There is a "heatwave" in SD.
Yesterday (and what was with the drizzling Thursday evening, anyway?) the temperature reached the 80s and, after lab, that meant mobs at every stop that's within walking distance of the beach, with their wet hair, sunburn, and beach gears. I've never seen the bus crowded enough, in US, for it to turn away from multiple stops because there was no room for more people. The press of bodies brings back childhood memories of public transit, though the freezing air conditioning that was making everyone sneeze was a new American twist.
The "heatwave" (after living in places where 100s is considered acceptable summer weather, I can't really take the SD version of the term seriously) continues today with gloriously clear sky and impossibly bright sun (you don't expect the light to be strong enough to make you squint at 8:30am one day after weeks of no sun at all; you just don't). A good fraction of the cars parked along my street has already evacuated themselves by 9am, proving that my throw-away hypothesis about the weather last week might be correct. Given that parking was not going to be an issue probably before sundown, and the threat of far too much sun later in the day (which make make visibility of the white paint that separate lanes hell -- a fact that I never appreciated about sunny days before SD, I believe), I went to grocery shop about half an hour earlier than my usual time, and encountered a blissfully sparsely populated store as well as one of the PIs I knew.
And I thought that time when I ran into the post-doc in my lab Saturday morning at lab and then, right after, at 99 Ranch, was kind of awkward.
We have only one 99 Ranch within practical distance, which means that if you are Asian, you will probably stop by there at some point. I think I have met nearly every Chinese post-doc that I've spoken to there (I think the students go later in the day). This occurrence is something I have resigned myself to, despite of the fact I like to keep my work life separated and whenever it breached into the other portion of my time I always feel like...that something extremely invasive has escaped its containment barriers, actually. These days the mental flailing is at a minimum, until the moment today when I look up from trying to decide whether or not I'm in an eggplant kind of mood (I was) and saw the PI from one of the labs that I rotated in (the one that tried to keep in, in fact) grocery shopping with another much more elderly man that I presume is either his father or father-in-law.
There is something distinctly surreal about seeing your polished PI raggedy and carrying a 20lb bag of rice of his shoulder.
Did I mention that the guy is pending approval (by the Dean) as a member of my thesis committee and will sit through my advancement to candidacy exam soon? My bubble of zen at the quiet (and the ability to push my cart in a straight line unmolested) was irreparably shattered. My thoughts went from "eggplant" to "thesis".
(He didn't see me at first, but there was a point where we accidentally, but literally, found ourselves standing face to face, at which point we both looked awkward -- okay, I felt awkward and he looked it and had to say "hi" and spent the rest of the time trying to pretend it didn't happen.)
(Go easy on us: in labs there's a specific set of parameters and guidelines for the relationship between a grad student and a PI, which does not apply at all in a grocery store at nine in the morning, next to the peaches. Also, his dad/dad-in-law was there.)
And there was much mental flailing.
20100716
Hmm is it week three already?
No new developments from the two sites with the word "intellect" in them. Since I have tried to email someone in one of them (all with very abandoned-looking profiles) I am going to take that to mean that the profiles are indeed abandoned. Well, here's to one more week of the two week long probation period. I think this's about all the meet-a-geek sites that I know / have been told about, which means come next I might need to pick another site to keep my three-site-minimum plan and I shall need to brave the general population.
That should be fun.
When the last time I had an actual conversation with a guy who is not a geek? Six grade? No wait, there were those random people on the train. Except I don't think I can legitimately count someone who's twice my age and married for this so I guess it'll have to be...10th grade volunteering, listening Yonathan telling about the time when he walked into the school's pool and playing cards with Danny and Serena at six in the morning. (Good times.) I think conversation's gotten harder now that shared experiences of education, which composed of something like 80% of our time during that age, is no longer a given. Which brings me to:
Recent development in pen-pal-ship. In which I have been ditched by everyone except the Xylitol guy. This is oddly like real life, where though I don't attract much attention, I do have a few people who strikes up conversation with me here and there -- who will promptly bail once the conversation becomes a real conversation (i.e. past the "Hello, how's the weather / what do you do for a living" part). I suppose this means that online socialization is a working simulation of real life socialization, except with the reading of facial expression / tone / body language subtracted out. Well that, and two main differences in my case: 1) It's easier to meet people since I no longer have to wrestle with my schedule to try to find time to spend in a reasonably sociable environment at a time when the normal individuals of my age group and so I end up meeting people faster and 2) It takes people longer to flee, because while conversations go fast, the usually short email exchanges that we start with take longer. It takes people more than one email to get the idea that hey, she's ...kind of strange.
All this bailing probably would've given me a complex if it weren't for the handful of strangers who told me that I'm "fun" to talk to. Clearly my personality and conversational skills are not that repulsive to everyone.
I care about my personality more than my appearance, and somehow, over the past few years and persistent pressure from both my peers and my parents, I've found the fortitude recently to decide that I refuse to change for anyone except myself. Make no mistake that I am changing, for all that certain parts of me will probably never change. Make no mistake that not everyone will like the changes. Yet somehow, with a surprising number of people who continue to back me every step of the way, I've been finding it easier to face those people who are very not okay with me, grin, and say "Deal with it."
And you know what? Whatever people's responses have been, I have been happy with this.
Kind of weird, but it makes me smile.
That should be fun.
When the last time I had an actual conversation with a guy who is not a geek? Six grade? No wait, there were those random people on the train. Except I don't think I can legitimately count someone who's twice my age and married for this so I guess it'll have to be...10th grade volunteering, listening Yonathan telling about the time when he walked into the school's pool and playing cards with Danny and Serena at six in the morning. (Good times.) I think conversation's gotten harder now that shared experiences of education, which composed of something like 80% of our time during that age, is no longer a given. Which brings me to:
Recent development in pen-pal-ship. In which I have been ditched by everyone except the Xylitol guy. This is oddly like real life, where though I don't attract much attention, I do have a few people who strikes up conversation with me here and there -- who will promptly bail once the conversation becomes a real conversation (i.e. past the "Hello, how's the weather / what do you do for a living" part). I suppose this means that online socialization is a working simulation of real life socialization, except with the reading of facial expression / tone / body language subtracted out. Well that, and two main differences in my case: 1) It's easier to meet people since I no longer have to wrestle with my schedule to try to find time to spend in a reasonably sociable environment at a time when the normal individuals of my age group and so I end up meeting people faster and 2) It takes people longer to flee, because while conversations go fast, the usually short email exchanges that we start with take longer. It takes people more than one email to get the idea that hey, she's ...kind of strange.
All this bailing probably would've given me a complex if it weren't for the handful of strangers who told me that I'm "fun" to talk to. Clearly my personality and conversational skills are not that repulsive to everyone.
I care about my personality more than my appearance, and somehow, over the past few years and persistent pressure from both my peers and my parents, I've found the fortitude recently to decide that I refuse to change for anyone except myself. Make no mistake that I am changing, for all that certain parts of me will probably never change. Make no mistake that not everyone will like the changes. Yet somehow, with a surprising number of people who continue to back me every step of the way, I've been finding it easier to face those people who are very not okay with me, grin, and say "Deal with it."
And you know what? Whatever people's responses have been, I have been happy with this.
Kind of weird, but it makes me smile.
20100715
Re: public transit
Having someone sneeze on you is really disgusting. It's a wonder how our parents have managed to handle it. Or does the fact that it's the germs and mucosa secretions from your own offspring reduce the disgust factor?
The animal paperwork finally went through and we have new strip tubes that are the color of pink grapefruit. My mice are still circling. All is well with the world.
The animal paperwork finally went through and we have new strip tubes that are the color of pink grapefruit. My mice are still circling. All is well with the world.
20100711
Epiphanies
I think I finally understood the appeal of liquid soap over bar soap: you don't have to scrub out the soap tray! I mean I know it's only bio film and all but it's still really disgusting.
Also, hiking is a success. I got to see the sun for the first time in a week (it came out today!) and the new place has real hiking trails (any hiking trail that is paved does not count as real hiking trail in my opinion) and loads of flowers still blooming, because of the cool weather. Photos have been uploaded to Facebook, along with the blooming tea episode.
I have also discovered that while blueberry is awesome while fresh, blueberry flavored anything / dried blueberries is unappealing. They're like raisins gone wrong. Don't ask me why.
Lastly: there must be a better way to cube potatoes. I mean I know they're irregularly shaped and vaguely roundish and trying to get them into geometrical cubes of the same size is impossible but...at least there must be a way to get them more regular in size? What do people do with those bits at the edge? I have been sticking them in along with the rest but I'm thinking that there must be a better way.
Also, hiking is a success. I got to see the sun for the first time in a week (it came out today!) and the new place has real hiking trails (any hiking trail that is paved does not count as real hiking trail in my opinion) and loads of flowers still blooming, because of the cool weather. Photos have been uploaded to Facebook, along with the blooming tea episode.
I have also discovered that while blueberry is awesome while fresh, blueberry flavored anything / dried blueberries is unappealing. They're like raisins gone wrong. Don't ask me why.
Lastly: there must be a better way to cube potatoes. I mean I know they're irregularly shaped and vaguely roundish and trying to get them into geometrical cubes of the same size is impossible but...at least there must be a way to get them more regular in size? What do people do with those bits at the edge? I have been sticking them in along with the rest but I'm thinking that there must be a better way.
20100710
Sudden onset of laundry
Well, speaking of emotionally cathartic posts, today is one of "those" days. I'm torn between being peeved and laughing at myself & life. C'est la vie indeed.
It started with laundry and parking: I was hoping that if I delayed my usual activity hours (and brave the subsequent onset of traffic down in PB as all the surfers hit the beach) I'll have a spot closer to my apartment so I won't have to haul my laundry (and detergent) that far (because remember? I switched cars last week and so lost my lovely spot that was right across the street from where I live). No such luck though. NO ONE had budged at their usual times and so I ended up having to haul my laundry, all the while comforting myself that at least this is good exercise.
Move on now to exhibit B: solely laundry.
The laundry place that I've been routinely going through went through remodeling (I think I posted about that too) and now it apparently is switching owners. And going through remodeling again. There was no deadline for when it will be open again but based on the advertisement for what kind of service they WILL be offering, I probably will no longer be able to afford going there. (Well, technically I can but it's unnecessarily wasteful and given the option, I'd rather spend the money at the used book store, where I can buy colored hardcovers for a dollar.) (Or possibly the used CD store. I need to investigate more to see which one is good though.) I went to the other laundry place that is at PB that I found during the last remodeling directly, but it turns out I should've gone home (assuming I could find a parking spot somewhere) and looked up the operating hours. The other place, for reasons that I've not yet determined, is only open from 5 to 11pm on Saturdays (i.e. at a time where there will be no parking space near my apartment for a three block radius). ...so that is a fail. Lastly I went browsing along one of the downtown streets for a coin laundry place that I remembered passing. I found it. That wasn't an issue. The issues were that it shared a parking lot with a car shop, which in the downtown areas, means no parking, and that the laundry machines there were all for multiple loads. It's no doubt cheaper and more efficient if you're the sort who hauls the equivalent of a person's weight in laundry in each time. For me, who does laundry regularly, it's probably cheaper just to drive up to La Jolla and use the laundromats there. (It is a sad day when you have to drive to another town to do laundry.)
Exhibit C: now onto car issues and me feeling extremely stupid.
My dad and I switched cars last weekend, as I may have mentioned, on the account that his car is the least likely to break down on the highway in the family (99 Camry) and makes my parents feel better about my general safety. (It's a nice touch. I am touched. Pun intended.) Given that I've learned to drive on both of my parents cars, there wasn't any adjustments to make, so I never thought to worry about anything except to incline my head a different degree when I'm getting in so I don't knock myself in the head. (Has happened before, and ow.) All of this means that when I got into the car at the end of my last laundry place excursion I was...stunned, if you will, to discover that the parking break is stuck.
I looked through the manual (not helpful). I tried jiggling it (no effect). I tried pressing it harder because occasionally it is a bit tight and that's all I need, but all it got me today was possibly bruised thumbs. (I've never had those bruised before, so it's a novel experience.) In the end I went over to the car shop that is sharing the parking space with the laundry (so you see, it turned out to be handy) and asked one of the staff there for help. What I learned from this particular adventure is that, since my issue was that the button on the break won't depress, I need to pull the break up, further, to relieve the tension, and then I'll be able to press the break down.
Seems simple, doesn't it? I'd never have thought to try it on my own.
So now it's past noon, I've finished about 20% of what I was planning to do this morning and I still have a basket of laundry in the back of the car. Animal shelter's a no-go now, since now all of the volunteers are there already(well most, since something like 90% of us only show up on Saturday and only in the late morning / early afternoon --which is why I only go in the morning because they don't need me in the afternoon. The shelter's closed to volunteers and public alike on Sundays, by the way). (Speaking of which, it's July now and I've just never found the time to make it down there. Then again, given that my life is lab Monday through Friday and the Saturday afternoon volunteer overflow, Saturday morning is my only time slot, so maybe I should just look into doing other stuff instead.)I wanted to get most of my stuff done today so I can go hiking tomorrow, so now I suppose I'll do laundry (at La Jolla, since I'll be passing by there anyway) and then go hiking or something, and aim for somewhere closer to hike at.
To top it all off: there is still no parking space when I returned just now, and the space I vacated this morning was taken as well.
I think this calls for ice cream.
Can I blame the weather?
[Edit]
Daemon's LAN capabilities are broken along with wireless. In fact, all networking functions are down. I wonder if the NIC's broken. Software I can cope with (or at least try to cope with), but with hardware I'm way out of my depth.
It started with laundry and parking: I was hoping that if I delayed my usual activity hours (and brave the subsequent onset of traffic down in PB as all the surfers hit the beach) I'll have a spot closer to my apartment so I won't have to haul my laundry (and detergent) that far (because remember? I switched cars last week and so lost my lovely spot that was right across the street from where I live). No such luck though. NO ONE had budged at their usual times and so I ended up having to haul my laundry, all the while comforting myself that at least this is good exercise.
Move on now to exhibit B: solely laundry.
The laundry place that I've been routinely going through went through remodeling (I think I posted about that too) and now it apparently is switching owners. And going through remodeling again. There was no deadline for when it will be open again but based on the advertisement for what kind of service they WILL be offering, I probably will no longer be able to afford going there. (Well, technically I can but it's unnecessarily wasteful and given the option, I'd rather spend the money at the used book store, where I can buy colored hardcovers for a dollar.) (Or possibly the used CD store. I need to investigate more to see which one is good though.) I went to the other laundry place that is at PB that I found during the last remodeling directly, but it turns out I should've gone home (assuming I could find a parking spot somewhere) and looked up the operating hours. The other place, for reasons that I've not yet determined, is only open from 5 to 11pm on Saturdays (i.e. at a time where there will be no parking space near my apartment for a three block radius). ...so that is a fail. Lastly I went browsing along one of the downtown streets for a coin laundry place that I remembered passing. I found it. That wasn't an issue. The issues were that it shared a parking lot with a car shop, which in the downtown areas, means no parking, and that the laundry machines there were all for multiple loads. It's no doubt cheaper and more efficient if you're the sort who hauls the equivalent of a person's weight in laundry in each time. For me, who does laundry regularly, it's probably cheaper just to drive up to La Jolla and use the laundromats there. (It is a sad day when you have to drive to another town to do laundry.)
Exhibit C: now onto car issues and me feeling extremely stupid.
My dad and I switched cars last weekend, as I may have mentioned, on the account that his car is the least likely to break down on the highway in the family (99 Camry) and makes my parents feel better about my general safety. (It's a nice touch. I am touched. Pun intended.) Given that I've learned to drive on both of my parents cars, there wasn't any adjustments to make, so I never thought to worry about anything except to incline my head a different degree when I'm getting in so I don't knock myself in the head. (Has happened before, and ow.) All of this means that when I got into the car at the end of my last laundry place excursion I was...stunned, if you will, to discover that the parking break is stuck.
