Things I have discovered upon returning from Peru:

1) The CO2 regulator was not replaced. The incubators are down. All of them. For the cells. 90% of my remaining work involves cells. (The regulator finally got replaced yesterday evening but one of the two incubators are still down and the working one still needs to be calibrated.)

2) There was some issue with temperature regulator in the vivarium last week. May be reason why I lost 2 mice. Does not excuse mistake make by staff where they accidentally switched the cage label so that a cage with four female mice got labeled as a breeder pair. The sex ID mistake I can understand but- did they not realize that the cage contained 4 mice instead of 2?

3) The fan for the camera for the microscope is officially out. As in the camera got shipped off for repair and won't be back for three weeks. There goes the schedule for the cell immunofluorescence experiments.

4) Apparently on Monday there was an issue where they tried to fix the emergency power supply and ended up blowing out the fuses to a bunch of -80C freezers (i.e. where all the bio labs keep their most expensive and delicate samples). Ours is okay. For now. The place is crawling over with electricians though.

5) I still don't know what is wrong with the ventilation in our building. Last week the air pressure got inverted. Starting yesterday it's operating at a dull roar so that I can barely hear my timer going off.

The consequences of which meant that at one point today I sat down on the floor in the mouse room and tried to come up with a new schedule for my experiments because as much effort as I am exerting, trying to graduate, it really does feel like fate is conspiring against me. So much for that nice little bubble of joy that I carried back with me from my vacation.

Friend of mine's gotten the okay from her committee to graduate in December! I'm torn between being deeply jealous (she'll be done!) and nonplussed (she doesn't have a job lined up and announced she's not going to finish her current set of experiments and apparently her committee was okay with it??) and sad (she'll leaving, both the school and from science -- she's going into teaching / writing). Also she will be having a baby soon which seems to me like a whole 'nother sort of stress. But on the other hand I'm also kind of happy for her because she was handling the near-graduation stress even worse than I am (save for July; July was the abyss from which I hope to never return) and was joking about quitting so she'll be done and free at last, free at last -- and I think she'll be happier once she's done.

So, complicated feelings tonight.

Also, I'm presenting in lab meeting tomorrow evening and flying out for Peru the day after all. Just FYI.

Trying to get my stuff approved by my committee as well as my PI and, eventually, peer reviewers. This can only end in tears.

Also, for reasons unknown, my neighbor's left his socks on the communal cacti.

Taxonomy is not for the common English language. For instance, Osteichthyes I'm pretty sure I can just type in as "fish", or possibly "bony fish" if I'm feeling particular -- but what on earth do I call lamprey? "Invertebrate chordate"? That's not exactly common speech....

Universal standard for application of common names fail UTTERLY once you reach the point that the things you're trying to name is no longer something people commonly encounter.

(Though I suspect that most people outside of my niche - most NORMAL people - just consider lamprey to be fish.)

(Yes I'm still working on this bit.)

(Did you know people use the term "worm" for earth worm, round worm, and polychaete worm when there's like more evolutionary divergence across those three categories than between us and like, sea urchins?)

I just spent 30 minutes confusing myself with the past tense of the verb, "to spread". Why English WHY?

I have discovered madeleine cookies and they go well with earl grey, except we're in the middle of a "heat wave" (meaning 80s F where I am) so I'm mostly sticking with making a large pot of caffeine free ice tea and drinking it throughout the day, because I live on the top floor and there is no air conditioning and also - computers get hot when you use them for a long time.

Also discovered? Lentil snaps / Snapea crisps. They are as bad as Pockys in how addictive they are.

In the meantime I have to go and finish updating the accession IDs for my supplemental table #2. There are 97 species I have to go through across 4 different databases and a lot of the information got updated / merged so it is a tad painful to wade through. I am in the 70s, however. I WILL PREVAIL.

There are only so many scientifically acceptable ways to say "statistically significant" and "not statistically significant". Also: I think my committee disagrees with my PI on what the main focus of my paper should be on. WHY.

Has any one of my acquaintances ever found what they learned in high school geometry useful?

Trying to write for a Nature publication from scratch is painful. (And you know what? I don't think my manuscript will even make it because it's not a hot topic or, as some of my co-workers like to say "it's not sexy enough for Nature".) (I know right?)

As someone who likes to finish 24hrs before the actual deadline, the feeling of being perpetually late and in need of catching up is deeply unsettling. And exhausting.

