...somehow I drink MORE tea when drawing's going well but less tea when my experiments do?

List time

1) The cells (yeah those that I screwed up on before break) lives! YAY I have experiments. Oh wait. Oh well better than the alternative.

2) Have now tried honeydew green rooibos and apple-spice chai.. The rooibos is very good (thanks Kate!) and conveniently caffeine free so I can actually drink it on weekdays after work. The chai is somewhat lackluster. Maybe it's because I'm used to Tazo's chai tea but this version seems very...bland. Not very fruity and certainly not very much of that distinctive blend of spice that is the main reason I keep buying chai.

3) I went and saw RISE OF THE GUARDIANS today, which I liked very much (though I'm sure it's not to everyone's taste) and bought my tickets for it early. ...so I took a brief walk through the mall before show time and discovered that a bunch of clothing stores are having sales and managed to find the plain, long-sleeved tees that I have been hunting for at 5$ each. VICTORY IS MINE.

4) I mentioned wanting to try the cheap Monoprice drawing tablets while at home and my father decided that since he has no idea what to get me for presents, ever, I should just order it for Christmas and he'll pay for it. This is the tablet that costed 51$, shipping included (needless to say my Wacom costed MUCH more) and it came in yesterday! So far the verdict is that the sensitivity setting is way different and there's less of a gradation, at least in Photoshop, for changing the size of the brush based on pen pressure. As in it goes from very small to very large VERY quickly. Also the drawing surface is textured, which I'm not sure how I feel about. On one hand it's more like sketching on a textured sketchbook. On the other hand it SHOWS in Photoshop. I think I prefer the Wacom because if you drew smooth and wanted texture you can still do a filter later on, whereas if you drew textured...it's not so much of an option anymore. Anyway, the package came from the driver installation disc and replacement tips (bless them, Wacom would never do as much) so on the whole this is a pretty good deal for traveling tablet that's going to inevitably go through some wear and tear and possibly get tea spilled on. The only thing to note is that I can't install both drivers on the same computer. Or at least Photoshop Does Not Like It and will not have the sensitivity setting for one if the other is also installed. I run a windows 7 with PS CS6 and I'll admit I panicked a little when the Wacom sensitivity suddenly died on me. (All fixed now though!)

Have just tried to explain to my father my theory that we get warm more quickly when drinking something hot than when eating something because water has a very high specific heat.

Also: suspect that parents have in fact packed away my mass in food to take back with me. No complaints though since affection in my family is shown with food, apparently, so am going to interpret the amount of freezing I will have to do upon arriving home tomorrow as appreciating affection. There is a lot of affection. Some of which are probably crunchy.

80% sure I'm going to Peru in 2013. Mail me if you want to come with.

Not sure if the difference in water pressure's a universal thing between north and south Cal or if it's differences in the plumbing at my parents but that shower was bliss. Hot, prickly bliss.

Complete inability to focus throughout lab. Am going to ditch work and go home early...

...to do the dishes and pack.

I was planning to spend the 25th doing absolutely nothing but now suspect I won't be able to  manage it without my head exploding.

Opened work email inbox and saw there's an email titled "Sponge!" from the professor which arrived at 10pm last night.

Ladies and gentlemen -- my life.

(It's the protein conservation thing which will continue to haunt me, I suspect, until the day I die.)

Labmate got me Lindt truffles!

FINALLY finished all the cards. Mailing the lot off tomorrow morning!

Brought cookies for lab but sadly they didn't survive the crush of the public transit (the ones with peanut butter are always so crumbly...). Also had an argument with two different character sheets which left me feeling more peculiar than usual.

There's a type of cheese called Drunk Goat. It's Spanish. The origin of the cheese I mean. Though possibly the goat as well.

Ohgodohgod the antibiotic I was using expired and I didn't notice and I think I may have just lost a month's worth of cells OH GOD.

Outed myself as ace to another friend today and her comment is that maybe I'll "feel differently" when I'm no longer working so many hours a week (there were other comments as well).  For which I tried to explain to her why I find that kind of talk is a bit not good (sexual orientation is not a result of life style nor -- the more troublesome implication -- something that could be "cured" if you changed your life style) and she said by the way of excuse that she's never heard of "asexuality" before today.

And then we moved on to other topics and I discovered that her opinion on the restaurant calling customers "fat girls" incident (x) and she announced that she considers both sides to blame, meaning that the bartender should not have done what he did but the girls shouldn't have made such a fuss about it because they really are overweight. Because she considers obesity to be a fault of the individual, as a marker for...I don't know, lack of self control? Will to exercise? And so I spent some time explaining why THAT is a bit not good.

...and I ...don't want to lecture my friends and I try so very hard not to come across as a snobbish know-it-all, but when someone makes comments like that not out of ignorance but because they didn't have all the information, I can't help but want to provide the information because I really do believe that they wouldn't have the same opinion if only they knew better. And isn't that presumptuous of me? Who am I to assign myself the role of the educator? To designate what the "better" of knowing better? I have the right to speak up on asexuality because I am ace but should I refrain from commenting on the wrongness people making judgmental remarks on people who don't fit the "skinny" expectations of the society because I am, myself, "skinny" and therefore don't have first person experience of the discrimination, save for the brief period in 5th-6th grade when I was chubby? Should I not speak up for trans discrimination because I am cis? I don't think so. There's really no conflict-free way of making a stance, and the best way I can think of to handle this is to point out what I think is wrong, do my best to explain why that is and engage an active discussion about it, and always defer to the people who have first hand experience of the topic. I really can't think of a better way to handle it than that.

Also I'll admit that I'm still smarting a little from her variation of "it's just a phrase / it's not real" comment on asexuality, not because I don't encounter it often, but because she's my friend and I honestly didn't expect her to make that kind of comment. I don't think I am being too judgmental or holding my friends to too high a standard when I expect them to acknowledge what I am telling them first instead of having an initial response, almost reflexively, to deny. Though I suppose I should give her credit for honesty, the fact that she had zero ill intent, and definitely zero clue that she had just spent a few minutes trying to invalid my experiences.

It was all very civil. We had hot chocolate and our time together ended on amicable terms, so it definitely could've been worse.

Life hack

When my second box of brown sugar solidified (as in, I tried to break it with a hammer but only managed to smash it into 3 giant chunks type of solidified) despite of the fact that I kept it in a plastic bag, I was frustrated and looked up "how to declump brown sugar" on the internet. This is what I found:

You take your solid chunk of brown sugar
Put it in a ziplock bag
And stick in a slice of bread
Then you let it sit.

I was kind of skeptical of this because, as I've mentioned, I had a LOT of sugar that was REALLY solid. ...so I stuck in 2 slices of bread ...and let it sit overnight at room temperature...and it WORKED.

As in when I poked at it this morning the edges of the chunks crumpled back into the texture sugar was supposed to be and then I, thrilled, took out the bread, put the plastic baggie on the kitchen floor, and pressed down with the base of my palm and the chunks ALL WENT BACK TO BEING SUGAR GRAINS.

I felt like I just completed witchcraft. Except it was not magic, it was two slices of bread.

Anyway: the wisdom of the internet also says that if you keep the de-chunked sugar in the freezer it will prevent it from solidifying again, so I've labeled and dated the bag and put it in the freezer (this is so similar to what I do in lab that I nearly typed "sample" there instead of "bag"), and if someone will remind me in a few months I'll let you guys know how well the second tip works as well!

Also you can still eat the bread. It's got a bit of sugar on it but the bread (I used whole wheat, I don't think this matters though) isn't soggy or anything.

Some day I will learn not to buy Christmas with glitter, because they shed like you wouldn't believe and get tracked everywhere and I will probably ingest it at some point because it'll just be EVERYWHERE, but even that's better than inhaling it because mercy on my poor lungs.

Exam's over and everyone's punchy and filled with good will. ...sort of sweaty good will, but good will never the less. Guys I am having the most awesome day and no amount of chores in the remaining hours can take it away from me. Also I'm buying milk so there will be both tea AND hot chocolate for me today.

And now, it's officially winter.

By which I mean it's wet and chilly and water's started to seep into my socks. Cold weather is never quite so miserable as when your socks are wet.

Tried to trap moth in kitchen cabinet since failed to lure it out with light (what kind of moth doesn't follow light?), forgot that the cabinet was not sealed to the wall -- a fact that was brought home to me this morning when I accidentally poured tea dreg over the moth, who was in the sink (apparently really concentrated chai tea has potential applicability as insecticide?). Had to remove carcass with paper tower (EXTREMELY UNPLEASANT) since my kitchen sink doesn't have garbage disposal and the moth'd probably block the drain, and having it moldering away in the drain is a new and shining item I'm adding to the very long list of Things I Do Not Want to Have to Deal With. Though I suppose one conclusion we can reach is that tea does, however indirectly, make everything better. Someone ought to get a chuckle out of that.

I also had a very nice dream in which I'm piloting ships for interplanetary travels, and the moment when the ship breaks orbit is amazing. Also apparently my subconscious can dream up pretty good inertia dampeners.

OH GOD GIANT MOTH HAS SOME HOW GOTTEN INTO MY APARTMENT WHY.

