat my shirt.

As for the retreat itself, there were a record number of faculty attending this time, possibly because it was coupled to the orientation and we had (or so I've been told by the chair of the department) something like 80 faculty who want grad students for their labs. (Good luck guys, we have less than 30 incoming students, so not all of you are gonna get one.) I was slightly disappointed in the awards event at the end though, since this retreat's award to the best student presenter did not, in fact give the best presentation. My classmates and I agree.

We had bonfire the first night there, pre-ZMGSTARS. The slightly less social ones of us sat around the fire and roasted marshmallows (with various hilarious attempts at backseat cooking and much ribbing) while the more social ones hung out around the tables in the back, where the food and alcohol were. I enjoyed myself very much and had the opportunity to meet a few of the new students during then (one of which went on to win one of the two awards for incoming students which were given out for best incoming grades and best CV--according to Genentech, anyway; but to us he will always be known as the Marshmallow Guy).

That took me until Wednesday, when I returned to SD and discovered that the heatwave was not so much an Inland Thing as a South Cal Thing, and spent first ten minutes of my trip to retrieve Zen considering the possibility of using steering wheels to cook things. They will have to be steering wheel-shaped things, of course. Or the cooked parts will be steering wheel shaped. Zen's return has already been mentioned. I've restored the old settings and files and will attempt, some time over the next few weekends, to see if the old sims data can be restored too or if I'll need to create new sims people. Zen's speed is still fairly snappy. At the current rate, it's the fastest laptop.

My PI is currently due for a grant review panel next week, which unfortunately, as I found out this morning, means that I will not get a review out of him for my qual until the second week of October. I still need to be appointed a committee member, whom I was supposed to have heard from 10 days ago but so it goes. Despite of his apparent flood of deadlines, however, PI did find the time to take the entire lab out for an end of the summer treat today. He took us all out for lunch. In downtown La Jolla. The apparent problem of lack of parking and spacing was taken care of with valet parking and reservations. I had no idea what half of the items on the menu were, but the place had a very pretty ocean view. Everyone in the lab, including the undergrads, save for the post-doc whose due date is in 3 days, made it. It was surprisingly fun.

The Walk-Out's effects on me was limited to the fact that the protesters were wandering on the street, which caused some delay which traffic, leading to a slightly later arrival to the lab for me.

Spent 11 hours in lab today. Have not had dinner yet. Update will be delayed until tomorrow.

Yay

Am home with Zen now. In fact, I am using Zen to update this blog right now. Zen's system board & thermopad (thermal pad?) got replaced (they included a nice list of what got replaced) and now everything seems to be running fine.

Will update more tomorrow. Am tired now, will unpack and collapse somewhere for a while first.

Say "more options" or press 3

I am currently plotting to get Zen back on Wednesday. Based on the schedule issued, we will not be back on campus until 2 to 3pm, which means I will have three-ish hours only to do experiments (let's face it, unless there's an overnight incubation, no one will start an experiment an hour before they usually leave). Since many people just go home for the rest of the day, anyway, I think I will take the initiative to go home and then drive over to the Fedex depot and pick up Zen, hopefully arriving back at home still in time to find some sort of parking spot.

Currently there is only one problem with that plan: I don't know where Zen is.

I know there is, in theory, a depot somewhere for Zen-type packages. I do not know where that depot is, just that it's in town (thank God, the employee originally thought it was at Oceanside). The Fedex tracking system is down and all the information that the website can helpfully provide me with is that Zen is in town, which is not at all helpful. This city is rather large. I'd prefer not to comb every depot in the city for my errant laptop.

This, of course, makes it a lot harder for me to debug and defragment Daemon, who had apparently caught something on Friday and is now sluggish and had given me the Blue Screen of Death last night. All in all, I'd rather not take apart the software components until I get a reliable backup computer back.

I love how my computers all chose to fizz out during Qual Season. Or perhaps that's why they fizz out. Perhaps there is something inherent about Qual (the Qual-ness that I referred to the other day, maybe) that causes things to fizz and go kaput. My brain can empathize. Unfortunately my sanity can't and my patient is suffering. In fact, if I still have not managed to retrieve Zen by next Wednesday, I think this case may be lethal.

In all likelihood I will not be updating from now to Wednesday on the account of retreat. The place boasts of Wi-Fi, but so did the last place and I utterly failed to connect to any sort of reliable network while I was there. Did finish a book the last time though, so maybe that's what I'll do. I've almost finished Imaginary Numbers from my Beijing trip (which reminds me to point towards the poem "Letter from Caroline Herschel", which I loved, and one of my favorite poet, Wislawa I-can't-spell-her-last-name's "A World on Statistics") so that will not last me through this trip. The local library happens to have a copy of Persuasion though, so maybe I'll read that instead. I think it is technically a romance novel, so it should be very non-qual related. (While I am still talking about stuff I've read: I've finally flipped through Write It Right! and I hated it. First of all, I have no trouble writing memos and business letters, so most of that part is useless. Second of all, I already know basic rules such as I vs. me. I even know what an active voice is vs. passive voice and how to change one to the other. It's the finer points that I'm sketchy on, not the basics, and certainly not how and when to use a period. Finally, the authors keep on emphasizing on writing based on speaking style, at the same time as the need to eliminate big words / cliche phrases and so forth. The problem with that is, in this blog, for instance, I already write how I speak (well, with somewhat better grammar because otherwise Kate's brain will hemorrhage). How I speak is, apparently, not considered acceptable. ...and that sums up all the main points of the book, which is, therefore, not of use to me. The style of the book is also dull and a little condescending, which is just...ugh.)(Why can't Gaiman write a book on writing? Or did he and I just missed it?)