In other news my brain decided to pipe "Oh My Darling Clementine" at me for over an hour this afternoon, for no reason I can discern. It was especially annoying since I don't actually know the lyrics but, since Annie introduced it to me during my undergrad years, I was well aware that it involves some lady dying and her lover pairing up with her sister. Which lead to a round of "why brain, WHY?" It's admittedly no worse than all those sailor songs about drowning but even so, WHY BRAIN?

And update to clarify:
I am more or less fine. Meaning that, after comparing notes with my classmates, we all realized that we are all more or less in the same boat of stressed and overworked. Which no doubt contributed to some of my dithering but the exact question is HOW MUCH.

But you know me, I'll keep soldiering on and keep you all updated on my progress whoo.

Warning: long unhappy post, but not that much existential ennui

Today I spent some time huddled in the restroom while waiting for the last 200mg of motrin to kick in. It's gotten worse recently. 600mg and I was still in enough pain that I could not effectively function in lab -- a lingering, unnecessary reminder that I've been going through one of the rougher patches in life. That and the fact that it was actually the wrong day for Shark Week, which would make the upcoming Peru trip -- yes the one that's I'd mentioned last year, with the tickets for everything ordered and paid for months ago-- very interesting. (I was considering canceling, last month, but my mother persuaded me not to. Since February this year she's taken a more "as few regrets as possible" approach to life, which she's trying to extend to me, whenever possible. With dubious results.) It's perhaps telling that I have had enough experiences to know what happened and how long it'll take my body to recover. Human bodies are complicated and full of regulatory mechanisms, most of which, thankfully, I do NOT have to know off of the top of my head. (Read: committee meetings. Ugh.)

Dear blogger why won't you let me publish this this is my THIRD TRY

A temporary end to the "BRB off dying" post a while back (yeah a while back, I am aware) as I have just had my committee meeting this afternoon and am going to take a few weekends off before I go insane. In the meantime I would like to announce that:

1) This is the first committee meeting that did NOT end with directions for me to go and edit my slides. (Though of course my PI told me how to improve my slides anyway -- there's no "go edit these or I will not sign your eval" from the other PIs, praised be.)

2) I am scheduled for another meeting at the end of November to  a) serve as progress check and b) set a defense date. DEFENSE DATE.

3) I got more experiments suggested to me, even though I'm supposed to be WRITING NOW and it's supposed to take me around 6 months to put together a manuscript, so I'm not entirely sure how this is going to fall out so OH GOD. (Does this mean it's a pre-defense meeting? I'm not entirely clear. The PI claims that the pre-defense meeting is not an official thing but just a thing to make sure that the student is ready to defense so I guess????)

4) I have apparently started the process of completing my doctorate. Yet somehow I don't feel any smarter than when I started this journey. If anything I feel stupider. I feel like I should write very indignant and cuttingly worded letters to somebody.

5) I want tea and a chocolate cupcake, rather badly.

Have accidentally swept up a harvest spider in the kitchen. Have just accidentally apologized to the spider as it scurried away.

I'm exhausted and there is, fascinatingly enough, aggressively upbeat pop song coming up THROUGH MY KITCHEN FLOOR, from, I believe, the new neighbor that moved in recently. Am rapidly approaching the state of "Why is it still June I HATE EVERYTHING" and reveling in the sheer irrationality of my aimless hatred. Also, Ivy's battery died (as in laptop thinks it's not present and will not charge or withdraw charge from it) and I haven't the faintest idea WHY.

Hey guys,

Still not dead. Recent activities have been pretty hard on my wrist but there's no way to protect it without severely limiting my range of motion, so I've mostly resorted to wrapping it up when I get home, which means that doing stuff outside of work takes a lot longer than usual. Typing is okay except I can't really reach for backspace easily and kept hitting "=" instead and drawing is...interesting but at least I know how to ctr-z like a pro. It's more of an extra support for my wrist at this point than anything else and if my experiment goes well this week hopefully that's all it'll be needed for.

Honestly, the things I do for science.

Found an extra old thing of tea and tried to brew it and found that it's sufficiently aged to go all crumbly and escape from the tea strainer. Ewww. I need an extra fine strainer or possibly cheesecloth for the size of particles. This is what I get for being cheap.