I have discovered mint-creme oreos.

It almost makes up for the fact that I left for work at 7:15am this morning and got back home just now.

The effects of deletions in my protein failed to reach statistical significance LIFE YOU ARE CRUEL AND UNUSUAL.

Do people even still use ribbons

Just spent 2+ hours wrapping things and am ready to start flailing because I realized that one of the things I ordered HASN'T COME IN YET and there's glitter everywhere, because of the cards and methinks it's time to type up my annual recap letter for some of my more out-of-touch friends.

The holidays are upon me.

LIST TIME

1) Labmate made these oatmeal cookies with white chocolate and dried strawberries in it and it's really, really awesome. She forwarded me the recipe here. I mean normally I don't even like oatmeal cookies and I ate three of these under not-starving conditions, so. Uh. I highly recommend the recipe?

2) The husband of my former teacher who passed away earlier this year send around the newsletter. I guess I'm still on the mailing list, which is kind of awkward because I've never even met the husband, much less talked to him. Also it's less of a newsletter and more of a summary of her last moments, the funeral, and the aftermath. It came in just today like a particularly unexpected punch of emotional trauma and now I will have to spend the next day trying to drown my sorrows in tea.

3) As a result of the UCLA accident my school is taking preventative measures by having us fitted for lab coats. Which we are required to wear, in theory, at all times when we're in the lab and outside of clean areas ("clean area" is what it sounds like -- it's clean, it's usually our desks where we can eat something during particularly long all-day experiments). This does not make a lot of sense because lab coats will not save us from the sort of mistakes that happen at UCLA and anyway, most of the things I work with I need to be careful with because I need to protect the samples from me, not the other way around. I mean the chances that I'll be severely harmed by half a liter of ice is extremely slim. Then again, according to my PI, when he was a post-doc their department passed a mandate to lock up all storage containers for radioactive chemicals (so that only the lab people have access) because some post-doc somehow ended up ingesting some. I mean the solution doesn't even address the problem! So maybe calling it a "solution" is a bit of a stretch. Hm.

4) Ashley's successfully mustered her first trimester (and the in fact not limited to morning morning sickness) and continues to baffle me with her tendency to describe her baby using fruit. WHY.

5) Stupid proteins. My shoulder hurts.

6) I have tried netflix. About half of the things on my to-see list is not available, so I will probably not have an account and continue to borrow Lucy's for the odd show that's on there. Are cookies acceptable currency?

7) It's been nearly 6 months since construction and we still have odd people in fluorescent vests and hardhats wandering through. WHY.

8) There are more things but I can't remember them at the moment, so I'll probably do another list at some point.

• I was in lab both days last weekend and it looks like I'll have to go in both days this weekend as well and it feels like THE WEEK NEVER ENDS oh god.

In which the theme color is yellow

Trip to Arizona is a lot smoother this time because I've done the bulk of the route before and retained a vague memory of where the rest spots and gas stations are (or more specifically, which point has cheaper gas than the rest of the route -- v. important these days with the 4$+ / gal pricing). This time I also had the benefit of taking the same route both ways, which means I get to drive through a part of I8 in the morning light, which is quite pretty. There were wisps of very dense fog on the ground, but only enough wisps to look fantastic and poetical under the sun and the blue, blue sky. There were also a couple areas with deciduous trees with bright gold leaves tucked into the nooks of the mountain, which I missed completely last year on the account of the sun being in my eye when I drove through that area in the evening.

Okay so the 2 day roundtrip to Arizona and back is a little bit exhausting but REALLY fun. This is mostly a post to hold the place and remind me to write more about it later.

Out of season honeydew tastes strangely like cucumber. I wonder if I should try cooking it with shrimp....

So hey, I got here after all

Remember when, over two years ago, I made a post and outed myself as being asexual? Specifically, remember this quote?

Oh and just so you know, despite of the fact that I am comfortable enough with this aspect of myself to write a post on the internet, I'm not at that point where I'm okay with people teasing me about it yet, however well meaning they may be.

 Well in the past 2+ years I have passed both my qualifying and candidacy exam, grown older physically and mentally, dealt with minor verbal harassment on the bus, taught undergrads (who, in my opinion, utterly failed to appreciate the magic of genetics), tested up one rank in martial arts (due for another exam in December, oh dear God), presented at two different conferences, ventured into online dating, washed my hands of online dating, while keeping up my schedule of explaining to my parents that I don't wish to get married and have babies at least twice a year while THEY are still at the point where they are supportive of everything I do without letting go of the belief that asexuality is something I'll "grow out of". Well my mother anyway. Father dear who checks over my car every time we see each other and spent the day before we meet making all my favorite dishes still declines to acknowledge that I've said anything about my sexual orientation at all. It's a shaky sort of passive aggressive peace at my household.

As I was typing up the other post trying to explain to people, most of whom I've never even met in real life, that asexuality is a valid orientation and not a form of repression, I remembered all of this. All of which reminded that me at this point I've learned to be more assertive and be more comfortable in my own skin so I should let people know that there's no need to be super careful around me regarding this anymore. I don't think I'll ever be what people consider to be "normal", but I feel astonishingly well-adjusted and capable of dealing with whatever people choose to throw at me. So, discussion & teasing are fine, questions are fine (actually more than fine because that way I will know where I'm unclear and will have a chance to explain). I want to be a person who's comfortable with herself and now I realize that I am one step closer.

I think this calls for celebratory tea.

Food: more thoughts

1) I have no idea why I keep buying two eggplants when I only ever manage to eat one and I know that the texture gets all weird if I try to freeze it.

2) I can't tell the difference between maple sugar and cane sugar, so the wildly inventive decision to put maple syrup in my tea was anticlimatic.

3) Che-choui, the banana-coconut-tapioca pudding, is really not my taste. In fact it reminded me of how I thought I hated coconuts until I came to the US and discovered that I do, in fact, like fresh coconut, pina colada, and in fact coconut in baking (imagine my astonishment when I discovered coconut macaroons).

4) I still don't understand why people like tootsie rolls.

5) Don't remember if I mentioned gulab jamun yet but it's really good! It reminds me of baklava in the sense that I expect it to be too cloyingly sweet for my taste but I ended up liking it despite of the fact that it's much sweeter than stuff I usually eat. (The version I tried had rose water and I think that's the first time I've seen it in food.)

Last night I had a dream in which I was explaining my data to the PI at my desk and my lab bench spontaneously combusted. It was the sort of fire that could not be put out by water / normal extinguisher and my labmate figured out how to put it out by setting fire to the stuff that's on fire with a bunsen burner which, for some reason that only makes sense in my subconscious, ended up putting out the fire.

From this I conclude that I need to spend a weekend Not In Lab.

Also I had the recent revelation that cool is overrated. As in the popular notion of "coolness" is an unnecessary amount of work and a bit pretentious. I've decided that I'd rather be the flailing dork because frankly they seem to have a lot more fun in life and, I've realized, being unapologetically enthusiastic about something is actually kind of awesome. I'm not entirely sure what the next generation will take away from me, based on this conclusion, but I've also realized that I apparently belong to the group of people who try to teach a two year old how to say "mitochondria" so, if all else fails, I will lure the progeny to Science. [Insert mad cackling.]

That will be all.

1) The phrase "Important information inside! Open immediately." No longer has any meaning for me because they inevitably contain advertisement.

2) I forgot to water my mini-rose before I left for the conference and came back to find it dead. Graduate school has been absolutely terrible for practical horticulture.

3) While we're on the subject of food, I'll load photos of stuff I ate in New Orleans probably to Facebook. In the meantime I should mention that while here I've also tried kiwi berries (you can eat them peel and all) which are quite good and spaghetti squash, because it was on sale and the handy sticker on the thing actually includes instructions for how to cook it. I have the strangest urge to lecture it and ask it didn't it know that it's a melon and not a type of pasta and it doesn't really taste like pasta...but not quite like a melon either. It's good though.

Cathe persuaded me to try pumpkin smoothie ("It can't be scarier than Cajun food."). It's got pumpkin and soymilk in it, is sweeter than I would've liked, but is somehow not as weird as it sounds -- mostly it tastes like icy pumpkin pie filling. It does, however, makes me want to make some time to try to track down a good recipe for pumpkin bread.

Also: milk is icky, soy milk is very nice, almond milk it tolerable, but rice milk is ...kind of awful. 

Weirdest dream last week: Crime and Punishment and the Metamorphosis fusion, featuring Razumihin (is that the guy's name? Really tall guy who married the sister) being agitated and flailing around yelling at Rodya about how he's not a super-human, dammit, he's a cockroach, and Raskolnikov explaining that cockroaches are in fact superior beings and did you know they have really high tolerance for radiation? (Because my subconscious has been taken over by science, no matter what else may be going on in there at any given time). And there was someone who was either Gregor's (Gregor? The guy who turned into the bug) sister or Soniya, sobbing.

This entire dream may or may not have been inspired by the fact that I stepped on a giant cockroach in the hostel's kitchen.

My brain, guys.

