A mischief of mice

So I'm working on nine different experiments right now and the PI has come out to talk to me about the NRSA (f31) fellowship and hinted strongly that I should get myself registered now and apply for the one this summer. Also, he thinks I should have an undergrad. I was personally considering separating out the teaching part of my learning experience from the research part of the learning experience because 1) there're only so many things I can focus on on any given moment, 2) undergrads come in a variety of competence -- the good ones are excellent, but occasionally we do get people who come in, after their freshman year of chem and math courses, and needs help figuring out how to dilute something one to ten and those...are time consuming and there's no guarantee which undergrad will come into which lab and also, 3) if nothing else, doing more teaching-related stuff later will give me a larger age gap between myself and the person I'm teaching. I didn't much like working with undergrads when I was an undergrad (with a few notable exceptions), a fact that I pointed out to the PI (he was amused), so I'm hoping age will bring wisdom and patience.

Then again, it is possible that it will be like my relationship with the average high school student -- beginning with vague feelings of alienation and ending with confusion increasing exponentially per unit (years) of time.

Lost another litter of mice to the parents. The crazy crazy inbred cannibalistic parents.

My new computer was supposed to get shipped on Tuesday, but due to the processing time of the order, the processing time of the money transfer, and the processing time of the order for airplane tickets for Greece, the keyboard protector was able to be processed and indeed, I received it today, but the computer order wasn't processed and then they cancelled that order. I managed to sort that bit of fun out, but now the computer isn't due to be shipped until next week and Ivy is having a particular glitchy week where it freezes randomly when I have the browser and multiple files open at the same time. Zen's...well the OS is stable for NOW but there's something very wrong with the fans that I'm very, very clueless about (which figured because the original problem started because of overheating, if the error message is to be believed). So now I'm not even turning on Zen at all because the noise from the fan makes me fear for my personal safety. As in I'm worried about overheating and melting things and possibly the battery exploding (it's lithium). So, well.

There is brominated vegetable oil in my citrus soda. And at some point I need to mail someone in another lab about Bermuda land crab, or at least its cDNA. And I need a new long sleeved shirt. And more sleep.