Cleaning the kitchen while making lunch. Making a note of the fact that my parents and I have progressed in our relationship to the point that when they bring food that I don't eat I'm comfortable telling them I probably won't eat it and they'll insist that I just keep it "for now" and if it's still there when they next come they'll pick it up but won't insist that I try it, and because I always feel bad that they brought it all this way I'll keep it, so now I always have this bag of aging snacks sitting in the bottom shelf of the fridge waiting for pick up. It's "love, as demonstrated by food", episode "how to compromise". It's also a mark of where we are that the sight of a bag of food I won't touch makes me feel all fond inside. A little annoyed still, because that's what family inspires in me, but fond.

Hi blog,

I am indeed still alive. Just write a quick note (until I have more time later to write more short posts -- they are all most likely to be short due to time constraints and if I try to make them into one post it'll sound like I have the attention span of a gnat -- which, to be sure, is an accurate representation of how I feel but I swear my long term memory is still functioning) (REALLY) (though I do get more easily distracted these days) (case in point) (what was I saying?) (oh right) to mention that someone passed on a ziplock bag of bread starter to me, which she's named "the Aikido Friendship Bread" (since it's going around the dojo) and I find it helplessly adorable. It's basically Amish friendship bread-- i.e. chain letters, but with baking. I'm on day 2, with the bag mashing, and kind of wish I have more friends around who bakes to pass this on, as I don't think this will mail well.

My presence online will most likely decrease for the reminder of the month because I am a fifth year graduate student being poked with far too many deadlines and one of my cell lines developed an issue with contamination and I am presenting in another symposium in two weeks.

Just spec'ed my sample and it reads 0.1987.

IT KNOWS ME.

This weekend's food adventures involve:

1) Rhubarb. If you've ever eaten wood sorrel stalk, raw, rhubarb is like a giant, pink-skinned sorrel stalk. If you have never eaten wood sorrel raw rhubarb is tart like a citrus but has a consistency that's like a...less stringy form of celery. The raw form weirds me out. The rhubarb crumble (via Anna's instructions) is v. good, however. (Though I'm not entirely sure how a thing like a crumble is supposed to be served. I mean the name is "crumble" and it does fall to pieces when I try to get it out of the pan so do you just ...dump a glob of it on a plate or something? Oh well, still tastes the same, intact or not.)

2) Not brave enough to try it, but have discovered that bread pudding is in fact, not a pudding. Or at least not the sweet semi-solid dessert product that I tend to think of as pudding. Bread pudding is like very confused bread with STUFF in it. I'm inclined to think that Hetalia is right and the UK pudding the weird bread-like thing and the dessert pudding is like a French-metamorphosed thing.

3) Canadian bacon is, in fact, not bacon. It appears to ham. Or something very like ham. V. good in grilled-cheese sandwich either way.

While grocery shopping a very old man with a very nice guide dog attempted to make off with my cart filled with my unpaid groceries. Also my lab pen (water and ethanol-proof) spontaneously started ejecting ink. I couldn't figure out where the source of inner pressure was coming from, but there you have it.

And then there are mornings where I fail at pancakes.

And then there are mornings where I fail at pancakes.

Fist-sized chunks of the balcony outside spontaneously disintegrated onto the ground floor. It was fixed within the week. Nevertheless I find this to be somewhat alarming. It was left me feeling a tad incredulous because my rent's raised starting next month.

Perhaps my new goal ought to be to graduate and move out before the building I live in collapses around my ears. (Ugh so close, so CLOSE -- I need to get a publication quality image for an experiment but the antibody gives me background so I'm tweaking one variable at a time -- and I have two additional experiments to triple check my findings and another talk in 28 days OH GOD.)

Went hiking yesterday at Cuyamaca Peak (5000-6000ft elev.) yesterday because I have never done hiking at an elevation (WELL, I've done leisurely walks on relatively flat grounds at elevation that I don't really count as hiking) and I figured I should probably figure out how I'd react to elevation BEFORE I reached Peru, i.e. Machu Picchu (~8000ft) and Cuzco (something like 11k ft?). It was 70-75F where I live at around sea level but cold enough at the summit that there was snow in the tree shade and I was extremely glad of my sweater (yes I brought a sweater). I have learned that:

1) I'm a-okay at 6K elevation doing a medium - moderately strenuous trail.
2) My water consumption did not noticeably increase, which sort of freaked out the people I was with who were not used to how little water I normally drank.
3) Cheeses get softer at high elevations. Weird but true. Soft cheeses will get weird and gooey at 6K in sandwiches.
4) UV radiation is indeed a lot more severe at high elevations -- I know this because though I remembered to put on sunscreen before I left I (possibly because I'm right handed) missed a spot on the back of my neck, just behind my left ear, and now I have this 2cm spot that's sunburned while the rest of me is fine. So much for my reputation of being thorough.