Flying out to New Orleans tomorrow (one layover in Texas)! I have my trusty knapsack with my wallet and my poster tube of awesome with my poster. Everything else is pretty much secondary. That being said packing for business is definitely different than packing for pleasure: after some thought I'm not taking my sketchbook with me or my fancy camera (though I stuck my old Canon one in my suitcase because is small) but decided to include Ivy (there are keynote symposia that I will compulsively take notes at), so there will be internet access, at some point.

Labmate introduced me to goat milk candy! She brought something called "Aldama", described as "obleas con cajeta de leche" ("something milk" I told her, reading it; she laughed). It's something like caramel.

Grad school is apparently my time to be introduced to goat-based food products, what with the goat cheese in Crete and goat candy now. Neither of which are actually as weird as goats themselves. (Seriously goats are...physics defying, among other things.)

I should go hiking somewhere where I might see goats for the completion of the experience.

After some contemplation, I realized that most girl's dads probably don't sign their emails to their daughters "Regards, F." (F for Father.)

Families are Complicated.

So the weather prediction for New Orleans is going to be in the 80s.

Today: the lab microwave started random emitting sparks so we put it out of commission because no one was sure if we could heat up our gels without something exploding. Also, I learned via Tumblr that it is apparently possible to take off one's bra without removing the shirt first. When I find the time I will need to figure out how this is possible.

I was politely stalked by four different bees four separate times and my thesis adviser advised me to watch Casablanca. 

My life, guys.

(As in, the bees ignored my abandoned lunch & jacket & bag and followed me across the courtyard and to the building entrance where I closed the doors on their face while they buzzed anxiously outside and my labmates are unsympathetic and joked about pheromones.)
(I am not wearing perfume and have been avoiding food / floral scented shampoo & soaps for years now. They're not trying to sting me. They just keep trying to land on me.)
(The professor went from early endosome marker to Casablanca. I'm not quite sure how his brain works, either.)

I think our neighbor's spectrophotometer has a cricket living underneath it.
Warm autumn = crickets in doors?

Susan vs. fashion: the epic quest for pockets

Nearly all of you who know me in real life (as well as some of you who only know me from online) know of my continuous bemusement & frustration with fashion, the most recent of which is my on-going quest to find a suite (blazer +/- slacks) that I can wear to the conference in two weeks that a) fits and b) have pockets. It was an arduous journey fraught with treachery and well-meaning but confused sales reps and, until today, fruitless.

As I've posted to facebook: I have found a blazer with pockets. Victory is mine. 

Has "it will fit once you wash it" ever been the case for anyone? Because I am looking back in my memory and the fit-after-it-shrank has never worked out for me.

Soy milk is fine in nearly all forms and Almond Dream is okay but Rice Dream is vile.

Lab smells of paint and something floral.

Courtesy of the explosion and how our negative air pressure ventilation works it's been raining a small but steady amount of soot indoors these past few days. Today a bunch of guys came in near the end of the day and cleaned out the air vents with a mixture of chemicals and giant blow-dryers; I am now waiting for Claritin to kick in because I started to have and am having a mild allergic reaction to something and it's making me want to crawl out of my skin.

Labmate joked that she was getting high off of the fumes. I couldn't help but think how potentially dangerous it is to be high in a lab setting. Or, you know, it could lead to a scientific break-through.

Found cricket in bathroom. No idea where it came from or how it got there. Ended up stepping on it because it was jumping all over the place. Wish I hadn't put on my glasses because the hi-res view of the thing is actually incredibly creepy.

There is a cricket in my apartment. It is very loud.

Both my conference admission badge and the voter information guide came in today! I love it when things come on time.

This will degenerate into a rant about lab safety

So: I have a sprained toe (again) and a fairly recent dream where I had to get up at around 3am in the morning because a hurricane is blowing in and I had to save the flamingos by herding them into the shelter. I stayed (in the dream) until the (dream) morning and ended up having to drag a lot of giant tree bits out of the city hall / conference center place that the weather wrecked. On the plus side, this is far more interesting than dreaming about protein gels (which I did, before this). However, I haven't decided how I feel about the fact that flamingos have evidently infiltrated my subconscious.

And now we're going to move on to the lab safety portion, because as fascinating as my flamingo dream and oft-sprained toe are, they both kind of paled in comparison to real life, honest-to-goodness explosion.

My order of minicards from moo.com came in!

I ordered a set of half-cards for the career fair at the neurosci conference next month, along with a card holder, and right now I don't have a better way to describe them other than "helplessly adorable". Everything seems to be decent quality (though I'm having a bit of an issue putting the keyring on the card holder, on the plus side, that probably means it's not going to fall off by accident either), though I'll post back after the conference to let you guys know how well it traveled.

I also have 3 coupons that it came with for my friends. No really that's what the instructions say. moo.com to business cards, to me, is kind of like ThinkGeek for presents. It's just...shiny and cute. For my definition of cute. They're 15% off for the first order so if anyone's interested in them let me know -- they don't seem to come with expiration dates. (Also if you're a student with an .edu address there's an additional discount, which I duly took advantage of.) The print & delivery time is pretty quick too and they give you an exact date of arrival when you order ...and mine promptly came two days early.

The only downside is that for half cards the lowest number you can order is 100. It's pretty cheap, considering what I'm getting and the tons of options I got (I only have 2 designs for 100 but you can have 100 cards with...I forgot how many it is...10? Different designs printed on one side, in full color), but still, 100! What am I going to do with all of them?

Well we'll find out, I guess.

Microwaved bacon. Now everything microwaved smells of bacon. Cannot decide if this is an improvement.

Neighbor had a party last night. This morning I found an abandoned shoe in front of our place. It looks expensive. I wonder if I should try to return it?

On a completely unrelated note:
CURRY PUFFS! They're like less spicy, bite-sized samosas. I may have found a new addiction. 

Why brain, why?

I just had a dream where a couple of friends and I were at the zoo and one of them collapsed and was not breathing and there was no heartbeat. I asked one of them to call 911 and he handed me his phone so I ended up dialing but it turns out he was here to visit (we forgot) and the phone put us through to HIS local dispatcher and I found out when I said zoo and he asked to confirm if it's the zoo in XX city and I realized "sh*t, not local" and had to explain where we are, blanking momentarily on our location because I was so terrified, and then he transferred us to the local dispatcher and my friend's crappy cell phone connection cut out --

(Note: I've never had personally called 911 before so I have no idea if they transfer people if you called the wrong dispatcher to get to where you are or what. I would prefer never have to call 911.)

--at which point I just gave up and asked my other friend to call 911 because the person who's collapsed is just lying there and no one's DOING anything and my brain keeps screaming "brain damage in two minutes at me" (not strictly accurate -- it depends on age and temperature but it's more like 5 minutes) so I had to roll him over and try to perform CPR and it was REALLY frustrating because I kept explaining to the two who are not on the phone that they have to watch because I'll need help in a few minutes (approximately 10-15min before I start to get dizzy because my lung capacity's improved a little but not THAT much) because it isn't easy and the dispatcher takes time (average time depends on location but it's around 15-20min here) and they keep interrupting with questions like how's he doing (how do you THINK? I have to breathe and pump his heart for him) and just, UGH.

It was a very real dream. There was patches of dying-from-summer-heat grasses in the area near the entrance, kneeling on the cement is uncomfortable, and my fingers were shaking so badly that it took me two tries to get 911 (dialed 6 by accident the first time).

On the plus side, I correctly remembered to curl my fingers correctly, the depth of compression, and the 2 breath per 30 compression rule. Congrats, Red Cross, you have managed to instill information all the way into my subconscious. Now we just have to wait for another nightmare to see if the first-aid part took.

Actually no, dear powers that be, if you are listening, I would like to petition to have Friday and Saturday nights be nightmare-free-zone. Because otherwise I end up awake at 7am on the weekend and unable to go to sleep because it's bright outside and I have too much adrenaline burning through me-- its half-life might be about 2-3 minutes but I think it takes up to 30min to clear my system and I'm jittery for about an hour afterwords. This is not conductive to my plans to sleep-in at least until 8am on the weekends.

He was honestly trying to be comforting

Thesis adviser: "You can't survive in science unless you have thick skin. It's actually worse than in politics, because in politics your friends will stick up for you, even if you are a jerk."

Followed by something along the lines of "in science your friends are supposed to be your harshest critics because they're supposed to help you succeed by giving you their honest opinion &c &c".

...is it so egregious to want friends whom I can depend on for both honesty and moral support? I did not ask this out loud, because it sounds like the sort of thing that will prompt an "if you are a REAL scientist" sort of rant.

And of course, if you're not REALLY serious about Science, that makes you a Bad Scientist.

I miss the days when being a bad scientist meant someone doing bad science (i.e. producing sloppy unreproducible results / running badly designed experiments / fail to ask the right scientific questions).

Well that was different

This morning on my way to the bus stop I was waylaid by an unknown young man who tried to offer me a ride in his truck to the beach.

1) It sounds like the start of a joke. It FELT like the start of a joke -- especially since I initially thought he was asking for directions.

2) This wouldn't have been too shocking, I suppose, if it was in the evening, but this happened around 7:30am. Mornings are quiet time. It (the context) was confusing.

