Sequentially is good

I have been a student (continuously) for so long that I'm pretty sure hearing someone say "exam" is enough to make my blood pressure rise.

That being said, it looks like my committee meeting make take place during the first week that is on my two-month time frame, meaning it will be the week after next week (I did leave myself a week minimum to prepare), and that I'm allowed to postpone the exam, much to my relief. Thus, in terms of scheduling, my main events this summer (defined to commence the week after next week, since that's the last week of instructions)are: committee meeting, genetics retreat, Greece, birthday, NIH training grant, department retreat, and exam (which I apparently need to find a mentor to train extensively with prior to, and hopefully this will actually give me the time to figure out how to go about doing this). The longest gap will be between when the training grant is due and when the department retreat/orientation is (I listed the retreats that will require me to present things in front of loads of people), with a gap of nearly six weeks. Based on the list, you can predict my levels of neurosis with a fair degree of accuracy, barring any unforeseen circumstances that will leave me pacing erratic circles in my room while consuming liters of tea. Because those do happen as well.

Somehow I only have half a day left, and still far too much to do.

Completely unrelated to the above paragraphs: my classmates and I found out that one of our classmates got married this past New Year's! She was sneaky and didn't tell anyone, so we found out mostly by looking at the slide the day of her presentation and noticing that her name is...different. There was a collective moment of "Ah, that's right -- life exists outside of lab...." Then we teased her about how it's not "official" until she posted about it in Facebook (because obviously our Facebook accounts are where we should post any "official" changes in status of any nature) though yes, I'll agree that finding out via Facebook is better than finding out on the title slide of a powerpoint about calcium channels in neurons. At least in Facebook there are photos. Don't let the "soon-to-be-Doctor" titles fool you -- we are very partial to pictures and, I'm starting to suspect, far worse when it comes to being easily distracted by the shiny and new than the average individual.

(People have said scientists are people who never grew out of the "why" stage of their childhood. My current experiences indicate that this is true. Most toddlers, however, probably are slightly less prone to really bad science jokes.)

(...Lucy... I just realized that the jokes we have about TLA -- Three Lettered Acronyms-- in science -- well, TLA is also Avatar. There is something inherently hilarious about trying to combine the two different fields of TLA. It's like...space-time warp or something. Or at least reality warp. For some definition of reality.)

I think, despite of my experience with my collaborator. I would like to work on zebrafish more at some point. They are transparent, they are one of the model organisms with a nervous system that's more homologous to that of mammals, and they have cooler names for mutants, like van gogh, sputnik and space cadet.

...that is neither here nor there. Oh well.