I slept for 10 hours last night. Somehow I still want to sleep.

I make lists in my sleep

A couple labmates and I went out for lunch yesterday. It was surprisingly fun and even funnier when I wonder what the PI must be thinking when the group of us went trooping by him without so much as a by-your-leave. In our defense, it was lunch time and we are allowed to take time for lunch.

The place at Price Center does a very good tikka masala chicken. Wendy thought the bright color of the sauce (it was...red orange) was frightening. I thought it was funny that she didn't like peas.
(They are peas. Don't most people get pickier with things such as broccoli or brussel sprouts that have a strong, distinct taste?)

Even the entire cup of pearl tea that I drank wasn't enough to keep me awake, however, when I was updating my lab notebook. There were a lot of gel images and protocols to put in. Kate got me one of those fountain pens that have single-use tubes of ink I can just stick in, so I won't have to wrestle with a ink bottle and possibly get ink everywhere. I've gone through two tubes of ink already since May. That is, no matter how you look at it, a lot of writing. I hope my in situs work at some point, so at least I'll have something to show for all that scribbling besides the scribbling. (Mmm fluorescent images.)

There was a bonfire-bonding event for international students yesterday, so that the bus I usually took was overfull and a third of the students, along with me, had to wait for the next bus. Naturally they only left one guide with the entire group, and naturally the third left was left without a guide. The poor kids were without a clue where La Jolla Shores beach was. I couldn't tell them either because the beach was an entire stretch, and I have no idea which part of it they were aiming for (also the guide was horrible at giving directions, so this entire thing was like witnessing a train wreck). Naturally the group ended up getting off at the wrong stop, thanks to a combination of the bad directions from the guide, bad directions from an over-enthusiastic, well-meaning man on the bus who was trying to help, and the general chaos created when a group of students who just arrived in SD who do not speak English very well needed to navigate the public transit. There was nothing I could do to help because for the same reasons mentioned above, I couldn't figure out where they were going, either. It was only three stops after all the students got off, when I saw the sign for the bonfire stuck to the bushes next to the bus stop, did I realize that oh, okay, here was where the bonfire was supposed to be.

At least a slightly smarter girl had recorded the phone number of their guide, and they were, technically, still on La Jolla Shores beach (somewhat further north than they'd want to be, but technically the same beach). I want to help them so much, but given the entire mess, there was no hope for it.

It's an orientation process of sorts, I suppose. Welcome to the US, guys.

...

I've already considered the neighbors option for Zen. Unfortunately, unless I want to ask Deborah, for downstairs, to sit in my apartment all day, from 7am to 8pm, waiting for the package, it'll just involve more paperwork trying to explain that yes, I know the nice lady is from apartment 3, not 5, and that the address on the box says 5, not 3, but I gave her permission so stop leaving nice but useless little notes on my door already.
All my other options at this point involve contacting HP again (because changing the receiving address apparently needs to go back HP, not Fedex) and more paperwork. Given my general experience with paperwork and bureaucracy in general...I'll just figure something out on my own. It seems less painful for everyone involved.

...

Qual: am trying to fit everything in 6 pages. Am failing. Will probably end up cutting out a bunch of stuff at some point so my total page count will fall under 15. (Who the heck counts work cited page toward total page count, anyway?)
...

I have chocolate. I am prepared.

Aaagh

Dear Diary,

Fedex hates me. I can't get Zen back because I'm not home during the day (and I can't do a time request, either), and the only place I can pick up Zen is this office very far from where I live, which only operates M-F. (Apparently the office three blocks north of me can send away Zen-type packages, but not receive them.) I can't even find the drop off site on their web page! Also, retreat M-W next week so there is NO TIME to be off looking for Zen.

Oh God. Why me?

-S

In which I fail at blog-updating, but otherwise do well

A brief check on my blog (after an email from Anna inquiring whether or not my thesis ate me -- or something to that effect) revealed that I have, indeed, not updated this thing in a while. This is, as I've explained to Anna, mostly due to the fact that once I get home at whatever time it happened to be that night, I usually have no desire to turn on the computer again. Due to the fact that this is the Quarter of Qual, turning on the computer immediately triggers my sense of obligation to check on my school email, go over my notes, and work on my qual...and it's all downhill from there.

I'm updating my blog in lab instead today, in an act of open rebellion.

...or perhaps, just a direct result of the fact that a mini-prep is something I can do in my sleep at this point and it comes with many 15 and 10 minute incubation time, which isn't really enough time to get into anything else (it takes 10 minutes just to get into the groove of writing qual -- and before you laugh, yes there is such a thing -- it's like a state of Zen, except it's a state of Qual-ness) (more on that later).

Aside from that though, all things considered, I'm doing quite well.