3) It vaguely made me think of that scene from Disney's Aladdin. Except instead of Aladdin and a flying carpet I got a boy in tank top and a white pickup truck on a thankfully public street. (Oh geez a pickkup truck why.) (Huh, given the thing with strange man showing up on her bedroom balcony unannounced, at night, I suddenly understand why she keeps a tiger as a pet.) (Though for the parents out there: despite of what Disney says, tigers do not make appropriate pets for your daughters so, for the safety of you and yours, just get her a dog. Mutts tends to be less neurotic and hardier than purebreds.) I think there's some kind of connotation about guys offering girls rides. I'm still working on figuring out when people are talking with metaphors and when they're talking about this sort of things literally.

4) What is he even trying to accomplish??? As I've mentioned, it was around 7:30am in the morning. The only people I see around that time are shift-workers, students, and occasional senior citizens. Maybe he's well meaning and genuinely in the habit of offering random rides to strangers (that early in the morning?), but can you imaging him dropping off random shift-workers, students, and seniors at the beach? What. 

Conclusion: it was strange and people are weird. 

In which I have sudden sympathy with John

Adventures with the self checkout machine:

Me: scanned an item and put it in bagging area.
Machine: "Unexpected item in the bagging area! Please remove item."
Me: removes item.
Machine: "Item has been removed from bagging area! Please return item."
Me: puts item back.
Machine: "Unexpected item in the bagging area! Please remove item."
Me: removes item.
Machine: "Item has been removed from bagging area! Please return item."
Repeat.

Out of order machines are SUCH fun when you're the one to discover that it's out of order.

Trying to buy a lighter weight gi but everything is unisex cut and I am, according to the height by weight chart, in between sizes. My female classmate says that it fits well if you're slender hipped...but what does that even mean? I'm trying to google what waist to hip ratio would qualify as slender hipped but I keep getting these things about healthy weight, the importance thereof, and how to flatter slender hips which is supremely unhelpful. I tend to get pants one size up from the tops in anything that comes as a set, but this is not an option here...so I guess I'll buy everything one size bigger and wash the top in really hot water or something, because that's the benefit of buying things that are 100% cotton.

Labcoats, gis, nerdy t-shirts...everything's unisex cut and I'm nearly always in between sizes. Why is this?

On the other hand I remembered to finally print out the forms to register to vote! (Yeeeeaaaaah democracy.)

I hate for this to be the first thing I'm posting here after regaining coherency, but is it me or have there been a lot of earth tremors today?

Strangely fascinating

Is it possible to get sunburn on your toes?

I need to get that paper out stat

I woke up this morning and realized that 5 years will be the longest I've ever spent at one school, ever, and even at 4 years that's ties for being the longest at one school thus far, given that if I define the last day that I spent at the school as the Last Day the breakdown of my childhood is:

3-4
4-5
6-9*
9-10
10-10
11*
12-13*
14-17*
18-20*
21-now*

This is....strangely frightening. 

---------------------
*Note: I'm counting my age as of the Last Day, and since my birthday's in the summer, the asteriks marks all the schools where I entered in the beginning of the school year, like everyone else, as opposed to being dropped in the middle. I guess what they say about people settling down / getting more stable as they get older is true. For some variation of it.

I can math, REALLY

Moment of Stupid today:

Classmate asked me how old I was and I literally could not remember -- tried to calculate it in my head (for some reason kept thinking I was older than I am), which unfortunately happened in the middle my attempt to do put his wrist in a lock-hold and thus the spectacular failure of both the math and the lock-hold. Apparently I can't access both the math portion and the muscle memory portion of my brain at the same time. Or maybe I can but I just need to wait for the other bit to become actual muscle memory (intrinsic instead of extrinsic knowledge). In either case there was a moment where there was someone else's hand right in my face and I literally stood there because I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with it.

...and then we both burst out laughing because it was really ridiculous.

In other news there was a spontaneous lecture on the difference between research in neurdevelopment and neurodegeneration today, by yours truly, because a classmate showed interest, so score one for the fandot.

Sometimes there is no explanation

A while ago I mentioned that I was going to write a post about bullying and the time feels about right tonight.

Bullying is one of those things that is shared across cultures and according to news media people use to consider it to be a rite of passage of sorts until the more recent years, where the string of suicides had made people realize that maaaaaaybe we should find safer rites of passage.

For a while I was considering whether or not to write about it because, let's face it, most of the people I know who reads this share similar political and philosophical views with me, and anything I say will be preaching to the choir. Then I realized that maybe I should talk about it because my friends are at the stage where they are getting married and having children, the oldest child is around two, and the concept of bullying and discrimination is something that is taught, if not by parents, then by society and media, in which case a passing explanation that Bullying is Bad is not enough to combat it. People have noticed an active role in parental teachings, not just in what is right and wrong, but what are the correct actions, or what should be done, does make immense difference in how children treat others in school. That takes extra time. That takes extra effort. Both of which are hard to give for an abstract problem. By which I mean yes, there are starving children in the world, but it's abstract -- how many of us lose sleep over it. So I wanted to make it more personal, because it is personal for me, so I hope the people close to me, at least, could see why it's a big deal and can hopefully make the extra effort. And then I felt all my preaching is getting...not so much condescending as well...as someone who doesn't plan to procreate, how much right do I have to lecture others on how to deal with their toddlers? Which led to me second guessing how much of the delay (because this post has been years in coming but I just wasn't ready to talk about it until more recently) is just me being cowardly...which led to more second guessing...which led me to conclude that, okay, I'm just going to write this, and people can make of it what they will.

So let me use many many words to tell you why the phrase "bullying builds character" has always bothered me, since I learned enough English to understand it....

I am continually shocked whenever my experiments work like they're supposed to.

I wonder if I can print this out as a flyer...

7 things extroverts should know about their introvert friends. Courtesy of tumblr.

I'm going to take a moment and be deeply, immensely grateful for the invention of emails, IM, and text messaging. And the internet in general. I mean I would be, incredible as it may seem, even more of a loner if it weren't for our technology since, unless I implied / promised that I would call someone, it takes nothing less than family emergency and me nearing a potential melt down for me to even call a close friend.

My thesis adviser doesn't get it. He's all "Oh you have trouble reaching so-and-so? Call them" while in my head my first reaction will always be "ASDF!@#% NNOOOOooooooooooooooo."

So: thank you, text-based information networks.

My day began with tea, oreos, and blueberries.

I am baking a chocolate cake.

The lone professor has finally (!) signed the paperworks.

I don't even have to go to lab today. 

I am going to sit around and doodle things in my sketchbook until the cake is done. And then I will have cake. And I will eat it too. 

...can I declare this my birthday weekend instead?

So the professor approved of the slides but apparently didn't sign off on anything.

I'd headdesk if my desk isn't covered with notes and binders and pens that are in danger of losing their equilibrium.

Hey my powerpoint slides finally passed or maybe he just ran out of patience but most likely both as in it got closer to what he wanted and he doesn't want to deal with me anymore but either way he's going to sign the paperwork and then I won't have to deal with him for another year hallelujah I feel like I won.

The award for the most bizarre songs to get stuck in my head during protein gel, to date, now goes to the Mary Poppins soundtrack.

Dear Brain, what are you doing?

You can actually put anything in it, it just may not taste right

Today a random man poked me on the bus and asked if I "cooked Japanese or Chinese food". Then he wanted to know if I cook it at home. Then he wanted to know the name of "you know, those roll...things...that you fry..." and then he wanted to know if you put vegetables in spring rolls.

The strangest part of this conversation was that usually when I don't feel like dealing with people I put on my earphones and people leave me alone, but somehow this gentleman decided to persist and initiate physical contact which was...okay, more than a little irritating.

Here's a hint: if someone is wearing earphones and giving you short, terse answers? She doesn't actually want to talk to you. Please respect her wishes. Thank you kindly.

(Thankfully he didn't initiate until just before my bus stop so I escaped via leaving bus and didn't have to deal with "Sorry, I'm not interested in talking to you nor do I find your attention flattering" ordeal.)

Why's it always beetles

Kept meaning to update and even made notes to myself about what to write but these days experiments are going 7 days a week and things are kinda busy so when I do get a free moment I feel more like drawing to unwind than writing (which requires more brain cells, not to mention grammar). However, I'm currently logging back in to report that I've been hearing this weird noise tonight that, for the longest time, I thought were noises due to things being piled precariously, as they shifted weight. That sometimes happen. However they don't happen that frequently. As in once every five minutes. Turns out? The noise was weird because I've never hear the sound made by a really massive beetle bouncing off the ceiling (sometimes literally, it seems a bit directionally challenged).

After initial flailing (late night battles with beetles are one of those few moments in life where I remember fondly of living with my parents and am not happy to be an independent woman, because I can no longer make my dad go deal with it) I actually managed to successfully herd the massive beetle of massiveness back out the door, alive and no worse for the wear (meaning the beetle -- I was very cranky at this point).

Except then somehow, within the next fifteen minutes the beetle managed to find its way back in through a warp in the bottom of the door frame. (Was going to wait till winter again before getting landlady to fix it.) I was dozing off when I heard the distinctive clicking of its wings. So yeah: directionally challenged. At this point I'm exhausted and lost all patience with this particular arthropod -- if you can't be bothered to stay alive after I went out of my ways to help you then -- well---

--I smacked it with a rolled up magazine. Quite a few times, actually. It didn't do a darn thing. Have I mentioned it was massive? With massive hard shells covering its wings?