It's near the end of wild flower season but there was still a bunch of the little blue flowers that I liked everywhere along with the occasional bunches of lupine and poppies so it's quite nice. The snow was weird though. Really weird.

They started stocking Tazo chai again! Now in a new grey-on-grey packaging. To be fair Tazo actually does a pretty good job with the packaging designs compared to some of the other brands. (Numi your tea's excellent but some of your design choices are suspect.)

Also got letter notice that my rent's being raised UGH stupid protein why won't you behave properly so I can finish up my project and graduate. Maybe to some place that's less expensive to live. Or at least to a position that has better pay.

Have decided to try out the food coloring color palette I found a long time ago and made myself green pancakes -- mint chip green to be exact. Experiment v. successful.

Moving on to plan B (sports stores) as my hip to waist ratio is unsuited for boy pants. My options are either to go with something that's really uncomfortably tight or to wear a belt and have an uncomfortable amount of material bunched at my waist.

Also cream in soup is weird. Maybe it's better if I can't taste it.

So this is a pretty awesome recipe and you should take my rec seriously because it's a recipe for cheesy bread and I don't even like cheese.

Also the sketchiness was indeed a power thing and I've had no trouble since the reset. 

Ugh I think the internet sketchiness from yesterday may have been a minor power flux / power cut in the area or something and messed up router.  Did ipconfig /flushdns and router reset and everything seems fine...FOR NOW.

Am feeling a bit upset. Ladies and gentlemen, how many people,  in your esteemed opinion,  must I have sex with before I can make a believable claim to be an asexual? Because apparently I should not claim that label if I have never has sex, because how else will I find out if I like it or not? (Nevermind that I have never met anyone I liked enough to want to have sex with,because I simply have not met THE ONE- the fact that I have had multiple crushes and experienced zero physical attraction is iirrelevant. ) I also can't claim the label if I had sex with only one or two people because it could be those people are just bad at sex! Don't underestimate technique and experience! (I kid you not someone said this to me. Also if I met THE ONE it will be different! And so I should not be so *hasty* in labeling myself as an ace!

So how many then? How many people? Or perhaps how many years must I live without experiencing their definition of sexual attraction to qualify?

Forgive me my facetiousness but really, how many?  I am curious.

Have I mentioned that French macaroons are weird? They're like a weird hybrid between candy and cookie. Also have been introduced and taken moral offense to the term "fugly" and a weekly farmer's market apparently opened in the high school parking lot three blocks over.

I have a hypothesis that the balcony in front of my door is where all the stray bees in these couple of blocks come to die.

The combination of residual adrenaline and watching ELEMENTARY apparently meant that I get to dream about nearly being shot by Sherlock Holmes, which jolted me awake enough that I spent an indeterminable time awake, in the dark, plotting my experiments for the next two weeks until my brain gave up and I went back to sleep and dreamed about being shuffled off to retake SAT II and how the math portion is now a subject test of STATISTICS which, even dreaming, I knew made no sense and was trying to reason with my own dream logic.

You know what I've never dreamed about? Ducks. Why can't I dream about ducks? I'm going to make a token effort from here on out to insert ducks into my dreams and will post when that is successful.

Also for the people who, in the past few months, have received random blank txts from me the current working hypothesis is that it's a result of a key lock (current phone not a flip phone / does not have retractable keyboard /does not have touch screen) only engaging when I go back to desktop and after certain number of seconds (so if I stick it in my bag before the keylock comes on...you get the idea) and I have been unable to find a way to change this setting so far. It is a work in progress. Like my life.

I've improved over the years but 150 people is still a LOT OF PEOPLE and now the symposium is over and I'm in front of my computer and I can't focus because of adrenaline, it is making me slightly deranged HELP.

I live in the relatively quiet sector of my neighborhood but occasionally there these sudden events that happen that floods the place of people and (with the exception of 4th of July and Labor Day, whose firework fans I am now well prepared for) it always catches me by surprise. Like that time when I stepped out on what's usually supposed to be a quiet Sunday morning and the street I was on was swarmed by a stampede of people in colored jerseys, because it was mapped as part of the route for a half marathon / marathon that ends at the bay 20mins over. I'm not sure what's happening today, but I gathered there's some new thing going on for St. Patrick's this year, and the street two blocks over is filled with cars and haphazard driving and there is suddenly no parking.

