'Cause we got more bounce in California

PhD comic: what to call your professor?

Admittedly I went around calling them Dr.__ as an undergrad, and as that this was not that long ago, I tend to stutter a little when first calling someone by their first name (actually, how comfortable I am with a PI correlates with how many weeks it takes before I can comfortably address them by their first name). I have the strangest urge to call people by their first name but with "Doctor" tagged on in front. Except that sounds as awkward as you might imagine.

It's easier with PIs who joke with the students. It's also easier with younger PIs. Sometimes those two conflict and then I wait to see whether they're the type who mumble to themselves.

[edit 10:49]
Mom sent me a Picasa album called, translated "A Day of Tulips".
Here's the one called "8 in the morning":


Then there's "12 at noon":


In case you're wondering, my next class is at 11:30am.

On the tally

Student showed up, apologized very sincerely for being late because of traffic problems.
+1
PI didn't show up. No idea where he is. Doesn't seem to be the type that you can just drop in with a question.
-1
Has plenty of lab space. Good atmosphere.
+1
Very friendly lab members. One of the other grad students made cupcakes for everyone. With very sticky frosting.
+1
Uses kits.
+1 Lab is well funded.
-1 You don't learn as much by using kits.
Lab is VERY organized. Everything's labeled.
+1

Total so far: +1

Another lab...sort of

Dear Diary,

Today I got to the lab too early (8:30am) and neither the PI nor the student I'll be working with are here. I am currently stuck reading papers in an empty seat that I've appropriated. Current lab score = -1, from the initial default value of 0.

Also,I got an email last night from a classmate which said:

Does anyone know when or where our stats class is happening?

Those people who make it seem like grad school will be more organized than undergrad are very misleading.

Sincerely,

-S

In which there was finally ice cream

Lusine and I have successfully navigated through our first trip out together, without parental supervision (or interference), no less. Joshua Tree National Park is a bit far for a one day trip, but close enough that we could do it when I tacked on the two days to my weekend. Lucy came over on Thursday, when we went out to get food and gas, not to mention to pack everything we may need (proper preparation prevents poor performance, heh). I got Lucy introduced to OURAH HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB, which I have just recently discovered and is a bit like a FRUITS BASKET AU (except not) that makes fun of itself and is liberally sprinkled with sparkles. (I kid you not, the anime is ridiculously sparkly.) We boiled eggs (which we didn't really eat so hey, breakfast next week's done ahead of time) and made sandwiches with the flatbread that Lucy brought over (which is oval with weird edge pieces that resulted in a running commentary, given by Lucy, while I was attempting to roll my sandwiches). Introduced Lucy to new food: yes for pineapple-orange muffins, no for the shrimp-chips and the Pocky biscuits. We also watched a few episodes of DUE SOUTH, season three (because Lucy didn't care and I missed the rubber duckies). It all went well and fine until Lucy pointed out that Kowalski had very pointed features and is, actually, rather Mike-like. From that point everything he did become doubly hilarious as we tried to stick Mike in various situations and facial expressions. (Spiky.)

We switched off on driving on the way there and discovered that our height difference is enough for seat adjustments. There was snow on the mountains at one of the rest sites...and also horses, which distracted Lucy. We also swapped our music. A lot. I was introduced to Bon Jovi and got Lucy to listen to the entire RENT soundtrack. The rooms weren't ready for check in until later in the afternoon, so we went to the park (lovely roads weren't really marked, so navigation was super fun), where there was a visitor center with park rangers and an entrance booth that was empty. Given that the entrance booth was where we were supposed to pay our park fees we were slightly confused. Nevertheless we continued on until we started encountering Massive Piles of Rocks. And lots of "Exhibit Ahead" signs that are possibly a lot more useful as road markers than road signs, if we ever bothered to keep track of how many of those exhibit signs are between each hiking trail. As it was we pulled over next to a Massive Pile of Rocks and proceeded to climb around it, over it, etc. The sky was very, very blue. It was very, very windy. I discovered that the weird brown things that skitter around the windshield while driving were actually kamikaze moths, as evidenced by the number of death moths we encountered by the side of the road when we were returning from our hiking trails. (Hiking trails very nice. We do seem to go against the arrows a lot, though. It's mildly perplexing.)

Oh, and no matter what the signs tell you, there is no water in this season. The lake is a lie. The rocks were a lot more inspiring. The Joshua trees were very spiky. I think I'm developing a fondness for spiky things. Though admittedly it's mixed with a healthy dose of wary suspicion, since my sense of self-preservation hasn't completely deserted me.

We had lunch in the park. Dinner, however, took place as a local diner called Carousel Cafe. The place is, as you might've inferred from the name, carousel-themed with the main room being octagon in shape. It's a little shabby but very homey, and served food in very generous proportions. (As in, the dinner became lunch the next day and I just finished off the last of it today.) Lucy said that a lot of the day felt like something from the movie, with us driving in the car with the music blasting away and nothing but the desert on either side / us in the trail feeling that there's nothing around except for the rocks, local vegetation, and bottomless sky over us / eating dinner in a kitschy local diner that had red vinyl booths and served fries and fried chicken in a basket. Then she mentioned that in all the movies she could think of something horrible usually happens afterwards. Despite of that, we went for a walk after dinner and discussed the Lunatic Sims in detail. (Lucy wanted another baby. Because of the crib. It made sense at the time.)

I was planning to drag Lucy up early to see the sunrise in the park the next morning. However, our attempts to go to bed early were thwarted by misbehaving children that weren't even ours. They were next door and very LOUD. You could hear the thumping very clearly. After a much shorter night than we anticipated, we got up at around 5:30 the next morning, looked at each other, and decided that after sunrise we were coming back to the hotel for a nap. (It was either that or drive into a Joshua tree. Napping seemed safer, and less likely to end in fines for destruction of natural property.)

We saw still more rocks the second day and I discovered that the winding drive through the park (very large, something like 30 miles?) was actually very enjoyable with the music and scenery (the entire place was incredibly scenic in a stark, clean kind of way). We also saw a lot of bikers, which was a little alarming because--well, national park and biker parade just doesn't seem all that compatible somehow. During our hike in another trail (no water, no spring, despite of the name, but we did see five mile's worth of rocks and hills and plenty of wildflowers, which made me happy) we also saw a bunch of kids in bright orange shirt hiking with giant packs on their backs (some of the packs look larger than the kids, I swear). Lucy and I were both very glad that we never had to do something like that.

I made Lucy drive the entire way back, because I was lazy and unwilling to drive anymore than I have to. At least on roads where there are other cars and not nearly enough rocks & plants on either side.
(We also saw lots of lizards. No scorpions though. Nor tarantulas.)
When we got back we decided that we'll sleep in by Sunday morning, by which I mean that both of us were up by 8 in the morning and contemplating the merits of different types of cereal and geez...the quarter starts tomorrow, doesn't it.


...k then.

Never alone

I think I've had this dream before.

A squirrel is still a rodent

It's 9 in the morning and I'm hiding out the library again. Truth to be told, there aren't that many people in the lab (mostly empty). I just felt like being in the library, which is also mostly empty. I also have something that has to be incubated for two hours, cannot start another project because my last day in this lab is tomorrow, and the guy whom I'm doing site-directed mutagenesis with isn't here yet. (Maybe I'll try back in an hour? But if I get everything done by 2pm what am I going to do with myself for the rest of the day? Hang out in the library until 5 so I can go home? It's kind of ridiculous.)

Have emailed the person from the next lab for my background reading. So far have not heard back yet.

...

I've had a conversation with mom recently in which I warned her of my plans. I am going to, eventually, end up in bay area again, possibly SF since SD & SF are the two hot spots for bio-tech research (unless I can't afford the housing there, then I imagine I'll have to think up another plan) and SF is closer to where my parents are. Eventually I'll want to be somewhere where I can make a roundtrip to my parents' place and back in one day, if necessary, since we don't have any other relatives in the US besides my cousin in New Mexico whom no one's heard from in five years. (...yeah.) And there's heart disease from my dad's side of the family which I frankly try not to think too much about but dad's been watching his cholesterol intake very carefully so hopefully everything will be okay. But, in case, I want to be close. Which my mom appreciates and was okay when I frankly pointed out that just because I will be able to visit every weekend doesn't mean that I will. For which I'm thankful.

What is the best part of the conversation for me, though, is that I got the okay to do whatever I want to do with my life in the years between when I get out of grad school and before I turn thirty. (Compromise, you might say.) Specifically, by "whatever" I meant I got permission to go out of country to wherever I want to find whatever job I want, etc. Which is kind of awesome because, well, a chance to see the world and all before I have to settle down into a nice middle class job somewhere in the field of science and be mostly normal.

Which means, of course, that I get to remind my parents of this every year for the next five to seven years just to make sure they don't go back on the promise. (Sometimes it's necessary.)

Well, cheers.

And that spells DNA

Am in lab right now. It's very quiet and very empty, which I approve since it lessens the occurrence of headache which the later lab meeting will no doubt bring up. I've a draft of my final written project almost ready to go (feel twitchy, need to look over it again before I send it in) and then it's home free...until the next quarter.

I also need to finish registering for my classes. And house clean and buy food &c but that will have to wait. I think I will just go home after the meeting today, finish doing the math for the data that the machine'll spew out, and then take a nap. Despite of the knowledge that grades don't matter in grad school (I mean, most people will not be applying to another school afterwards, yeah?) and that the 3.0 minimum GPA (scary, isn't it? If it drops any lower you get kicked out of the program) is well known amount the PIs and mostly they well interfere before we get to that point, I was still found finals week to be deeply stressful. I simply can't not take classes seriously and not go through the "OMG am I doing this right?" cycle. On one hand, it means that I'll try to do my best regardless of whether the project matters or not, which is kind of a good trait. On the other hand: stress & exhaustion! (Did not sleep well last night and felt a sudden urge to re-do the formatting for the citations!)