Herding wasn't working because of the directionally challenged thing, so eventually I gave up and hauled out the vaccum cleaner, sucked it up, and deposited it in the bathroom and closed the door because I just can't deal with it anymore. I wanted sleep.

Then I sat down on my bed and realized that all that flailing and vacuuming had made me quite wide awake so now I'm on my computer blogging about it.

I don't want to go out when it's chilly and kind of damp and walk to the unlit garbage area where there are even more insect to free a beetle that will probably find its way back somehow, anyway, because the thing is out of its little beetle mind.

I also don't exactly fancy the idea of a massive beetle incubating inside my vacuum cleaner either.

Perhaps if I need to use the bathroom later tonight I will be attacked by the ghost or not-so-ghostly beetle. It is possible. And if I were to perish mysteriously within the next ...oh eight hours or so, I want "death by beetle" in my eulogy somewhere, got it? Good.

Conformity approved

Remodeling of lab is done, except it isn't -- there are parts of our ventilation that are different from the blueprint the construction workers got (read: a result of the duct-tape and glue patch-ups that have happened over the past decade), which meant that the crew is still wandering around, causing massive panic when they get lost in our building and propose to seal off a lab when they, in fact, meant the lab one floor up.

Good things

I have returned from my vacation and my brain's sporadic interpretation of the ground swaying like the boat on the ocean to inform you, my dear readers, that I have discovered really good mint green tea today, totally by accident, when Lucy and I were recovering from Comic-Con by the way of lunch. It came from a plastic bottle. It shouldn't be this good. It was. It also read, on its packaging:

We found this great flavor while traveling through Morocco on bicycles. Our folks weren't very excited about the semester of class we missed, but at least we came home with the most delicious tea recipe ever...and a couple of kilim rugs for our college apartment.

...we are still inspired by Clayton's granny, "Mimi," who taught us never to use ingredients we can't pronounce. We hope you have as much fun drinking our tea as we have making it.

<3

It's called "Sweet Leaf green tea", mint and honey flavor. If you like mint-flavored things or tea flavored things even remotely I'd highly recommend it!

So this topped off a day where I stopped by the Peanuts booth when they were doing signings and Vicki Scott drew Marcie for me. Which topped a weekend where Lucy came over. Which topped off a week of vacation. 

...at which point I said, screw it, it's late on a Sunday and I'm not going into lab. One more day will not make that much of a difference to the overall progress of my work but it will make a lot of difference on my happiness this month, when I look back on it, years from now because, right now? I find myself almost bewilderingly happy with Life, the Universe and everything. 

(My God, what is in that tea?)

OH MY GOD

In the light of my post on Jul. 6th, this feels like some kind of karmic coincidence.

Thesis comic...in two minutes...but Jorge Cham of PhD Comics.

Going on a boat tomorrow & our room's starboard!

I am declaring war against the English language. We are at an impasse.

...can I draw my entire dissertation as a cartoon? CAN I.

Writing: day 2

It's really hard to spell multiple sclerosis for some reason. Also, I've migrated by to being on the chair but the curtain needs to be closed because otherwise my screen is too shiny.

I am writing the discussion part (only bit left besides the methods section) right now, and I have a strong urge to discuss how manuscript writing is really educational for the grad student but really hard on the eyes. All that staring at the screen, you know?

Oh God I need a nap.

Manuscript writing, 8 hours in

I just compared Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) to tumbleweeds to my PI (it made sense in my head at the time). Also: I need more tea.

Manuscript writing, 4 hours in

Have migrated from chair to floor. Referenced only 2 papers so far and consumed only 1 cup of tea. Already feels jittery and have started googling terms because I am starting to forget what is a legitimate biological term and what is made-up. (The distinction is fuzzier than you'd think.) Lunch break, methinks. 

...

Went in for a talk with one of my committee members about a part of my project as well as future career plans. During the talk she made a comment about how my logic is "different". It's not an insult or a compliment -- just a matter-of-fact observation. Yet, somehow, it made me feel inexplicably lonely -- more so than anything else anyone's said to me within the past year.

Asdf

Newly discovered item on the list of "Things You Never Want to Hear Your PI Say":

"I'm not sure if he (other senior professor) is doing this to you to make some sort of point to me...".

In which I find html codes of things

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Outside of Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples", this is probably the best vampire story that I've ever read. It's genuinely creepy, and while the plot is well done and the story is well-written in a stark style that reminds me of GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, one of the things that stood out is how well the author set up the atmosphere of each scene. There was a fairly large cast of characters and, about half way through the book, all their lives suddenly click together, onto a collision-course track, things speed up, and the book becomes horrifying riveting. By which I mean that this story is much more gory than things I typically read (though less gory than some of the SANDMAN stuff or my brief encounter with Stephen King's tales) but I was so invested that I couldn't stop. That being said, this is as much as psychological horror story as macabre horror, if not more so, and the other thing that was REALLY WELL DONE was how REAL and 3-D each of the characters are, to the point that, near the last quarter of the book, the story had moved on from scary to wrenching. Not sure if this should be an addition to my bookshelves, but it's definitely one of those books that is worth reading from cover to cover at least once.

Well that was exciting. Not.

Adventures in remodeling: construction crew did something that took out the power for our entire floor for around 15 minutes. Unfortunately this was right in the middle of my series of three minute incubations.

...I wonder if this counts as a valid excuse for unreplicable data.

Okay I lied

I didn't post the full quote / discussion that happened yesterday, or why it made me so upset. It's actually kind of ridiculous and in, one sense, I suppose I brought it on myself. On the other hand, I seriously was not expecting focusing on facts would be an issue, as a junior scientist.

Warning for long post and emotions all over the place. 

...I give up

After my presentation the senior professor (also chair of our department) told me that I'm "too rational". He meant it as a criticism. So.

To everyone who's ever told me to "stop being so rational &c &c": at this point I think we can safely conclude that there's no hope for me.

Tomorrow's Wendy's last day in lab. I've inherited a fraction of her reagents (since she's one of the few people whose reagents I trust) as well as the bottle of Blue Water. I have three different experiments to finish and we have to consolidate the mice in the vivarium after my one hour long presentation.

In conclusion, tomorrow will end with me both exhausted and depressed.

I am going to watch Legend of Korra and drown in tea.

Unpleasant discovery: I'm not thick-skinned enough for academia.

Dear Professor-Who-Shall-Remain-Anonymous,

A lab that has consistently only one female member over the years is not a lab that is "bucking the trend" (the trend that you have helpfully pointed out as having 60% of the incoming grad students be female), it's a lab that has failed to buck the convention, since the convention , anywhere from 20-50 years ago, is a ratio of something like one female per medium sized lab.

Sincerely,

Me.

I wander through lab areas so frequently that the construction crew recognizes me. By "recognize" I mean commenting bemusedly that "Hey, you work here everyday!".

Yes, yes I do.

I just wrote "dismal cause" instead of "distal cause" by accident. Brain needs break and it's still morning. WHY.

Does anyone else think that "the optic density of your sneeze" sounds like it could be some kind of a band name?

Mini blow-torches

I often have many things going on at once, and this turned out to be one of those weeks where it felt like too much, with this kind of result. (I will, I fear, have to be lab both days this weekend, which feels like a minor tragedy at this point.) --it is a frustrating week too: I made two really really stupid mistakes, which caused two separate experiments to fail, and the thing that I was sort of painting on my off time as a way to distress just refused to out right (I mean that it's much much worse than the usual "it looks nothing like what it did in my mind") so I ended up starting over for the third time. 

Darn

Okay I'm switching Ivy from Fedora to Ubuntu. The latest version update had an issue with SE Linux that just drove me crazy and made me realize that everyone I know who uses Fedora are comp sci people for a good reason -- I have neither the time nor the energy to learn Linux "properly" (as opposed to via google whenever I have more than 30 minutes free and feel like it). I'm not comfortable enough to operate a computer via command-line and basically eschew 90% of the GUI -- I mean, I haven't kept up with the coding side of things since when C was popular. (Oh dear God I'm so outdated -- who still uses C these days??) and all the mods that I want to do just isn't going to happen on my schedule.

So: Ubuntu it is. Still Linux, still good enough for small projects should I ever find the time, still open source, but a whole lot more user-friendly for none-code-savvy.

Career choice should not be an exercise in Dadaism

I have traumatized yet another grad-student-to-be, methinks.

Couple of things

These things relate to each other only in the sense that they relate to me. Though there's a sort-of book review at the bottom.

Well that was fast

Parents have already killed off one of the guilt-lavenders.

One of those days, apparently

Today I got a ticket for a vehicle registration sticker that I carried in the gloves compartment but utterly failed to put on the license plate on time. 

This is why I shouldn't be allowed to procrastinate -- I'll end up forgetting things and then get fined by the police.

Also, here's the exciting scoop from the campus!

Power to the campus was disrupted ... The cause of the disruption was a transformer, which caught fire at the east campus power station. The switching equipment in the station was severely damaged.