Last week, after massive amounts of email and comments from the PI that I shouldn't panic, panic doesn't help, I did get part I of my qual in and approved. Right now I'm waiting for a committee chair to be assigned, who will be the last member to complete my qual committee. I've started contacting many other PIs for advise, reagents, and general offers of collaboration for what I'll be doing for my dissertation. Most of them have been very gracious so far. The ones who aren't just never reply to my emails so there are, in fact, no direct refusals. (I've learned also that PIs are masters at passive-aggressive behavior. But that's neither here nor there.)

To celebrate the ending of qual, part I, I drove up to LA on Saturday to see Lucy. We went to the Getty because there was a French-themed event that weekend. There were people wandering around in paper berets.There was French music. There may even have been people there who spoke French!

Oh wait.

We discovered a sketching gallery upstairs, which was awesome since it's a quiet little corner where they provide art supply for you to sketch sculptures and paintings displayed in that area. The upshot is now I have a very large sketch of a slightly angry-looking woman rolled up beside my nightstand. I'm not entirely sure what to do with it and am trying not to read too much into the fact that Lucy's version of the same woman looks much happier.

We also discovered Solanum pyracanthum and Lucy immediately dubbed it "the Mike plant" after I commented that it's softer than it looks but very prickly if you poke it the wrong way (because, ow). It had orange spikes. And purple flowers. Lucy claimed that the purple flowers are Nick's influence. I plead the fifth on the account of imaginary people currently residing in my head. A quick flip-through in the Getty-Garden book in the museum store revealed that everyone apparently likes this plant and comments on it a lot. I'm a little puzzled and a lot amused by that, since the plant itself isn't very large or very showy, compared to all the other things that are there (purple wings, for example, or angel's trumpets). It just...has blue-green leaves with orange spikes.

Lucy put it down to Mike's innate ability to capture people's attention. I was too busy laughing at the fact that the plant's common name is "porcupine tomato" because...well, porcupine tomato.

Lucy has already mentioned our spontaneous display of desire To Get A Night Life, also known as, "Susan dithers and Lucy finally decides" (yeah), in which we went out and caught a showing of Star Trek on IMAX at 10:15pm at night and it was totally worth it because, my God, the shininess. (Overall design of spaceship, based on my personal and lack-of-engineering-training, ranks below Fifth Elements and above Star Wars.)

(Also dragged Lucy makeup shopping with me, because am fed up with mother and the cosmetics section is too scary to consider venturing into alone.)

(Then the next day was the day when I probably should've updated the blog and instead I went and...let's just say grocery shopping takes a lot longer when there are more people, later in the day.)

I gave a lab presentation yesterday. It seemed to have gone fairly well, overall. Department retreat will be Monday through Wednesday next week (half day, full day, half day). It's been changed from being held in May every year to being held in September, so it can be coupled with the orientation week of the incoming freshmen. I'm somewhat dubious about the wisdom of this decision, because is it really a good idea to ship off students who are still disoriented from coming in from all over the place (a good portion will be from CA but we get a lot of people from all over the US and occasionally a few from outside of the US) in the middle of the orientation to somewhere else? I guess we'll see.

Am currently on part II, section 3 of qual, page 4 of 7. This is the last section unless you count the works cited page, which I don't. If I get it done this week the rounds of editing will start next week. Possibly.

Wow that is a long post. It took...about five incubations to type.

Zen tried to come home on Tuesday. Unfortunately I'm gone for most of the day so there's no way I can sign for Fedex'ed things. I've arranged for a pickup so hopefully I'll get Zen back tonight.

Panic rising

Okay, so drafts of the first three sections of my qual is due tomorrow and and I sent my stuff in last week and I STILL have not heard back from the PI yet (he needs to sign it before I can turn it in). I just sent him another email with the file attached. On one hand, I feel bad for bothering him on Labor Day. On the other hand, he is a known workaholic and I SENT IT TO HIM LAST WEEK, dammit.

TEA. This calls for tea.

[edit 13:58]
I GOT AN EMAIL BACK. (He's a workaholic. Yes.) THERE IS HOPE YET.

Well, I have food now

Parents came. Dad decided that it's absolutely necessary to change the oil & oil filter on my car, so that's what ended up happening. They've also hauled back my Pile of Stuff (including the heater) that has been sitting in the middle of my studio for the past month, so now there is room.

I think I may need to re-vacuum. Though I did vacuum up this massive spider the other time....

I've also came across this:

After another series of scrubs, the Space Shuttle Discovery is slated to launch the COLBERT treadmill (among other things), to the ISS tonight. The satirist Stephen Colbert crushed the competition when the name of the ISS’s new module was put up to a public vote, though NASA balked and went with “Tranquility” instead. The exercise equipment was named after him as a compromise.

From SEED (the science magazine). Poor Colbert. His name is apparently not cool enough for NASA.

Life. It goes on.

Dude

I think I just found a new incentive for why I'll want to aspire for a job that pays well. Besides the hope of affording a house with a backyard large enough for me to grow things in, I mean. (I suppose I could move to the middle of nowhere if that is my sole incentive, but it does seem to conflict, logistically speaking, with finding a job that pays well in my particular field of interest.)

Look at it. Gaiman's library. Although that is not the level that I'm aiming at (I am, after all, very pragmatic). I do want to be able to have at least one extra bedroom and install it with wall to wall and floor to ceiling bookshelves. It's getting a bit tragic how often I wander past bookstores now and force myself only to sigh and cast a longing glance before moving on. Quickly. (I'm convinced I'd be lured away by its siren calls if I pause in front of it for more than three seconds.) Perhaps this is what lovesick adolescent girls feel like. There is, however, considerably less stalking and crisis over self-image in my case, so I feel that I've got the better deal.