I looked through the manual (not helpful). I tried jiggling it (no effect). I tried pressing it harder because occasionally it is a bit tight and that's all I need, but all it got me today was possibly bruised thumbs. (I've never had those bruised before, so it's a novel experience.) In the end I went over to the car shop that is sharing the parking space with the laundry (so you see, it turned out to be handy) and asked one of the staff there for help. What I learned from this particular adventure is that, since my issue was that the button on the break won't depress, I need to pull the break up, further, to relieve the tension, and then I'll be able to press the break down.
Seems simple, doesn't it? I'd never have thought to try it on my own.
So now it's past noon, I've finished about 20% of what I was planning to do this morning and I still have a basket of laundry in the back of the car. Animal shelter's a no-go now, since now all of the volunteers are there already(well most, since something like 90% of us only show up on Saturday and only in the late morning / early afternoon --which is why I only go in the morning because they don't need me in the afternoon. The shelter's closed to volunteers and public alike on Sundays, by the way). (Speaking of which, it's July now and I've just never found the time to make it down there. Then again, given that my life is lab Monday through Friday and the Saturday afternoon volunteer overflow, Saturday morning is my only time slot, so maybe I should just look into doing other stuff instead.)I wanted to get most of my stuff done today so I can go hiking tomorrow, so now I suppose I'll do laundry (at La Jolla, since I'll be passing by there anyway) and then go hiking or something, and aim for somewhere closer to hike at.
To top it all off: there is still no parking space when I returned just now, and the space I vacated this morning was taken as well.
I think this calls for ice cream.
Can I blame the weather?
[Edit]
Daemon's LAN capabilities are broken along with wireless. In fact, all networking functions are down. I wonder if the NIC's broken. Software I can cope with (or at least try to cope with), but with hardware I'm way out of my depth.
20100709
lolwut
So I have one site that I opened an account on the last round, Geek 2 Geek, that I've kept. I did not try OkCupid after all, since I figured three is about as many as I can keep track of at any given time. Therefore, this week I'll blog about:
Other news? People have figured out that I can't send message on Geek 2 Geek so I have received email giving their none G2G email address, which I greatly appreciate and think is much better than randomly giving out my own address by posting it in my profile (I think I'm definitely more the sort of girl who asks for numbers than gives them out). I got flagged down as "hot" by one person, which cracked me up because guys, this is the Facebook photo. With the birds. I felt bad at first, considered briefly whether or not I should try to get a more flattering photo of myself, then went to investigate the person who did the flagging and it turned out that significant amount of alcohol was involved (they were very honest about it). After that I didn't feel bad anymore, but instead thought about the saying I've read somewhere about how the attractiveness of the person next to you is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol you've imbibed. Is this why people go to bars? Then again, considering that alcohol negatively affects a person's sexual drive and the fraction of bar-going people who are looking for hookups, isn't this a self-defeating endeavor? I suppose it depends on whether or not the rate of increase is greater than the rate of decrease but thinking too much about it only reminds me of those relative rate problems from calculus. As much as I appreciate the fact that this may be the only chance where what I learned from that will come in handy in real life, I think I'll pass.
I think I may be acquiring pen pals, in the sense that we have established already that dating is probably not going to work out but we'd like to have more geeky friends. There was bonding. Over the many uses of xylitol, among other things, but there was bonding.
Intellect Connect:
I like the layout. It is very much like another Facebook (yes, down to the free account part), except shinier and more up to date in terms of applets and css than Sweet On Geeks. However, it does suffer from the same issue: that a lot of people there, when you do an initial scan, have profiles that haven't been touched in ages. The users don't even seem have logged on for a while, and while it may be just me, but the average age of the population there seems to be about 10 years higher than Geek 2 Geek. It does have one feature that I like, should I be the sort who's interested in constantly actively searching for people, and that is that Intellect Connect saves your past searches. The searches have more criteria than Sweet On Geeks and Intellect Connect saves the exact criteria that you've chosen, but presumably when you use those criteria again at a later date you'll get to see any new people who'd fit the bill. Other than that, there's not much that's notable. I'll keep it for another two weeks to see if anything interesting reveals itself to me. Otherwise? I have a Facebook account, thanks very much, moving on now.
Intelligent People:
Another site that's free...provided you pass their IQ test (18 questions this time). The site design is on par with Intellect Connect in terms of scripts, except it is way more sparse. In fact, the sparseness can be applied to describe the members as well, in the sense that there aren't that many. This is possibly due to the fact that it make people take tests to join and not many sane people want to take tests when they don't have to. The site structure is like Intellect Connect and Sweet On Geeks in that it's a social networking site mostly that allows you to actively search for people, but doesn't match you with anyone. I do like how international it is, because there're people there from all over the place. Case in point: the first message I received there is from someone in Russia (Moscow, to be exact, and for someone who's never been in Russia I seem to have a lot of Russian speaking people in my life) who wrote something along the lines of "We're too far apart, I'm having trouble finding someone near me too, but good luck!". It was the nicest message ever. With questionable grammar, but still nice. (I don't think I've ever been cheered on by someone from another country who's not related to me, either, come to think of it.)Aside from possibilities of finding international pen pals, I'm not so certain about keeping this account, either. I think I will also apply the two weeks-long rule here.
Soul Geek:
This is my favorite site, so far, out of all the ones that I've seen. Sure the site design is tacky and a bit passe, but aside from that? Just...wow. My favorite thing about it is definitely its sense of humor (it's of the same caliber as ThinkGeek). For instance, in the area where you tick off boxes for your physical description, there's an area under "Extras" that lists: tatoo, glasses, evil minions. Evil minions was inexplicably appealing at the time when I was filling this out but alas, I didn't check it. Then there's the part with word verification where they said something along the lines of "We know this is stupid, but our lawyers said that we have to do this or else zombies will break out and eat all our customers". I lol'ed at that one. ("Aaaallll we want to do is eat your brains!") Free account gives me profile, messaging, and winking/glance/hail whatever the flagging operator is for this site. I think it's "hail". They are very big on the Star Trek theme. Paid account should give me access to chats and forums and ability to share fanart and fanfic AND it's about a third of the price of Geek 2 Geek.(It's not like they're being unreasonable...okay I will stop referencing the zombie song now.) My only issue is that the site is more fanboy fangirl based than geek based (though a giant fraction of the fans are geeks, yes), which means lower percentage of nerds. Oh also they are still trying to solve issues with yahoo, so I can't use the same email account as the other sites. (But they say they're working with yahoo techs to solve this. In giant fonts. Flashing across the top of the page. When they want you to know something they are not shy about it.) This account is a definite keeper.
Other news? People have figured out that I can't send message on Geek 2 Geek so I have received email giving their none G2G email address, which I greatly appreciate and think is much better than randomly giving out my own address by posting it in my profile (I think I'm definitely more the sort of girl who asks for numbers than gives them out). I got flagged down as "hot" by one person, which cracked me up because guys, this is the Facebook photo. With the birds. I felt bad at first, considered briefly whether or not I should try to get a more flattering photo of myself, then went to investigate the person who did the flagging and it turned out that significant amount of alcohol was involved (they were very honest about it). After that I didn't feel bad anymore, but instead thought about the saying I've read somewhere about how the attractiveness of the person next to you is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol you've imbibed. Is this why people go to bars? Then again, considering that alcohol negatively affects a person's sexual drive and the fraction of bar-going people who are looking for hookups, isn't this a self-defeating endeavor? I suppose it depends on whether or not the rate of increase is greater than the rate of decrease but thinking too much about it only reminds me of those relative rate problems from calculus. As much as I appreciate the fact that this may be the only chance where what I learned from that will come in handy in real life, I think I'll pass.
I think I may be acquiring pen pals, in the sense that we have established already that dating is probably not going to work out but we'd like to have more geeky friends. There was bonding. Over the many uses of xylitol, among other things, but there was bonding.
20100708
Umm
Dear Diary,
When your PI suddenly walks up to you one day and says, "So, I need you to give me a quick reality check", do you:
A) Stare.
B) Blink, and then say "Excuse me?" just to make sure you heard right.
C) Sit down on the nearest surface not contaminated by samples or chemicals and laugh hysterically.
D) Flail.
E) None of the above.
(To be sure I actually DID remember that I theoretically work for him in time and didn't just go along with instinctive response which, for someone I work with and about the same level in terms of social hierarchy, would probably be along the lines of asking them to tell me how many fingers I'm holding up and pronouncing that they either passed or failed.)
Sincerely,
-S
-------------------------------------------------
In other news: Daemon's wireless went kaput! The software portion keep telling me that the card is inactivated and when I try to activate it Daemon tells me that it can't be found. So guess what I'll be doing this weekend?
When your PI suddenly walks up to you one day and says, "So, I need you to give me a quick reality check", do you:
A) Stare.
B) Blink, and then say "Excuse me?" just to make sure you heard right.
C) Sit down on the nearest surface not contaminated by samples or chemicals and laugh hysterically.
D) Flail.
E) None of the above.
(To be sure I actually DID remember that I theoretically work for him in time and didn't just go along with instinctive response which, for someone I work with and about the same level in terms of social hierarchy, would probably be along the lines of asking them to tell me how many fingers I'm holding up and pronouncing that they either passed or failed.)
Sincerely,
-S
-------------------------------------------------
In other news: Daemon's wireless went kaput! The software portion keep telling me that the card is inactivated and when I try to activate it Daemon tells me that it can't be found. So guess what I'll be doing this weekend?
20100702
Oh hell
Ever had a moment where, half-asleep, you suddenly remembered something that snapped you wide-awake while you mind gibbered to itself madly, all traces of rest lost?
I just recalled that I was supposed to contact a collaborator to talk over some behavioral data of my mice. Two weeks ago.
And ask about the auditory tests, but that part didn't have an appointment involved.
It's possible that she'd forgotten too, since we have exchanged emails in between this time and neither of us mentioned it. But even so...asdfasdf dammit!
I just recalled that I was supposed to contact a collaborator to talk over some behavioral data of my mice. Two weeks ago.
And ask about the auditory tests, but that part didn't have an appointment involved.
It's possible that she'd forgotten too, since we have exchanged emails in between this time and neither of us mentioned it. But even so...asdfasdf dammit!
A little bit of this, a little bit of that
Okay, it's been one week since I started visiting dating websites (read: I signed up and posted a bunch of profiles last Friday evening). Here are the sites that I've tried so far and what I think of them:
In conclusion, the only place so far where I managed to get something working is Geek 2 Geek, where I garnered a lot of attention from military geeks. And geeks that work for the military. (Differentiation being soldiers vs civilian contractors.) Given that the matches are taking geography into account and that I am surrounded by the navy, the air force, and the marine corps, this isn't too surprising. However, it's quite strange that my initial encounters are with people whose profile photos include themselves in their uniforms and have phrases in their profile along the lines of "will be deployed soon", "waiting for date of deployment", "looking for someone with patience as may be deployed". So, even if I subscribe? I think I'll stick with the civilians. I have nothing against them personally, but I think I should establish some sort of standard for what a normal (well, as normal as anything involving me can be) relationship is like before I venture into the vast and uncharted waters of long-distance relationship.
Last comment: this post should effectively answer any question people may have about what my "type" is. No, really, it should.
Geek 2 Geek:
Very easy to use. Posting a profile is free and I really appreciate the fact that 1) I was allowed to pick my area of geekiness (they have everything from science to Harry Potter to politics) and 2) of the questions I've filled out in the profile, I was allowed to pick the top three traits that are the most important to me, ranked by order. When the site matched profile the potential matches are listed in three different sub-pages, where there's a page where the profiles are ranked by my top three most desired traits, another by the potential match's top three desired traits, and last page ranked by some algorithm that combines the top desired traits of both our sides. The real names and all contact information are hidden, so the only way to contact potential matches initially is by sending "winks" to indicate interest or sending messages through the website's messaging system. We are also allowed to rate a person's profile (with stars, like a restaurant) and list a profile among our "favorites" (which made me feel vaguely like a bookmark, of the web-browser variety). The downside is that, for a free account, I was allowed to post a profile, send and receive winks, and only receive messages but not send any. The subscription fee that allows me to send messages is...well I don't know what the "average" fee is, but it's a lot more than OkCupid (which I will talk about later). I got sent two emails with new potential matches the past week. I don't know whether there's a two-per-week schedule or I just get sent emails whenever they do match up someone.
I am pondering whether or not subscription is worth it. The profile reviewers (I'm guessing they're reviewing to make sure we don't post anything obscene, and that we are in fact human, but that's just a hypothesis) worked pretty fast. My profile was up within twenty-four hours. I was flagged just as fast, too (dunno when it happened, I just logged into my email account and the first contact email came right after the profile-approval email). I did flag someone back, but unless the person can figure out that I'm on a free account and send me a message with non-G2G dependent contact information, this is where it'll stop.
Sweet On Geeks :
...is like Facebook, for geeks. (Well...it's less polished, too.) The intro page has the cutest robot-looking-for-mate ad that I've ever seen. Everything is free, profile, status update (yes, just like Facebook), blogging, forum, messaging, you name it. It has more essay questions than multiple-choice type questions (well it's my first time around, so I did have my moment where I felt vaguely like I'm taking an exam -- I am going to get evaluated one way or another, anyhow) so that it took a LONG time to get the profile set up. I know I didn't have to put my life story up there, but Lucy was right: the profiles that have no photos and little to no answers to any of the questions are creepy. Me? I'm thinking that creepy is not the way to go here. Geeky? Of course. Weird? Sure. Not creepy. The profile-approval process is also pretty immediate and the entire set-up relatively painless.
There are two main problems that I will deduct points for. One is that there's no matching going on. It really is like Facebook in that, if you want to find someone, you have to troll through lists of profile after tackling the search machine. Very time consuming, especially since the search machine only has the basic criteria of zip-code, gender, age, and whether the person's interested in friendship/dating/flirting. I didn't try the keyword search, because the use of keywords is an art --you almost have to have a sixth sense of what the right combination of words should be to find what you want. I'm pretty sure that keyword rules for finding the right person isn't the same as the keyword rules for Google. Or else Google would've launched its own dating site already. (Or maybe it did and I'm just not aware of it -- it's Google, after all. One day it will take over the Internets.)
The second main problem is the reason of why I'm deleting my profile: even when I did give the search machine a shot, the majority of the profiles are of the creepy, photo-less sort. Of the few that have photos, the ones that I've seen are ones that haven't been active in a while. The forums are mostly empty also, with few posts scattered throughout time. In general the site has the pleasant atmosphere of a ghost town. Now, it may be that if you earn enough points you'd get to "unlock" another level, where all the posh people hang out. However, there's no clear explanation for a point system or how the site works, exactly, so I'm not going to bother with it anymore.
IQcuties:
I gave it a shot for the heck of it. To join you need to take an IQ test, which is graded in batches. I have not heard back yet, which means either that it hasn't been graded yet, I failed, or that my email inbox ate it and it's now in the in-between no-man's-land area of data, where all the lost emails go to die. I'll wait another week and then write it off, so as of now, I have nothing to report. (It's a six-question long test, so my guess is that I failed.)
OkCupid:
The site that everyone but me apparently knew about already. Except it turns out that I seemed to know it too. Or at least my email did. Let me explain:
After the initial check, when I went to try to set up an account, the site told me I already had one. This confused me, as that I am pretty sure I've never visited the site before. I think I would remember if I visited a dating site, but I started considering possible spontaneous onset of amnesia (worrisome and improbable, but I suppose not impossible). Since it claims that my email is registered already, I clicked on the button to sent lost password. I did receive a password-reset link in my email, so it really was my email in their database, but when I logged in, the username (which the site told me is locked and cannot be changed) immediately told me that no way was I the one who registered with this website. Whomever had set up the profile initially had left everything else blank, which I suppose I ought to be grateful for. It was pretty freaky though, and I deleted that profile, partly for security reasons and partly because I was wtf-ing over the username, which I can't change.