Nap. There needs to be a nap in the near future.

Oh and while I was sticking my plate in the qPCR machine the DNA song came up on my mp3 player (another good thing about empty lab morning on weekends -- mp3 player! Because there's no one around to talk to you) and I grinned, because perfect timing -- nothing is quite like having someone singing about guanine and cytosine to you while you're qPCRing.

I also noticed that I've developed a strange fondness of adding "ing" to whatever reactions that I'm doing to make it into a verb, despite of the fact that I know what the abbreviations stand for and adding "ing" makes no grammatical sense of whatsoever to the majority. It gives me a perverse sort of pleasure to mangle the grammar in the sciences even more.

Somewhere, out there, a grammar nazi experienced a sudden chill.

[edit 9:34]
The inevitable truth of grad school (am filling out course evaluation forms online right now, in case you're wondering what brought this one) is that the more organized courses (as in came with website and non-faculty organizers) are often less educational.

Spoke too soon

Dear diary,

This morning I received an email sent at around 4pm yesterday afternoon requesting that we send in a hard copy of the proposal to the PI. I turned in my proposal electronically at around 10am yesterday. I just went in to turn in my paper copy, and the person who is supposed to receive this wasn't there. I hope nothing goes wrong in the transfer of papers & explanations from the person that I left my papers with to the person who is supposed to be receiving the papers.

Which is to say, that I'm experiencing some anxiety and trying very hard not to think about Shakespeare. Or Stardust, the movie version. (At least no one will die here, right? Right?)

(Also, anxiety works better than caffeine.)

Yours,

S

[EDIT 10:45]
Have returned from appointment with optometrist. Did you know that sucky depth perception after dark is apparently a common trait for people with astigmatism? (Eye pressure is still fine, despite of my DNA, thank goodness.)

Still working on the cancer paper but want to whine about the fact that when I woke up today I discovered that today's the monthly Pain Day.

Wednesdays. Why is it always Wednesday?

Hard questions to answer

Example: proposing a new therapy for cancer (one that is not currently used or in clinical trials).

Note: there are many, many different types of cancer, and subtypes. There are many,many types of treatments out right now and many more in the pipeline (what pharm people call the series of trials to approve a drug for usage). There are research being done on many, many pathways.

I hope the PIs aren't really expecting something noteworthy out of us first years here. Like the next imatinib.

(I skipped the question about the upstream and downstream pathways. People spent 30 years studying one pathway in cancer. I have no idea how to even begin to describe the masses of pathways that are involved.)

(Thank you, Anna. I had chocolate. It did indeed improve my mood somewhat.)

Finals week has begun

I went in to have my access card reset today. It turns out that somehow the card had defaulted back to its previous value, so that when you enter its ID number it shows that I belong to previous lab and not the lab I'm currently in. The person in charge was as bemused as I was.

Is it a sign? Hmm.

... ...

In other news, given that it is Monday and I have, by 1pm, not heard back from the PI about my proposal yet, I went over (while my experiment was at the "plug it in to electricity and wait" stage) to check, just to see what on earth happened and whether or not I should be waiting for an email at 3 in the morning tonight. Er. Tomorrow morning. When I went in the PI looked mildly surprised and mentioned that yes, she got the emails from me (yes, note the plural) and inquired as to whether or not I've attached my proposal to them. I informed her, very politely, that yes I did in fact attach my proposal. I attached it to all the emails I've sent to her. She said, mildly, "Okay, let me take a look then," went to her inbox, and there the emails were, with the attachments.

She decided to take a look at them while I was right there. (To save me the pain of staying up all night anxiously waiting for an email, but mostly just to get rid of me, I suspect.) Which is, to say, she skimmed over them, noted that I have more details than I need for the literature review (which I don't really consider a fault) and had me re-organize the entire experimental methods section because my aims needs to be numbered. She didn't actually comment at all about my experimental design, approach, or limitations. After she made sure I know how to re-organize the second half of my proposal (and part of the first half too, apparently background and literature review were supposed to be together for this proposal, and the sample proposal that I followed was for another type of proposal, nevermind that we weren't really told what type of research proposals we were doing to start with), she sent me on my way (no, literally, she said "Bye" to me). She was nice enough, I suppose. And technically helpful, since she gave me advice that I will take (she IS one of the graders for the proposal, after all). Mostly, though, I'm fuming slightly, because I sent that thing to her last Wednesday. For this.

Well, at least when I turn it in tomorrow it'll be over and done with. Good riddance. (For a 2 unit class too. ...If it weren't for the fact that I thought learning how to write a proposal was so important....)

Hit the pause button

It is Sunday morning. I am sitting on the living room floor, wrapped in a blanket, with two laptops and a bag of potato chips, writing about early onset type 2 diabetes. It is nice to write about something where 90% of people don't die from it in less than five years. At the very least, there's less of the "why the heck am I writing this stupid thing about changes in cell phenotype instead of doing experiments that's actually relevant to figuring out the disease?" mindset, which makes it easier to stand back, breathe, and say "Okay, this is not my area of interest, I need to know the general pathways to get through this course, but this will be someone else's project, not mine."

(Still no sign from the PI looking over the Alzheimer's proposal, by the way. Should I be giving up all hopes by this point?)

I am going through tea at an alarming rate. Though usually after the second cup I'll start switching to non-caffeinated types so I don't end up awake at 3 in the morning. No one feels good at 4 in the morning, but 3 honestly isn't that much better.

My upstairs neighbor is unusually noisy this weekend. Given the nature of the noises I try very hard not to think too much about it.

I realized I also haven't written anything particularly insightful here in a while. Is it simply because the classes and research have eaten my brain? Possible, but a large part of me is always lingering on the academic stuff. Maybe it's just because I got lazy and kept finding excuses to put it off. This weekend my excuse is the finals projects. Or maybe I'm just getting so tied down to the mundane things like remembering to buy eggs at the grocery store and turn in my papers on time that I don't bother with trying to find something insightful anymore. It's hard to know, right now, with little bits of my idealism bleeding into all my proposed experiments and a lot of emotions and philosophies bleeding into my stories and my pragmatism (is that what it is? This here's what I did today and here's what I'll need to do tomorrow?) dumped here. Whatever's left is dealt with by attacking a paper with crayons, apparently. There is no insight. Somehow I've gone from "why're things the way they are" to "that's the way things are, c'est la vie".

Except no, that's not really true either. I think I may have gotten sneakier when I'm not paying attention. Or maybe I've just stopped paying attention.

Curiosity lives on, though. It does that.

Status report

Did managed to flag someone down at 1:30ish in the afternoon and harvest my cells.

Did not hear by from the PI who is supposed to be looking over my proposal (3 days left and counting).

On the plus side,one of the postdoc from my previous lab saw me while I was leaving and was very nice to me. As was the Russian girl who is in my lab (though I guess sympathetic is a more accurate term). So, you know, it didn't end up with me sulking by myself in the tissue culture room, which made my day that much better.

Onward to salvage my day. And finish the thing on dust mites.

Planning. FAIL.

I have some cells I need to harvest today so I thought that I might go in early, when it's nice and quiet and no one's using the equipments except for me, get it done, and get on with my day.

FAIL.

The access card for the building, despite of being just fine yesterday, refused to let me into the lab. I went around and tried every single door that can potentially give me access and it failed each time, with the little security light by the door blinking green and red at me, balefully. In a fit of pique, I tried the card on the door downstairs. It opened. Now I have access to the tissue culture room, except it was the wrong tissue culture room. I have access to my previous lab. It appeared that somehow my card had defaulted back to its previous value. (The other two cards worked just fine for access to the other buildings though, I tried.) (Yes each floor has a different access code for the card, don't ask me why.)

Not helpful.

The downstairs and the upstairs are not connected by internal stairs. (Yes Kate, this is the really weird building I was complaining to you about, a while back.) You have to exit the doors, climb the staircase outside of the building, and then re-enter. Hence, access to the downstairs lab did me no good at all. To be sure I looked around for people, with the vague hope that some of the people from my current lab, who work downstairs, might have upstairs access. Failed. Then I tried to find a PI, hoping PIs get building-wide access. Given that it was 9 to 9:30 on a Saturday morning, there was no one there.

Further more, due to the fact that the PI of my current lab will be gone until next week, the chances that someone from my current lab will come in over the weekend is much, much lower than normal.

After flailing around in frustration for a few minutes (didn't solve anything, of course it didn't solve anything), I went grocery shopping. And got myself more chocolate. I'm going in later today again to see if anyone's there (unlike my previous lab, I don't have the phone number of anyone in the lab either, and I only have the email of one postdoc who will not be in until Monday). If not, I'm leaving the entire thing until Monday. If the cells start dying or the protein expression changes -- well, I'm a rotation student and I've darn well tried my best.

Oh my God. Fail. I don't think flailing adequately expresses my frustration anymore. I mean, how often do student want to go in on weekends and can't?

I need a life

What Susan does on Friday night is, apparently, filing out her tax forms.

And vacuuming. And dishes.

Because she is taking a break from working on her paper.

Planning fail

I sent in my proposal early (Wednesday) because one of the PIs offered to look over it for us if we sent it in early, and also because I don't want to cluster it with the other two projects that are due next week if I do end up having to re-write half of it. I didn't hear back all of yesterday. Just now I got an email that, in summary, said "Oh sure. Did you attach your file?"

Well, at this rate, I probably won't get the feedback until Tuesday, which is when the proposal is actually due, so therefore the entire OMG-hafta-finish-early-so-I-can-get-useful-feedback will not be panning out.

