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.