Dude. Books.

Geek circuit fail

NY Times did a dedication article to the guy who invented D&D. It came with a cool circuit diagram that was posted on a PI's door that caught my eye the other day, and I vowed that I would hunt it down. And print it out. And trace the parts applicable to me with highlighter of an eye-blinding shade.

All these I have done and I am forced to conclude that the diagram seems to be targeted primarily for a male audience .5 to 1 generation before mine. (My God, just when was Atari?) In any case, what I ended up tracing were bits and pieces all over the place that formed no progression of whatsoever. No loops. Nothing. I am slightly sad. I am also somewhat doubtful of the accuracy of the diagram, which currently allows me to trace two more items on the diagram: "blogging about diagram" and "doubting accuracy of this diagram".

Well, cheers. I am all caught up on the web, finally. (As much as I ever was, anyhow.) My parents have called and told me not to buy food, because they will be bringing a lot, apparently, and I have just vacuumed my place again because they sound like they were serious about camping out on my floor.

Will not be going into lab this weekend (well, except Monday, but that doesn't count). Experiment failed. Troubleshooting took me all the way to 3pm today without a break which made me cranky, because I was very hungry by then. For some reason I wanted a burger. I wonder if this means that I'm not getting enough protein in my diet.

Have signed up for classes. This year I get to search through course catalogues again. As usual, they make my eyes twitch.

(No it's not caffeine. I'm officially off caffeine and back on Pacific Time now, cheers.)

Those of you who are moving into new apartments for the upcoming school year -- I need your new addresses. Especially since I DO send things via snail mail.

I am planning to be back in the bay area for Thanksgiving, which means I need to order tickets within the next two weekends. Which reminds me that sometime near the end of September / beginning of October we should start Facebook messages again and try to figure out who'll be around at Thanksgiving. Also, are we still doing Secret Santa this year? Should I bring a hat?

Okay, dinner.

At Jerusalem next year

I am on schedule (as in the official schedule provided in the grad student handbook) now. I am slightly behind schedule in terms of where I'd like to be in my experiments, but catch up is in progress and I'm hoping that one of my experiments will yield a positive result soon. Meanwhile, my parents will probably attempt to come down here this weekend (where the heck they're staying, I have no idea, and I did warn them) and I will have to go in for at least 15 min on both Saturday and Sunday and work at least half day on Monday.

Well, cheers.

Jet-lag continues to recede. I just realized that while converting from Beijing Time to California time I must be at least on time somewhere each day of this slightly hazy week. Today, after some estimation of how energetic I feel verses how energetic I usually feel at noon, I concluded that I am currently somewhere between Brazil time and US east coast time. My aim is to be by west coast on Friday. I have switched down to green tea now, so victory is in sight.

My right eye twitches when I'm tired. It's getting annoying.

The HP box has arrived today, complete with forms, shipping labels, and three strips of 12" tape to reseal the box (yep, the box came sealed with those things in side, and two styrofoam things). Everyone say "bye" to Zen!

When my PI is mad at someone, he apparently, unlike other PIs, does not swear. He calls them names. Such as "dumbbell". It's all very PG. I am amused. He also commented on a sheet of data today that only God knew what it meant, then added that God might know, but He didn't choose to share with him.

A day per time zone

I'm trying to cut back down on my caffeine intake now, since I figured if I'm going to suffer from jetlag-induced headaches I might as well get all the headaches over with together. At this stage it mostly means that I'm switching from mochas to black tea and I'll hopefully switch to green tea, to decaf, by next weekend. Tazo's assorted tea mix is proving to be most useful. I'm currently at the "Awake" stage, which I am probably drinking with far too much sweetener but oh well, I need the extra boost of energy at noon-time.

It is currently 3am in Beijing right now. I am hopeful that I can get through the week without resorting to a stop at the drugstore for chemical aid (though it makes a lot of sense now why so many headache meds make me sleepy). I have picked out (and gotten replies back confirming) the people for my qual committee. I am caught up on my chores (well, all except the vacuuming, but it's 86F today and I think I can excuse myself for a week), my emails, and I have discovered that I've been accepted for the genetics training program, which means I will actually have financial support my third and forth year (the departmental stipend ends in September, the PI of the lab is responsible for our stipend the second year). My choices right now are either to work on my qual draft some more or go out and present shop (oh God I'm behind schedule for this, eek). I think I'll go present shopping because: 3am and if I'm out I won't fall asleep. Unlike the process of working on my qual draft. Also, it's one of the two things left that's still behind schedule.

Not bad, all in all.

Might still need more tea, though.

Jitters and steady hands

Currently am trouble shooting the Zen, which is one of the Presario F500 series and apparently EVERYONE's been having trouble with it's wireless card (great, huh) lately. Zen's serial number is covered under the extended warranty and I can't even see the WLAN under the network adapters under Device Manager. From what I've read so far, the chances are that the card itself is fine, but the adapter's dead. ...which really sucks. I'm re-installing the driver to see if it does anything at all. If it doesn't I'm calling the company for the free repair.