Cheers.

More PI lolz for the biologists out there:

"Gastrulation, it's the most important event in your life ...though you probably don't remember it."

Geography fail

Today our lab received a package that's addressed to Athens, Ohio.

We are not in Ohio.

Someone was napping during those high school geography lessons.

PI lolz

"Then kinase inhibitors took over the world!"

|:O


It's even better than the "Lungs are seats to the soul" one, I swear.

...

In other news, it is apparently cancer metastasis week. All week.

In which subconscious geek strikes again, and boundaries are useful

I dreamed last night and I've forgotten most of it. I do, however, remember the part where I was playing chess with someone in the park and at the same time was trying to explain why the clinical trials of cancer therapy via folate receptors is plausible to a third person who showed up and wanted to know about it. Because he came from the hospital and the doctor mentioned something about it.

Then (still in the dream) I had to go and take an exam on California florists in which, I now realized, I did get the name of the bush poppy right, Greek and all. I mixed up the name of the evening rose genus with the other genus of the poppy family though, and I don't know whether or not I should be saddened by this, or by the fact that I can give out the name to members of the family Papaveraceae in my sleep.

I also got the folate receptor information right, except I did neglect to mention that they target a specific receptor but, again, in my sleep.

I'm beginning to suspect that reading those papers right before I go to sleep is not healthy for my state of mind.

...


My parents sent over photos of the Yard, where the tulips I'd planted have germinated. Yes those are ropes. I did rope off the area where I planted things. It's basically to remind my parents that I planted things there and that they should weed, but very carefully.

It turned out pretty well, don't you think? (The plethora of weeds aside.) Can't wait until they bloom. (I got the red kind.)

Why hello there

There is a ladybug in my spinach. This is why I wash my vegetables super carefully.

Okay the ladybug has been carried out to the balcony on my finger.
And now the balance has been restored to nature. (lol MERLIN)

(Yes it was still alive. I checked. It crawled up my finger.)

Chieves, anyone?

Today I noticed that 99 Ranch (had to go today because of lab thing yesterday) misspell their vegetables. It's a little alarming, since I've always taken the English names that they present for vegetables that I grew up with as the correct name. Apparently not. Unless there's a very, very close relative of chives named "chieves" that I'm not aware of.

I now have a sudden urge to go and google the name of every vegetable label that I've seen there, especially when you get to weird names like chayote (click here if you're not sure what it looks like). Though I'm fairly confident with the names like daikon, and garlic, so maybe not every label.

I also had an urge for pineapple today. Then I took one look at the pineapples on the stand, all of them being, on average, roughly the size of my head, thought about how much work it'd be to dissect one, and lost my urge.

The tea urge continues though. It usually does.

I am now up to the part in my proposal where I'm describing the methods and wondering whether or not saying "I think there're things in the basement I can use to see that" would be considered unprofessional.

Ha

I've gone around the room during break and reorganized and so there are now ONLY FIVE PILES OF PAPER in my flat, total.

Also I may have had too much tea, if anyone can ever be said to have had too much tea.

Random

There is supposedly a movie/documentary made about the discovery of Gleevec and struggle of the scientist against Genentech. The PI has admitted that it was a little over-dramatized but nevertheless pointed it to us as an example of the odds we have to work against if we happen to discover a compound that might be used as drug therapy, if we were lucky, since apparently the odds are usually more against us than that.

Now I really want to see that movie/documentary. Think of it morbid curiosity.

Saw a giant crow on campus today. It is bigger than Kate's rabbit and slightly smaller than Anna's cat, very glossy, and totally unafraid of humans. In fact it reminds me eerily of every single fairytale/folk lore in which the bird that stares unblinkingly back at you isn't usually a bird.

Also saw a dragonfly, but I guess that isn't as interesting, aside from the fact that it seems to be very, very far from home given that there was no bodies of freshwater near where I found it. Do dragonflies migrate?

My fingers have their own minds

After some more googling, I've concluded that I got the "introduction" section of my proposal mixed up with the "literature review" section and have thus effectively thwarted my own attempt to write the entire thing in order. (It's more logical to my brain and will speed up the experimental design process that way-- or that was the plan, anyway.)

It's always a little discouraging, when you've managed to thwart yourself without even trying.

In addition, much to my own bemusement (or is it amusement? Anyway, by now it's definitely amusement), I kept typing "dopaminergic" when I meant to type "cholinergic". Clearly my mind is hung up on Parkinson's and very reluctant to switch over to Alzheimer's, despite of the fact that I just read three papers on Alzheimer's -- okay, they're all focused on golgi fragmentation but the idea is there. (The proposal will be on the role of golgi fragmentation as cause / indicator for neurodegeneration; it's based on a 2008 paper on Cdk5 and golgi fragmentation in Alzheimer's, if anyone's interested.) (Presentation today on the mechanisms of cancer cell metastasis went v. well, by the way.)

One of my classmates who rotated in my current lab fall quarter is thinking of joining my current lab. He pointed out that this is one of the most well-funded labs, which is true. He will never have to worry about the PI running out of funding to support the grad students. It does not, however, make my current experience any more pleasant. I think I'll take my risks and learn to write really good research proposals. That way I can try for my own training grant (NIH and NSF are surprisingly grad student friendly, all things considered) and it should decrease the lab-funding-risk worse case scenario, should everything go pear shaped three years down the road. (Which has happened to other students before.) (You hear horror stories from the upperclassmen.)

Conclusion? My current proposal-assignment is therefore very useful. Very annoying, but very useful.

My living room looks like a file cabinet has regurgitated on the floor. There are four stacks of paper that I can see without moving from my current spot. I no longer know which stack contains what. There is at least another stack in my bedroom, not counting the stuff that I've filed on the bookshelf.

I still want a cat, but moments like these that make me thankful that I don't have one. Otherwise there's a very high chance that I'll return from my nightly coma tomorrow morning and find that half of my review article's been chewed off and that someone's gnawed through the wire to my laptop. That'd make me sad. And the cat will probably have a bad case of food poisoning. As the saying goes, food for thought requires a mind with teeth, and thoughts for food requires...a stomach that can handle copious amounts of printer paper, plastic, colored ink, and possibly staples. (Note: colored ink from printers may contain heavy chemicals.)

...Maybe I'm thinking of a goat, and not a cat, after all.

I think I've reached that stage of the day when I'm very confused and probably shouldn't be allowed to wander around by myself. Well then. Good night.

Desperation much?

One of the PIs has, apparently, gotten someone to sent out a mass email to all first years with a list of potential rotation projects.

(Usually WE pick a PI we like and go ask THEM for rotations.)

Just the messenger

Though it does sound fun and I'd go these next two weekends if I'm not under the pain of having lobotomy performed on me with a knitting needle if I don't attend my lab meetings on Sat. and finishing my mini research proposal.

Lucy, if our schedules work out, I'm dragging you to this with me:

From Larry Brock:

...
For the past year I have been working on organizing the San Diego Science Festival - a major FUN, entertaining, educational and FREE event geared toward reinvigorating the interest of Americans in the Sciences. I have put as much energy and imagination and effort into this as any of the companies I started. And now I need your help
getting the word out.

Why is this important?

In a nutshell:
-- according to Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley, by the year 2010 (just 1 year from now) 90% of the world's scientists and engineers will live in Asia.
-- 85% of people being trained in the advanced physical sciences in the United States are from abroad.
-- because the opportunities are now greater abroad, we are no longer retaining them in the USA.
-- If we do not turn this trend around SOON, we will have outsourced innovation.

... ...

The Festival kicked off yesterday and will run through the month of March, offering over 500 FREE events for the public geared toward sparking an interest in Science. I have pulled together a grassroots effort of over 350 companies, universities, research labs and over 150 of San Diego's leading scientists and Nobel Laureates.

You can find out all the details at: http://www.sdsciencefestival.org
Click on the calendar to see dates, times and descriptions of all the fascinating events and opportunities.

The grand finale will be an all-day EXPO in Balboa Park on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 --- over 500 fun, hands-on interactive activities for all ages. There will be stuff for the mildly curious to the science professional. Balboa Park will be transformed into a series of pavilions: YOUR BODY, YOUR ARTS, YOUR SPORTS, YOUR HERROS, YOUR
PLANET and YOUR FUTURE. You can learn about fun topics like the science of the magic of Harry Potter, the mathematics of juggling, the physics of skateboarding, the science of chocolate, the physics of golf, trends in Global Warming, renewable energy sources of the future .... Plus the some of the major museums will be open to the public for free. (This is a completely non-profit, non-commercial
initiative.)

You can operate state-of-the-art robots, learn how scientists uncovered great artwork under the original Da Vinci canvases, laugh with science comedians, be mesmerized by science magicians and mathemagicians, fly a fighter jet simulator, enter a virtual reality environment, be a CSI agent, make a virus out of marshmallows and toothpicks, try your hand at using a surgical robot, discover ways of measuring global warming, learnt how to transform your car so it can run off a cusinart ....

And --- while having fun, you can leave with information about science scholarships, internships, mentorship programs, jobs and much more.

So, why should you forward this message?

You could be the one who passes it on to the student (or their parent or teacher) who is inspired and excited enough by the science they see to eventually cure AIDS or cancer, reduce Global Warming, invent the next source of renewable energy, discover how to extend life or solve world hunger...

Please consider sending this to your employees, colleagues, friends, teachers, teachers....
... ...

I spy a chance to geek out totally. Science Festival. How awesome.
Totally will try to go on April 4th, regardless of whether or not I'm going before then.

