The title of today's post is brought to you by a collaborator of mine, who is also a PI and on my thesis committee. He is my living proof that PIs are capable of talking normally (for my definition of normal, which means no convoluted sentence structure reminiscent of rhetoric of Cicero). Though I suppose my PI also has his moments -- for all his tendencies to sound like a GRE verbal study guide and loquaciousness (and painstaking levels of finickiness when it comes to accurate word usage --I wasn't allowed to say "purely cytoplasmic" because he pointed out that there can't be "impurely cytoplasmic" for the point I was making), he will occasionally say things like "the paragraph is too listy" or "you can put it on things and it does stuff".
Right.
Have tried French onion soup, which was far too salty but in general kind of lackluster, and hearty pot roast soup, which tasted exactly like the beef stew I made a few months ago except it's...less hearty (I suppose in store-brought soups "hearty" is more along the lines of "can see distinguishable chunks of food" than "has lots of chunks of chewable food")
Lucy bore the brunt of my "OMG my life is horrible I wish my neighbor would pass out NOW" these few weeks, but the debacle is finally drawing to a close. The short version is that I got a new neighbor, of the angry and violent when drunk variety. He likes to get drunk on weekdays, never weekends, and then he'd proceed to scream out obscenities, punch walls, bang around, play music far too loud and sing very badly off key (he's not too bad when he's sober). I have talked to him twice to try to solve it, one of these was when he was drunk, and called the landlady one to complain about it. After each time there will be a four-seven day grace period, he'd apologize and I'd think "Thank God, I think it worked."
It was obviously to lure me into a false sense of security.
Last night was the worst one yet. Apparently other people in the neighborhood can hear him too (and I was on the bed that was against our shared wall, so it was all kinds of horrible). At one point he was banging around so much I can hear the windows rattling and I called the landlady right then and there, where she can at least share my pains since she could hear him over the phone as well. Complete with the atrocious music. The sum of it all (which included a very useless appeal to the police) is that he will be moving out this Thursday and I am refusing to feel guilty about any of it. I am going to do self-defense / martial arts though (did a quarter of it when I was in Davis), for my peace of mind, if nothing else.
On a happier note: past weekend was fun. Lucy came over and she has photographic evidence of the giant human sized hamster ball. We watched TANGLED, which was adorable if overly saccharine at certain points (I understand the name was meant to appeal to boys, but what's the point if the entire story is more romantic comedy than adventure?).
The talk last Friday was...a blur for me, to be honest. But other people told me I did fine, despite of my inability to understand the question of one of the post-docs at the end. (In my defense, he was very heavily accented.) There was also one man who was convinced that everything is caused by dopamine. Which isn't impossible, I'll admit, but a bit improbable given the evidence. He cornered me before I could get to my chair afterwards and told me I should give my mice levodopa.
On the whole the audience were VERY nice, which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I was the last speaker before the break, so they need me to finish answering all the questions before they can get to the food.
Went "shopping" on campus today for special types of paint pens, D-cell batteries, and Frootloops. Was amused by the thought that all these things are for my project but most people probably would think I'm joking.
There was something else but I can't remember at the moment. I am starting to crash. Despite of the tea.
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