Three sentence rule

There are a lot of thoughts inside of my head right now, both in terms of things I can put into words and those that I can't. For the things that can be distilled into words, I have this blog. I'm afraid this entry will be very choppy, since I will be trying to get down everything that I've noted and wanted to mention with all the things that are constantly happening before I forget.

The store ran out of lasagna noodles this Saturday, so I was forced to use rotini instead and therefore I am currently eating something that's a cross between lasagna and casserole. Which reminds me that a) Annie gave me a recipe for eggplant casserole that I've been meaning to try, and this month I may actually find the time to and b) I don't think I've mentioned this before but now I'm reminded of this almost, but not entirely unlike a cookie thing that Annie got while we're in Athens (yes, along with Kinder Surprise and Greek TV dinner) which she had succinctly described as "If a piece of toast and a cracker ever had a baby...."

I'm so thoroughly distracted already, it's like I have ADD. No offense to those that actually have ADD.

But while we are talking about food, I have discovered that I really like yogurt covered pretzels! As in I got a box this Saturday and I'm nearly halfway through the box already. Surely, I keep thinking, I must have had this at some point in my life -- but I honestly cannot recall. They are v. additive to boot, though they are probably not that healthy, given how sweet they are. However, they are probably a lot healthier than loads of other junk food. Like chocolate chip cookie. Wendy's undergrad had her last day the past Friday as well, and she brought in cookies that she'd made. Chocolate chip cookies. Made with real wheat flower. So it's ...healthy junk food? No, not quite. Healthier than it could've been, probably. I'm not sure if this is a natural tendency of hers (she likes cooking) or if all the ribbing (when we took our undergrads out for frozen yogurt -- this is separate from our lab outing where the entire lab, PI included, went out for lunch -- this is just the grad student mentors and their students -- we were joking about our tendencies to read ingredients and Wendy had me list the commonly seen preservatives by my personal list of preference) finally got to her.

Completely unrelated to the food rambling is yesterday, when Ashley and I met up. She and her husband are buying a house! It's an odd feeling to see your friends all married and ...buying houses, apparently. They are such grown up things to do, after all. Though to be fair they are mostly buying a house because they don't like the place they are currently staying and have figured that if they have to pay the exuberant rent in this area, they might as well as get something out of it. I am given to understand that house-buying is less stressful than wedding-planning,though there's still significant amount of twitchiness enough. I have mostly gotten over my own state of twitchy-insanity, which lasted, it seemed, the entire month of July (though apparently the stress things is still something that I need to work on, as that when Karen said "now relax your shoulders" on Saturday, the entire left-side of my neck spasmed in protest and it hurt) and so spent my portion of talking time wailing about my disillusionment with the academia.

Ah the Third Year Existential Crisis. Turns out that I didn't manage to avoid it after all.

Unrelated to that is a list that I've been composing in Evernote regarding everything about Windows 7 that annoys me. I may get around to posting that this weekend. Evernote is part of a series of software I've recently been experimenting with to try to make my lab experience less insane. Or at least more organized and manageable. I should probably make another list of what I've tried and how they turned out (the Zotero vs Mendeley thing for citation was interesting and I probably SHOULD mention THAT) and post that, too. Some day.

Finally: LibriVox. Have finished DRACULA and started FRANKENSTEIN and just...gave up. Unless I've already read the book audiobooks are just not for me. Also, I didn't like the story or the character much. I mean I can definitely identify with his obsession with a project and I can forgive him when his first reaction is to run. But then his subsequent reactions? Possibly it's because I have a biologist's training and, more importantly, a geneticists training where we go over and over how if you brought something into the world, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. Which includes all the things that can harm it as well as all the things it can harm. You are responsible for its well-being and all the repercussions of your choices leading to bringing it into the world. Even without considering how I find anyone who turns into a sniveling wreck at the first signs of trouble distasteful at a personal level, the actions of the doctor offends me at a professional level. I mean yes yes it's a sci-fi horror from a long time ago and I am taking it too seriously, but the point of literature, to some degree, is to interpret and make personal connections with it, and it's hard to make personal connections without reacting, positively or negatively, in some way and...

...okay, way too long in the rambling lane here.

Lucy's getting her circadian rhythm monitored! And she's going to share the graphs with me! And I can't think of anything else to type right now! So off I go!

(I've not had any caffeine today, in case anyone's wondering.)