51327496810

The unfortunate thing about working with a postdoc is that usually postdocs, like most other people of my acquaintances, turn to be Not Morning People. Therefore, despite of the fact that I purposefully stayed in for 30 minutes this morning I still had to wait for about an hour before the postdoc came and showed me where the qPCR reagents are. (Attempts to attain information about the whereabouts of reagents before I actually need them are usually met with abysmal failure, as postdoc does not seem to trust me to do the experiment on my own without her being there to show me where the stuff is and give me a perfect walk-through.) (Although this is understandable, currently the only mistakes I've made are the ones that the walk-throughs wouldn't have helped with and everything else just resulted in unnecessary amounts of waiting.) Then again, I've suddenly realized, now I have a valid excuse to not have conclusive data by the end of my rotation.

Am currently sitting outside again. Postdocs have taken over the area where I usually work and the PI is having a Meeting With People in the area where I usually stay, when I'm not working.

Our final assignments were assigned today. I was made aware that I have to write two papers and take one take-home exam. I'm more worried about the papers than the exam, since one of them is supposed to be a mini research proposal. I've never actually done a serious research proposals (by which I mean more prose-like and less...uh...bullet points or anecdotal). I expect there will be a lot of reading involved (well the number is currently at six papers and counting) on top of my class papers. And the presentations.

Have made banana bread over the weekend, as bananas from last week have acquired too many brown spots and are not looking very appetizing anymore. Banana bread very good though. Attempt to bake chicken has failed. Kate's given me some tips though, so there may be hope yet for the future. Of chicken baking. Or something.

I've moved my pot of narcissi out, since the light deprivation indoors has given it a serious case of plant starvation and it's looking sickly. Aloe needs to be transplanted into a larger pot. I have no larger pot. This is probably going to get tacked on to the end of my "to-do" list which will, in reality, not get resolved until summer.

The wireless is particularly sucky at the library today (finals are starting, med students have trooped in to cram for last midterm / early finals with their laptops). I want tea. I also need to vacuum my place this weekend.

Odd

I'm feeling no less strange or awkward and my mom still doesn't quite think I'm smart enough for grad school, but in spite of all this I'm feeling happy. By which I mean I have this constant low buzz of contentment and life is good.

I haven't even had tea yet, today.

The med-into-grad applications (it's pretty much what it sounds like) got mailed out today. I'm not participating. I could say I'm not philanthropic enough to want to deal with the patients except that...no, you know what? I'm not philanthropic enough to deal with people. It's a very valid reason.

So, basically

Have gone through five papers today. Conclusion? That pulmonary hypertension is veeeeerry deadly and phosphorylated tyrosine blots are cool, but doesn't really pertain to anything I'm interested in.

The paper I have to present made me lol by including a paragraph explaining that, originally, they named the protein Fish, but naming it Fish made it really hard to work with in databases and search terms so they had to change the name back to Tks5, which was a clone name.

Creative naming fail.

Have also concluded that it's entirely possible to like someone as a scientists and not like her as a person. Have concluded that the current lab has far too many meetings (four per week, if I'm interested, which thanks, but no thanks, since I don't want to be in the lab on both Saturday and Sunday). Also that the tissue culture room is no longer a safe haven because once the clock hits 10:30 am and people all arrive, there is only one microscope and something like eight incubators, all stuffed in a room with five laminar flow hoods in a configuration that possibly violates six different safety codes and it gets crowded. At the risk of sounding anti-social, I just want to be left myself somewhere without having to move aside and make room for other people every five minutes.

Not to mention I don't get my own pipetmans, and that makes me sad.

Have cells, will induce genes tomorrow and harvest on Sat. May do qPCR tomorrow too, but we'll see. Have constant urges to draw things today but do not have sketch book on hand. Will settle for sketching them out in my head.

I remember this from somewhere

I had been hungry all the years;
My noon had come, to dine;
I, trembling, drew the table near,
And touched the curious wine.

'T was this on tables I had seen,
When turning, hungry, lone,
I looked in windows, for the wealth
I could not hope to own.

I did not know the ample bread,
'T was so unlike the crumb
The birds and I had often shared
In Nature's dining-room.

The plenty hurt me, 't was so new,
Myself felt ill and odd,
As berry of a mountain bush
Transplanted to the road.

Nor was I hungry; so I found
That hunger was a way
Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.

Hmm

My current lab names its incubators (e.g. "Keith"). I think it's my favorite thing about this lab so far.

[edit 15:04]
The lack of a desk has given me, in addition to a truly awful crick in my neck (which, now that I've thought about it, would explain the slight headache), a constant feeling of disturbance as people go in and out of the lobby. Since the postdoc who's in charge of my project can't be found and no one else aside from the PI (who's busy) and another grad student (who's in class) ever notices whether I'm there or not and I can't do any experiment today, I've fled to the library.

I've never appreciated a desk and a chair more. Truly.

Here comes the sun

I expected it to rain yesterday except it never did and now we're in the 70s. It does not feel like February.

Tried several new things this weekend as well: liked dolma (courtesy of Lucy), liked the lemon-ginger infusion thing from Tazo (tasted like the herbal tea thing they have of the same name), didn't like the TeaZazz thing (it's supposed to be carbonated mint green-tea, yet somehow the mixture of my favorite things was ...rather terrible, really, given that I had to dilute it with juice to drink it). The peanut butter with celery combination, at the suggestion of the girl from the grocery store, was interesting. If I took it with enough peanut butter it's not bad, but it does defeat the purpose of eating celery as a healthy snack. I think I still prefer it cooked.

I went to the Getty Villa with Lucy & her family (well, minus her dad) this weekend! The gardens are pretty neat and I kept getting distracted by the carvings on the ceiling and tile-work on the floor etc, while most people are photographing the statues. Annie, you would've really loved the place. In their signet ring collection there're stuff with the profiles of people you know, such as Octavian. (Yes I typed "people you know" on purpose.) We also finished watching Merlin, which was very shiny (or as Lucy said, "lighting-y"). There's no redeeming value, but it was entertaining. I like it.

Lucy's grandpa is vaguely intimidating. Due to a mistake in communication Lucy was dragged out of bed at a quarter to nine on a Sunday. I felt bad, except for the part where I mostly didn't because it meant we could go wandering around outside.

Coraline is creepy. I think I find cutesy things creepier than blood and gore, actually, though this may be a beneficial side-effect of physio (or just, you know, the fact that I have to read so many biomed papers with cadaveric animal parts). The 3D was much better than I expected. I miss having cats.

Will start transfection in lab this week. Hopefully. Currently still have no spot to stay in lab, but at least I will have cell lines?

And Poe had his cadaveric heart

I many times thought peace had come,
When peace was far away;
As wrecked men deem they sight the land
At center of the sea,
And struggle slacker, but to prove,
As hopelessly as I,
How many the fictitious shore
Before the harbor lie.

-Dickinson

Dear Diary,

Today I was called "Bessie" by someone in my new lab. I have never been associated with that particular name before. It was interesting. The other rotation student, Tom, laughed so hard that his whole face turned red.

Yours,

S


......

Kate said that we're not, in fact, doomed. We will suffer, but we are not doomed.

Cheers.

Put your neurosis to constructive use

I went to Roger Tsien's presentation (he gave the nobel-laureate presentation on campus today), and that was one of the pieces of advise he gave to future scientists (read: students). There were loads of people there and I didn't get out of lab early enough to get a seat, and so had to stand (with loads of other people -- we were a mob, albeit mostly a very organized, geeky mob) for the entire hour. Roger, being Roger, looked around and wryly commented that he didn't expect this many people to come since this was almost exactly the same lecture he gave every year to about 20 grad students in the florescent protein class, but now that some "Swede had sprinkled fairy dust" on him, it seems to be much more popular.

Needless to say, he was quite an engaging speaker (and also responsible for the glowy protein that I imaged this morning, in addition to naming the other glowy proteins "mCherry" and "mTangerine" &c instead of something like ASDF651389) (he claimed to have gotten the color-name inspirations from Crayola).

(It's also hard to get the "zmg nobel-prize winner" attitude when the guy's just the crazy PI from the lab next door.) (Literally -- my current lab is next door to his.)

I also saw the people from my previous lab rotation there (who also came too late for a seat, so we stood together), which was nice. My new lab still appears to be organized chaos to me. To the best of my knowledge, no one there went to the event.

The boot lace from my favorite pairs of boots broke. I think this may be the first time, for me, when the shoes lasted longer than the laces. I need to get new shoe laces. I wonder if they sell that separately?

Maybe, next time

Okay so, I have decided to do four lab rotations. I have picked out my fourth lab. I have interviewed for my fourth lab and I will be ready to switch into it at the start of next quarter.

In the meantime, I'm 90% sure I will NOT be joining the lab that I just started at today.

Meanwhile, if I understood Kate's explanation of the economy-stimulus-bill-thing correctly, we are all doomed. Doomed. The weather's lovely, however.

[edit 20:53]
I should add that I did, in fact, gain a greater appreciation of cell morphology, especially those of fish karyocytes. (And possibly those of kangaroo rats?)

It went a little something like this

My parents, after reaching here on Saturday, checked the weather forecast and decided that the weather will be (and it is) really awful on Monday, so they're going to drive back on Sunday. Therefore, yesterday morning, after some more nagging ("Be safe and take care of yourself." "Yes mom." "Do you have a boyfriend yet?" "No mom." "Remember to eat all the food in your fridge, don't forget." "Yes mom."), they left. I was returned to the middle of my living room, feeling slightly shell-shocked because in less than 24 hours (courtesy of LA traffic on their way down) my domicile went from one person to three person to one person again. Except for the refuse around the place and the vast quantities of food in the fridge it might've been a dream.