Another thing people don't really warn you about: halting all lab work because something suddenly caught on fire. 

This is me, emoting

As someone whose research (and stipend) comes from NIH, I'm required to go through regular "ethics training" which, for someone at my stage of career, means discussion / seminars. This morning we had one on retractions and authorships and make no mistake, it was a good talk, but.

There was this one area of the discussion that bothered me. Enough to post about, even.

To be fair

First of all, I would like to link to this comic. (Thank you, Lucy, for linking me.)

The other week when I went in for my physical I saw the same person that I asked about whether or not there could be something physiologically wrong with me, to result in asexuality, and was told "no". (I will not lie: I was relieved. Terrified, but relieved.) She wanted to know how I was doing (well) and whether or not the LGBT center she recommended was helpful and I was trying to explain to her that the LBGT people are very nice but the focus is still on SEXUAL attraction that's outside the norm, rather than the lack thereof. (Though I think she did make a note when I told her that I found the online community for ace to be very supportive. I can only hope that if someone comes to her, in the future, with the same questions she'll now be able to provide an additional resource.)

People are confusing with their naming of peppers

Dear all,

Today I have discovered the recipe for vegetarian chili. I have no idea what it's actually supposed to taste like but I like my version, so I'm going to count it as a win.

I also watched The Illusionist (2010 one) and my God, it's depressing. Think Mary and Max, but without the death and the hopeful ending. (Yeah you'd think it'd be happier without people dying but there's no redemption...just the slow fall of the curtain. Geez I need to find a happy short story or something, now, to balance my psyche.)  Really beautiful work though -- a style as unique as that of The Secret of Kells, and if it's a little slow paced -- well, it suits the mood. (Though it does make it feel even more like I'm steeped in melancholy.) (And now I'm going to imagine the rabbit went off on its own and learned magic tricks to perform for other rabbits and it was a success to make myself feel better.)

Earlier this morning the air was strangely warm and saturated with droplets somewhere between a mist and a drizzle.

My mind supplied: "Today the weather is like the kraken!"

I laughed all the way to the bus stop.

Would this be post-modern something or the other?

Photo from mother, title of which loosely translates to "Your dad's strange sense of aesthetics."

For those who are wondering, the vase contains green onion.

That's right. Green onion. Of the variety that people sell in supermarkets that is usually harvested well before they start flowering. Also? It's giant. I see a running theme here with my father and giant fruiting bodies of things that didn't get harvested on time. Like that giant turnip-seedpod-tree. Seriously, what is he doing that the flower stalks always ends up huge??

The construction crew (from the group that's remodeling our lab building's ventilation) came through today for a quick survey of the grounds. I promptly lost all will to regard the remodeling with anything other than a sense of impending doom.

I also think no one's ever explained "shared lab space" to the workers before.

Guilt plants and sudden genetic

For those of you who are familiar with the term "guilt plants", some of you may recall that my parents accidentally killed the lavender I had in the backyard and so were very eager to make amends. After asking me which type I preferred and I emailed them back the species & cultivar names (common names are kind of iffy for all plants because people tend to just call things whatever) they realized that they had trouble finding the type we had or the types I wanted and so I just told them to not worry about it. Except.

Rambutans are strange.

And how many grams of reagent is this worth, exactly?

Roughly two weeks ago my lab got a trial sample of a new formula for a common reagent from a vendor, which my labmate tried out and then recommended for me to try out.

I ran an experiment with it, it worked really well, and in a fit of data-induced ecstasy (or possibly I was just giddy from the beauty of those melt curves) I sent back a quip to the labmate via email -- something about magical properties, I believe.

Turns out? Labmate thought it was funny. In fact, labmate thought it was funny enough that she forwarded the email to the vendor sales rep. Who somehow decided that he should forward it to the marketing department.

So today, in a completely novel and unexpected turn of events, the sales rep turned up while I was mid-experiment, holding a sample in each hand, and wanted to know if the company can use my email for their product advertisement. 

I blinked at him slowly over the tabletop centrifuge while my labmate made apologetic faces and other labmates looked on in confusion and decided that, "Wow, this is really awkward."

He was very smiley and left me his business card (which was was shiny as his teeth) and said I should get in touch should I decide that the answer is "yes." I'm left wondering what the hell just happened -- or at least until I remembered that oh right: two samples still need to be processed.

The lab's opinion so far seems to be that if I'm allowed to remain anonymous as the source, I should see if I can somehow leverage this to get more free or reduce-priced reagents for lab. I should mention that the professor is not aware of any of this. Yet.

On one hand: What. 

On the other hand: this is really hilarious.

Today the thesis adviser asked me for something that I threw away last Friday afternoon.

Note to self: pippeting all week + balancing giant camera on weekend = bad idea.

It's really hard to write / draw without bending my wrist.

At this rate I really will need to by a wrist brace.

Professorial duties and tests of limit

Quote from friend on why she's not planning to become a professor: "I don't want to my goal in life to be making other people feel stupid."

(...well, considering the job of a professor in training scientists is, in theory, to find where our limits are and to push us past them....) (In our program it seems to be, by consensus, a yearly pushing until we fall flat on our face and then wait, and then setting the point where we fail to get back up as the new limit.) (Have I mentioned that it's almost time for my yearly committee meeting? I'm told that I'm being pushed harder because I can "take it", which has yet ceased to be equally flattering and terrifying.)

It's a perfectly valid goal.

A strange form of feminism

I've had too much tea, am in a writing mood, and am sick of people saying that feminists are "just" women who are bitter because they don't have a (good) boyfriend, are not "real" women, etc. I realized that I've never talked about this explicitly before, but I'm going to attempt to explain what my definition of a "feminist" is, why I would refer to myself as one, and why I think it's necessary. And then I will ramble off target and be confused at what some people are saying because, what? People. Seriously. What. 

Right, here we go.

Well that was...enlightening

Considering that half of the plasmids in lab contains the promoter of a member of herpes virus family (cytomegalovirus, in case anyone's wondering) and that all non-undergrad members have to do regular animal husbandry, breeding, and colony maintenance, it's a wonder that I haven't posted anything more risque up to this point.

Well, time to amend that, I suppose.

Okay, parents have decided to treat me this birthday with a cruise. I can take a week off maximum and the port will have to be from LA or SD. Ideas? (We're thinking Mexico.)

Have gleefully discovered that shimejis are still visible on screen even when you put your powerpoint slides to presentation mode. Am currently entertaining visions of presenting my data with little Sherlock scaling up the side of the screen (though I don't think anyone in my lab would recognize the BBC reincarnation of Holmes & Watson) during the informal lab meetings.

10:55am
Attacked by protein sample.

...well I'm not buying that brand of flip-cap tubes ever again.

Fandot

Gave a impromptu lecture to personal banker at the banking center on campus today, on the topic of genetic mutation. He displayed gratifying interest. Or at least he said that it was cool as opposed to giving me the glazed look that so many undergrads demonstrated when I tried to explain nearly the same thing to them a few years ago.

Sometimes I feel like being in biology is like being in an obscure fandom. There're a decent number of people who's heard it in passing but only a small number of dedicated fans and you know it'll never be "cool" enough or "mainstream" enough to catch on, even if you think it's the greatest thing in the world. And then in the rare occasions when you manage to share your love with someone without scaring them away in the process, and then that person shows interest (or fakes interest due to personal agenda), it makes your day.

Careless handling is not a cause for rejection

Found ancient vial of dead pupa and two tennis balls behind desk. V. curious as no one before me in our lab and no lab who has occupied the same space prior to our lab has ever worked with flies.

The title of this post is taken from the wrapper of a part of an equipment. No one's quite sure of what it means.

This used to be a longer post started yesterday that I accidentally "deleted" (it's not actually deleting that I did) and now can't retrieve so I'll just summarize it this far and add that one of my classmate's graduating this June! Or at least he's defending. He's from a comp-bio lab so it's not that surprising that he's the first from my class to graduate (not having to wait four months for mice for each experiment will speed some things up). However what this means for the rest of us is this:

The countdown towards graduation for the entering class of 2008 has officially started.

Whiplash

Have started using this bar of fancy triple-milled soap this week and have just discovered that the soap has fused itself to my bathtub. Application of water has failed to dissolve bond. Current strategy: dry for a minimum of 12 hours before applying knife.

Sometimes, life is forcing bacteria to express a mouse gene and finding an isoform where no one in the world has found it before.

Other times, life is...soap fused to the bathtub.

(Or, in my friend's case: finding the causes of cerebellar hypoplasia and getting spaghetti sauce smeared all over you by your excitable but uncoordinated toddler.)

And here I thought we're past the age of George Eliot

I'm cross-posting this a bunch of places because feminism happens to be one of those things that I feel strongly about, and here's another reason why I think it's necessary:

One of my favourite children’s authors is J.K. Rowling. Her Harry Potter series are some of the most successful children’s books ever written, so much so that as many adults as children have read them. But, as a woman writer, Rowling struggled to get these books published. Initially, despite the fact that her main character is a boy, publishers rejected her manuscript because they were worried boys wouldn’t read a book written by a woman. This biased perception continued even once she secured a contract, and she was ultimately made to conceal her sex by use of the two initials J.K. -from Jump!