Ugh just finished my taxes. Hope I didn't screw anything up. Filing these things as a grad student never gets any better, but at least most things are online these days so I basically end up with one browser window with a lot of times so I can squint at the numbers and figure out the difference between fee remissions and scholarships.

Things We Established Today:

1) I have very "round" hair
2) birds have lymphoid tissues and bone marrow
3) people develop allergies to urushiol, which is present in both mango and poison oak (how did I miss that family connection I have no idea), and is enriched in the skin and the area near the pith near the mangoes and so people who want to avoid becoming allergic to mangoes should avoid the slice-and-eat method and peel the entire thing ...and possibly handle it with gloves while peeling. (But then not everyone reacts to allergens the same way and I think Linda'd be fine...?)
4) mathematicians are aliens
5) the undergrads apparently thing I'm qualified to give advice on public speaking. This is in fact the weirdest thing to me, in this entire list.

Baffled by undergrads.

In which we verify that yes, she is still very much Weird

Went to Ashley's baby shower, which I liked much more than I expected, considering that the only person I went in knowing was ...Ashley. People were astounded when they found out how long we've been friends and actually said things to me along the lines of "I could never keep a friend that long", which I thought was sad. Upon reflection, it could be that everyone has different definitions of friends. Certainly I've in instances when I heard someone refer to me as their friend to their other friends when I consider us to be more like friendly acquaintances, and I know some people like to have large numbers of friends so that they have this...cloud of people they know, wherever they go, and certainly that's fine too! It's just that for me, partially because I'm an introvert, I'm more comfortable with a small group of friends and I suspect that my definition of friend is more like "close friend". Or at least I measure whether or not someone is my friend by how far I'm willing to go for someone, to trust someone, allowing them the liberties I would never consider for others? For me, at least "friend" is a label that has a LOT of emotional investment! I try to be polite and friendly to all and make the effort of being acquaintances with more people than I'm strictly comfortable with, but I don't actually make the commitment to making a friend unless I start to think that's someone I want around for the rest of my life in some way. Even if I don't always succeed. Even if we only get the chance to talk once a year or something I go in wanting to keep the person for as long as I can and from that perspective, the number of people my age who are ...agog at friendships that can last for longer than five years makes me sad. Yes it's fine to have a group of ..."casual friends" -- I guess that's what you'd call them? I don't even know -- but I keep thinking, during each iteration of "yes we really have know each other for that long", that's there's this really, really wonderful thing that they're missing out.

Sadly this isn't like...some new type of tea I can just get them to try. And of course for the ones who are just making the remark for the sake of something to say, I don't care as much, but for those who said it quietly, enviously, it's a little heartbreaking. Because it's possible. It's possible to have people in your lives, unrelated to you, that you can rely on. And certainly they sound like this is something that they wanted and of course I don't know any of them or their stories so it's all just...there's this fine tinge of melancholy in the laughter bubbling through the afternoon.

It's one thing about me that I can understand people being envious about, because I have been on the other end as well. Though being the subject of envy has always been equal parts flattering and unnerving.

Also unnerving are people who only knew you for three hours and expect you to hug them when leaving. I am not comfortable with casual physical affection at all by which I mean being hugged by people whose name that I don't even know makes me want to crawl out of my skin. (Also one of the lady was wearing really strong perfume so now my coat smells like it and I kind of feel like I need to get it dry cleaned but then I feel like it's insulting to the unknown lady who I will probably never see again -- yes I am aware of how much logic there ISN'T -- that I'm acting like I find her so repellent that I need to remove all traces of physical contact with her but it's really making me uncomfortable and weirdly jittery but it's not worse than jittery so I don't know. I haven't decided. Maybe if I just hung my coat out in the sun all day tomorrow that'd do the trick?)

Mother just sent me a bunch of photos to prove that there are plants that she hasn't killed yet.

Last night I had a dream where I met a girl that I've never seen before, developed a crush, asked her out, and was irrevocably rejected. In case anyone's wondering: I find being rejected in a dream to be actually more depressing than being rejected in real life. Also I crashed my tablet while editing the script for CODA. The tablet recovered fine but I lost a bit of my latest edits. All of the script and notes were on Evernote, which got HACKED this weekend and so ALL the users got a password reset, which I didn't find out about until I checked my email much later -- I just kept getting notices telling me that the notes failed to sync and that my password couldn't be authenticated. All of THIS, of course, was the perfect wrap up for a rather FAIL-filled end of my week, during which I failed to replicate the really cool result I got two weeks ago, failed another separate experiment, and then had to drive to campus at nearly 11pm because that's when I remembered that I forgot to turn off one of the power supplies and I didn't want to risk a blown fuse when the buffer inevitably ran out.