(I also noted that I've apparently grown very territorial of my kitchen, given that I spent five minutes trying to convince mom to stop putting things away when she's done with them because she's putting them into the wrong spots.)

(It's a rather sad kitchen to be territorial of. As Lucy can attest.)

Also, I introduced mom to BPAL (Black Phoenix &c) and she snagged "Ultraviolet", so that one's out of circulation, folks. Her ability to tell what is what, however, is worse than mine, since for almost all of the bottles she can only describe it as "something plant-like." (I can ID the more obvious things such as juniper, mint, eucalyptus, and citrus. And some commonly used lab chemicals, though I suppose that doesn't count in this particular context.)

I've gone through five papers about actin polymerization this weekend, and pages of photos of cells. I know nothing of cell morphology (and they vary based on cell type, too!), most of them just look like cells (vaguely fibroblast-like things) with cobwebs to me. I expect I will gain a greater appreciation for them by 12pm tomorrow, or just end up banging my head against the desk a lot.

...

Microscope scheduling continues to fail, along with my attempts to do volunteer work. I seriously miss Davis, when I just email someone, say I'm interested in volunteering, and I get some sort of message back in a week at the most and at the end of the month at the most I'd usually be doing something. (Usually it's more informal than that: I just get a "you might be interested in this" email and show up to the event, then I sign up for the more registered thing on the spot and start working right away.) Currently, at SD, I've contacted six different organizations, received an initial email back from four of them, averaging at around two weeks, have to fill out a bunch of forms ahead of time indicating my volunteering history and whether or not my act of volunteering is required by school or court order (funny how those got grouped together in most forms) (my God how I despise paperwork), mail them back to pend for approval and then never hear from them again.

Er. Sorry about the italics abuse. I felt they were called for.

Clearly something is failing. It could be me & my "volunteering history", but I'm more inclined to blame it on the system right now (the four page form I had to fill out for the last one had not helped). There's one that turned out to be a "show up as you are" event, except I missed yesterday's due to parents and the people only meet twice a month. (But it's to plant things, kind of like the Central Park Project I was in, so that's nice.)

For the record: I did look up this sort of things via campus-related means; most of the student organizations for this sort of thing are run by undergrads, and have meeting times I cannot attend to, being now a paid lab minion and all. The grad organizations do have cool out-of-country trips, except I can't afford them and they take time away from my research for week(s) at a time and, in a time when I occasionally have to show up on the weekends (not this weekend, though, but last weekend? Yes) to wrap up experiments, this is perhaps not a good idea. (Read: spectacularly bad idea.)

There you have it.

...

Lucy said she'd met someone who looked like Mike but had a more Nick-like personality, and trying to imagine that is like getting lost in an Escher drawing. In my brain.

I suppose if they both had babies and ended up baby-sitting for each other a lot one of Mike's offspring might turn out like that. Though currently the idea of Mike's offspring (my God, baby-proofing the entire house might not be enough) had gone off on a Mobius strip and I don't know how that's going to end up. I suspect he'd be rather horrified at the thought if he were still infecting my brain, especially since the infecting-the-brain voice is still at the 20ish age range.

Pet peeve

People who don't label their axes (as in plural of axis, not ax).

Gaaah.

In which there should be more tea

Today is a very sci-fi sort of day.

I made the bullets for the gene gun this morning, the actual practice of which is nowhere near as cool as it sounds, though it did involve giant tanks of compressed nitrogen and desiccant pellets. Then for our discussion (which was supposed to be Monday and so got moved to today, all hail the mighty power of the instructor) we went to a classroom in the pharmaceutical sciences building (PSB -- we also have a BSB and a NSB; occasionally us first years get a little confused in the conversations). It has a special projector. We got to use uber-cool 3-D glasses, of the sort that came with a tiny chip in the frame that you use to calibrate to the projected image at the beginning of class, so that the structures you see will be 3-D while everything else remained firmly 2-D without any sort of weird overlay.

There was a weird moment while the instructor was showing us the structure of a protein where it looked like we were going to get brained by an alpha helix. Slightly nervous giggling ensued. (None of us are actual structural biologists -- if we were, we would be majoring in pharmaceutical sciences and not biomedical sciences-- so death by secondary protein structure struck us as being slightly hysterical.)

(It was a G-protein coupled receptor, if you must know. 50% of the drugs on the market target some form of that, so it's not just this random unrelated thing we have to do each week.) (Though I wouldn't mind playing with those glasses even if it's unrelated.)

(Did I mention that it was awesome? Even though I despise structural biology?)

Tossing away all my cells today made me sad, but I had to do it since no one else would take care of them otherwise and then they'd die and possibly cause contamination and then the world would end. (All the cell culture people firmly believe that contamination == end of the world.) Waiting by the bus stop in the dark and the rain was very lonely, and then I ran out of the un-caffeinated lemon tea but there was chocolate, so all was well at the end.

I'm taking the opportunity, while switching labs, to have Monday off. Parents are coming over to visit this weekend to prove, as my mom put it just now, "that we still care about you."

Cheers.

[edit 21:43]
You can apparently light nail polish on fire. Have checked.

If you were a tumor...

It is probably a sign of mental instability that when I first heard that today I felt an almost irrepressible urge to laugh, and when I looked around me, I saw that all my classmates (all fourteen of them) were completely dead-pan.

The key question, of course, is whose sanity is in question.

I have a new-found respect for nail polish. You can use it to make slides for prokaryotes AND eukaryotes, apparently. (And I got to play with paraformaldehyde, which was, sadly, not as exciting as I'd hoped.) Watching the post-doc painstakingly dab at it is funny though, because he's in his thirties and has to sit down in order to look through the microscope in the culture room since otherwise he'd have to kneel on the floor to get his eyes on the same level -- and it's such a dainty tiny bottle of polish. (Kate, I think the top of your head may just about clear his shoulders.) (Yes he really is that tall.)

(Also: has anyone ever seen nail polish catch on fire before? Purely scientific interest. Or at least, purely curious as to why it'd say "FLAMMABLE" on the back when things that I know are flammable in the lab have often more innocuous looking warning labels.)

In other news:

From Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab I have "Ultraviolet", "Crossroads", "Tiger Lily" and "Shanghai" up for grabs for anyone interested. If you really want to I can be persuaded to give up "Dance of Death" and "Loup Garou" too, though the latter is currently gracing the scent of my linens.

First come, first serve. Will mail, unless you're Lucy, in which case we'll do an item trade of some sort next time we see each other.

Lolz

Dickinson's awesome:

Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen who see;
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency!

Speaking of which, I've a date with the microscopy core on Friday to make the bullets for the gene gun. You may now cue the sci-fi themed music.

Well, that was an unexpected amount of foresight

I just got a bunch of "Forever" stamps the other weekend.

Presenting at lab meeting today. Have 4 more papers this week and 11 for next week. Grad school and having a life clearly are meant to be mutually exclusive concepts.

A little wistful now

Wait, Sims 3 got delayed?

...which is probably a good thing since I do not have time for it right now. Huh. Think I'll have time in the summer? Assuming I'm not taking classes then?

I really, really feel like writing something now except I'm just getting a bunch of scenes, personalities and emotions and no way to put them together into something that makes sense. It's like white noise in my brain. I still want to write something that does not contain words like "signaling pathway" and "regulatory function".

It got a little hazy after the tenth plate

I have somehow accumulated many, many plates of cell cultures. Currently this is not a good thing. I wonder if I should be freezing down a sample of each plate when I leave, just because when you passage cells too many time they tend to become strange and disinclined to die when they're supposed to.

Today alternated between periods of downpour, where it is in fact accurate to use the word "downpour", and periods when it's sunny and massive fleets of clouds go sailing by overhead (way cool to watch if you've got the time -- for me it's mostly limited to glimpses between class and lab). The wind made me gasp, mostly because it's there and there was an unexpectedly lot of it. The presence of weather is almost soothing after the days in 80s. This could be why I'm having another good day today, despite of the fact that my troubleshoot experiment has failed. Or you know, I could just like being a lab minion / geek that much.

I got "I'm Feeling You" stuck in my head this afternoon, which is strange since I'm pretty sure I haven't heard that song in a very very long time. It's not even the entire song, just the part of the chorus that goes "I'm riding the highs / I'm digging the lows / cause at least I feel alive" ending right before the "I'm feeling you" part. I didn't know the lyrics until I looked it up just now. It has probably something to do with the rhythm of things, like the "The Hurlers", except I actually like "The Hurlers" and I'm not entirely sure I like the other song. (Oh and Annie, I recommend Seth Lakeman to you, his style a little bit like Leahy and...well...just look him up on youTube or something.)

Speaking of multimedia type things. I had an extra hour last night and so went to look up Pushing Daisies. Except I can't find season two on the abc site anymore. Lucy, is this because I was just browsing the wrong abc part or did they took it down?

I've structural biology papers. They are confusing. I mean I know those bits are hydrophobic, but so what?

Ergo

25 things meme is done over at lj. Meanwhile I've finally given in and ordered a set of imp-ears from Black Phoenix Alchemy lab (sorry Annie, let me know if you want to order together still and we can try the next time you remember). They came and I had some fun trying out the scents because, wonder of wonders, they are not the overly-sweet / musky stuff you'd find in the stores that'd make me sneeze. My favorite scent so far is "Shattered", which is a kind of mint + citrus type thing and smells fresh and not at all over-powering, like most of the smells that involve citrus I've run across. Unfortunately it doesn't last on my skin at all. The runner up is "Undertow", which (and I've tried again last night after my shower just to confirm), seems to actually make me sleep better. By which I meant I felt so well rested that I woke up at 7:07 on a Sunday morning with no alarm clock and felt ready to go out and face the day (it was almost the same the first time I tried it, too). Just for this I think it might be worth the investment.