32 hours without sleep yesterday and I think I drank more coffee-based beverage in that time than I usually do in a year. (I've developed a fondness for the dark-chocolate mocha-typed semi-frozen things.) That, combined with the fact that I kept my jacket off in the airport so that I'm always a little cold, helped a lot. Unfortunately it also meant that when my transfer flight announced that the plane got down-sized and so 30 people are going to need to get on the next flight out, at 10pm instead of 6pm, and then when my name didn't show up any of the lists showing the transferred, approved, and standby lists, I started shaking, thinking I can't deal with this right now. (At that point I was sleep deprived for around 29 hours and have max'ed out on the amount of caffeine I can take without getting sick.) Fortunately it got sorted out, eventually, and I got really lucky with the buses (which only came once every half an hour after 7pm, so I could technically wait up to close to an hour) and had to wait for less than 20 minutes total for both lines. I did notice, however, that despite of the jitters my hands were surprisingly steady throughout the entire debacle, which means that if I do end up having to do the two hour time points for my 24 hour study on circadian rhythm in my mouse mutant, I am reasonably certain I can still perform the dissection on the brain of a ten day old mouse without mangling anything. (And yes I thought of that as my "upside" while queuing yesterday.)

Also, what's up with the weather? I feel like I left in the beginning of autumn and came back in the middle of summer. Time does not that way flow. Unless I did, how did Lucy put it..."black out" at some point. For an entire year. And all my mailbox dates are wrong and my car and apartment miraculously are still exactly how I left them. Which is logistically improbable but then, time flowing backward is sort of impossible....

Hm...restalling the driver didn't seem to change anything. Call it is.

Ugh, no urge to cook of whatsoever. I wonder if I can just have fruits for dinner. Mmm strawberries.

[ETA]
It's a motherboard problem. HP is sending me a box.

It doesn't exist

Dear diary,

Today I discovered the differences between GSM and CMDA phones, as in that my US CMDA phone doesn't have whatever the equivalent of SIM card is, so I can't switch to dad's quad-band GSM phone that's usable both in US and PRC.

Fail.

Sincerely,

S

5 Ps

Long rant ahead, heads up.

For those of you who haven't heard already, I'm flying out to Beijing next Saturday, returning the Friday after. Grandpa (mom's side) is in the hospital, though his condition has stabilized enough in these two weeks that they're thinking of releasing him next week, which would be interesting since he is not going to recover fully, so mom's currently in charge of setting up an "Invalid's Room". They haven't found a good nurse yet (he needs to be fed through a tube every two hours, turned every two hours, etc.) so right now my mom & aunts & uncles are doing rotation (though my oldest aunt's already had a breakdown from exhaustion and that's going to push everyone else closer to their breaking point, as a result). Mom's reported that grandpa's seems more lucid now, though, to the point where he's asking after me. (It's kind of weird that I'm still that much of a favorite, because I keep thinking that I should be standing in my cousin's shadow since he's the one to carry on the family name and he's there.)

I have my visa now (thanks to Lucy, muchas gracias), I am done with moving (courtesy of Glen and Kate, whose vacation I sort of ruined, lo siento), and my stuff packed with enough cash in both USD and YMB that I should be able to navigate the entire thing on my own, if necessary. My dad (house keeping & managing finances &c at this end from Bay Area) just emailed me yesterday asking if I can find the time to stop by and see my grandparents (dad's side) while I'm in Beijing, since my other grandpa's health apparently has been failing too (why do people not tell me these things?) and he wants me to leave them "a happy memory". Also, he hasn't cc'ed, called, or in anyway notified mom of this plan. Not that anyone from mom's side will have the time to deal with either him or point me to the right bus stops (since they've changed all the bus lines prior to the Olymptics and I have no idea in hell which buses to take, since the buses I used to take don't exist anymore). I'm thinking maybe taxi, as seen by the cash withdraw mentioned earlier.

I've had the dubious pleasure of running over my credit limit for the first time today. Admittedly it's mostly because I'm still using the card that I got when I left for Davis and the credit limit on that is 1/8 of the cards I got later and I ordered the plane tickets with them, which is 1.5K right there. But well, interesting. (I paid for groceries with debit today.)

I'm going to try to pay my bills, pick out my classes &c this weekend, because the deadline's two weekends from now and the second weekend...I don't think I'll be good for much the second weekend. I've already brought one of those mocha-mixes to aid with the 15 hour jet-lag, which I have two days to get through. I'm going to try to shift my lab schedule a little so I do cryostat that Monday. It shouldn't require too much concentration and the room is too cold for me to fall asleep (I'll be sitting in front of -20C station with its door open for hours).

In other news: we threw a baby shower for Aiju (postdoc in my lab) yesterday. I made jello and got her flowers. People got her baby clothes and things too, and a cake. It was all very cute.

Been feeling tired all week. I think things will be better in September. I hope.
Knock on wood.

Hair is long enough for donation. Have checked. Will cut this weekend. That is all.

Whhyyy?

Zen's decided that it can't find the wireless. So now I need to use Daemon, to try to figure out what's happened. (Ivy can see the wireless too, so it's just Zen.)

[edit 13:36]
Zen's wireless card died. Aside from that it's all systems go.

Perhaps it's a PI thing...

Today the PI dropped in on a conversation where my labmate was saying to a postdoc, "But apparently they're transparent!"