I can't think of a more eloquent way to express my current state of being other than "ugh". I've had three cups of tea and did a bit of house cleaning and I'm going to go and draw a ton now, and I WILL PREVAIL because tomorrow is a new day and all that and I'm too stubborn to give up.

Had a conversation with professor on what is and isn't sexy enough for the top tier journals. On one hand I can kind of understand what point he's trying to make make. On the other hand, "sexy"? Really?

So today while sorting through the keys and USB sticks in my pockets I wondered why I don't own any cargo pants. I had a pair in high school. I brought it in Beijing, I think. It was awesome. After some thought, I realized the handful of times (pretty sure I can count the times on one hand) I've gone to hunt for pants I never actually saw anything resembling what I think cargo pants should look like. Just to make sure I had the right terms, I looked up types of pants on Google, and Google, in its infinite wisdom, gave me this article, which kind of explains it.

Cargo pants are, in conclusion, for boys.

Well this is discouraging, I thought, and briefly googled "cargo pants for women" because these must exist, right? And lo and behold -- I have hits. In terms of images they look about right and I thought, okay, so maybe I'm just terrible at cloth shopping and just now, after I arrived home, I did the same search and looked at the sites from Macy's, GAP, and Old Navy since these stores, especially GAP are the places where my clothing comes from if they didn't come from Beijing or Costco. I got this, this, and this. They look nothing like the stuff from Google Image Search.

Now this may be just because I'm being picky, but for me the point of cargo pants is to have loose fitting pants with a ton of pockets so I can sort and carry various things with me since women's clothing have too few pockets as it is in jackets and thing and jean pockets are just uncomfortable if I had to carry two sets of keys, a security access card, as well as a pen and a USB stick (my hands are busy carrying other stuff -- I may or may not have lab gloves on as well). I don't consider anything that has fewer than six pockets to be cargo pants. So.

Gah.

Maybe Sears has them or something, because none of the image search results are from physical stores near me. 

I lack the words to adequately expressed how utterly freaked out I was by the fact that the vivarium lobby smelled of peaches. For the 4 years I've been through there it more or less smelled consistently of animals or cleaning products or, more excitingly, of animals AND cleaning products. This sudden bed-and-body-works burst of - of -PEACHY-NESS was just UNNATURAL.

Experienced the ridiculous situation where I'm so sore that when I try to move too fast that group of muscle actually seized up...and I ended up closing the car door on my leg by accident. I wonder how people in my dojo end up eventually achieved poise and grace. Mostly I just end up getting teased a lot by my classmate (also why are there so many Mikes in my life it's actually alarming at this point) when he spends five minutes trying to teach me how to punch someone in the kidney and I more or less fail at the entire experiment. (Though seriously if I were required to actually defend myself I would not be using my FISTS because I would most likely hurt myself more than my opponent.) (Though maybe punching things is therapeutic? My classmate certainly seemed unduly fond of it.) (Or maybe he just thinks watching me flail around is funny, which is more than likely.)

In the meantime I have jasmine tea and butter cookies. I have also discovered this fascinating thing called the water barrel brush. When I finish CODA I plan to myself a set of 3 as a reward.

Made pancakes to prove that 1) yes, I still know how to make them from scratch and b) no, I still haven't figured out how to make a batch without burning the first one.

March is apparently the month for baby showers this year. Let me just say that it's so much more fun if you're shopping for someone who falls under the "nerd" category.

PI mock-chased a post-doc down the lab bay with a freezer today. Admittedly it was a small lab freezer that he was shoving in after defrosting, but STILL. Then overheard him instructing the undergrads not to pipet violently. HOW do you pipet violently? I wondered, then decided that I didn't really want to know.

Random man with a white hair that's all shaved off except for a rectangle in the center of his head, wrapped in a brightly colored plaid blanket, was preaching about repenting and how God is the "Revealer of Secrets" (you can just hear the capitalization) on the bus today. The preaching isn't new -- we've had quite a few of those over the years on this particular route, but the hair & blanket combination is. I just can't take him seriously when he's wrapped up in a plaid blanket like the world's preachiest over-sized burrito, you know?

