I believe in updates, I do, I do

Another insane (quite) week has passed. In lab we sorted through stuff in the freezer, tried to figure out what to do with the sodium acetate (trihydrate) that's solidified into a chunk, and watched the PI pretend to be a handyman. (He screwed back in a part of the autoclave and failed to fix a chair. The first few moments of watching him come by and methodically flip chairs over -- with no explanation--was very surreal.) There was also the moment when PI Dearest compared my metazoa-wide cloning attempts to collecting Pokemon cards (i.e. "gotta catch'em all" and that one of them might be "magical"), which resulted in the moment where both Wendy and I stared at him like he was insane (aside from the undergrads who weren't there, and the tech who away doing something else, we were the only ones young enough to get the reference) (the lab tech was the other person besides the PI with kids who might be old enough to get the reference). Magic clones. Right. I think I'll go back to my miniprep now. (He also managed to wheedle me into presenting during orientation. How does he do it? I hate public presentations.)

I've twisted my ankle a while ago and, although it didn't seem that bad after the hell that was day two, for some reason I'm still limping a little. This is the main reason (the other one being the gloomy weather) why I had to keep slashing my plans to go visit the beach. Instead I've been puttering around a lot indoors and re-organized all my music files. Sadly, this also led to my discovery that A) I have more music than I thought because for some reason my mp3 player just doesn't play some of the mp3 files (the entire folder of the DW fanmix will play on my computer by not the mp3 player and I haven't the slightest clue why) and B) my mp3 player eats files, and then spit out versions that NOTHING will play (I have no idea why this is either). I've managed to figure out what's missing and what's usable though, for the most part, and that I have at least three copies of "Watch the Sky" in different folders. (It's one of my favorite songs but yeah, that's waaay too much.)

In the progression of the week I've also gotten a parking ticket for forgetting to move my car during the Wednesday every month where I can't park on the street (always inconvenient since I leave / return at a time where all the cars are parked and there is no free spot), received my copy of DS CDs that I ordered in the mail, and discovered that all the worms in the worm bin have perished out of neglect (read: further proof of why I should not be allowed to have pets during grad school).

Lastly I should mention I submitted my first draft of my advancement to candidacy exam to my PI yesterday and he has given me his blessings to schedule the exam in October (also introducing me to Doodle, whose name first made me think that he was making some kind of weird joke again). Given that no one from my little protein group has asked me for a copy of the presentation that I've promised them two weeks ago, does anyone want to volunteer their time some time within the next three weekends to hear me present a much longer version (30-40 minutes), so that I can polish my presentation enough to withstand the 50 minutes (I kid you not) of verbal grilling during the exam? Putting together this bit of fun has been what I spent all my spare time doing this week during lab, and then it's onwards to carrying on the tradition of being twitchy and mad every fall....

Well, time to hit the list of chores.