I think I might try to create a real account there sometime this weekend though, and see how it goes.
In conclusion, the only place so far where I managed to get something working is Geek 2 Geek, where I garnered a lot of attention from military geeks. And geeks that work for the military. (Differentiation being soldiers vs civilian contractors.) Given that the matches are taking geography into account and that I am surrounded by the navy, the air force, and the marine corps, this isn't too surprising. However, it's quite strange that my initial encounters are with people whose profile photos include themselves in their uniforms and have phrases in their profile along the lines of "will be deployed soon", "waiting for date of deployment", "looking for someone with patience as may be deployed". So, even if I subscribe? I think I'll stick with the civilians. I have nothing against them personally, but I think I should establish some sort of standard for what a normal (well, as normal as anything involving me can be) relationship is like before I venture into the vast and uncharted waters of long-distance relationship.
Last comment: this post should effectively answer any question people may have about what my "type" is. No, really, it should.
20100629
Standing up and make some noise
Remember the issue with the parking permit I mentioned last time? A classmate of mine did start a petition. An online petition. That, seeded through our department's list serve, gathered over 200 votes within the first two hours and is now spreading throughout the campus. We are allowed to leave our personal comments and the departments that we represent when we sign electronically, so just by glancing at the petition (over 700 signatures the last time I checked, and this petition started at noon, today) we have people spanning all stages of academic career, from undergrad to techs to grad to staff and tenured professors. We have a lot of people from my program and biology, quite a few from chemistry, biochem, bioengineering, and a handful from physics, economy, engineering and political science. We have more lighthearted comments such as "Thanks for giving me the weekend off" and we have mini-essays. I got almost everyone in my lab to sign, including the PI (who gave me a brief lecture on the history of parking lot economy and how it apparently dated back to Reagan --yes this is what my PI tends to do) and have forwarded the link to a few others who have indicated interest, including the vivarium staff.
I'm quite excited about this now because a) we're sending this to the chancellor, and right now it looks like there are enough people who are upset about this that the administrators can't just ignore it and b) this is a good chance for me to see how much power the student/staff body really do have, when it comes to changing regulations and policies.
It's amazing though. Every time I click on the refresh button on the e-petition link, new signatures show up. Even if I click it every two seconds.
...
Unrelated: got my SfN session appointment! Anna's presenting on Monday morning in November, Lis (the other one presenting in my lab) is on Monday afternoon. I'm on Wednesday afternoon, and I forwarded my notification to the PI with a note about whether or not this meant I get to skip lab meeting that week (we have it on Wednesday afternoons). He "supposes" so. People have been giving me tips and advises and things to see about the conference so now I'm getting all hyped up about it too. Should be fun!
I'm quite excited about this now because a) we're sending this to the chancellor, and right now it looks like there are enough people who are upset about this that the administrators can't just ignore it and b) this is a good chance for me to see how much power the student/staff body really do have, when it comes to changing regulations and policies.
It's amazing though. Every time I click on the refresh button on the e-petition link, new signatures show up. Even if I click it every two seconds.
...
Unrelated: got my SfN session appointment! Anna's presenting on Monday morning in November, Lis (the other one presenting in my lab) is on Monday afternoon. I'm on Wednesday afternoon, and I forwarded my notification to the PI with a note about whether or not this meant I get to skip lab meeting that week (we have it on Wednesday afternoons). He "supposes" so. People have been giving me tips and advises and things to see about the conference so now I'm getting all hyped up about it too. Should be fun!
20100627
May the fun never end
Last I checked, of the teams that I drew the lots for, only Chile remains on the short list. There is now a bag of chocolate for second place as well as for first place in the shelves next to our lab tech's desk.
We got another undergrad in our lab recently and both Wendy and I, along with a post-doc, were asked if we'd have the time for an undergrad. The main issue Wendy and I had with this applicant was that he was planning to only work here for the summer, which wasn't enough time, in a biology lab and especially not for a genetics lab that works with mice, to both teach a student the techniques, have them master them, and get usable results. (A general rule of thumb from my undergrad days is, if you want to be more involved in a lab than just washing glassware, you need to pledge more than one quarter. That rule still seems to apply.) (If no one wants to take on an undergrad we just don't accept the applicant, since my PI's of the opinion that it's rude to accept an undergrad into the lab if there's no one who can make the time to deal with him / her.) As a result, the post-doc got the undergrad (who is thankfully more experienced than our current undergrad, in the sense that he knew how to make dilutions and buffers and basic safety rules). Unfortunately, this is the post-doc with the somewhat...unstable schedule, so within the past week there have been many times where no one can track down the post-doc for the poor undergrad and he ended up just kind of lingering around, waiting. And generally making me twitchy since I am in the midst of in situ hybridization, northern blot, and western blot as well as occasional mice, which apparently looks very impressive. Or something. I have no other explanation for why I'd return to find him lingering over my bench, staring at the mess of experiments there. Oh well, whenever there's someone new it's always a group effort, in my current lab, to help out anyway, since we've all got expertise in different areas...and keeps track of different stock reagents in lab.
Speaking of lab: there was one day last week when I looked up at an odd scraping sound and saw my PI pushing this large box toward the lobby (by large I mean he'd fit in it, easily, multiples of him, even). We caught each other's eye, and then he went back to box-pushing. (Yes Kate, this is one of my boring stories, where I ask no questions.) PIs are very strange. I have no idea where that box came from. We have no room in any part of our lab space or his office for something that size. Or what he was doing with it. It was like that time when Wendy spotted him cutting strips of carpet (which later turned out was because he was experimenting with...never mind). Tiffany, a former tech in our lab and now a grad student, had once wondered if the PIs knew that we observe them like they're animals in the zoo. I'm pretty sure mine does. He's self-aware to a degree that occasionally leaves my lab mates unsettled. (After that time where I heard someone from a neighboring lab describe him as "young and neurotic"...I mostly try not to remember that comment when I'm talking to him, especially not in conjunction with his somewhat self-deprecating sense of humor, so I can keep a straight face.)
There was one thing that I was a bit upset about last week, and that was finding out that our campus is getting rid of free parking on weekends and nights. Supposedly this is because of shortage of campus funds. What it means is that for all the grad students who have seven-day-long experiments or need to come in for a few hours on the weekends to get a result sooner, we'd have to pay fifty dollars for a permit. Now, since I tend to avoid going to lab on the weekends whenever possible, I don't go in enough times to make that fee worth my while. Nor am I inclined to go in on weekends anymore than I absolutely have to: there are plenty of burned out grad students, I do not intend to become one of them. All of this means that I either need to brave the two hours of public transit on the weekends, which is unacceptable, or that I'll take my car to the nearest mall shopping center and take the bus / walk to campus from there (so an hour round trip at the most instead of two, but at least if I walk I'll get some sun and exercise). Some of my classmates have time point experiments which means they have to come back to something every six hours or every twelve hours. Before, after dark, they'd just take their car to campus so they can still grab a few hours of sleep at home in between. Now I think there're plans of camping out in the student lounge and in the lobbies of the lab buildings, where the couches are. Thankfully the only time point I have to do right now is long enough that I can just stay later the night before and arrive earlier the next morning, and I'd be fine. The generally feeling, however, is that if there's a petition to repeal this, we'd sign it.
The new rules are effective as of July 1st, 2010. I think it's an absolutely dismal way to start July. I wonder what all the PIs will say when they realize this will decrease the data output in their labs because now, rather than starting something that'll require two hours on the weekend, but will allow the next step to be performed as early as the next Monday, we are more likely to not start the experiment and just wait until Monday, and damn the delay.
Have ordered plane tickets. Will be in bay area Jul. 29 afternoon and leaving Aug. 1st in the morning. My parents are still coming next week. I think.
We got another undergrad in our lab recently and both Wendy and I, along with a post-doc, were asked if we'd have the time for an undergrad. The main issue Wendy and I had with this applicant was that he was planning to only work here for the summer, which wasn't enough time, in a biology lab and especially not for a genetics lab that works with mice, to both teach a student the techniques, have them master them, and get usable results. (A general rule of thumb from my undergrad days is, if you want to be more involved in a lab than just washing glassware, you need to pledge more than one quarter. That rule still seems to apply.) (If no one wants to take on an undergrad we just don't accept the applicant, since my PI's of the opinion that it's rude to accept an undergrad into the lab if there's no one who can make the time to deal with him / her.) As a result, the post-doc got the undergrad (who is thankfully more experienced than our current undergrad, in the sense that he knew how to make dilutions and buffers and basic safety rules). Unfortunately, this is the post-doc with the somewhat...unstable schedule, so within the past week there have been many times where no one can track down the post-doc for the poor undergrad and he ended up just kind of lingering around, waiting. And generally making me twitchy since I am in the midst of in situ hybridization, northern blot, and western blot as well as occasional mice, which apparently looks very impressive. Or something. I have no other explanation for why I'd return to find him lingering over my bench, staring at the mess of experiments there. Oh well, whenever there's someone new it's always a group effort, in my current lab, to help out anyway, since we've all got expertise in different areas...and keeps track of different stock reagents in lab.
Speaking of lab: there was one day last week when I looked up at an odd scraping sound and saw my PI pushing this large box toward the lobby (by large I mean he'd fit in it, easily, multiples of him, even). We caught each other's eye, and then he went back to box-pushing. (Yes Kate, this is one of my boring stories, where I ask no questions.) PIs are very strange. I have no idea where that box came from. We have no room in any part of our lab space or his office for something that size. Or what he was doing with it. It was like that time when Wendy spotted him cutting strips of carpet (which later turned out was because he was experimenting with...never mind). Tiffany, a former tech in our lab and now a grad student, had once wondered if the PIs knew that we observe them like they're animals in the zoo. I'm pretty sure mine does. He's self-aware to a degree that occasionally leaves my lab mates unsettled. (After that time where I heard someone from a neighboring lab describe him as "young and neurotic"...I mostly try not to remember that comment when I'm talking to him, especially not in conjunction with his somewhat self-deprecating sense of humor, so I can keep a straight face.)
There was one thing that I was a bit upset about last week, and that was finding out that our campus is getting rid of free parking on weekends and nights. Supposedly this is because of shortage of campus funds. What it means is that for all the grad students who have seven-day-long experiments or need to come in for a few hours on the weekends to get a result sooner, we'd have to pay fifty dollars for a permit. Now, since I tend to avoid going to lab on the weekends whenever possible, I don't go in enough times to make that fee worth my while. Nor am I inclined to go in on weekends anymore than I absolutely have to: there are plenty of burned out grad students, I do not intend to become one of them. All of this means that I either need to brave the two hours of public transit on the weekends, which is unacceptable, or that I'll take my car to the nearest mall shopping center and take the bus / walk to campus from there (so an hour round trip at the most instead of two, but at least if I walk I'll get some sun and exercise). Some of my classmates have time point experiments which means they have to come back to something every six hours or every twelve hours. Before, after dark, they'd just take their car to campus so they can still grab a few hours of sleep at home in between. Now I think there're plans of camping out in the student lounge and in the lobbies of the lab buildings, where the couches are. Thankfully the only time point I have to do right now is long enough that I can just stay later the night before and arrive earlier the next morning, and I'd be fine. The generally feeling, however, is that if there's a petition to repeal this, we'd sign it.
The new rules are effective as of July 1st, 2010. I think it's an absolutely dismal way to start July. I wonder what all the PIs will say when they realize this will decrease the data output in their labs because now, rather than starting something that'll require two hours on the weekend, but will allow the next step to be performed as early as the next Monday, we are more likely to not start the experiment and just wait until Monday, and damn the delay.
Have ordered plane tickets. Will be in bay area Jul. 29 afternoon and leaving Aug. 1st in the morning. My parents are still coming next week. I think.
20100623
People vs life
Labs have to deal with sales reps. They come around with their flyers for lab supplies, for anything from pipette tips to mini-centrifuges. They often leave us with pieces of candy (or else advertise that there'll be a vendor show on campus with food, please come), or occasionally a pen or post-its (everyone likes post-its; if you work in a lab, post-its are you friends). Today, for some unknown reason, the rep, after talking to our lab tech, left us with a flyer and a packet of sunflower seeds. As in the type you find in a nursery, not the type you find in a grocery store. It is also of the mammoth variety, not dwarf.
My labmates and I are equal parts bemused and amused. What are we supposed to do with the seeds? Grow giant sunflowers in the middle of the lab, between the incubator and the spec? I mean in some lab some people can have a small potted plant at their desk (clean area, never on the bench with the chemicals). Very tasteful. Gives a nice ambiance. Mammoth sunflower does not equal small potted plant. Mammoth sunflowers, as the name implies, are huge. (Well, for something that's not a bush or tree.) Give them right amount of sunlight and water they average over seven feet tall. Why on earth were we given a packet of these seeds?
I continue to be confused by marketing people.
Dorothy's taking home the seeds to give to her son. Maybe he can do a science project out of it or something.
Something else strange happened today as well, with my bottle of water that I tried to autoclave. I needed to treat the water with DEPC (...uh diethylpyrocarbonate) to get rid of the RNase in it, since RNase chews up RNA and I need the RNA of my samples intact, not chewed up. Usually you put DEPC in the water (where it forms clear little beads that roll around in the bottom of the bottle -- pretty cool to look at) and let it sit overnight, and then the next morning the beads would have magically disappeared. Then you autoclave it to inactivate the DEPC so it doesn't interfere with the enzymes you might need to put in the water later. Since the DEPC beads are always gone by the morning, I usually don't check for the beads. Yet somehow, today after I took my two liter bottle of water out of the autoclave, I noticed that there's a small bead of DEPC rolling around on the bottom. I stared at it. Wendy stared at it. Eventually most of the lab (except for the PI) came to stare at it. We have no idea how this was possible, especially given the thing's been autoclaved and usually that much heat and pressure can be used to help things go into solution. I've left it to cool overnight and I'll try to autoclave it again but really, what? (I should mention I had three other bottles of DEPC-treated water and this did not happen with those bottles and so, before you ask, I used the same DEPC for all of them so it is neither the DEPC nor the autoclave.)
People confuse me. Life confuses me. It's been a confusing sort of day.
My labmates and I are equal parts bemused and amused. What are we supposed to do with the seeds? Grow giant sunflowers in the middle of the lab, between the incubator and the spec? I mean in some lab some people can have a small potted plant at their desk (clean area, never on the bench with the chemicals). Very tasteful. Gives a nice ambiance. Mammoth sunflower does not equal small potted plant. Mammoth sunflowers, as the name implies, are huge. (Well, for something that's not a bush or tree.) Give them right amount of sunlight and water they average over seven feet tall. Why on earth were we given a packet of these seeds?
I continue to be confused by marketing people.
Dorothy's taking home the seeds to give to her son. Maybe he can do a science project out of it or something.
Something else strange happened today as well, with my bottle of water that I tried to autoclave. I needed to treat the water with DEPC (...uh diethylpyrocarbonate) to get rid of the RNase in it, since RNase chews up RNA and I need the RNA of my samples intact, not chewed up. Usually you put DEPC in the water (where it forms clear little beads that roll around in the bottom of the bottle -- pretty cool to look at) and let it sit overnight, and then the next morning the beads would have magically disappeared. Then you autoclave it to inactivate the DEPC so it doesn't interfere with the enzymes you might need to put in the water later. Since the DEPC beads are always gone by the morning, I usually don't check for the beads. Yet somehow, today after I took my two liter bottle of water out of the autoclave, I noticed that there's a small bead of DEPC rolling around on the bottom. I stared at it. Wendy stared at it. Eventually most of the lab (except for the PI) came to stare at it. We have no idea how this was possible, especially given the thing's been autoclaved and usually that much heat and pressure can be used to help things go into solution. I've left it to cool overnight and I'll try to autoclave it again but really, what? (I should mention I had three other bottles of DEPC-treated water and this did not happen with those bottles and so, before you ask, I used the same DEPC for all of them so it is neither the DEPC nor the autoclave.)