The side seam gave away on one of the long-sleeved tees I bought back in January. It's a final sale item from Cotton On so there's a strict no-return policy. To be fair the material does appear thinner than the shirt I got from the GAP sale across the mall. Nevertheless, note to self: do not buy future shirts from Cotton On. My GAP shirt is just fine. (Though the winner for sturdiness in my closet collection of long-sleeved tees appears to be Old Navy -- I had THAT particular shirt since high school and it has survived quite a lot.)

Unrelated: I have tried bread pudding. To me it's more or less like a failed attempt at cinnamon roll, but without the frosting so I can't say that I see the appeal. Have discovered a decent, if tiny, bistro this weekend that does very good homemade fettuccine with braised duck though!

Apparently some people eat dumplings with sweet and sour sauce? This is like...being told someone eats nachos with teriyaki sauce . My mind. It is boggled.

Today I have learned that in the case of lockout as enforced by rabid racoons or actual coyotes I can dial 411 for animal control. The call isn't free but they have the set up to deal with wildlife without injuring themselves or wildlife.

There was  GIANT raccoon in front of my apartment. At first I thought it was an over-grown cat or a small dog and then realized the shape wasn't right and then the neighbor SHONE A FLASHLIGHT ON IT and did you know their eyes have the ability to reflect light in REALLY CREEPY way? Like, "two glowing orbs of reflective evil in a dark, masked face, staring into my soul" level creepy. I do not know how I feel about this sudden encounter with wildlife of the unsettling variety, but at least it was not a coyote (we have those around here too, though usually they don't brave the more populated areas like raccoons apparently do).

PI brought in Thin Mints. They are unfortunately addictive.

Right, so it's clearly worth the extra dollar (or two) and get the spiced chai from Tazo because IT IS SO MUCH BETTER than the one from Stash.

I would like to take a moment today to express my gratitude for the existence of caffeine free tea. That is all.

Someone didn't close our lab freezer properly this weekend and a lot of our samples got partially thawed as a result. Am running test digests to see how many of our key enzymes were lost.

Damn it.

While walking today I saw an advertisement for carpet cleaning that declares "30$ per area!"

It's definitely one of the less informative ads out there. (Imagine of this sort of thing happened at grocery stores -- apples 1.99$ per weight!)

After a brief calculation I'm forced to conclude that even without factoring the time cost, it's cheaper for me to buy cookies than to make my own. Therefore unless I've a hankering for the types of baked goods (such as the strawberry-white-chocolate-oat-meal cookies I've mentioned before) that are usually not in store (or corn bread -- corn bread, biscuits, and banana bread are pretty cheap to make) I should just buy the darn things.

I'm having one of those Fail Days where I put my watch in a pocket and then later couldn't remember where I put my watch. Ugh at least the day's almost done.

My Mexican pineapple comes with a tag printed with the coloring and pattern of the Italian flag.

I am confused.

That's hours I could've been sleeping

I managed to keep myself up half the night lying in the dark by having an argument with myself about whether or not "apathy" counts as a type of feeling, only to conclude that "feeling" is an inadequate term. More specifically, I concluded that "apathy" should be grouped with the other things such as "happy" and "sad" as "states of emotional being".

...and then I did manage to fall asleep and dreamed that someone gave me a basilisk tooth as a present. Not HP basilisk but basilisk as of mythology of yore. Though for some reason the teeth had an oddly metallic sheen.

This is what I get for researching story lore before bedtime.

Dec-Jan., up to this point, in between the traveling and the stolen stuff and getting replacements and one weekend of sickness, I was lagging behind in my martial arts classes, which meant that I haven't been training regularly, which meant that right now I'm back to square "wow I am sore in really weird places".

At least I didn't randomly sprain a toe this time. Also this has all been a very good education in anatomy.

Have discovered really fantastic raspberry strudel (an entire box for under 3$!) and Scott's lent me 6 CDs of Dr. Demento's novelty record collection so I'm all set for a drawing session once I finish excavating my room the the detritus that builds up over the course of the week. Grad school's also been terrible for my general household-y tidiness, apparently.

Pondering whether or not I need to build up my stamina to hike the Inca Trail, given that I don't do any aerobic exercise regularly and it'll be at high elevation. (Probably.) Pondering that if yes, when the heck am I going to find the time to do this. (Hmm.)