"But are they apparent?" Said the PI, and gave us the pleased smile of someone who had just told a really great joke.

We stared at him blankly for a moment.

"...what?" I finally said.

"Just thought it's an interesting turn of phrase," replied the PI, looking pleased with himself.

I thought about it for a moment and got that apparent and transparent sounded alike. Then I got transparent = trans-apparent. Then I realized that the PI was making a joke about how if something is apparent it's easily visible and if it's transparent, it's invisible. So saying something is apparently transparent is like saying something's visibly invisible. Or something.

It fitted with what I know of the PI's sense of humor.

"...but that's a terrible pun," I thought, but saying so seemed impolitic.

"He always comes up with these things that he thinks are funny and that no one else does," my labmate whispered to me as we left to go back to our experiments.


In other news, turned in transcript and stuff for my training grant application today. Am feeling twitchy.

Effective, yet utterly bizarre

My PI explained an experimental design to me by likening it to hunting for purple aliens (I think he said Martians) in the New York subway.

How does he come up with these things?

It happened

Have internet at new apartment now. No time to do anything with it, but it's there.

Aioli

Aioli (Provençal Occitan alhòli[1], Catalan all-i-oli) is a sauce made of garlic and olive oil. Normally egg is also added for ease of mixing.

There you go, as provided by Wikipedia.

Crazy bus this morning. It was late and (possibly that's why?) packed with high schoolers on their way to summer school. You know that general trend where it looks like the high school students / undergrads keep getting younger and younger? Fail. I couldn't tell if they were college or high school students. (It's overhearing part of the conversation that decided it. That, and the way they talk.)

Checked the Sims order. Amazon says:

Delivery estimate: July 8, 2009 - July 23, 2009

So I guess I shouldn't worry until next Thursday.

Need to grow some clones now.

July, July

Crazy week as always (well slightly better than last week, but this week I spend 2 hours on the road each day commuting and I'm getting used to my new daily schedule). It just hit me in the middle of my experiment today that there are really people coming this weekend! Excitement! Etc etc.

Cheers, guys -- and don't worry, we've got food, sleeping arrangement etc covered.

Note:

People have gone insane. There's no parking spot near my new place (guess what they say about it being near the fireworks place is true) at 10ish this morning. Moving will be delayed because I cannot carry my stuff five blocks and up the stairs. Will be heading over there now before I have to carry the stuff I need to spend the night TEN blocks away. There's no internet there. Call if anything comes up. I'll switch on the ringtone.

Grocery stores should still open today, right?

Someone's birthday today! (Now imagine me pointing not-so-discretely in the LA direction which, come to think of it, wouldn't be much help since being in SD means that everyone I know is living in latitudes north of where I am, but there you have it: typing it out helps. She's in LA! Sort of.)

Today's order:

Laundry
Shopping
Moving
Shopping
Moving
Cleaning

Have discovered mysterious yellow stain on jacket while squirting stain-remover detergent. Is it food? Is it chemicals?

In the spirit of determination

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD.

The weeks have been getting a lot more insane lately, what with the moving and the lab work. There was a one-day retreat the other week for the genetics training grant, which my PI is strongly hinting (read: extremely unsubtle hinting) that I should apply for. I was there along with a few of my first year class mates. Here is a link to the photos from the retreat, where you can see me occasionally in the background and in one occasion standing next to my labmate, who has the dubious pleasure of showing me the ropes in our lab.

There was a meeting about our qual exam also, which I almost missed because for some reason I didn't get the email, despite of the fact that my correct email address was listed in the address bar (I checked with a classmate) (no it's not in my spam or deleted folders either, have checked). I was prevented from having an aneurysm later by the virtues of walking into a classmate while I was leaving to turn in my paperwork for something else (oh Gods the paperwork, it never ends), who wanted to know where I was going, and then, why I wasn't going to the meeting.

My response at the time, if I recall correctly, was to stare at her goggle-eyed and ask, "What meeting?"

So yeah, ladies and gents, my qual consists of a written portion and an oral portion, both of which are due at the upcoming Thanksgiving. The written portion is in the format of a grant proposal and the oral portion is in the format of a research seminar, followed by a question session in which we get quizzed on our knowledge regarding our presentation, the background research relevant to our proposal, and anything in our classes that could be related to our proposal. The rough of the abstract and the summary of the written portion is due by the first week of August. The final is due by Labor Day.

Meanwhile, my PI also hopes that I can churn out enough data for my current project that he can submit a grant application by the August deadline. He's not entirely sure whether or not my current project (a mutation that causes neurodegeneration, and we don't know why) would make a good dissertation project, because it's risky (as in we have no idea why the atrophy occurs, or even what the complete list of symptoms are), but the alternative is to pick up the project that the other people are doing for when the other people are going to leave next year, and those projects already have published work, their own grants, and established foundation to base further hypothesis on.

I asked the PI if I can work on my current project as my dissertation, despite of all the times (well, three discussions total) that we've had where he "hinted" that the other one may make a better thesis than this. I gave my reason as "I think it's really cool" and, much to my surprise, he agreed to let me work on it. Or at lease he'd agreed to help me with the written part of the qual (the part our PI is allowed to help us with) on it. I am having moments when I'm wondering whether or not it's better to have gone with the safer option. It's me after all. I tend to go with the safer option, all the time. Except for when I don't and then I end up in America, with something like 28 units per quarter and enrollment in grad school a year later, much to, I think, everyone's surprise. Therefore, for all that I wonder, I'm not going to change my choice because

1) What am I trying to prove now, really? Nothing, that's what. Do I NEED a doctorate? Not really, I'm not doing it for my career or hopes of improving my income. I'm doing it because I think it'll be fun and I'll regret it for the rest of my life if I don't at least give it a shot.