People confuse me. Life confuses me. It's been a confusing sort of day.
20100622
Love will remain a mystery
Why do I want to date?
I've considered this question for a while now. When I first approached the issue of romantic relationships I considered treating it like an experiment. I'll do some background research and test out each of my hypothesis and see what works and what doesn't. However, between the contradicting advises from many so-called "professionals" and my understanding that these advises are meant to address your average single woman, which I am not, the experimental approach doesn't look like it will pan out. Relationships vary so much on a person to person basis that the only way for me to find out anything is, as far as I can tell, to step off of the cliff into free fall and brave the terra incognita of your local dating scene with neither a compass nor a map (much less a GPS).
I like maps. I like experiments. When I drew the above conclusion, I was not happy.
So this brings me back to the question of why do I want to bother? I don't particularly want to be married or have children (not to mention I'm not even sure, at this point, of whether or not I'll be capable of either). If workaholic has a genetics component, I would have inherited it from both sides of the family which is, frankly, terrible for trying to do things such as dating. In what time that's left to me I volunteer, wander the streets and the beaches, write, draw, read. My life can be pretty full as it is, and I love my independence. If I were Zach diagnosing myself this is the point where I'd be telling me that I clearly need to figure out what I want.
(That last sentence sounded confusing, but less schizophrenic than it did in my head.) (The pun is accidental.)
After some thoughts I've drawn up three main reasons, one of which is based a bit on my personal insecurity. My mom keep reminding me (when she is in that certain phase that all mothers go through, visions of grandchildren dancing in their heads) that she and dad won't be around forever, and I shouldn't be left alone. Understandable. I like being independent, but I don't want the "I am all alone in this big wide world poor me" scenario either. I have excellent friends, yes, but family is still (or should be) the top priority. It will no doubt be a bit lonely when everyone gets married and such.
The second reason is mostly because I am at a phase in my life where I believe I deserve to have some fun. I like going out. I don't know if I'll like going out. Long-term relationship not withstanding, people my age seem to like the latter, so I figured I should at least try it once. It's like Greek food except less likely to involve words that I cannot pronounce. Going out, from what I understand, doesn't require anyone to make a commitment after the first date, so it shouldn't be too bad.
The last and the most important reason (in terms of influencing my final decision to get up, put in some effort, and do something) is simply curiosity. It's a good trait to have as a scientist, I've been told, and as a personality trait I am aware that it can potentially get me into all kinds of problems. Nevertheless, I have considered myself and decided that, theoretically, I am no less capable of loving than anyone else, nor am I any less deserving of love than anyone else. Therefore, if I want to find out what this kind of love is, I should be able to blunder along like everyone else and find...something.
Because really, aren't we all curious? Love is such a simple word. In languages that conjugate and decline their words, it's one of the first words we learn. By the age of new comedy we can already get a glimpse of the themes in the works to come, where love plays many key roles. Poets have waxed lyrical over it, literally, and lyrics...well: considering the proportion of songs dedicated to the subject, saying that it's popular would be a gross understatement. It is such a powerful thing. People sing of it, cry over it, die for it. For love the hanging gardens of Babylon were built. For love Isis hunted for the fourteen pieces of Osiris and Orpheus walked into hell to bargain with his music. In short, love is life and therefore death, because neither would have meaning with out the other. Love is a person and his or her world, and how a person can be someone else's world but how a person's world can change, as well. The more we find out about love the more confusing it gets until, frustrated, we are forced to yell out, "It just is!"
...which may be the truest thing of all, considering.
With the nuance of English we can make the distinction between "love" and "in love with". Trace the literature world and we can find many ways to express either (though Mr. Darcy's "how ardently I admire you" always makes me want to laugh for some reason...I can try to blame the BBC mini-series' cast but I think it may be just me in this case). It is one of the oldest and most sacred human emotion we know, and therefore we are not lacking in either words or experience when it comes to the subject of love (as compared to many other subjects of similar nature that exists out there).
We can travel faster than sound, synthesize proteins from scratch, and predict the trajectory of the stars... so why is it, even now, that we are still singing of the riddle-in-a-mystery-in-a-enigma that is love? (Or Russia, if you ask Churchill. Apparently the two are similar in their ability to bewilder.)
I'm old enough to wonder. I'm old enough to care. I want to know.
Don't you?
(Forget Rubik's cube. This is like the ultimate puzzle.)
I've considered this question for a while now. When I first approached the issue of romantic relationships I considered treating it like an experiment. I'll do some background research and test out each of my hypothesis and see what works and what doesn't. However, between the contradicting advises from many so-called "professionals" and my understanding that these advises are meant to address your average single woman, which I am not, the experimental approach doesn't look like it will pan out. Relationships vary so much on a person to person basis that the only way for me to find out anything is, as far as I can tell, to step off of the cliff into free fall and brave the terra incognita of your local dating scene with neither a compass nor a map (much less a GPS).
I like maps. I like experiments. When I drew the above conclusion, I was not happy.
So this brings me back to the question of why do I want to bother? I don't particularly want to be married or have children (not to mention I'm not even sure, at this point, of whether or not I'll be capable of either). If workaholic has a genetics component, I would have inherited it from both sides of the family which is, frankly, terrible for trying to do things such as dating. In what time that's left to me I volunteer, wander the streets and the beaches, write, draw, read. My life can be pretty full as it is, and I love my independence. If I were Zach diagnosing myself this is the point where I'd be telling me that I clearly need to figure out what I want.
(That last sentence sounded confusing, but less schizophrenic than it did in my head.) (The pun is accidental.)
After some thoughts I've drawn up three main reasons, one of which is based a bit on my personal insecurity. My mom keep reminding me (when she is in that certain phase that all mothers go through, visions of grandchildren dancing in their heads) that she and dad won't be around forever, and I shouldn't be left alone. Understandable. I like being independent, but I don't want the "I am all alone in this big wide world poor me" scenario either. I have excellent friends, yes, but family is still (or should be) the top priority. It will no doubt be a bit lonely when everyone gets married and such.
The second reason is mostly because I am at a phase in my life where I believe I deserve to have some fun. I like going out. I don't know if I'll like going out. Long-term relationship not withstanding, people my age seem to like the latter, so I figured I should at least try it once. It's like Greek food except less likely to involve words that I cannot pronounce. Going out, from what I understand, doesn't require anyone to make a commitment after the first date, so it shouldn't be too bad.
The last and the most important reason (in terms of influencing my final decision to get up, put in some effort, and do something) is simply curiosity. It's a good trait to have as a scientist, I've been told, and as a personality trait I am aware that it can potentially get me into all kinds of problems. Nevertheless, I have considered myself and decided that, theoretically, I am no less capable of loving than anyone else, nor am I any less deserving of love than anyone else. Therefore, if I want to find out what this kind of love is, I should be able to blunder along like everyone else and find...something.
Because really, aren't we all curious? Love is such a simple word. In languages that conjugate and decline their words, it's one of the first words we learn. By the age of new comedy we can already get a glimpse of the themes in the works to come, where love plays many key roles. Poets have waxed lyrical over it, literally, and lyrics...well: considering the proportion of songs dedicated to the subject, saying that it's popular would be a gross understatement. It is such a powerful thing. People sing of it, cry over it, die for it. For love the hanging gardens of Babylon were built. For love Isis hunted for the fourteen pieces of Osiris and Orpheus walked into hell to bargain with his music. In short, love is life and therefore death, because neither would have meaning with out the other. Love is a person and his or her world, and how a person can be someone else's world but how a person's world can change, as well. The more we find out about love the more confusing it gets until, frustrated, we are forced to yell out, "It just is!"
...which may be the truest thing of all, considering.
With the nuance of English we can make the distinction between "love" and "in love with". Trace the literature world and we can find many ways to express either (though Mr. Darcy's "how ardently I admire you" always makes me want to laugh for some reason...I can try to blame the BBC mini-series' cast but I think it may be just me in this case). It is one of the oldest and most sacred human emotion we know, and therefore we are not lacking in either words or experience when it comes to the subject of love (as compared to many other subjects of similar nature that exists out there).
We can travel faster than sound, synthesize proteins from scratch, and predict the trajectory of the stars... so why is it, even now, that we are still singing of the riddle-in-a-mystery-in-a-enigma that is love? (Or Russia, if you ask Churchill. Apparently the two are similar in their ability to bewilder.)
I'm old enough to wonder. I'm old enough to care. I want to know.
Don't you?
(Forget Rubik's cube. This is like the ultimate puzzle.)
20100619
Time is...brain?
So continues my confusion with the advertisements. The above line is part of one of the slogans for the Scripps, "Time is brain, think FAST." I can see how the perception of time and the brain relate. What I still can't understand is how one equate the other.
People are strange.
Okay now for the long recap, I'll try to organize it by days and see how it goes.
Friday, last week: the undergrad assistants did not ditch us, and so I had relatively little to do in terms of grading. To celebrate, I ate a box of Pocky and taught myself how to do inner ear dissections. (And subsequently discovered a maddening tendency to type / write "innear" instead of "inner ear".) It was difficult. I messed up two out of eight samples but, in my defense, I was dissecting out membranous, cork-spring-ing tubes that are embedded in bone, where the largest part is about 2mm at its longest part. I actually felt rather pleased that I managed to get six out of eight and, when the PI passed by later to see what I was up to, showed him my results (which were floating in 4% paraformaldehyde). He had trouble spotting them in the paraformaldehyde solution and was confused / amazed that those things can be dissected out. I felt that I had fulfilled my job as a grad student.
Saturday: Lucy came, we went to get food (since I mostly depleted my fridge the past week) and I marveled at how nice it is to sit around not having to do/think anything. I like thinking. I like thinking about things. I think more people should think abut things. However, after my brain's been placed under stress / in overdrive like it had been that week, slouching against the wall listening to birds chirp was very nice. We got Greek food and discovered moussaka (it was delicious, by the way).Then Lucy introduced me to the wonder that is the 11th Doctor and Amy. I like the 11th better than the 9th, possibility because I can identify with the talking-self-through-thought-processes-very-fast trait very well. Too well. (My PI has told me that I talk too fast, and he talks fast himself.) There was the part where he muttered, "Com'on, brain, think!" which is pretty much what I tell myself often, so I can definitely relate. Amy has rapidly gained a place as one of my favorite female leads of all time (I also liked Alice from the recent Alice In Wonderland film, in case you're wondering), since she is a) courageous, if occasionally lacking in foresight b) smart, in the sense that although she might not have the breath of knowledge that the Doctor does, she's genuinely observant and clever, and c) has a sense of humor. (See: Peruvian folk band.) Also in the same day: played with Lucy's phone's dice widget, with the result that we craved eggs and had to look up the difference between "sunny side up" and "over easy" (and Anna, the next morning, proved herself to be even more helpful than the Internets). Lucy's also introduced me to the weird circular version of Bejeweled on her computer. It was very addictive.
Sunday: Went to see Prince of Persia with Lucy and was pleasantly surprised. Mostly from the trailer I was expecting an adventure / fantasy film that's fun to watch. I wasn't expecting the characters to be actually more than two-dimensional (see: Avatar), I wasn't expecting a truly interesting plot, and I certainly wasn't expecting themes. (They beat the "destiny" one to death, but given the plot and that the kind of movie that it is -- well, nothing's perfect and I'm more than willing to forgive.) Then I renewed my acquaintance with Greek food (gyros sandwich very good; also, I got to have fries), and watched more Doctor Who. I have now watched up to the Dream Lord episode and grins whenever I hear really loud bird chirping. (Seriously, I think Amy, Rory, and the Doctor should be conditioned -- yes in the Pavlovian sense -- to paranoia at that particular cue after that experience). I also got the "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts" song from the HP musical stuck in my head, for which I blame Lucy entirely.
Monday, this week: start of my week of trying to get back in the rhythm of full length lab days and ended up playing a lot of games of "what did I forget?" as I tried to remember what I did and how for the experiments done during / before spring quarter. Discovered that the girl who was going to trade supply fund with me this year (resulting in my rather rushed foray into researching the pros and cons of different types of Vaio laptops) had decided that there were things she wanted to get after all, so we called off the laptop thing.
Tuesday: discovered Trillian Astra. Very shiny, very aesthetically pleasing, very confused about the invisibility status of the gchat plug-in (due to the nature of the original gchat interface, according to the wisdom of the Internets). However, it does allow connections to twitter, facebook, msn messenger, yahoo messenger, aim, and ICQ (and a unique Trillian chat program that I will probably never use), which is handy. I cleaned up my contact lists and generally annoyed everyone who was online at that time by signing on and off a lot as Lucy and I tried to figure out how the invisibility option is (or isn't) working.
Wednesday, Thursday: massive amount of cryostat time. I am nearly done with all of my sectioning, thank God. I pondered what to do with what's left of my supply fund (it has to be used before the end of June). I also pondered when to fly back to bay area, given the timing of the birth of my mice, that mom's flying out of the country in August, and that I have to present in lab meeting at the end of August.
Friday: went to the Japanese place that Wendy had introduced me to and had my end of the quarter udon (I like udon, I don't like ramen, and I am still mystified by the fish-flavored thing they put in the noodles). Our undergrad's doing an undergrad research poster presentation that afternoon, so our entire lab trooped over, field-trip style, to cheer her on and look around. (I noticed that something like 80% of the PIs listed in those posters came from the PIs in my program. I like to think it's because we have really nice PIs who do really cool stuff that even undergrads know they're cool and are interested in helping out -- and yes, that was sort of how I picked my senior thesis lab. It was gratifying.) One of my undergrads (from my discussion section) emailed me to complain about grades. I emailed back and then allowed myself about an hour of obligatory guilt (I can't help the initial response of feeling like that I'd failed them in some unknown but significant way), but if they scored that low on both of their exams, there really wasn't any way that they could've gotten anything but what they did get. At which point I decided to cut short my remorse: the quarter's over, the grades are posted, I did a lot of the scoring but didn't assign the grades and they are no longer my responsibility, anyway. Bitter recrimination is always doable but at this stage? Very unproductive. I decided to use what's left of my supply fund to buy some textbooks and managed to get a brand new neuroscience textbook that was very new and very shiny (sorry for the obsession, but those things usually cost over a hundred dollars so I'd never thought I'd be able to afford to get a brand new copy). It made my day better. Books improve my day. Then I received a letter from my mom, which is five pages (front and back) handwritten, and ended up crying for over an hour over it. But you know, that's parents for you -- they know how to push all your buttons because they're the ones who put the buttons there. We're mostly good now, though, so I'm glad.
Today: had a very good morning (with tea). Did the random items run that I do once every few months and probably puzzled the store clerks (by getting really strange assortments of things, from shampoo to cereal to gum to wire whisk -- and yes Lucy, I did finally get the whisk). Did laundry. Got hair cut by a new but very nice lady. Went present shopping, which is always fun, and my venture today proved to be fruitful, too. (The only kind of shopping I like better than present shopping is nursery/gardening supply shopping. Book shopping doesn't count. I usually know the exact book I want to buy, so I don't browse. I browse in libraries.) I also went and finally tried the No. 73 frappe from Chuao's. Remember? Last summer I tried the one that's around 50% cocoa and decided that it was too sweet. I can now say that, for me, the 73% is very good, as in a moment of bliss good. It's really too bad that there's so much methylxanthine in there (mostly theobromine, I think) that I dare not drink the entire thing, since I'd like to sleep on time tonight.
Planned for tomorrow: grocery run, smog check, and baking cookies!
People are strange.