Someday I will remember not to read while cooking and stop burning my dinner. (It's only a little burnt this time, in my defense, because I did finally manage to exercise an ounce of self control and pull myself out of text.) (Wait wait does this mean there's hope where one day I'll figure out how to cook AND read at the same time?)

Have you ever blown your nose and be staggered by the sheer VOLUME of snot that can be stored in your nasal cavity? I mean in terms of cubic centimeters of liquid it's pretty impressive how all of THAT can fit up there. Is the nasal cavity like the TARDIS? Bigger on the inside? I mean I've actually done cryosection through nasal cavity before and it's not like the entire thing is lined with mucosa and snot is still mostly water based, which means should also be less dense as a solid than a liquid and I have no idea where I'm going with this....

...ugh still got chores to run.

Saw a place called "The Promiscuous Fork" along the bus route today. Am not 100% sure it's a restaurant but am terrified to contemplate what it could be, if it were not a restaurant.

One day I will figure out how to eat sprinkle-covered cupcakes without shedding sprinkles everywhere. In the meantime: labmate brought cupcakes! My replacement credit card came in. The bookstore was having a sale on art supplies so I broke into a new sketchbook (sadly the Strathmore ones are sold out but I guess I get to try a different brand? It's flat-bond, at least, I like none-wire bindings) and the weather's warm again!

I like this week much better than the last. I feel that I can write a thank-you note to someone about it.

In fact the only thing that's missing is my building access card but eh. I've high hopes of persuading someone to take out my culture plates for me on Sat. so maybe I won't even have to come into lab this weekend and would THAT be a nice way to end the week?

Have just realized that thanks to the theft I no longer have a mp3 player.

Am still more upset about the sketchbook.

I haven't been this cold in the morning since Davis. South Cal, I am disappointed in you.

Liver with freezer burn looks equal parts fascinating and disgusting.

It's a mystery in January

Why do they make tanktops with sew on tags? I just spent two hours twitching as the scratchy corners jabbed at me over and over again. It's more annoying than that tiny pebble in your shoe because most people would not blink if you stopped on the sidewalk and shook out your shoe, whereas tanktops are worn against the skin, so usually you can't just strip off your top on the side of the road to remove the stupid tag. Instead you grit your teeth and bear it and it rapidly becomes like a mild form of torture (although it may be that if I bore it long enough or had to deal with something distracting enough I will no longer notice it's not an experiment I feel like doing. Instead I am removing the tag).

Shrimp poppers are wonderful. And goes with none of my teas.

One of the vendors sent a package of gummy bears along with our order. I find this adorable. Also: candy!

I always get thrown off when one of the databases I use lists Macaca mulatta as "rhesus monkey" and the other one lists it as "macaque". There's always this moment of "OHNOESIMISSEDONE" before the inevitable "oh wait" followed by "WHY".

I know I should be grateful for the auto-shut function of the lab freezer door, but it keeps trying to shut on me. Literally. Occasionally I end up with a weird line of ice along my side from it. Some day I will discover the perfect way to wedge my foot under the door to prevent this from happening without losing my balance in the process. However, today is not that day.

Okay despite of the fact that it is only Tuesday I am fully ready for this week to end already.

My lab building is so complicated that I need someone to draw me a map to figure out how to get to a lab on the east side.

I have been working in this building for four years.

About half of the people who come in to talk to my PI needs help with directions.

My PI thinks our building is this way because architects hate us.

The cricket is INSIDE THE WALL. I don't know how to deal with this but eventually I was tired enough that I went back to sleep. (Just please, please don't mate and procreate inside the walls. Walls full of crickets are --no, just --NO.)

Had a talk with PI today. My current run of the protein project may be a no go but the possible alternatives are... . Well, the RIGHT experiments to answer the question will mean that I won't finish before June.

Time to go and drown my depression in tea.

(No it's not THAT bad. I mean all things considered I'm pretty well off. It's just that I LIKE being ahead of the curve and failing to do that that so blatantly makes me feel really disappointed in myself but this too, shall pass.)

A cricket that has somehow survived the cold snap last week migrated into my place. It was loud enough to warrant a cricket hunt at 3am in the morning. I think it may have taken up residence under my bed but I am not up for dragging my bed around at 3 in the morning so guess what I'll do when I get home today!

Also received spam in work email inbox for talking to Russian women. There was much lol'ing.

This is the weekend in which we ordered a boat for lunch.
(And it was delicious.)

I have found this to be true: the older I am, the more excited I am about getting socks.