I liked how "Loup Garou" smelled in the bottle better than "Undertow", but it does something on my skin that I'm not entirely sure about and ends up smelling almost acrid, so now I keep it tucked in the bag with my spare linens because the smell reminds me of every single hiking trip that I've ever enjoyed. (Considering that my scent association outside of chemical labs is usually pretty bad, this is fairly impressive.)

Oh and the Black Phoenix people did two random swaps for my order, and I got "Dance of Death", which I liked more than I thought I would and will most likely end up being the scent I wear on dates, should I ever go on dates (dunno, it's that kind of smell, I can't really explain it). The other one is Tiger Lily, which is far girlier than anything I'd ever pick for myself, but there's something very sweet and innocent about it that makes me think of sunshine and puppies. I put one dab on in the morning before my two hour discussion the day after I first tried it because I want the sunshine and puppies kind of feeling. Though I probably should never try to describe myself as sweet or innocent, in scents or otherwise.

That sums up my excitement of the week. Lab proceeds as usual, ditto for the papers. (OMG the load of papers.) My lab rotation ends next week and I have to give a talk on Wednesday in between the papers and there is so much stuff that I need to do next weekend that I've actually managed to convince my parents to not come and visit that weekend. I may need more chocolate.

Cheers.

So

Result of being tagged by Victoria's over at my lj.

Learned why diabetics (mostly type II) tend to have heart problems. It's like watching a train wreck happen.

Peach jam

Did a transfection the yesterday. The results so far are not too promising. The fusion protein construct that I put in refused to light up but I've still 24 hours left to check, so here's to hoping.

In other news: my rotation in this lab ends at the end of next week, and I went to Pt Loma last Sunday morning and saw a maroon-colored crab with white spots on its back. It was still alive, too. I found out by accident. I also found out that lichen-covered rocks are slippery and that perhaps having my camera out was a bad idea, since I dropped the camera pouch into a tide-puddle (not deep enough to be called a pool).

Despite of how a lot of things could've gone better this week, I am feeling oddly content.

Upon reflection, it's really a new kind of pathetic

Sometime around 2am I woke up half way, thought about my reaction mix for an experiment I have to do on Monday, and calculated 18.5*33 in my head. Then in the morning I woke up, remembered that thought, laughed at myself, and checked and I've actually done it correctly.

On one hand: cool, I can apparently do two digit multiplications even half asleep.

On the other hand: my God I need to find something occupy my brain that's not school related.

Maybe Mike'd find this more impressive. Except for where he wouldn't because he can probably tell you the answer to 12! off of the top of his head at 6 in the morning with no caffeine.

Sometimes it's very awkward to write people who are smarter than you are. Especially if they happen to be the mouthy type of person.

Also I just realized that today, for the first time ever, I can't tell you right away where my sketchbook/notebook is. Remember high school? I used to carry that thing with me all the time. And throughout most of college too. This is the sad state of things.

Untitled

Sometimes I forget how dull plain USA grocery stores can be. I've had this point covered in class even, multiple times (agriculture & ecology, floristics, in case you're wondering). Somehow the colors and shapes can still distract me enough that occasionally I forget 90% of the stuff you'd find in your local equivalent of Safeway is derived from something like only seven ancestral species (e.g. cauliflower, radish, mustard greens of any kind, broccoli, all Crussiferae). Then I'd go to a different grocer's which, in my case, is frequently Asian, and I'd get things like taro and caltrop. I dithered for about five minutes in front of the tray this morning, because although I like to eat them but I'm pretty sure that I don't have the time to eat them right now(the shell requires both fingers and teeth and will likely result in smudges on my homework if I try to do both at the same time -- not as multitask-friendly as carrot sticks). The same thing did happen the other time I got taro. I ended up having to throw them away. It was very sad.

I did finish both papers I have to read for Monday, with the sheets perfectly clean. I'm not entirely sure I understood the bit on chemical engineering (they all have guanines, all the R groups are hydrophobic, I can't tell what other electrostatic what-ever-you-cal-its are important) but that's the way it goes. One of my classes is going to start the unit on heart diseases next week, so hopefully that'll be interesting (and will no doubt involve NFkB, because it is everywhere and involved in everything).

I also (finally) finished season one of Due South today, bring me to: 1) ouch...I mean, nice, but the progression to darker themes is apparently not a linear, but exponential scale and 2) this show's got the most awesome soundtrack ever. The fact that I know who Ray Kowalski is shows up at odd moments, when I'd wonder what he'd do in such and such scenario. Mostly I just feel bad for Ray Vecchio. A lot. And then spend half an hour mulling over Truepenny's analysis of the episodes (that's her lj username, google it and read her meta under "due south" tags if you haven't already, Lucy) which continues to be insightful without being dense. I feel like it rounds up my Due South experience very nicely.

Next up? Pushing Daisies. Going to get caught up on that.

Starting next weekend.

Lucky break

New moderator today. He was a more talkative individual, and between him and the course instructor (who did not appear to suffer afflictions of psychological origins today) the class was kept well entertained and I was saved from having to talk too much.

In fact, they took up so much time that I was a little behind on time and was ordered to rush through two of the figures in my paper. I did get picked on for my summary slide, where I wrote "complex forms" instead of "complex is activated" since based on the paper it's not possible to know whether or not the protein complex does form or not, only that it's activated at the time point of interest (it could be still in a complex, just inactive the rest of the time). All in all though, I got off fairly lightly. My presentation is over and I say thank goodness and good riddance.

My cells are growing very slowly. If they don't grow faster I'd be going through my entire rotation without accomplishing anything except getting the sequence for part of a protein.

I got a new USB stick today, since my mp3 player is still out and my other USB drive that I tend to carry around with me is only half Gb and has lost three gel electrophoresis photos in as many days. The campus bookstore happened to have a sale on Kingston datatraveler today and so I got a 4 Gb one. (They didn't have many types -- it was either that or a white and pink one / white & greyish one. So I got a dark blue & silver one that looks like the one in the photo. Zach's favorite colors!) It is shiny.

Learning to use the new camera on the microscope tomorrow! Also up: more cells.

(What's the temperature like where you guys are? It's insanely warm today here. I'd given up on my sweater by lunch time and was wandering around in my shirtsleeves.)

When I'm sixty four

Second presentation of the quarter tomorrow. I think I have at least three more to go, at least two of which should require powerpoint. Oddly enough, even the prospects of doing a lab presentation is no where near as intimidating as the presentation I'll be facing tomorrow. Although lab presentation is presenting my own work, the presentation tomorrow involves me facing off the instructor who was so exasperated with us on Tuesday that he did an actual face-palm and said "Aaaaugh" in the middle of the class. He also (semi) joked about how if we're the graduate students that he really has to speak to the admissions committee and how at metaphase we're the chromosome that lagged behind and caused the whole cell to be delayed through M-phase.

On one hand, this is possibly the most educational class I will be taking this school year. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about being insulted by the instructor. I am, however, very clear on what I feel about the instructor, which is mostly along the lines of "stop trying to fish for answers, I have no idea what you're trying to get at" and lucky for me (and unlucky for the instructor, as proven by the face-palm) I am not alone in my sentiments.

Well, we shall see what we shall see. If you guys don't hear from me in a week, assume that the instructor has bitten my head off due to my gross incompetence at presenting research articles.

...

My current PI is fascinated by the gene gun. He wants me to try to use it to blast brain slices (we're trying to transfect a construct with glowing GFP reporter into neuronal tissues). I am slightly apprehensive, since my knowledge of the gene gun is that it's to be used on plant cells, when all other transfection methods have failed because of, usually, the type of cell wall involved. I also have trouble taking the instruction manual seriously, since it uses words like trigger and bombardment and includes instructions on how to shoot animals with it (which I think is silly and a waste of material, but explaining why will take me too long). That the PI has made a pun about aiming it at thieves to give them cancer has not helped one bit.

The fact that we make our own cartridge out of a suspension of gold (I assume because it's relatively inert) and DNA gives "the gold bullet" a whole new meaning.

Though...brain slices. I can feel vegetarianism lurking in my future.

Don't ask me why he's still in a Santa hat but...

...it's Chinese New Year and Zach gets to play with sparklers! (Hee.)

(Courtesy of Lucy; hi!)

Happy Chinese New Year!

I've blueberry muffins baking in the oven. There will be dumplings.

The powerpoint is NOT coming along

Oh my God proxy settings. Why? Why?

I think more tea is called for.

Only a first year

I've never had anyone feel sorry for me because I'm a first year before. It's a novel and unnerving experience, when I was patted on the back in a "you have a long way to go yet, young grasshopper, I'm glad I'm not you" kind of way.

I went out and got a bar of chocolate.

The two events may or may not be related.

Further update on my apartment hunting: I have found more studio apartments. They continue to be more expensive than my current one bedroom. The cheapest one is currently a hundred dollars per month more expensive so we'll see -- if the managers of my current place decides to raise the rent I might move to the place behind Ralph's, since it's closer to campus and has the studios on the top floor so I feel less like I'm living in a cave (that is possibly connected to the Arctic in some secretive magical fashion that I'm currently unaware of).

We'll see.

I should also mention that there is wind outside today. Possibly up to five mph. However, since it rained earlier and in all likelihood will rain again later, it's still not the ideal kite-flying weather. (By the way, the kite came with a manual that warns me to not pull a Benjamin Franklin, because the manufacturer will be held responsible for the consequences &c &c.)

There are also blueberries, which have improved my day considerably. I'm going to make tea in a continued effort to improve life.

That guy isn't a HeLa cell...