Okay now for the long recap, I'll try to organize it by days and see how it goes.
Friday, last week: the undergrad assistants did not ditch us, and so I had relatively little to do in terms of grading. To celebrate, I ate a box of Pocky and taught myself how to do inner ear dissections. (And subsequently discovered a maddening tendency to type / write "innear" instead of "inner ear".) It was difficult. I messed up two out of eight samples but, in my defense, I was dissecting out membranous, cork-spring-ing tubes that are embedded in bone, where the largest part is about 2mm at its longest part. I actually felt rather pleased that I managed to get six out of eight and, when the PI passed by later to see what I was up to, showed him my results (which were floating in 4% paraformaldehyde). He had trouble spotting them in the paraformaldehyde solution and was confused / amazed that those things can be dissected out. I felt that I had fulfilled my job as a grad student.
Saturday: Lucy came, we went to get food (since I mostly depleted my fridge the past week) and I marveled at how nice it is to sit around not having to do/think anything. I like thinking. I like thinking about things. I think more people should think abut things. However, after my brain's been placed under stress / in overdrive like it had been that week, slouching against the wall listening to birds chirp was very nice. We got Greek food and discovered moussaka (it was delicious, by the way).Then Lucy introduced me to the wonder that is the 11th Doctor and Amy. I like the 11th better than the 9th, possibility because I can identify with the talking-self-through-thought-processes-very-fast trait very well. Too well. (My PI has told me that I talk too fast, and he talks fast himself.) There was the part where he muttered, "Com'on, brain, think!" which is pretty much what I tell myself often, so I can definitely relate. Amy has rapidly gained a place as one of my favorite female leads of all time (I also liked Alice from the recent Alice In Wonderland film, in case you're wondering), since she is a) courageous, if occasionally lacking in foresight b) smart, in the sense that although she might not have the breath of knowledge that the Doctor does, she's genuinely observant and clever, and c) has a sense of humor. (See: Peruvian folk band.) Also in the same day: played with Lucy's phone's dice widget, with the result that we craved eggs and had to look up the difference between "sunny side up" and "over easy" (and Anna, the next morning, proved herself to be even more helpful than the Internets). Lucy's also introduced me to the weird circular version of Bejeweled on her computer. It was very addictive.
Sunday: Went to see Prince of Persia with Lucy and was pleasantly surprised. Mostly from the trailer I was expecting an adventure / fantasy film that's fun to watch. I wasn't expecting the characters to be actually more than two-dimensional (see: Avatar), I wasn't expecting a truly interesting plot, and I certainly wasn't expecting themes. (They beat the "destiny" one to death, but given the plot and that the kind of movie that it is -- well, nothing's perfect and I'm more than willing to forgive.) Then I renewed my acquaintance with Greek food (gyros sandwich very good; also, I got to have fries), and watched more Doctor Who. I have now watched up to the Dream Lord episode and grins whenever I hear really loud bird chirping. (Seriously, I think Amy, Rory, and the Doctor should be conditioned -- yes in the Pavlovian sense -- to paranoia at that particular cue after that experience). I also got the "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts" song from the HP musical stuck in my head, for which I blame Lucy entirely.
Monday, this week: start of my week of trying to get back in the rhythm of full length lab days and ended up playing a lot of games of "what did I forget?" as I tried to remember what I did and how for the experiments done during / before spring quarter. Discovered that the girl who was going to trade supply fund with me this year (resulting in my rather rushed foray into researching the pros and cons of different types of Vaio laptops) had decided that there were things she wanted to get after all, so we called off the laptop thing.
Tuesday: discovered Trillian Astra. Very shiny, very aesthetically pleasing, very confused about the invisibility status of the gchat plug-in (due to the nature of the original gchat interface, according to the wisdom of the Internets). However, it does allow connections to twitter, facebook, msn messenger, yahoo messenger, aim, and ICQ (and a unique Trillian chat program that I will probably never use), which is handy. I cleaned up my contact lists and generally annoyed everyone who was online at that time by signing on and off a lot as Lucy and I tried to figure out how the invisibility option is (or isn't) working.
Wednesday, Thursday: massive amount of cryostat time. I am nearly done with all of my sectioning, thank God. I pondered what to do with what's left of my supply fund (it has to be used before the end of June). I also pondered when to fly back to bay area, given the timing of the birth of my mice, that mom's flying out of the country in August, and that I have to present in lab meeting at the end of August.
Friday: went to the Japanese place that Wendy had introduced me to and had my end of the quarter udon (I like udon, I don't like ramen, and I am still mystified by the fish-flavored thing they put in the noodles). Our undergrad's doing an undergrad research poster presentation that afternoon, so our entire lab trooped over, field-trip style, to cheer her on and look around. (I noticed that something like 80% of the PIs listed in those posters came from the PIs in my program. I like to think it's because we have really nice PIs who do really cool stuff that even undergrads know they're cool and are interested in helping out -- and yes, that was sort of how I picked my senior thesis lab. It was gratifying.) One of my undergrads (from my discussion section) emailed me to complain about grades. I emailed back and then allowed myself about an hour of obligatory guilt (I can't help the initial response of feeling like that I'd failed them in some unknown but significant way), but if they scored that low on both of their exams, there really wasn't any way that they could've gotten anything but what they did get. At which point I decided to cut short my remorse: the quarter's over, the grades are posted, I did a lot of the scoring but didn't assign the grades and they are no longer my responsibility, anyway. Bitter recrimination is always doable but at this stage? Very unproductive. I decided to use what's left of my supply fund to buy some textbooks and managed to get a brand new neuroscience textbook that was very new and very shiny (sorry for the obsession, but those things usually cost over a hundred dollars so I'd never thought I'd be able to afford to get a brand new copy). It made my day better. Books improve my day. Then I received a letter from my mom, which is five pages (front and back) handwritten, and ended up crying for over an hour over it. But you know, that's parents for you -- they know how to push all your buttons because they're the ones who put the buttons there. We're mostly good now, though, so I'm glad.
Today: had a very good morning (with tea). Did the random items run that I do once every few months and probably puzzled the store clerks (by getting really strange assortments of things, from shampoo to cereal to gum to wire whisk -- and yes Lucy, I did finally get the whisk). Did laundry. Got hair cut by a new but very nice lady. Went present shopping, which is always fun, and my venture today proved to be fruitful, too. (The only kind of shopping I like better than present shopping is nursery/gardening supply shopping. Book shopping doesn't count. I usually know the exact book I want to buy, so I don't browse. I browse in libraries.) I also went and finally tried the No. 73 frappe from Chuao's. Remember? Last summer I tried the one that's around 50% cocoa and decided that it was too sweet. I can now say that, for me, the 73% is very good, as in a moment of bliss good. It's really too bad that there's so much methylxanthine in there (mostly theobromine, I think) that I dare not drink the entire thing, since I'd like to sleep on time tonight.
Planned for tomorrow: grocery run, smog check, and baking cookies!
20100617
More scary people on the bus
I was going to wait until the weekend and then write a long entry but I wanted to just share this now:
The girl who sat across from me on the bus got attacked (physical shoving) by one of the crazy people today, who was set off (like a bomb, she seemed to have exploded suddenly), apparently, because the girl started using her cell phone The crazy person really had something against that cellphone. She was screaming about how she ought to beat the girl blind and next time that's what she'll do as she was let off the bus. (The bus driver asked the girl if she wanted the police afterwards, she declined.)
Crazy or not, I've never before, in my life, heard someone scream at another person with that much hate. Movie actors/actresses have nothing on it. (Seriously, a cellphone. My mind does not compute.) I'm mostly sharing this since if I talk about something I'm less likely going to have nightmares about it.
My God.
The girl who sat across from me on the bus got attacked (physical shoving) by one of the crazy people today, who was set off (like a bomb, she seemed to have exploded suddenly), apparently, because the girl started using her cell phone The crazy person really had something against that cellphone. She was screaming about how she ought to beat the girl blind and next time that's what she'll do as she was let off the bus. (The bus driver asked the girl if she wanted the police afterwards, she declined.)
Crazy or not, I've never before, in my life, heard someone scream at another person with that much hate. Movie actors/actresses have nothing on it. (Seriously, a cellphone. My mind does not compute.) I'm mostly sharing this since if I talk about something I'm less likely going to have nightmares about it.
My God.
20100616
In lab
While I'm waiting for things to thaw. Here's a question for the masses: which holidays do you celebrate? This is for those who were born in the US as well as born elsewhere. Personally I've sort of picked out a few holidays from both cultures that I grew up in and follow. Except Christmas. I don't actually celebrate Christmas (we haven't done the tree thing or the decorating thing since...what? High school? Except I sort of did in Davis. But that was more in the spirit of thing. I didn't do anything on Christmas day that year except open a present, I think). Or Solstice, exactly (not in your traditional sense of "celebrate"). I just make sure there are two days in mid-to-late December that I can get together with friends and family and do the food & presents thing.
20100614
FYI
5.9 earth quake just now. Am fine. Nothing fell in my place (though from the sound of it, something did fall in my neighbor's place). Twitter's trending earthquake again (there was also a minor one over the weekend which didn't trend). I think I'll sleep now.
20100610
Any soccer fans out there?
A post-doc in my lab got a box of chocolate and now we're betting on World Cup. Winner gets chocolate. Any opinions out there before I jump in? (What? It sounds like fun.)
The server who sold me tea today turned out to be in the course I'm TAing. She's not in my section so I don't know her, but she recognized me from the lectures as "a genetics TA". I don't think I've ever achieved this level of infamy before. Also: some of the students are still having trouble with the concept of meiosis. Us TAs were very unhappy about this.
My parents are planning to come to SD (as in 90% certain) for 4th of July. Somehow, despite of the length of time I've spent living on my known they still feel the need to try to feed me. I'm still trying to work out when I can fly up to SJ in the summer. June's out because I have mice, and I need to plan any time off at least a month ahead of time for them. I was originally planning on August but mom's planning to go out of country some time that month. She's willing to push it later so I can, technically, utilize Labor Day to visit, but I don't know if any of the Lunatics (besides Kate, possibly) will still be around at that point. My parents would like me up there for my birthday, but there are no holidays around that time. At all. So if I actually want enough time off I'll have to add days to a weekend and...well, I'd rather not spend my birthday at the airport so I'm not sure how that goes. Sorry Victoria, I probably won't make it up there before you left. Does anyone else, besides Victoria and Lucy, know their plans this summer?
The server who sold me tea today turned out to be in the course I'm TAing. She's not in my section so I don't know her, but she recognized me from the lectures as "a genetics TA". I don't think I've ever achieved this level of infamy before. Also: some of the students are still having trouble with the concept of meiosis. Us TAs were very unhappy about this.
My parents are planning to come to SD (as in 90% certain) for 4th of July. Somehow, despite of the length of time I've spent living on my known they still feel the need to try to feed me. I'm still trying to work out when I can fly up to SJ in the summer. June's out because I have mice, and I need to plan any time off at least a month ahead of time for them. I was originally planning on August but mom's planning to go out of country some time that month. She's willing to push it later so I can, technically, utilize Labor Day to visit, but I don't know if any of the Lunatics (besides Kate, possibly) will still be around at that point. My parents would like me up there for my birthday, but there are no holidays around that time. At all. So if I actually want enough time off I'll have to add days to a weekend and...well, I'd rather not spend my birthday at the airport so I'm not sure how that goes. Sorry Victoria, I probably won't make it up there before you left. Does anyone else, besides Victoria and Lucy, know their plans this summer?
This may not make sense to most of you but
My parents know. My mom, at least is fine with it. She may not be very clear on what it means, exactly, but she's fine with it.
I have 15 minutes to be hysterical somewhere before I head off to grade undergrad exams.
[update]
Post phone call:
Mom's okay with it though she still kind of thinks of it as a phase. Nevertheless she holds to her opinion of health and happiness first and is very supportive of "experimenting". Dad's not okay and will most likely adapt a model of "never speak of it again". I've asked mom to play along since the last thing I need to give them another thing to fight over.
That went well, all things considered.
I have 15 minutes to be hysterical somewhere before I head off to grade undergrad exams.
[update]
Post phone call:
Mom's okay with it though she still kind of thinks of it as a phase. Nevertheless she holds to her opinion of health and happiness first and is very supportive of "experimenting". Dad's not okay and will most likely adapt a model of "never speak of it again". I've asked mom to play along since the last thing I need to give them another thing to fight over.
That went well, all things considered.
20100605
Less vegetabley?
I saw an advertisement from Albertson's yesterday on the side of a bus. I didn't read the find print, but their giant slogan was "MAKE VEGETABLES LESS VEGETABLEY".
Now, I may not have a degree in psychology, but something about this doesn't make sense. Either as a way to appeal to the masses or, you know, in terms of general logic. Isn't this similar to an appeal to make water less watery?
I don't understand marketing people. I never will.
To-do list for this weekend requires some effort into putting together notes for the two hours review session I'm co-running on Monday and working on my take home final (due Tuesday, at which point I get to turn it in during class and take my in-class final. For the same class). I have finished grading the problem set turned in to me on Thursday, and I have just finished taking the final designed for the undergraduates. (And as far as I'm aware, I was the only TA in the class who was asked to do this -- possibly because I'm pretty sure I'm the only graduate TA who manages to give prompt and detailed feedback--somebody better appreciate this.) (Yes it's genetics and I like genetics and the final isn't that bad, but I like weekends with time off even better, not to mention my own take home final is of the horrible, essay-writing type and dammit that's what I forgot -- I need to change the directory of Windows Office on Zen because it's been having trouble locating the executive files ever since the RAM got upgraded.) (Daemon and Ivy runs Open Office which has some formatting issues with MS Office.)
Gah. Time for tea, me thinks.
Now, I may not have a degree in psychology, but something about this doesn't make sense. Either as a way to appeal to the masses or, you know, in terms of general logic. Isn't this similar to an appeal to make water less watery?
I don't understand marketing people. I never will.
To-do list for this weekend requires some effort into putting together notes for the two hours review session I'm co-running on Monday and working on my take home final (due Tuesday, at which point I get to turn it in during class and take my in-class final. For the same class). I have finished grading the problem set turned in to me on Thursday, and I have just finished taking the final designed for the undergraduates. (And as far as I'm aware, I was the only TA in the class who was asked to do this -- possibly because I'm pretty sure I'm the only graduate TA who manages to give prompt and detailed feedback--somebody better appreciate this.) (Yes it's genetics and I like genetics and the final isn't that bad, but I like weekends with time off even better, not to mention my own take home final is of the horrible, essay-writing type and dammit that's what I forgot -- I need to change the directory of Windows Office on Zen because it's been having trouble locating the executive files ever since the RAM got upgraded.) (Daemon and Ivy runs Open Office which has some formatting issues with MS Office.)
Gah. Time for tea, me thinks.
20100530
Linkage!
I have discovered:
1) Clients from Hell, which promptly send me into fits of giggles because, my God, yes. This is why despite of my initial considerations back when I was in high school I realized I'm never going to go into being a professional designer. Or for that matter, the local IT person. (Except friends and family. They have their own brand of insanity but they're far less likely to make me headdesk.)
2) Geek Pop, courtesy of one of the undergrads (someone else's section, more's the pity). It's what it sounds like. Remember John Coulten's "DNA"? I think that's the idea. I will need to go through and investigate that site in greater detail. In two weeks.
3) A biologist's (geneticist's, more like) Mother's Day song, courtesy of the course instructor. It's sweet. Or at least I think it's sweet.
1) Clients from Hell, which promptly send me into fits of giggles because, my God, yes. This is why despite of my initial considerations back when I was in high school I realized I'm never going to go into being a professional designer. Or for that matter, the local IT person. (Except friends and family. They have their own brand of insanity but they're far less likely to make me headdesk.)