Which brings me to the A Mighty Girl site. This is essentially their mission statement:

After years of seeking out empowering and inspirational books for our four young nieces, we decided to create A Mighty Girl as a resource site to help others equally interested in supporting and celebrating girls.

Girls do not have to be relegated to the role of sidekick or damsel in distress; they can be the leaders, the heroes, the champions that save the day, find the cure, and go on the adventure. It is our hope that these high-quality children’s products will help a new generation of girls to grow and pursue whatever dreams they choose -- to truly be Mighty Girls! 

Okay so "Mighty Girl" is kind of a tacky name, but I really like what they're doing and an easy way to show them support is just to mention them in your blog / twitter / tumblr /whatever or "Like" them on Facebook, so I'm doing that and hope that those of you who are still following this will take a moment to do so as well.
 

Ah the Monday morning Facebook check

Seriously, I think I spend 90% of my time waiting for things to reach the right temperature. But anyway, here are two quotes that I will share from my classmate:

"I've never been this excited to run a PCR before except I know the result has a 99% chance of being negative because science is a bastardy bastard coated in bastard icing and filled with bastard filling."

To which her friend replied that that was why success tastes so sweet....  

And  then there's the part where she commented that the results will cause either extreme elation or extreme depression that will "resolve itself into apathetic acceptance by tomorrow". 

With that feeling in mind, I invite all my non-PhD friends to take a look at the PhD movie site (and trailer). Online streaming is available now and I highly recommend it because it's got both heart and humor and explains the life of a graduate student better than I ever could. (Also I like the soundtrack.)

And as I and many of my classmates can tell you, part of the appeal for those of us who are in the middle of our dissertation process (I have another presentation this Wednesday) is that so many of the jokes in both the comic and movie are sad but true, and this is an on-going reminder that other people have gone through what we've gone through and that we're not alone. It's less of a "misery loves company" thing at this point and more of a feeling of solidarity. Solidarity is nice. 

New bottle of soy sauce has a pull-to-open seal with a ring attached for pulling. The ring detached when I pulled it.

Hypothesis 1): I am bad at pulling these sort of rings in the intended direction.

Hypothesis 2): These ring-things are flawed in design.

(Eventually the bottle was opened by abusing a small-medium-ish screw driver by inserting the flat tip against the raised area of the seal and exerting force down then up. Couldn't help but feel opening a bottle should require less effort than this.)

Maybe I'll learn tailoring someday

My long sleeve tees are developing holes in them. Given that I've had some of them since high school, this is probably not surprising. I could just order more long-sleeve tees online, except I like nice dress shirts and would like to get more of them but that would mean the horrors of Physically Shopping.

Heaters are good for drying shoes

So many facets of my life seems to boil down to "don't know what I'm doing, but keep going anyway" and then somehow, things magically get better. (Well, to be fair, occasionally pivoting helps provided I don't accidentally elbow someone in the face.)

Tried to get rid of the last of the wine by making wine cake. Sadly the batter tastes much better than the actual cake. (Get rid of the leavening agents and  use it as mix for gelato instead, y/y?) 

Have discovered that when I turn on the heater (what's with the weather, by the way?) the carbon monoxide light will flash. Not red or green, but white. The alarm doesn't actually sound however. Hunted up the instruction manual left from that day and discovered that the only copy left for me was, incidentally and inexplicably, in Spanish. And contains no information on what does the light mean if it's not red or green though now I know the words for "digital display".

In the meantime, have a song about Nicola Tesla. 

Dear property manager (not landlady, note) came in at some time today and installed a carbon monoxide alarm. Given that our building already has a series of fire alarms that gets set off accidentally about every week and that I need to disable the fire alarm in order to bake anything over 375F, hopes of peace and quiet is probably futile at this point.

Absolutely hysterical:

(From here. )

Have discovered green tea with peach and ginger. This has been a very good morning.

Also to add, randomly, that my current phone doesn't have a timer (have checked a while ago, yeah). It has an alarm clock that I suppose you can use as a timer but it's just not the same. 

Random post

You know what I miss? A watch that comes with a built in timer.

Undergrad asked me if sodium hydroxide makes an acid or a base.

I asked her to repeat the question because I thought I'd heard wrong.

Nope, I didn't hear wrong.

There are so many things wrong with being asked this question by a bio-major who has been working in a lab regularly I don't even-

For knowledge! ...Or something....

Time-point experiments are truly awful things that we do to ourselves in the name of science, but they're even more ghastly, I've discovered, when the scientist happens to live an hour's bus ride away from her lab.

It's far too early in the week for me to feel this tired.

Though to be fair, it could've been much worse -- if it weren't from Anita I might've had to crash overnight in the student's lounge in the library basement. (Better option, still, than the couches in the lobby area, given how our lobby area's all glass and there are all these lights that I'm pretty sure can't be turned off.)

...if this experiment doesn't work I'm going to be so incredibly frustrated. 

...okay?

So for some reason it's April Fool's day and the English (or at least the American?) version of Google is perfectly normal...but the Chinese (or at least the Xiang-Gang / Hongkong) version is...um...

...underwater. (As Neil Gaiman directed, click on the "I feel lucky" button, repeat 3x.)

(April Fool's definitely not a Chinese holiday.)
(Google why are you so adorable?)

But while speaking of stuff that Mr. Gaiman's posted, I wanted to share this Dalek relaxation tape.

Yep, you saw that right, A Dalex relaxation tape. 

...thought I must confess that they have one of the least soothing intonations I've ever heard. (Don't tell me you didn't spent the entire clip waiting for the word "exterminate". I know I did.)

But I fear she's not really paying attention

Dear Undergrad,

Yes you can borrow my stuff. In fact, I told you you that you may, without asking me each time but, as I've also told you multiple times now, please put back the stuff where you found it. This is not a difficult concept. Stop stashing my scissors and reagents and what-have-you in your drawers and yours boxes (where no one can find them when they're in the middle of their experiments and need them) when you're done. They're not yours, they are mine and mine to share with the lab. It's been over two years' worth of reminders and I know you're leaving lab this June but for the love of God or science or whatever you believe in, please show some common courtesy until then.

Your very irate labmate,

Me.

Blue nerds

Quick post to share this link. (It's...flash comic about industrial pollution in China at this point, I guess. I think the author explains it better in the notes.) It works as a stand-alone.

...that nursery rhyme from the beginning...I must've learned it before the age of four (because it pre-dates boarding school) and my parents know it because of me, and I just realized that I knew the first two lines of the second stanza...for some reason I've forgotten that until I saw the comic.

Last time my mother went to Beijing and stayed for more than two weeks she got asthma because of the air quality. Thankfully there is a movement toward environmental awareness and pollution, which got a large boost because of the Olympics (needs, must) and so there's some improvement these days. (Though if you're in Beijing you still can't really see the stars due to light pollution.)

There's definitely seratonin around now

So: the science fair was awesome.

That being said, there were some issues of communication between the volunteer transport and the police (they had to cord off part of the streets for the fair but they were supposed to let the volunteer shuttles through) so that the shuttle drop off/ pick up point for us kept getting changed while we were waiting for our transport. So there was a lot of walking and crankiness.

But, an hour later, I finally managed to get home and rewarded myself by making French toast stuffed with cream cheese and strawberries and honey (idea from the super fancy mango-mascarpone-toast that I had last time Lucy and I went out for breakfast) to go with heavily honeyed tea so now I'm adrift in a sea of carb-induced bliss.

Have to go and deal with chores in a hour, but in the meanwhile: exercise + loads of starch & sugar = at peace with the world.

Key points of fair this year as noticed by me: elephant-brain-hat, live owl, live reptiles & tarantulas & squirrel, DNA extraction from strawberry, analysis of your snot, make-your-own skateboard (by lottery) booth, basket-ball-sized maze-navigating robots, something mysteriously small but definitely aerodynamic. Oh and balloon animals. Er. Molecules.

Why does our lab have cheesecloth?

It's like a sneeze that doesn't come

After spending all of yesterday (as well as part of the evening) obsessing over my cloning experiment, my subconscious provided me with a dream that involves baking. Very specifically about putting shredded coconut in frosting. The baking part I understand because, all jokes aside, baking is  really a lot like setting up an experiment in a molecular biology lab. Even the frosting I can understand. But why, I wondered during breakfast this morning, why coconuts? Not knowing bothered me.

Possible explanations, I concluded while brushing my teeth, are the following:
Zebrafish >> tropical >> coconuts
Fruit fly >>coconut oil (via information retained from classmate's talk) >> coconuts

What makes somewhat less sense is the connection with mice, because:
Mouse>> ??? >>coconuts

(For the record, the mice I work with are black in color.)

The mind is a truly mysterious place.

I am losing feeling in my fingers

I have learned a new word today: empfindsamkeit.

In addition to reading, I should not be allowed to draw things while cooking. I will burn food. Badly.

Anderson predates the 8th, but does Disney?