2) If I pick something I'm not as invested in, three years down the line I'll be dragging my feet to go to the lab each day. It happens to some of my upperclassman. With this current thing, I will never be bored. Exhausted, occasionally. Frustrated, no doubt about it. Occasionally beating my head against the wall. But never bored.

3) A large part of the spirit behind science is actually risk-taking. Or so I believe. If we only stick to the "safe" experiments we'll be forever fine-tuning the details of the existing models and never discover anything cool.

In conclusion these days I'm in lab from about 8 to 6:30 and I spent my weekend cleaning / packing / worrying about my random deadlines that I have drifting around. I did order Sims3, though at this rate I'm dubious as to when I'll have the time to play with it, to the point where I'm considering the logistic of declaring myself a two hour work-free time every weekend. We'll see.

Am moving over to new apartment this weekend. Was told that from the second floor balcony outside of my door I get a clear view of fireworks over Mission Bay (which is roughly three blocks away) come Independence Day. Will be awesome.

Have just squished a spider with post-it. Recent check with someone who knows an entomologist informs me that spiders do bleed green. My is currently more brown, though. Not sure why.

Shower, and packing!

(Yeah, full day at the lab tomorrow, before anyone asks.)

Huh

Dad contacted the Acer company (my laptop still has about six months left of the warranty) and they sent me a few files to update the BIOS and now Ivy works again. I have no idea what was wrong to begin with or why it works now, but it works!

Maybe it's dehydration?

Have a low level headache today and, what's more unusual, I have no idea what's causing it. V. annoying.

In other news, was planning to update this & get some stuff done last night but was too tired. Ended up sleeping for about eleven hours (which was not the source of the headache) and had multiple interesting dreams, including one where Annie and I were discussion bike helmets (and then we went grocery shopping). It was surprisingly mundane. Realized at around 5'am this morning (also not source of headache) that I forgot to check something before I ordered stuff for my next experiment, so had to email my labmate about that. Hopefully it'll still be okay. Woke up at around 8ish and realized that I've forgotten to send out the card I got for my dad three weeks ago and remembered, with some eye-twitching, that this is exactly why I usually don't plan out things more than a week ahead of time when I know I'll be busy.

Still drowning in kittens at the animal shelter. They're ridiculously hard to keep track of since they put multiple kitten per cage and when the door is opened to take one out, all of them try to escape.

Was informed I can start moving stuff into the new place next weekend, which will give me a head start and hopefully mitigate the insanity that is early July. (Even one year is enough to accumulate stuff. Especially since my parents keep bringing over things. At least now I have a convincing excuse to get to start carting some of the stuff back.)

On a note about the email, since I know most of the people who are coming do (somewhat) follow this blog: the reason why I requested for brightly colored clothing is that although yes, calling me on the phone will tell me when people get here, unless I can answer the phone I have no way of knowing which exist people are at. This way if there's no space for my car and I'll have to circle around I know what color I should be keeping an eye out for as I'm going by. It'll be possible to find people without it, since SD airport isn't that big, but this'll just make my life easier. And less hazardous in the sense that I'll be navigating around some of the crazier SD drivers.

I cannot shake off the feeling that I've forgotten something important.

[edit 14:15]
It is dehydration. (Was it something I ate?) Am better now and, for some reason, with the opening theme for Ouran High School Host Club stuck on replay in my head.

[edit 17:22]
Just got the notice: if I were to continue at the same apartment my rent will be going up starting September. Heh.

What IS it with me and Wednesdays?

WARNING: whining post.

Good question, Lucy. I'm not entirely sure. Everyone sometimes have one of those days, when plugging in a laptop can result in electrocution. For me, it just happens that about 90 to 95% of those days always happen to fall on a Wednesday. Not every Wednesday sucks, thank goodness, but even so I've learned that when a day has turned out to be awful, it's most likely Wednesday again. (Yeah my grasp of days of the week can be a little shaky at times, and grad school is not helping.)

Take today, for example:

The day began with me, oversleeping. Yes, me. I usually wake up at least once at 6:30am, 5:30 if it's bright outside and not cloudy like it usually is in the mornings here (it's because of the ocean). (This tend to make me wonder what'll happen to me when I'm seventy. Will I wake up at three in the morning when everyone else wakes up at five? Will I forgo sleep altogether?) For some reason I was out cold last night and didn't wake up once until I opened my eyes and saw it was 7:48am. Which was immediately followed by panic, since I have experiments and I need to go to the bank today, because my application for the studio apartment was approved and in order for them to hold the place for me I need to get the deposit (money order or cashier's check only) to the place within 48 hours or something, and I got the message at 7pm last night, after the bank (Chase) had already closed so it'll have to be today. Conclusion: short lab day just got shorter.

Then I left home, and had to come back less than five minutes later because I forgot the stuff. Which hasn't happened to me in...what? This level? Two years?

Then I missed the bus.

