It's going around

Thesis writing, I have been able to observe, is a bit like a viral infection. It causes exhaustion, nausea (and therefore inability to eat), headaches, &c. More importantly, it does seem to cause immune-depression, as that Wendy has gotten sick twice in two weeks now and had to go home early yesterday because she was running a fever (but she did manage to send off her draft to all her committee members and, more importantly, all her committee members are still here and can still make it to her defense date). After watching her flail around trying to analyze data and write at the same time and lying face down on her desk after drafts and drafts of it is coming back from our adviser covered in illegible blue scribbles, I, in the midst of acute pangs of sympathy (after changing the format for the qual and the candidacy exam we have to work with adviser on both now, and so I did the pages of blue scribbles thing, except my document was faaar shorter), had a truly horrifying revelation:

This is what I have to look forward to in a few years.

Which reminds me of the point where Wendy was looking at me blearily and said, "So you're aiming for this in ...three years, right?" (Six year graduation apparently being the shortest anyone who works with mice has ever accomplished, or something. Speaking of which, the pinworm infestation's gone away, except now all the mice going in and out still need to go through preventative treatment, which does affect behavior, which means I can't run any behavioral tests until this is over, which means that my own thesis-writing-pains just got delayed by three months and there's nothing I can do about it.) (I am just a little upset by this.)

Righto.

Meantime, I don't have to go into lab this weekend, though I do have to put together a presentation for lab meeting next week as well as find a decent paper to present for class / journal-club, so that will probably take up all weekend. In the after math of being introduced to Kate's ipad and griping about the fact that it's hugely impractical to have a giant drawer full of references, like I do, but that I can't just take notes on the computer because if the notes aren't right next to the text I sometimes forget what I'm talking about and also-- highlighting is USEFUL, I have discovered Xournal. It's for linux only (though I think there's a hack for mac somewhere) and it's brilliant. I have fallen into a green-orange color theme now (orange notes & green highlighter) and my read articles looks down right citrusy. Now if only I can figure out how to change the default settings somewhere.... (Still playing around. Also, it's been compared to Windows Journal for PC, which I haven't tried yet. More on that ... at some point, when I get around to installing a copy on Zen.)