I went to a joint lab meeting / seminar / science swap at the Salk Institute today. Liz, a postdoc in my lab, is presenting, so I went to cheer her on. It was my first time at Salk (oddly enough, our orientation involved commuting to places like the aquarium, and the Burnham, but not the Salk) and the bus driver helpfully told me when we got there so I didn't end up somewhere in, say, Del Mar, by accident.

Also lab-related is the end of the Olde Schoole prep that I spent almost all of Wednesday and part of yesterday on. And also an hours this morning. It involves me attempting to pierce a vial containing cryogens, carcinogens, and heavy metal with a surgical syringe in the dark. (Well, there was UV. Of strong enough wattage to warrant a very uncomfortable face shield but unfortunately it's a lab-grade UV which means there's a lot of UV and not a lot of light.) (Er. And it also requires two points of penetration -- one to release the pressure and the other to actually draw something out.) The yield is kind of abysmal, leading me to wonder why the PI prefers this method so much. Admittedly the poor yield might be entirely because of my lack of skill (first time around with the cesium chloride, after all), but personally, I think there's a reason why all the postdocs as well as the lab tech prefer to use the Qiagen kit. In fact the only person who prefers the other method is the PI so....

For those of you who are / will be doing lab work. Zap brand pippet tips suck. Or they don't, which is more of the problem. Specifically it's the 0.1 to 10 uL, filtered and aerosol proof type. It doesn't seem to seal to the micropippet correctly so the volume distributed is very inaccurate, not to mention sometimes you just cannot get the fluid out of the tip which is ultimately very frustrating. I got to use the nanodrop spectrophotometer though, which was cool. (Oh oh did I mention I got to run my own sequencing reactions the other day? Our lab has its own sequencing machine. Way cool.)

Eight papers and a presentation next week. I'm sleeping in tomorrow morning.

Cheers.

Fuzzy purple aggregates

Today my protocol told me that I can spin out the "excess fuzzy purple aggregates" on the Beckman tabletop centrifuge.

Sometimes the olde schoole methods are scarily like alchemy. (And I had a grand total of three seconds to reminisce about Merlin before I realized that I have to bleach all the other bottles too. Today is Bleach Everything Day. Every day with direct bacteria clone nucleic acid prep is Bleach Everything Day.)

In other news, I have finally had a chance to read through the inauguration speech transcript (yay). Kind of want to hear it (words are only half of a good speech, after all), but I don't think I'll get around to it until this weekend. Maybe I'll leave that on instead of music while I'm cooking this weekend. I've had my interview with the next PI, who has a very large lab (about three times the size of my current lab) and who promised to send me stuff to read. Except he worries that they might crash my computer. He told me that if they do I can drop by his office and he'll print the stuff out for me, which I suppose was very nice of him, although I have to wonder what kind of manuscript can crash a computer (and seriously, does his lab have special computers?). In my email I've received something that reads:

Speed Friending

Tuesday, January 27th, 4pm

Women’s Center

Limited Spaced! (only 30 spots)



We are bringing back a very well attended social event last year, Speed Friending. This activity will give you the opportunity to have brief interactions with a number of other graduate students from across the campus in a relaxing and fun environment. Afterwards, we hope that you can continue the discussions and further develop friendships that have been kindled by this event.

It's apparently like Speed Dating, except it's grad students only and less discriminating about gender. Kind of disturbing, actually. Though I'm half-way convinced now that speed friending may be the only way I'll find time to make friends here, since my next lab apparently has grad-student-paper-talks on Saturdays. (Whee.)

Okay. Over and out. Er. Dinner. Right.

Back to your scheduled programming

...okay that was a long delay (class ran late, seminar ran late, lunch ran late leading into direct entry to lab, from which I have returned, with the promise that I'll get to play with cesium chloride and ethidium bromide together tomorrow).

We left off at downtown La Jolla I think, where there was an unusual amount of traffic that day going from there to the Five. Lucy and I watched Merlin, which reminds me vaguely of Dr. Who until I saw that some people from that show did work on it and then promptly stopped making the association. It's helped by the fact that Merlin is a lot easier to like than either the Doctor or Rose. Having read the legend of Arthur before there were some details that kept tripping me (I think I was expecting everything except Merlin's age to be somewhat true to the mythology) (yes it was silly, I know), the greatest of which is Morgana's identity. However, the show is sufficiently shiny / dorky / whatever to distract me. And then Lucy explained the concept of the "slash dragon" to me. Since this was shortly followed by the scene where Merlin was unconscious and calling for Arthur (ball of light very shiny) I had a "..." moment and realized that I now have a slash dragon in the brain.

Wheedled Lucy into watching Due South (and suspected that Fraser might be her type) and felt oddly triumphant when Fraser was pronounced to be "adorable". Felt sorry for Vecchio together. (Completely forgot the "She shot my hat, Ray," part. Definitely worth watching that episode again if only for that scene.)

Remembered to bring camera with self to Balboa Park this time. There was a statue of Hermes with winged feet (not sandals, feet have checked; have had Lucy re-checked) and the buildings remain awesome. Went to explore the gardens after the art museum and discovered a route that may or may not lead to nowhere. Which reminds me that on Saturday, when we encountered giant rocks on the beach, we took turns pretending to be the obligatory Kate and climbed a few. There is photographic evidence.

Sunset was lovely. I need to spend more time reading poetry.

Passaged cells on Monday, grew some colonies, and discovered one of the plate contained a piece of what may be a piece of fiber. Have concluded that will need to either be more careful while culturing cells or wear fuzzy sweaters less. Concluded that since it's winter and I need to feed/passage cells every other day, not wear sweaters is not a practical option. Will settle for being more careful about rolling up sleeves instead.

Got new papers this week. Interview with next lab's PI tomorrow. Lunch with seminar speaker was surprisingly fun and not painful.

Searching

I have approximately five minutes before class starts. I'm not sure how much I'll actually get to type but if I don't finish, expect a continuation of this post later on, 'k? 'k.

Lucy went home yesterday morning, after arriving on Saturday morning. We were very hopeful about the kite all weekend but, as she has already mentioned, the weather Gods/Goddesses just were not of one mind with us. There were also not many people on the beach with kites (read: none). It might be entirely possible that the area of beach around here is too shallow and even and the direction that the bay faces is not conductive to gloomy & stormy seas. Or maybe that's just around here. (Though the temperature here should be dropping later this week. Right now it's still too warm to wear a jacket over my sweater, unless I'm indoors.) (I would like to take a moment to mention that in terms of secret relative location to the Arctics, my lab is located much closer to the North Pole than my apartment. The tissue culture room is warmer, I kid you not.) There are craggier points up north but they are probably not very good for kite flying either. Knowing me I'd fall into a tide pool or something by accident and drop the kite, spool and all, into the ocean.

I've found someone who agrees that downtown of my grad school area  is a little bit like downtown of my undergrad school. They have very good fries.

And now the class starts.

Yesterday the lj, today the blog. Tomorrow.. um. I'll get back to you.

So after hacking into Susan's lj yesterday (and by hacking I mean, "launching firefox and asking her if she was signed in" -she was), I am now taking over her blog for this evening. She's almost making me do it, actually. I think she's afraid the blog will be jealous I am lavishing so much attention on the lj. But the lj has pretty icons! I am a shallow person. *NODS*

(Kite failure continued today if you're wondering. And the dragon spent the whole weekend in the trunk of my car waiting and possibly praying for wind. This is proof that the dragon god is not benevolent. Or doesn't exist. IDK.)

Kate, if you're reading this, you may be happy to know that Susan successfully got me hooked on "Due South". I also suspect I used to watch this when I was in middle school, but all I remember is the uniform and the dog. (MY BRAIN CELLS WERE BUSY WITH SAILOR MOON. AND POSSIBLY NOT DYING IN MOSCOW WINTER.) Okok, anyway. Susan's blackberries are weird and bitter. But she says I should eat them for the antioxidants. I like blackberries! Just not bitter ones. What's up with that?

(Susan just (fine, almost) broke something with a stressball. Please revel in the irony. Thank you.)

(Also, Susan's apartment has a hidden passageway to the North Pole somewhere. It's a hot "summer" day outside, and then you walk in and it's like ~WHOOOOSHWINDCOLDWHOOSH~. I constantly expect polar bears (she does have a stuffed one, so that doesn't help). I also tried to explain the humor of OMGWTFBBQPOLARBEAR to her but failed. You guys are probably not surprised.)

Oh, right, she's reminding me that we did stuff today. WHICH WE DID! And yes, there are pictures. We went to Balboa park by San Diego zoo, and there were a lot of pretty buildings built by the Spanish, and museums and gardens and cafes and STUFF. You know stuff, right? It's pretty neat. Oh, but even before that, Susan helped me rescue/retrieve my sparkly hat!! I realized this morning that I couldn't find it and that the last place I remembered having it was at the bistro on Saturday, so we located this fine establishment's website and called them and they had my hat <333

Also we watched the sunset over the ocean tonight, and it was magical. (Yes, yes, pictures. Later.)

-Lusine

Looking ahead with slightly more enthusiasm

So second week was almost awful.

Having spent part of my Saturday last weekend in lab, I felt like I didn't get the "full weekend" experience, and consequently that made me cranky. There was an unfortunate amount of reading this week and a presentation, and since the amount of time I spent per paper is directly proportional to how much of the detail I can retain (and there was a lot of details -- the papers are meant to familiarize us with different fields, so most of the papers are on things we've never heard of before and we need to figure out how all of them work before each class), the fact that I tend to get to class / lab at around 8:30 each morning and not return home until after 6 each night was not particularly helpful.

