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.