2) Geek Pop, courtesy of one of the undergrads (someone else's section, more's the pity). It's what it sounds like. Remember John Coulten's "DNA"? I think that's the idea. I will need to go through and investigate that site in greater detail. In two weeks.
3) A biologist's (geneticist's, more like) Mother's Day song, courtesy of the course instructor. It's sweet. Or at least I think it's sweet.
Unexpected exercise
Dear Diary,
I consider myself to be an independent girl and, for the most part, I am happy to be one. There are rare times, however, such as finding a beetle on my bed at two in the morning, where I'd miss being able to claim "girl's privilege" and let the man of the house (read: dad) deal with it.
Damn it. Now I need to wait for the adrenaline to wear off before I can sleep again. I can now confidently list beetles as one of my least favorite ways to wake up.
Sincerely,
S
I consider myself to be an independent girl and, for the most part, I am happy to be one. There are rare times, however, such as finding a beetle on my bed at two in the morning, where I'd miss being able to claim "girl's privilege" and let the man of the house (read: dad) deal with it.
Damn it. Now I need to wait for the adrenaline to wear off before I can sleep again. I can now confidently list beetles as one of my least favorite ways to wake up.
Sincerely,
S
20100528
Oh, fizzlesticks
This week started off okay and then things started snowballing somewhere around Wednesday and now I find myself staring at my planner, wondering what on earth I've gotten myself into.
To sum up: Two problem sets next week, one to turn in and one to grade, in addition to another paper to review and a trip over to a neighboring research institute to finish off my first cohort of mouse experiments, which will take at least half a day, in addition to presenting a poster at the genetics retreat, which will take all day. The week after that includes a two hour review session for me to run, a take home final and a in-class final (open and closed book, respectively), a lab presentation, and a final to help make, take, proctor, and grade. (Given that the midterm took us five hours to go through, this will probably take longer.)
These past two days I've been going through the hell that was poster-making, because we're trying out a new sort of account for printing them and the printer system is on a separate network from the school of med system and won't acknowledge that my printing account is valid. I just sorted that bit of fun this afternoon so now the file for my poster is off being British (queuing very patiently). I hope to get it some time on Monday, but I'll settle for anything before Thursday (day of presentation).
Attendance at my discussion section still sucks, and in this past homework one of my students told me that that a prokaryote has a nucleus. Despite of the fact that I know, quite logically, this is more of an intro-to-bio issue and is in no way a topic covered & held responsible for by our upper division genetics class, I can't help but feel like I've failed my students in some small but significant way. After that I gazed morosely at my grading sheet for a while and was cheered somewhat by the fact that the few people who have been coming to my sections seem to have been scoring progressively higher on their problem sets. I can only hope that I've played some small part in that.
Oh right. Thesis committee. I'll let you guys know by the end of next week! (Waiting for one more person....) I might make it on schedule after all. (Remember? My original plan was to have that assembled by the end of spring quarter this year.)
Utterly exhausted. Will sleep now.
To sum up: Two problem sets next week, one to turn in and one to grade, in addition to another paper to review and a trip over to a neighboring research institute to finish off my first cohort of mouse experiments, which will take at least half a day, in addition to presenting a poster at the genetics retreat, which will take all day. The week after that includes a two hour review session for me to run, a take home final and a in-class final (open and closed book, respectively), a lab presentation, and a final to help make, take, proctor, and grade. (Given that the midterm took us five hours to go through, this will probably take longer.)
These past two days I've been going through the hell that was poster-making, because we're trying out a new sort of account for printing them and the printer system is on a separate network from the school of med system and won't acknowledge that my printing account is valid. I just sorted that bit of fun this afternoon so now the file for my poster is off being British (queuing very patiently). I hope to get it some time on Monday, but I'll settle for anything before Thursday (day of presentation).
Attendance at my discussion section still sucks, and in this past homework one of my students told me that that a prokaryote has a nucleus. Despite of the fact that I know, quite logically, this is more of an intro-to-bio issue and is in no way a topic covered & held responsible for by our upper division genetics class, I can't help but feel like I've failed my students in some small but significant way. After that I gazed morosely at my grading sheet for a while and was cheered somewhat by the fact that the few people who have been coming to my sections seem to have been scoring progressively higher on their problem sets. I can only hope that I've played some small part in that.
Oh right. Thesis committee. I'll let you guys know by the end of next week! (Waiting for one more person....) I might make it on schedule after all. (Remember? My original plan was to have that assembled by the end of spring quarter this year.)
Utterly exhausted. Will sleep now.
20100523
We has cranes
They are building a lot of things on campus right now...a new student housing place for the School Of Med people and a telemedicine building. (Note: Wendy and I had to google it when we first heard of that one, because telemedicine sounds like telekinesis or something and we weren't sure what it is or why it needed its own building.) I just heard last week that they're thinking of building of another building for our program (we already have a building named after that family...I guess the family/foundation is very wealthy & philanthropic) and should that ever get completed (not going to happen during my stay at here) our lab might move there.
Mostly I just look around that the School of Med area and wonder where the heck they're going to stick another building. We're pretty full. Unless they want to cross the highway and build it in the eastern campus, I suppose.
I also had spare time this weekend, most of which I used yesterday to read GAME OF THRONES. (Bits of it are unexpectedly gruesome. I mean, I really did NOT need that depth of detail for what the scars look like. Or the sounds people make when tortured.) I've also sorted through my accumulating pile of already-read mail that I've yet to deal with, and uncovered a very nice cheque that needs to be cashed as well as the Chase letter telling me to activate my debit card. A visit to the bank is in order. Or at least an ATM machine.
The weather is really good here today and made me regret the fact that I now live in a place where it's not possible to go more than what feels like five steps without stepping off of a curb and worry about being run over. (Sun's out = crowded beach, unless I want to go really early, which I couldn't today because I had errands to run that I'd prefer to get done before there is a crowd.) As it is I've opened the windows and the door to let the wind through, and enough of it had gone through to knock fridge magnets (and the papers they were holding up) onto the floor (a lack of foresight on my part, I guess). It feels nice though.
Tried a cereal called "Wheat-fuls" from "Mom's Best" brand. It's like the regular frosted wheats except...more bland. I don't know how else to describe this, but I've never been so bored by cereal before. It's a novel experience.
In addition, I've been composing a list of things I've been meaning to get, but never got around to buying, for whatever reason (some of which being that I need to do a bit of background research before buying and I've just never found the time). I've been considering steadily working my way down the list once the quarter is over, except yesterday I'm suddenly struck by the idea of whether or not it's wise of me to accumulate worldly goods, given that I have no idea where I'll end up (except it will not be here) or how many times I'll have to move in the future. Yes, there's storage space, but is it really a good idea to collect so much knickknacks when I'm not even certain if there'll be someone around to help me move in the future? Not to mention given how much thought I tend to invest before buying something (except essentials such as food and such), even if that something is not something I need, per se, (e.g. a certain book), I'm not going to be willing to just sell it whenever I have to move. (If I can part with it so easily there's a much lower chance I'd buy it in the first place.)
Then I think that maybe I'm thinking to much, and if I really wanted to get something I should just go ahead and buy it. I still have at least three years to enjoy myself before worrying about storage spaces, after all. Except this line of thought usually end with me clutching my head and thinking, "But this is such an irresponsible line of thought!"
...Yep. I don't think I'm suited for commercialism. Or whatever this things is.
Mostly I just look around that the School of Med area and wonder where the heck they're going to stick another building. We're pretty full. Unless they want to cross the highway and build it in the eastern campus, I suppose.
I also had spare time this weekend, most of which I used yesterday to read GAME OF THRONES. (Bits of it are unexpectedly gruesome. I mean, I really did NOT need that depth of detail for what the scars look like. Or the sounds people make when tortured.) I've also sorted through my accumulating pile of already-read mail that I've yet to deal with, and uncovered a very nice cheque that needs to be cashed as well as the Chase letter telling me to activate my debit card. A visit to the bank is in order. Or at least an ATM machine.
The weather is really good here today and made me regret the fact that I now live in a place where it's not possible to go more than what feels like five steps without stepping off of a curb and worry about being run over. (Sun's out = crowded beach, unless I want to go really early, which I couldn't today because I had errands to run that I'd prefer to get done before there is a crowd.) As it is I've opened the windows and the door to let the wind through, and enough of it had gone through to knock fridge magnets (and the papers they were holding up) onto the floor (a lack of foresight on my part, I guess). It feels nice though.
Tried a cereal called "Wheat-fuls" from "Mom's Best" brand. It's like the regular frosted wheats except...more bland. I don't know how else to describe this, but I've never been so bored by cereal before. It's a novel experience.
In addition, I've been composing a list of things I've been meaning to get, but never got around to buying, for whatever reason (some of which being that I need to do a bit of background research before buying and I've just never found the time). I've been considering steadily working my way down the list once the quarter is over, except yesterday I'm suddenly struck by the idea of whether or not it's wise of me to accumulate worldly goods, given that I have no idea where I'll end up (except it will not be here) or how many times I'll have to move in the future. Yes, there's storage space, but is it really a good idea to collect so much knickknacks when I'm not even certain if there'll be someone around to help me move in the future? Not to mention given how much thought I tend to invest before buying something (except essentials such as food and such), even if that something is not something I need, per se, (e.g. a certain book), I'm not going to be willing to just sell it whenever I have to move. (If I can part with it so easily there's a much lower chance I'd buy it in the first place.)
Then I think that maybe I'm thinking to much, and if I really wanted to get something I should just go ahead and buy it. I still have at least three years to enjoy myself before worrying about storage spaces, after all. Except this line of thought usually end with me clutching my head and thinking, "But this is such an irresponsible line of thought!"
...Yep. I don't think I'm suited for commercialism. Or whatever this things is.
20100518
In which life stabilizes, and I confuse the PI
After the insanity the past week I arrived at Saturday evening with the dumbfounding discovery that I have finished all my "must do" items and that the weekend wasn't over yet. In fact, Saturday wasn't over yet. I hope this will be what it's like once the quarter is over. Life will be wonderful. My tablet will no longer be gather dust. I will get a chance to read something fun that doesn't include words like "minor allele frequency".
I don't think I've gone out since the last time Lucy and I went, before quarter started. I miss fries. I cannot understand why the professor didn't pass out the paper that's due on Friday until this afternoon (but at least my presentation is over, I just have to write a review for it).
Nevertheless, the lack of immediate and time-consuming sources of stress means that I'm feeling pretty cheerful today (despite of our UV box breaking yesterday). A lot of weird little things that happen in life that otherwise would've amplified my stress on a bad day merely amused me today, to the point that when the PI asked me how I was doing, I answered, "Pretty good!" and then when he remarked that I was smiling I replied something about how odd things are happening and they're amusing and left him standing in the lobby, looking like he can't make up his mind whether to be amused or confused.
(Eventually he did try to come and find out what on earth is the matter with his grad student. I used the opportunity to try to get him to explain my partial copy of the polytene map since the lecturer utterly failed to cover it. My PI's handy that way. For certain things he's like a walking encyclopedia that likes to wander by with his mug of tea, though he is easily distracted. Which may not be a good thing.)
Other than that, I have a bruise on my knuckle and I have no clue how I got it. The street in front of my apartment is being re-paved. My mice DID get shipped last week (yay!), the person in charge just forgot the email me. My classmate has created a new acronym that I will use diligently in my studies now, called YFDO (Your Favorite Diploid Organism).
Over and out.
I don't think I've gone out since the last time Lucy and I went, before quarter started. I miss fries. I cannot understand why the professor didn't pass out the paper that's due on Friday until this afternoon (but at least my presentation is over, I just have to write a review for it).
Nevertheless, the lack of immediate and time-consuming sources of stress means that I'm feeling pretty cheerful today (despite of our UV box breaking yesterday). A lot of weird little things that happen in life that otherwise would've amplified my stress on a bad day merely amused me today, to the point that when the PI asked me how I was doing, I answered, "Pretty good!" and then when he remarked that I was smiling I replied something about how odd things are happening and they're amusing and left him standing in the lobby, looking like he can't make up his mind whether to be amused or confused.
(Eventually he did try to come and find out what on earth is the matter with his grad student. I used the opportunity to try to get him to explain my partial copy of the polytene map since the lecturer utterly failed to cover it. My PI's handy that way. For certain things he's like a walking encyclopedia that likes to wander by with his mug of tea, though he is easily distracted. Which may not be a good thing.)
Other than that, I have a bruise on my knuckle and I have no clue how I got it. The street in front of my apartment is being re-paved. My mice DID get shipped last week (yay!), the person in charge just forgot the email me. My classmate has created a new acronym that I will use diligently in my studies now, called YFDO (Your Favorite Diploid Organism).
Over and out.
20100514
...
Dear classmate,
Please do not send me half-hearted efforts at powerpoint slides (two slides! I spent time waiting for two slides?) with the excuse that you're sorry you can't do more because you are "busy". We are grad students. We are, by definition, busy. I think for a group project, which involves other people, we at least deserve a better excuse.
Also...
Dear undergrad,
Please don't use "antibodies" and "antibiotics" interchangeably. They are very much not the same thing. It makes me sad every time you confuse the two.
...
Well life, that about sums it up. But the week's almost done! Cheers!
At this point, the highlight of my week is finding out that Anna's going to be at the same SfN thing in November as me. (Mail me your abstract title at some point Anna, so I can find out when you're presenting when the session book comes out.) Definitely something to look forward to.
Please do not send me half-hearted efforts at powerpoint slides (two slides! I spent time waiting for two slides?) with the excuse that you're sorry you can't do more because you are "busy". We are grad students. We are, by definition, busy. I think for a group project, which involves other people, we at least deserve a better excuse.
Also...
Dear undergrad,
Please don't use "antibodies" and "antibiotics" interchangeably. They are very much not the same thing. It makes me sad every time you confuse the two.
...
Well life, that about sums it up. But the week's almost done! Cheers!
At this point, the highlight of my week is finding out that Anna's going to be at the same SfN thing in November as me. (Mail me your abstract title at some point Anna, so I can find out when you're presenting when the session book comes out.) Definitely something to look forward to.
20100513
ZMG a break?!
Surprisingly this week is approaching the Week of Insanity Around Midterms Period in terms of stress and barely controlled chaos. I am reduced to list-making to account for the eventfulness of the days so far:
1. Kitchen faucet leak: water will spray out SIDEWAYS along the spout when turned on. Discovered on Friday. Called Landlady Saturday, temporarily dealt with duct tape (still leaked, but at least no longer spraying) leading to...
2. Mystery cleaning: giving permission for repairman to enter, returning home Tuesday to find the kitchen sink mysteriously cleaned and that the sink that always clogged a little no longer clogged. The faucet was still leaking.
3. Presentation Friday morning: GROUP presentation tomorrow morning. We didn't get the material assigned to us until Monday morning. I just found out yesterday evening that at least one person in my group of three (supposed to be four, but that person never showed and no one knows who that person is) has yet to read the paper. (I'm waiting to hear back from them right now.)
4. TAing duties: Problem sets due today. To sum it up in a word: grading. (Which I do not have my pens for right now but will shortly after this hour is over.)
5. SfN flailing: abstract deadline today at 2pm. Sent final draft to PI on the 4th of May (because I knew this week may be insane and I didn't want to deal with it this week). Found out YESTERDAY at 5:30pm that he can only sponsor one person and so he has decided for me to join SfN and submit my own abstract, probably because the student membership is cheaper than the postdoc version. Joining requires sponsorship of two PIs, CV, and forms. Managed to find sponsors & get all forms together and submitted by 9pm yesterday. Submitted my own abstract by 10am today, which happens to be my TAing day (8am-12pm occupied with TAing related stuff) (yes there is no one at my office hour, which is why I have the time to do this, which I wanted to do last night but had NO TIME FOR). There was a lot of frustrated flailing involved.