And then my laptop failed me. Ivy for some reason wouldn't output to its screen when I booted up. I tried directly plugging it into another monitor with the reasoning that a basic functioning computer must have a boot drive, power supply, hard drive, an input source, and an output source -- and so if it's something fundamentally wrong with the connections (such if something shorted out), then the output source'd be gone and if I plug it into a functioning output source while the original one was out, what's in Ivy should show up in the plug in monitor.

Nope. Got nothing. Which means when I get the time I'll need to take Ivy apart, manually disconnect the screen from the harddrive, and plug it into an alternate monitor to do further diagnosis etc. Current prognosis? Not good. Since I did have to drive down to Pacific Beach today after lab (by the time I set out it was past 7pm already, and the rush-hour traffic had cleared so at least I wasn't stuck in traffic) for the deposit and further paperwork, that took another hour out of my time. After dinner, shower and such, I've just now got a chance to connect to the internet and looking at the clock? I don't think I'll take a stab at it tonight. I plead mild exhaustion.

I did get my Hep B titer results back today though, and now I'm (finally) immunized. In addition, the PI got us each a nice USB drive for lab stuff and chocolates for the lab meeting, so the day wasn't a total loss.

Google map satellite is still kinda creepy

Good news was: the weather cleared up while I was at the animal shelter yesterday, so I DIDN'T have to drive through the rain in the afternoon.

I think I've mostly got my apartment picked out (unless the other person who emailed me in the morning yesterday and told me that I could come over in the morning yesterday via email after I've already left for my day manages to check his mail in time today AND tell me that I can visit today and his place is VERY good -- I mean it'll cut maybe ten to fifteen minutes off of my transit time and is cheaper, but I don't know how the place is, so I'm not going to make any commitments just yet) (that is possibly the longest in-parenthesis run-on that I've ever had to inflict on anyone).

That involves a lot of uncertainty in the many variables.

If most of them don't resolve I'll be moving to a place just off of Grand Ave in Pacific Beach. The rent is just over two hundred dollars cheaper per month (yea) and the utilities such as gas etc (the stove is gas) are included. It's, one small block away from the bus stop that'll take me to campus (which Google estimates will take me two minutes to walk to, so no more sulking in the dark parking lots in the winter, hopefully). The outside needs a new layer of paint, but the inside is clean enough, has a small kitchen and separate bathroom. What's more, the place that's available is second floor, and has a large, south-facing window (yes fiat lux!). It's just one building, and the other tenants are super nice. Two of them both went to call the landlord so she'd come over early, because I arrived early and they didn't think I should need to wait (and then I got involved in the downstrair's tenant's discussion on tomato plants, which another tenant gave her since he had some extra). It's also supposedly really QUIET there (enough to hear people snoring at night sometimes, but that remains to be seen), so no more jets passing by overhead while we watch things, Lucy. (lol It does make the trips to my place memorable, doesn't it?) It's next to a bunch of military housing and three of the six doors in the apartment facing the street was left open while I was there while the tenants were...somewhere, wandering around (sometimes with their shirt off, which was vaguely disconcerting at first, but this is Pacific Beach, so I guess that's expected?), which I thought was a very nice statement about the safety of that area (and one of the tenants has a very nice plasma screen).

The down side? It's still can take up to an hour to get to the campus (takes me thirty minutes right now). There's no on-site laundry place (I was told there's a laundry place two blocks north). The parking is on the street, so no parking spaces. I have to start paying rent by July 1st, since that's the longest they can hold the place off the market (but now that I got the other half of my salary at least I can afford to, for a brief while). And I would still like a bigger kitchen, but I've mostly given that up now since I still remember the apartments from last year's hunt and even the larger apartments have small kitchens. I should be glad I get a kitchen.

Oy.

My schedule today is animal shelter from 9:30 to 12, appointment at 13, 14, 15, and 16 (yeah one of the five managers annoyed me in the email so I didn't set up an appointment with him). I was cleaning out my papers from my school year this morning (4.5" stack left of just articles after I've thrown away everything else...that's still larger than a stack of unopened papers) and just now I was going to go out and throw away more papers...

...and then it started raining. It does not look like it'll stop soon. The weather forecast gave today as partially cloudy, so I've given up all hopes on it.

Well, driving around today should be fun.

Can you say dimethylpimelimidate?

It took us (meaning me and three different post-docs) the longest time to try to figure out how to say it without stuttering over the "imelimi" part.

Anyway!

School year's officially over, though lab isn't, of course. However, I do not have any extra readings outside of what I'm doing in lab and I have some time this weekend which means, of course, that by this point I've filled it up close to 80% already. However, I do believe that with careful time management I'll be able to clear up a lot of the items on my to-do list, possibly catch up on all the back-log work where I've said "I'll do this as soon as I...". It will be wonderful. Yes it will. Clear slates and crossed-out to-do lists give me a nice glow of accomplishment.

Hmm I need to get more somen. Looks like I'm out.

Now: onwards to dinner, house cleaning, harddrive cleaning, shower, and printing out directions to all the places I need to be tomorrow. I'm in the mood to leave the radio blasting the entire way.

Happy Friday everyone! And congrats to those of you who have/are graduating this week! (My there're a lot of you.)

[edit 18:37]
Dude, I went over to Pandora and first song that came on is Vitamin C's "Graduation".