About half way to falling asleep last night, I find my thought turning to the Disney sequel to the Little Mermaid, more specifically, to the fate of the villain. (Villainess? Villainette?) I was horrified to realize that what effectively happened to her is that she is trapped, alive and with full-awareness, in suspended animation (no pun intended), for presumably all of eternity somewhere in an abyss of the ocean.

I reflected that, if I were trapped in my head but with full awareness of my surroundings, I hope someone would have the mercy to kill me. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is a fate, I think, worse than death. I would go mad from it, in the clinical sense, and given how the villain (villaine? villaina?) wasn't exactly the most mentally stable to begin with, this strikes me as an Extremely Poor Solution. Forever, in a chunk of ice, can easily be translated to "bidding her time". And as various stories done by other authors can tell you, there's nothing quite so terrifying as someone who's mind is broken, who's vengeful, and who's willing -- and can afford to -- bid his / her time.

Triton is immortal, but forever is a long time. A lot of things can be done in forever. Glaciers have crept across continents and melted in less time than forever. How long would a block of ice (even magical ice) last, in the face of forever?

Unless this is a hedged bet on another sequel, in which I applaud the writers for a job well done.

Admittedly I can pretend that the Lord of the Seas tracked down that block of ice some time later on, preferably before she went mad, thawed her out and gave her a fair trial. Certain to my knowledge no canon exists to contradict me. And then she will probably serve time in an underwater prison, but maybe they'll have craft classes (complete with the underwater equivalent of safety scissors) and she can learn underwater basket weaving.

And then I fell asleep.

I need an econ refresher

Dear all,

Would someone please explain to me how it is that the .mobi (ebook) version of a book costs around 13$ while the used paper copy costs 0.01$? Is this a case of supply-demand? Because then...how is the supply limited? It's digital. Making a copy of a digital book doesn't take that much resources or energy, even compared to the making of mass-market paperbacks (which still requires paper making and binding and such). Most authors these days have their final transcript in digital format, anyway, and it's not that hard to convert .doc to ebook formats. I've done that before too. There are even free online software for these sort of things.

Perhaps it's because the paper-copy is "used"? But...it's digital. I mean how do you even tell apart "used" from "new" copies? But if that were the case, where can I get used digital books? Because seriously, I don't mind used books. Either paper-copy or digitally.

This mini-rant is brought to you by my visit to the library website. I'm one of those people who prefer not to buy a book until I've read it and know that I like it. I read fast. To entertain me for extended length of time requires something either massive or going to the library (whose schedule overlaps with mine by only two hours every week) every week. I have a kindle. I have gone through the entire SD library ebooks collection. There're just over 2000 books. There are five that overlaps with my to-read list (121 books so far). They all have wait-lists ranging from 6 to 36 people. Hunting on the internet has not helped much.

Help.

[edit 11:00]
New thought: I hate to default to thinking the worse of everyone, but I realized that it's possible for it still be a supply-demand situation where, because the supplier knows the demand is high, they can purposefully limit the supply in order to charge higher prices and therefore obtain more profit (and they don't even have to subtract printing and distribution costs for ebooks).

Thoughts? 

Some sounds go straight to the subconscious

I was pretty tired last night due to the length of my day and sadly, it also was one of those rare days when the neighbor had a few and then fell asleep in front of his tv with the volume on full blast, which meant that I could hear the dialogues, not to mention the music and other sounds, perfectly clearly. Even more unfortunately he was watching something with a lot of gunfire.

Eventually I was forced to get up, grab a jacket, and knock on his door until he woke up and then request he turn down the volume. Then I returned to bed and proceeded to have an extremely lengthy semi-science-fiction nightmare where I was sent off to war. I spent nearly the entire length of the dream feeling ill-prepared and terrified and now I feel a bit like my eyeballs are going to fall out of my head.

Please tell me this isn't going to turn into one of those days.

Last night I had a dream during which I was helping Sherlock Holmes troubleshooting the wireless connection on his laptop. Looking back, he was probably more patient than is canonically accurate.

Also, this is probably the record for early arrival to work since I moved to PB. Awful, isn't it? I'm tempted to ask Santa to 48 hours of nothing -- no chores, no obligations -- to just sit around and sleep except, rather like the lyrics from the song "Stress" suggests, I'd probably hate it.

That's the tragedy of being a self-aware workaholic. You are very aware that you really have no one to blame except yourself.

Oh well.

Common sense fail

Sometimes the Thesis Adviser seems so genuinely interested in the details of what I'm working on that I forget common sense and try to explain the details to him. I usually realize the mistake thirty minutes later with either a vague memory or no recollection of what I was working on before the discussion started and uncertain predictions as to when the discussion will actually end so I can go back and figure out what I was supposed to be doing (possibly when the timer went off ten minutes ago).

Today, for instance, I tried to explain to him why I stagger experiments a certain way to be efficient, and why that kind of efficiency works for me. Looking back I suspect I may have had better luck trying to convince him that genes are made of green cheese.*

--------
*A famous geneticist (possibly Nobel laureate -- I forgot) once made a comment along the lines of "the principles of genetics would still hold true even if genes are made of green cheese". (Yeah IDEK.)

I wonder what will happen in the fall

Dear all,

Today I encountered the most novel explanation for daylight saving I've ever heard: tomorrow an hour will be taken out of our day to be given to the Easter Bunny so it'll have time to go around the world to distribute candy to everyone.

Also, as per the song, "Raisins", I discovered that people do indeed wear orange pants outside of detention centers. Sorbet-y orange. It's...ghastly, actually, when paired with a shirt in an even more vivid shade of orange.

I don't understand fashion. I am better at drawing clothing lately but the nuances of what is tacky and what is fashionable appears to be, still, beyond me.

Lawn darts and baking soda

Confession: sometimes what motivates me to write a post is the title I can use for it.

Especially when the title is a result of my brain when I tell it to summarize the 24 hour highlights in ten words or less.

You sir! Yes, you!

There's unobservant and there's failing to notice three girls in bright yellow flailing at you from a grand distance of 15 feet away.

Why is it so hard to explain stairs to people? Why?

So I've been told that the Comic-Con tickets are already sold out.

The tickets just went on sale for registered members only this morning.

It wasn't this crazy the first year I went. If this trend keeps up soon we'll have to register for it a year or even two years ahead of the time, and it will be as bad as the university-run daycare. (Yeah they don't really have good infrastructure for career professionals who are also mothers. At least not until you've made it to the income bracket where you can afford to hire nannies five days a week.)

Unrelated: I have stubble burn on my arm. It is obviously a better alternative than getting clobbered in the face but a) light-haired people's facial hair, until they grow a beard or something, isn't obvious, so this is ...sneaky ninja stubble b) ow and c) and I thought that sprained toes were hilarious.

I didn't know necks could do that....

The man seated in front of me on the bus reeked of alcohol and was distressingly floppy. Based on what I recall from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he only needs a packet of peanuts to be ready for hyperspace jump. (Though he is a couple towels short of being an actual space-time hitchhiker. Shame, that.)

Tired now. Sleeeeeeeeeeeep.

Right.

So when a scientist is essentially told that she is too idealistic to survive in the academia, what is she not too idealistic for?

Loosely translated message from mother:

"So about the garden: We bought a bunch of bulbs and buried them. They grew. The stump from the dead lavender is still there. Should we save it for you or can we dig it up?"

Oh mom.

She's caught on to the whole interest in botany and all, but her updates regarding the tiny garden in the back is always a cross of lol'ing and face-palm moments. (Like most things with my parents, it is touching when it isn't frustrating.)

Information learned from emails & colleagues: most biotech companies require 5 years of either company or post-doc experience, because not all newly minted PhDs are equal and some of them has never had an independent project before.

My thoughts:
1) What's the point of grad school if you don't even get to have your own project??

2) Five years?

Bleh.

Two things:

1) I have a new contestant for the competition of the "Most Boring Dream, Ever". Last night I had a (short, thankfully) dream where I was at the store buying bread. Oh brain.

2) Have been introduced to GoodReads by someone on Facebook and am attempting to import my spreadsheet over to it. (It's got nicer graphics, for one thing.) As I'm going over books I have read and ones that I meant to read and ones I despised I can't help but think that so many problems with people in the world could be solved if only you're allowed to prescribe them books. Not even the self-help books, but genuine works of literature. I mean issues of efficacy and side-effects and incompatibility can't be worse than some of the medicine that's currently in the market.
...like a book-psychologist. I'd want to be one except I'd have to talk to people.

I returned from this morning's classes happy with endorphins, only to realize that somehow the list of chores I have to do this weekend had multiplied drastically.

...how did this even happen.

Dear Life,
I would like a nice break about now. A few hours with some nice music with nothing to do but to think happy fluffy hoppy thoughts. The music is optional.
Thank you kindly,
Me

Oh God it's time to deal with taxes and their associated paperwork and whyyyyyyyyyyyy.

(For those unfamiliar with my situation: the school sends me forms indicating the amount that I paid for tuition. I did not actually pay for those tuition, my program / professor did. The school also sends me a W2 of the amount the professor pays for my wage. This accounts for less than 40% of my income. The bulk of it comes from my training grant which is awarded to the school, which I don't get paperwork for. In other words: I have no paperwork for reality and must correct the paperwork manually for it.)