6. Mice: Still. Has. Not. Been. Shipped. WTF people. Because of age constraints between cohorts if they don't get shipped within the next week I'll have to forfeit my first round of data. Considering each round takes about 6 months to generate this makes me feel a bit like crying. But at least...
7. Faucet got fixed yesterday: No leaking, no spraying, yayness.
8. Need to present poster at Genetics Retreat: Which is on my TAing day. Which requires me to set up my poster at 8:30am. Which required emailing back to explain that I am gone from 8-12 that day. (Still waiting to hear back.) Which also requires me to finish my poster in two weeks. Which involves sorting through my gigabytes of data into figures on top of dealing with the lamprey tissue samples that just arrived this Tuesday.
9: Randomly: Smog check at some point. In between all the rest of the insanity.
I think I deserve pearl tea.
1. Kitchen faucet leak: water will spray out SIDEWAYS along the spout when turned on. Discovered on Friday. Called Landlady Saturday, temporarily dealt with duct tape (still leaked, but at least no longer spraying) leading to...
2. Mystery cleaning: giving permission for repairman to enter, returning home Tuesday to find the kitchen sink mysteriously cleaned and that the sink that always clogged a little no longer clogged. The faucet was still leaking.
3. Presentation Friday morning: GROUP presentation tomorrow morning. We didn't get the material assigned to us until Monday morning. I just found out yesterday evening that at least one person in my group of three (supposed to be four, but that person never showed and no one knows who that person is) has yet to read the paper. (I'm waiting to hear back from them right now.)
4. TAing duties: Problem sets due today. To sum it up in a word: grading. (Which I do not have my pens for right now but will shortly after this hour is over.)
5. SfN flailing: abstract deadline today at 2pm. Sent final draft to PI on the 4th of May (because I knew this week may be insane and I didn't want to deal with it this week). Found out YESTERDAY at 5:30pm that he can only sponsor one person and so he has decided for me to join SfN and submit my own abstract, probably because the student membership is cheaper than the postdoc version. Joining requires sponsorship of two PIs, CV, and forms. Managed to find sponsors & get all forms together and submitted by 9pm yesterday. Submitted my own abstract by 10am today, which happens to be my TAing day (8am-12pm occupied with TAing related stuff) (yes there is no one at my office hour, which is why I have the time to do this, which I wanted to do last night but had NO TIME FOR). There was a lot of frustrated flailing involved.
6. Mice: Still. Has. Not. Been. Shipped. WTF people. Because of age constraints between cohorts if they don't get shipped within the next week I'll have to forfeit my first round of data. Considering each round takes about 6 months to generate this makes me feel a bit like crying. But at least...
7. Faucet got fixed yesterday: No leaking, no spraying, yayness.
8. Need to present poster at Genetics Retreat: Which is on my TAing day. Which requires me to set up my poster at 8:30am. Which required emailing back to explain that I am gone from 8-12 that day. (Still waiting to hear back.) Which also requires me to finish my poster in two weeks. Which involves sorting through my gigabytes of data into figures on top of dealing with the lamprey tissue samples that just arrived this Tuesday.
9: Randomly: Smog check at some point. In between all the rest of the insanity.
I think I deserve pearl tea.
20100506
For a pretty penny
This the Thursday after the midterm, so I had two students come to my section and (so far) none to my office hour. Instead I've some time to marvel about the things people do for money and what they're willing to risk for it.
People should be more than familiar with my rant about inappropriate use of antibiotics by now. This morning I just got another fun talk from a practitioner (formerly ER & OR)who gave us a case study in which a girl decided to go off and take antibiotics for her cold. She did get better after a few days, mostly due to the fact that mild cold/flu only lasts a few days. What's important was that later when she got appendicitis and had to get her appendix removed, she had a fairly normal mild infection that, when treated with the fairly standard antibiotics that they give you for this sort of infection, got worse. By taking antibiotics when she didn't have to, she had effectively selected for the resistant bacteria growing on her so that, when she does develop a wound, it'd be those bacteria that's infecting her. She nearly died from the subsequent treatment to get rid of those resistant bacteria, but thankfully she didn't.
This I know. What I didn't know was how much antibiotics they're routinely loading into animal feeds. For the large companies that tend to house animals in far too crowded conditions, this is the only way they can prevent half of the animals from dying from infections born of unsanitary over-crowded conditions. Right now some analogues of the antibiotics that doctors reserve as a last line of defense for bacteria that are resistant to all your regular antibiotics is going into cattle feed on a regular basis. People who work in these company's meat packing factories have been found with higher percentage of antibiotic resistant bacteria on them than normal people. You draw the conclusions.
Meat is not a significant portion of my diet, but for this reason alone I think it's worth it to shell out a few extra bucks for the company that produce meat not loaded on antibiotics. Net income is somewhat less important than death, I'd think. If you're dead, your money's not going to be of much use to you, is it?
(Oh and I found the link for the treatise on the problem with sticking antibacterial agents/antibiotics on every thing, from Center for Disease Control. Seriously, normal soap is good enough. Normal soap (well a cleaner, more expensive kind) is what we use in lab to lyse (burst open) bacteria cells. Well technically it's possible that some day there may be a bacterium that'll be resistant to normal soap, but compared to antibiotic resistance that's like...looking for someone who's resistant to an atomic bomb vs looking for someone who's resistant to bubonic plague: 1/3 rate of survival for the later, currently known rate of survival for the former is zero. ...unless you count the Indiana Jones miracle, which I don't. Lead-lined fridge so would not be helpful to you in an atomic explosion, no matter what the movie says.)
On a not so seriously note, the TruGreen ad banner makes me think of the book GREENER THAN YOU THINK.
People should be more than familiar with my rant about inappropriate use of antibiotics by now. This morning I just got another fun talk from a practitioner (formerly ER & OR)who gave us a case study in which a girl decided to go off and take antibiotics for her cold. She did get better after a few days, mostly due to the fact that mild cold/flu only lasts a few days. What's important was that later when she got appendicitis and had to get her appendix removed, she had a fairly normal mild infection that, when treated with the fairly standard antibiotics that they give you for this sort of infection, got worse. By taking antibiotics when she didn't have to, she had effectively selected for the resistant bacteria growing on her so that, when she does develop a wound, it'd be those bacteria that's infecting her. She nearly died from the subsequent treatment to get rid of those resistant bacteria, but thankfully she didn't.
This I know. What I didn't know was how much antibiotics they're routinely loading into animal feeds. For the large companies that tend to house animals in far too crowded conditions, this is the only way they can prevent half of the animals from dying from infections born of unsanitary over-crowded conditions. Right now some analogues of the antibiotics that doctors reserve as a last line of defense for bacteria that are resistant to all your regular antibiotics is going into cattle feed on a regular basis. People who work in these company's meat packing factories have been found with higher percentage of antibiotic resistant bacteria on them than normal people. You draw the conclusions.
Meat is not a significant portion of my diet, but for this reason alone I think it's worth it to shell out a few extra bucks for the company that produce meat not loaded on antibiotics. Net income is somewhat less important than death, I'd think. If you're dead, your money's not going to be of much use to you, is it?
(Oh and I found the link for the treatise on the problem with sticking antibacterial agents/antibiotics on every thing, from Center for Disease Control. Seriously, normal soap is good enough. Normal soap (well a cleaner, more expensive kind) is what we use in lab to lyse (burst open) bacteria cells. Well technically it's possible that some day there may be a bacterium that'll be resistant to normal soap, but compared to antibiotic resistance that's like...looking for someone who's resistant to an atomic bomb vs looking for someone who's resistant to bubonic plague: 1/3 rate of survival for the later, currently known rate of survival for the former is zero. ...unless you count the Indiana Jones miracle, which I don't. Lead-lined fridge so would not be helpful to you in an atomic explosion, no matter what the movie says.)
On a not so seriously note, the TruGreen ad banner makes me think of the book GREENER THAN YOU THINK.
20100503
Um.
Dear Diary,
Today my PI compared a microsome to a "small New England farming town". And then it spiraled out from there to cell-specific protein functions and bells in belfries and support beams. I couldn't help it. I laughed.
Seriously, though. Small New England farming town? How does he come up with these things?
Sincerely,
-S
Today my PI compared a microsome to a "small New England farming town". And then it spiraled out from there to cell-specific protein functions and bells in belfries and support beams. I couldn't help it. I laughed.
Seriously, though. Small New England farming town? How does he come up with these things?
Sincerely,
-S
20100501
Not as exciting as Orlando, I guess
I'm catching up on online-journal entries right now and decide to do another one of those meme things, also taken from Lucy's LJ.
Pick 20 movies/anime/video games/literary works/etc. and put their summaries from Better Than It Sounds and WITHOUT CHEATING have your friends guess:
1. A confused young man starts to understand his life for the first time after he has an operation, only to have it slip away from him after his favorite animal dies.
2. A reclusive, unloving hermit is forced to go on a quest to rescue the rest of her kind after a jive-talking butterfly hints that they've been taken prisoner by a lightly carbonated energy drink. Over the course of her adventures, she learns how to love, but eventually gets better.
3. A satire of Victorian society in which a lawyer travels to other dimensions, and is arrested for trying to start a new religion. Oh, and the women of the protagonist's homeworld can accidentally stab people by sneezing.
(Victoria should know this. She recommended the book to me.)
4. Young man fights in the Second World War, goes home, gets married, is abducted by aliens, goes home, dies. Not necessarily in that order.
(Pretty sure Kate knows this. My highschool classmates' seen me carry this around, near the end of my junior year, I believe.)
5. Mentally-challenged man rescues ham from poor white trash out to avenge family honor.
(Okay, freshman year high school literature. You guys know this one.)
6. Humanity is saved by the common cold.
7. In a totalitarian world, a man has philisophical discussions with himself, has sex whenever he is alone with his girlfriend for longer than ten minutes, then gets tortured.
8. Extraordinarily Empowered Girls kill zombies with bells.
(I'm pretty sure this book was also pointed out by Victoria at some point.)
9. German college student's asshole professor sends him and his class off to World War 1; he and the rest of his class all die.
(High school literature, soph. year. Malvina really likes the other book the author wrote.)
10. The son has his girlfriend and identity stolen by the long lost brother he never knew he had. Except the brother is actually him.
(I think you've read this, Lucy, based on my recommendation. The author is something of a favorite.)
(Lucy, you're on the right track.)
11. Elderly brother and sister adopt an orphan who loses her temper, lets her imagination run away with her, holds a grudge, and generally gets into trouble. Everyone is charmed.
(Kate, you own this book.)
12. In The Future, there's no crime, poverty, war, disease or old age, and everyone gets to have lots and lots of sex. But the Noble Savage says it's bad. Two other people, who are among the smartest people on earth, go on a quest to stop being happy.
13. A squadron of insane soldiers try to not die in the war. Paradoxical bureaucracy gets in the way of that.
(Senior year in high school. Everyone who had the same lit class as me should know this.)
14. Guy kills old lady and her sister to prove his ideas. Turns out he was wrong.
15. A teenage girl is drafted into her grandfather's job, which conflicts with her efforts to save a handsome young man from his new guitar.
16. Boy named after a mouse helps locals improve their drug-filled sandpit, despite unfriendly wildlife. The government disapproves.
(Think: classic sci-fi.)
(...and sand?)
17. A centuries-old war hero, accompanied by a cocoon and their daughter the Internet, travels to to the home of a young girl, where he marries her after discovering that trees are actually pigs.
(Victoria should know this. One of the other book in the series was recommended to me by her.)
18. Television turns people into idiots. One guy rants at length about this.
(Okay not the best summary possible. Um...freshman year high school literature. Author is a favorite. Think...fire?)
19. A baby is switched at birth, which causes great problems later on. Meanwhile, a cynic with a fondness for antique cars, a rare book dealer, a Granola Girl, a man who breaks things, one of the last witch-hunters in Britain and the witch-hunter's landlady attempt to prevent four rather sinister bikers from causing The End Of The World As We Know It.
20. Young man suffers from mental illness, hallucinates, desecrates a grave, then murders his family.
(Hint: It's a play. You guys know this. Yes, all of you. At some point. Should've heard of this.)
(Wow I haven't laughed like that in a while. What were these people thinking when they summarized the books?)
Pick 20 movies/anime/video games/literary works/etc. and put their summaries from Better Than It Sounds and WITHOUT CHEATING have your friends guess:
3. A satire of Victorian society in which a lawyer travels to other dimensions, and is arrested for trying to start a new religion. Oh, and the women of the protagonist's homeworld can accidentally stab people by sneezing.
(Victoria should know this. She recommended the book to me.)
4. Young man fights in the Second World War, goes home, gets married, is abducted by aliens, goes home, dies. Not necessarily in that order.
(Pretty sure Kate knows this. My highschool classmates' seen me carry this around, near the end of my junior year, I believe.)
5. Mentally-challenged man rescues ham from poor white trash out to avenge family honor.
(Okay, freshman year high school literature. You guys know this one.)
8. Extraordinarily Empowered Girls kill zombies with bells.
(I'm pretty sure this book was also pointed out by Victoria at some point.)
(High school literature, soph. year. Malvina really likes the other book the author wrote.)
10. The son has his girlfriend and identity stolen by the long lost brother he never knew he had. Except the brother is actually him.
(I think you've read this, Lucy, based on my recommendation. The author is something of a favorite.)
(Lucy, you're on the right track.)
11. Elderly brother and sister adopt an orphan who loses her temper, lets her imagination run away with her, holds a grudge, and generally gets into trouble. Everyone is charmed.
(Kate, you own this book.)
(Senior year in high school. Everyone who had the same lit class as me should know this.)
16. Boy named after a mouse helps locals improve their drug-filled sandpit, despite unfriendly wildlife. The government disapproves.
(Think: classic sci-fi.)
(...and sand?)
17. A centuries-old war hero, accompanied by a cocoon and their daughter the Internet, travels to to the home of a young girl, where he marries her after discovering that trees are actually pigs.
(Victoria should know this. One of the other book in the series was recommended to me by her.)
18. Television turns people into idiots. One guy rants at length about this.
(Okay not the best summary possible. Um...freshman year high school literature. Author is a favorite. Think...fire?)
(Hint: It's a play. You guys know this. Yes, all of you. At some point. Should've heard of this.)
(Wow I haven't laughed like that in a while. What were these people thinking when they summarized the books?)
No gorillas
Slept for about ten hours last night and had a dream about discussion section (TAing eats your brain, I swear), one about my mom and I having The Conversation (ended well, which made me a little sad because this is literally of the "dream on" category), and one about earthquake (possibly due to the very large truck driving past). I have been bouncing between moods so fast this past week that by Friday I was starting to feel vaguely bipolar. When my PI asked me how I was doing late Friday afternoon (I warned him to not expect anything from me in terms of data production this week) I stared at him blankly for a moment before replying "...I'm not sure."
I mean, if you take the average I suppose this is an okay week?
At the very least, I got everything that needed to be done this week done on time and done to the best of my abilities. Whether that is good enough or not remains to be seen (I found out Thursday evening that my current genetics course instructor does give out Cs and if you get one you fail the course. As in you have to retake it) (then take into account that I've been getting 3/5 on my paper reviews since I've been using the standards that I've been taught my freshman year & in my other classes and that is apparently too tough and detail-oriented for this class -- which I have no way of amending now because the teacher didn't start passing back our one-per-week reviews until last week). Grading the midterm turned out took only five hours, instead of six. Either way I was feeling a tad brain-dead near the end. On the plus side, the students who are coming to my sections are now doing fairly well on their problem sets which totally made my day when I tallied up their score. The point is: I made it through this week, therefore I won this battle, at least.