Yet somehow I've managed to get by this week without ever having to stay up later than 10pm for my homework. I did have to stay up until some unholy hour Tuesday, but that was because one of my neighbors was having a party. Since my apartment complex is full of med people, I'm a little confused as to what they can possibly celebrate on a Tuesday night, of all things (med students being somewhat more high strung than grad students in my admittedly limited experience). Glen, from the lab (and he was very sympathetic about my plight this week and offered to take out my bacteria clones for me today so I don't have to go in the lab), suggested that maybe it's a post-exam celebration. However, it's only two weeks into the quarter (and I have just figured out where the snap-top tubes are kept in lab) and I don't think midterms start until next week. Whatever, I'm just glad it's over.

Which, come to think of it, sums up my feeling of this week nicely.

My immediate future is, I'm happy to say, considerably brighter. Lucy's coming today (in about an hour, I would estimate) and I will NOT be in lab either today or tomorrow (cheers). I have enough time left over on Monday to finish the two papers due for Tuesday. The papers for Thursday haven't been posted yet and so I have nothing to worry about. In any case it's only four papers that I'm going to get quizzed on, compared to the ten of this week. My next presentation is in two and a half weeks and I have heard back from a PI who -- maybe-- was okay with me finishing my rotations in his lab. I have a sequence for my construct. It appears to match what it's supposed to be. I have a new cell line waiting in the -80C freezer. I will not have to introduce the speaker for next week's pharmacology seminar, my partner will (the students who presented the presenter's papers are supposed to introduce him/her right before his/her talk begins), and it's a relief for all parties involved.

Despite of possible forecasts of temperature change, right now the weather is beautiful and there's a giant kite-in-a-tube in my bedroom, waiting to be assembled.

(Yes Anna, we'll take photos.)

New record

10 papers in one week + 1 presentation

Well

On one hand: lab is still awesome.

On the other hand: I will have no life if I join this lab (read: I just got home, having arrived at the lab just slightly after 8:30 this morning).

Then again: I've been trying to get a life since high school and it has never stuck, and this way I'll have a valid excuse when my overly-inquisitive relatives ask about my relationship status.

Hmmmm.

This is...winter?

I'm wandering around in a shirt. There are people sun-bathing by the pool. The days have been clear and sunny since the day the quarter started. I'm currently uncertain if this is the normal state of things or if this is some sort of a fluke in weather. My lab mates don't seem to be surprised by it though.

And now, to lunch!

(Lab hour got delayed because the guy who was supposed to let me in got distracted by the beach.)

Out of time

I had no time for hate
The grave would hinder me
Life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity

Nor had I time for love but since
Some industry must be
The little toil of love I thought
Was large enough for me

Wow

Today's the first day when I'm asked for a CV for a lab rotation. Which means of course that the lab must be hard to get into (not too surprising, since the guy's one of the more popular PIs, but still, CV?), and that must be some lab....

Geez, now I have to dig out my CV from my backup disk. (I know they tell us to keep it on-hand and updated always, but that's like the drink 8 8oz glasses of water per day thing -- most people don't do it.)

[edit 18:06]
Also, hey lookit, my name's listed under the department's current students index. With my email address. Isn't that a little unsafe, since these are our official school addresses and that page is open access?

Chargers?

The bus stop that goes closest to my apartment is closed these two days, which is a bit inconvenient. The bus that I rode on today kept switching its display between it's route/destination and "Go Chargers!", which I really can't be bothered with to look up at this point, but presumably it's a team of some sort.

Also, I got home at 7pm today. One of the classes ran over time so I had almost no break from 8:30am till 1pm (two classes and a seminar), lab went just after six (tissue culture + bacteria transformation), so the day is a little grueling.

On the plus side: the 5-6 class period thing that is this afternoon apparently doesn't really exist. (It was meant to be an extension of the 10 to 12 class except not.) On the plus side: I really like the current lab -- it's small, the PI is funny (and weird -- extremely weird), and I like everyone there, from the PI (I like weird people) down to the two undergrads, and at the current juncture they appear to like me back. One of them even spent considerable effort to chase down a cell line for me so that I can have a easy line to work with to make my own neuronal cells. (Day: 2; cell lines passaged: 2; papers read: 3; papers to read: 5; times that I started off in one direction only to remember that the equipment I needed is in the other direction: 10+) On the minus side: the PI is extremely weird (read: talks in continuous punch-line style and offers me extensive advice on modern day science...and possibly cooking) and the lab work is likely to be very intense, once I get into it. (I didn't get to see the mice yet. They're apparently in a high security vivarium and the amount of time it'd take for my paperwork to go through is likely to be longer than the duration of my rotation.)

Classes are yet to be determined. They currently involve a lot of papers, at least two written assignments and two more presentations. My education today went: inflammation, cell cycle, phagocytosis, cell culture! I wish there was better transition (or at least a ten minute break between the subjects) but eh, what can you do?

Cheers people! I've gone back to wet lab and all things considered, life is good.

Hohum

Originally posted on 12/31/08 at 15:17 according to blogger:

Things to do between now and next Tuesday:

-load car

-get to SD

-check and go through all snail mail

-reply to all the mail that requires replying

-vacuum change sheets do laundry &c

-get food. The perishable kind that contains more vitamins than preservatives

-print out my schedule / classroom assignments, because despite of the fact that everything is in three buildings, there are an uncommon number of rooms in those three buildings (one of which is five floors tall, not counting the basement or the annex basement)

-get all the files I need onto the netbook, which I have decided to name Ivy

-clean up Daemon. Again

-get the antivirus thing going on Ivy

-make sure everything's charged, set alarm

-get all school supplies

-upload all photos, organize and upload them as zip files, post download links somewhere

-reorganize my bookshelf with my new collection of books

-pay back Charlie the 5$ that I owe him

-get my security / access card paperwork filled out for my next lab, unless the PI decides for whatever reason that I don't need it Don't need it.

-mail Gina about the 12 weeks in 10 weeks plan, though need to check and recount in student planner before mailing (with finals week + spring break we get twelve weeks, will need to check with third lab PI to see how that turns out, will need to find third lab first...)

-scout for the lab after the next lab

-bug Lucy for her class schedule, and Kate for her final's schedule

HAPPY NEW YEARS!
Anything more insightful (i.e. about the start of a new year and such) will have to be detained until at least 9 days from now.

What happened?

Just suddenly remembered that waaay back I used to watch the Zeta Project on WB. Which, of course, meant that I watched maybe four, five episodes of it. Though now I wonder what the heck happened to it. I watched a LOT of WB my first two years in America (mom actually forced me to watch tv--I remember arguing with her about it because I wanted to read my Chinese books, which I could actually understand, after a day spent at school and of course mom wanted me to pick up English faster and so...). I also remember something that seemed to be called "Bruno the Kid". Watched a few episodes of X-men (the animated version, and Kurt was my favorite character, which just figures). Then there were random things with squirrels and giant chickens and a girl named Katie that could explode and, to be honest, I still don't really understand those episodes even when I pull up complete fragments of those memories. (Giant chicken dressed up as human? What?) Grew a deep fondness for the song & dance that Wacko, Yako (that how you spell it?) and Dot did though. After I've acquired enough English to figure out that hey, the educational humor's kind of neat. (Simpsons took longer time to appreciate, since you need more cultural background to understand it and cultural background isn't something you can pick up in school, if you're me.)

I wonder if this is where I started setting the trend for what I will / will not watch because less face it, I hadn't had a lot of choice / time / exposure to different genre of tv before this. (Cultural Revolution = total embargo on all things foreign, Shakespeare was burnt, Beatles never made it into the country, and there were ballet dancers who were tortured for no reason other than the fact that they are participating in a foreign pass time. Once again, idea is good, but trying to carry it out via the general public is utter disaster.) (The first foreign tv show I remembered watching is some sort of Japanese Anime, the first thing of western culture is either Bugs Bunny or a really old version of Zorro.)

(I'm afraid I'll start humming "Pinky and the Brain" under my breath when I'm not paying attention, as that now I'm affiliated with a genetics lab that uses mice.)

Parents, parents

My parents have just left for the return trip to Bay Area (leaving them tomorrow to recover). As much as I like going home and a part of that has to do with my parents being there, having both of them here in SD with me is...well, three people in a one bedroom apartment is one person too many. Especially when both of them are adults who are bored out of their minds (foggy day, can't go to the beach, they don't want to read any of the stuff I have here and I only let them use Daemon because my other two laptops are clean, darn it, and my parents go to sites such as creaders.com where trojans and worms abound). Of course, that means bickering. I've, frankly, refereed second graders with more tact (thank you City Year)...though I am also biased since I am running interference between my parents and I expect better of them. As long as they're kept busy, they're fine (and the whole "we won't see you for six month so we're going to buy you stuff" has resulted in way too much food and a new set of tupperware, which is nice. I needed the tupperware). I kept tripping over them for about half a day while running around unpacking and doing householdy-type errands (and slopped water on myself because someone filled the cup that I thought was empty while I was in the other room). Mom eventually got bored enough and found the copy of Peanuts that Victoria got me for Christmas and entertained herself with that (thank you Victoria) while dad went out and poked at my car. I got sent out with my dad for gas because, according to my mom, that if I let them close to each other they will start arguing (by the way, the first half of New Year's -- before everyone got mellowed out by fatigue -- sucked). Of course when they were leaving dad was so busy saying goodbye that he turned onto the wrong lane so that unless he knew that it's possible to get to the Five from the north end of Genesee -- which he didn't -- he was going to have to take a u-turn which will no doubt result in more bickering for the first hour of the trip. (At least they won't be bored?)

I love them dearly but sometimes? Good grief.

More errands!

Heads up

Photos available online for exactly one week. Links over at lj.

New Year's

Okay, back in SD. Question: what is the last (latest photo) that you guys saw me post?