The program director's gone and decided that everyone on the training grant (four students per year) needs to present a poster at our June 3rd retreat. I have just finished the SfN abstract on Monday (am now waiting to hear back from two people about co-authorship) and was properly horrified to find out that I have four weeks (counting the next two weeks with a presentation/project due each week) to sort through 2Gb of data into some semblance of publication worthy figures. It's doable, which is one of the reasons why I didn't say "no" right off the bat, so I suppose I'll be working on that as soon as my presentations are done. (Guys, what software do you use to put together a poster? Wendy said she used Powerpoint. I use Open Office, which allows you to work on .ppt files, but which means if I give them the .ppt file and they open it in Powerpoint I'll lose part of the format.)(Maybe I'll borrow the lab comp/lounge comp?)
Finally, one of the post-docs (the one who saved me from the weird guy at the bus stop the other week) has gone AWOL these two weeks and now I finally have all the information AND can tell people about it. (Also, what's with all this thing where people tell me things I'm not supposed to know and then ask me to keep the fact that they've told me and the fact that I know a secret AND the situations where people ask me things that don't need to be kept secret and then asking me to keep the fact that they asked a secret? It's getting kind of hard to keep track of what I'm supposed to know, what I'm supposed to tell, who I'm not supposed to know knows and who was supposed to know but doesn't want to be known that they know straight.) (Gah. I can keep a secret, but this is getting to be a bit much.) What has happened with the post-doc is that his wife is pregnant (we were very surprised since she always gave off the air that she didn't want kids), and that the morning sickness got so bad with her that she got admitted to the hospital for severe dehydration. (She couldn't stop throwing up, and so he ended up spending a lot of time at the hospital.) She's just gotten better later this week and was allowed home, having lost around 24 pounds in mass due to morning sickness. (For the record? I met her before at lab outings and she's about my size. 24 pounds is a LOT in terms of percentage of body mass.) We all signed a get-well card for her and are twitchily hoping that everything will be okay.
And now: tea.
I mean, if you take the average I suppose this is an okay week?
At the very least, I got everything that needed to be done this week done on time and done to the best of my abilities. Whether that is good enough or not remains to be seen (I found out Thursday evening that my current genetics course instructor does give out Cs and if you get one you fail the course. As in you have to retake it) (then take into account that I've been getting 3/5 on my paper reviews since I've been using the standards that I've been taught my freshman year & in my other classes and that is apparently too tough and detail-oriented for this class -- which I have no way of amending now because the teacher didn't start passing back our one-per-week reviews until last week). Grading the midterm turned out took only five hours, instead of six. Either way I was feeling a tad brain-dead near the end. On the plus side, the students who are coming to my sections are now doing fairly well on their problem sets which totally made my day when I tallied up their score. The point is: I made it through this week, therefore I won this battle, at least.
The program director's gone and decided that everyone on the training grant (four students per year) needs to present a poster at our June 3rd retreat. I have just finished the SfN abstract on Monday (am now waiting to hear back from two people about co-authorship) and was properly horrified to find out that I have four weeks (counting the next two weeks with a presentation/project due each week) to sort through 2Gb of data into some semblance of publication worthy figures. It's doable, which is one of the reasons why I didn't say "no" right off the bat, so I suppose I'll be working on that as soon as my presentations are done. (Guys, what software do you use to put together a poster? Wendy said she used Powerpoint. I use Open Office, which allows you to work on .ppt files, but which means if I give them the .ppt file and they open it in Powerpoint I'll lose part of the format.)(Maybe I'll borrow the lab comp/lounge comp?)
Finally, one of the post-docs (the one who saved me from the weird guy at the bus stop the other week) has gone AWOL these two weeks and now I finally have all the information AND can tell people about it. (Also, what's with all this thing where people tell me things I'm not supposed to know and then ask me to keep the fact that they've told me and the fact that I know a secret AND the situations where people ask me things that don't need to be kept secret and then asking me to keep the fact that they asked a secret? It's getting kind of hard to keep track of what I'm supposed to know, what I'm supposed to tell, who I'm not supposed to know knows and who was supposed to know but doesn't want to be known that they know straight.) (Gah. I can keep a secret, but this is getting to be a bit much.) What has happened with the post-doc is that his wife is pregnant (we were very surprised since she always gave off the air that she didn't want kids), and that the morning sickness got so bad with her that she got admitted to the hospital for severe dehydration. (She couldn't stop throwing up, and so he ended up spending a lot of time at the hospital.) She's just gotten better later this week and was allowed home, having lost around 24 pounds in mass due to morning sickness. (For the record? I met her before at lab outings and she's about my size. 24 pounds is a LOT in terms of percentage of body mass.) We all signed a get-well card for her and are twitchily hoping that everything will be okay.
And now: tea.
20100429
20100425
Why we can't cure the flu
Occasionally for my classwork I stumble across a project that contains information that I can share that people will care about. I mean, sure, I think making haploid fish is cool, but unless you're doing mutagenesis in zebrafish, the chance that you'll care about haploid fish is pretty slim. Flu though, I think everyone can relate to. I can relate to it, which was why I picked the topic, given that our theme for this quarter is host and pathogens interactions, which is so far from my area of interest (genetics / neuroscience) that it was hard to pick out something that won't lead to me banging my head against the desk over some aspect of immunology. (I'm terrible at immunology.)
So, the flu, also known as influenza, is a type of virus. I'll take another moment to broadcast the crusade that most of the people in the medical field have been engaged in for the past decade, which is "antibiotics don't work on cold / flu". Antibiotic is for bacterial infection. Cold and flu are caused by viruses. You need antivirals.
Given this is the case, you say, why aren't people just popping antivirals left and right every flu season? The answer to that is evolution, actually. A virus particle is mostly just a protein shell, which gets the virus in and out of cells, and protects the nucleic acid enclosed in that shell, which codes for the proteins. Influenza codes for 11 proteins. It's a small, simple system for a small simple organism, which means replication doesn't take that long. (We have gazillions of proteins and a cell cycle of around one replication per day, so starting from one cell it takes US a lot longer to procreate than a virus, which is much, much simpler than a cell, and much smaller (image: the small blob with the cheerios stuck on it is the virus, the ocean-covered mini-planet is your cell).
What does this mean? This means that a virus has no proof-reading mechanism or correction mechanism like we do, because it's so simple, which means each time it makes a copy of its genes to give to its progeny whatever mistake it made during copying is just going to get passed on. Take into account that a virus replicates extremely fast under optimal conditions (read: your cell), and that the location of the mistake is random, the chances that a random mistake will be a mistake that'll mutate the protein that our antiviral targets are pretty good.
While all this is happening, you have to wonder about our immune system. I mean it has to be pretty good, right? Because otherwise we wouldn't be here. We do have innate immunity that can recognize viral particles, namely the proteins exposed on the outside of a virus. If we develop antibodies against them, we won't get infected. If the virus somehow makes it past that stage (hey, innate immunity takes time to develop), we also have cell-mediated immunity, which can recognize proteins that will only be exposed once the virus has made its way into your cell (and shed the cheerios). If we develop antibodies against these, we can still get infected, but our symptoms will be less severe. Our cells will be able to clear the virus from themselves but they won't be able to prevent the initial infection.
(In case if you're curious, this is how flu shots work. There're two types of vaccines. One with killed viruses so your body gets a chance to be exposed to the viral proteins without being exposed to a live virus, so basically it'll have the time to come up with working antibodies without the risk of infection. However, the downside is, the virus is dead, which means when your body first sees it, it sees only the dead-virus-appearance and even though you won't get sick, you can still serve as a live incubator for virus. Or something. I'm a little shaky on the details on this one. The other type is the live virus vaccine, which means that yes your body gets to see a less virulent strain of the infective virus. It takes a bit longer for your body to cope with this one because it's a live virus and it does infect things a little, but it also means your body can go "ZMG VIRUS!" from the moment the real disease-causing-virus makes its way into your mucosal lining of your airway.)
And THEN you take into account that one of the antiviral targets we use is targeted against an exposed protein, neuroaminidase (needed for the baby viruses to bud from your cells so they can infect your other cells) (viruses like to share). Proteins exposed on the surface of a virus evolve extremely fast. That's why you have to get a flu shot every year. Both the immune system and the antivirals are essentially selecting for viruses with mistakes in their genes that allows them to not be killed by your immune system or your drugs. Which means that yes, we have viruses resistant to antivirals right now so we try to keep a lid on it by not using antivirals until we absolutely have to (decrease selection means that all viruses are created equal, and a smaller fraction of it will be antiviral resistant and so your immune system has a better chance to win against it) (as opposed to antiviral all the time which means all the non-resistant viruses will be killed off and the only viruses left will ALL be resistant). (By the way, this is another reason why med people get so pissed about people adding antibacterial drugs to practically everything; we're running out of working antibiotics, folks.)
Does that mean we're doomed? No. Our immune system is quite good if you consider humanity as a whole. Immune system of the host is constantly evolving to keep up with the pathogen; we have people who are naturally resistant to HIV. In addition, we are doing more research to find better targets for antivirals than just hemagglutinin and neuroaminidase (the two main protein exposed on the surface of viruses and the fastest evolving proteins) (random FYI: the names H5N1 and H1N1? Stands for Hemagglutinin class 5 Neuroaminidase class 1 -- their outer-shell is used as a way to classify viruses and does correlate with how infectious the virus is). I'll be doing a presentation the week after next week on a paper by Konig et. al, where they figured that since the virus proteins are changing so fast, why don't we target human cell machinery that the viruses steals to replicate with drugs instead? And they managed to find some targets that will not kill human cells (very important to check for, as I'm sure you'll understand) that if targeted, will reduce virus infectivity. Pretty cool, I think.
If anyone wants more information, PLoS (open-access to all) has a pretty decent review article here, called "Pandemic Influenza: the Inside Story". It's got relatively little tech-babble compared to the other stuff I've been reading.
And one last thing? After all this talk about no gold bullet for the flu, you know what's a tested and proven way of flu-prevention? Hygiene. Cover your mouth when you sneeze / cough, people! (And wash your hands...etc.) As someone who braves the public transit twice a day AND works in a biology lab, I'm at the point where I involuntarily flinch when someone sneezes on me. Vitamin C can also help a little by giving your immune system a little boost, but I've seen too many people randomly over-dose themselves on vitamins to feel comfortable endorsing it. It doesn't need endorsement.
So, the flu, also known as influenza, is a type of virus. I'll take another moment to broadcast the crusade that most of the people in the medical field have been engaged in for the past decade, which is "antibiotics don't work on cold / flu". Antibiotic is for bacterial infection. Cold and flu are caused by viruses. You need antivirals.
Given this is the case, you say, why aren't people just popping antivirals left and right every flu season? The answer to that is evolution, actually. A virus particle is mostly just a protein shell, which gets the virus in and out of cells, and protects the nucleic acid enclosed in that shell, which codes for the proteins. Influenza codes for 11 proteins. It's a small, simple system for a small simple organism, which means replication doesn't take that long. (We have gazillions of proteins and a cell cycle of around one replication per day, so starting from one cell it takes US a lot longer to procreate than a virus, which is much, much simpler than a cell, and much smaller (image: the small blob with the cheerios stuck on it is the virus, the ocean-covered mini-planet is your cell).
What does this mean? This means that a virus has no proof-reading mechanism or correction mechanism like we do, because it's so simple, which means each time it makes a copy of its genes to give to its progeny whatever mistake it made during copying is just going to get passed on. Take into account that a virus replicates extremely fast under optimal conditions (read: your cell), and that the location of the mistake is random, the chances that a random mistake will be a mistake that'll mutate the protein that our antiviral targets are pretty good.
While all this is happening, you have to wonder about our immune system. I mean it has to be pretty good, right? Because otherwise we wouldn't be here. We do have innate immunity that can recognize viral particles, namely the proteins exposed on the outside of a virus. If we develop antibodies against them, we won't get infected. If the virus somehow makes it past that stage (hey, innate immunity takes time to develop), we also have cell-mediated immunity, which can recognize proteins that will only be exposed once the virus has made its way into your cell (and shed the cheerios). If we develop antibodies against these, we can still get infected, but our symptoms will be less severe. Our cells will be able to clear the virus from themselves but they won't be able to prevent the initial infection.
(In case if you're curious, this is how flu shots work. There're two types of vaccines. One with killed viruses so your body gets a chance to be exposed to the viral proteins without being exposed to a live virus, so basically it'll have the time to come up with working antibodies without the risk of infection. However, the downside is, the virus is dead, which means when your body first sees it, it sees only the dead-virus-appearance and even though you won't get sick, you can still serve as a live incubator for virus. Or something. I'm a little shaky on the details on this one. The other type is the live virus vaccine, which means that yes your body gets to see a less virulent strain of the infective virus. It takes a bit longer for your body to cope with this one because it's a live virus and it does infect things a little, but it also means your body can go "ZMG VIRUS!" from the moment the real disease-causing-virus makes its way into your mucosal lining of your airway.)
And THEN you take into account that one of the antiviral targets we use is targeted against an exposed protein, neuroaminidase (needed for the baby viruses to bud from your cells so they can infect your other cells) (viruses like to share). Proteins exposed on the surface of a virus evolve extremely fast. That's why you have to get a flu shot every year. Both the immune system and the antivirals are essentially selecting for viruses with mistakes in their genes that allows them to not be killed by your immune system or your drugs. Which means that yes, we have viruses resistant to antivirals right now so we try to keep a lid on it by not using antivirals until we absolutely have to (decrease selection means that all viruses are created equal, and a smaller fraction of it will be antiviral resistant and so your immune system has a better chance to win against it) (as opposed to antiviral all the time which means all the non-resistant viruses will be killed off and the only viruses left will ALL be resistant). (By the way, this is another reason why med people get so pissed about people adding antibacterial drugs to practically everything; we're running out of working antibiotics, folks.)
Does that mean we're doomed? No. Our immune system is quite good if you consider humanity as a whole. Immune system of the host is constantly evolving to keep up with the pathogen; we have people who are naturally resistant to HIV. In addition, we are doing more research to find better targets for antivirals than just hemagglutinin and neuroaminidase (the two main protein exposed on the surface of viruses and the fastest evolving proteins) (random FYI: the names H5N1 and H1N1? Stands for Hemagglutinin class 5 Neuroaminidase class 1 -- their outer-shell is used as a way to classify viruses and does correlate with how infectious the virus is). I'll be doing a presentation the week after next week on a paper by Konig et. al, where they figured that since the virus proteins are changing so fast, why don't we target human cell machinery that the viruses steals to replicate with drugs instead? And they managed to find some targets that will not kill human cells (very important to check for, as I'm sure you'll understand) that if targeted, will reduce virus infectivity. Pretty cool, I think.
If anyone wants more information, PLoS (open-access to all) has a pretty decent review article here, called "Pandemic Influenza: the Inside Story". It's got relatively little tech-babble compared to the other stuff I've been reading.
And one last thing? After all this talk about no gold bullet for the flu, you know what's a tested and proven way of flu-prevention? Hygiene. Cover your mouth when you sneeze / cough, people! (And wash your hands...etc.) As someone who braves the public transit twice a day AND works in a biology lab, I'm at the point where I involuntarily flinch when someone sneezes on me. Vitamin C can also help a little by giving your immune system a little boost, but I've seen too many people randomly over-dose themselves on vitamins to feel comfortable endorsing it. It doesn't need endorsement.
20100424
Well...this week sucked
I do have both days off this weekend (yay!), but somewhere between the lack of a similar luxury last weekend (and possibly the weekend before that as well) and the need to stay in lab past 7:30pm after getting to lab at 7:30 am and having all but one experiment fail/do badly on me, and having to deal with an entire series of mishaps in animal transfer paperwork, I was ready to declare war on life. I didn't, mostly because I didn't have enough energy at that point to bother, but I had briefly considered wanting a do-over of the week only to realize that no, no I don't, because I've done my best given the circumstances and a do-over would only mean that I'd have to suffer through the week again.
No thank you.
(By the way, by "not enough energy" I meant I tripped and fell getting dressed in the morning and nearly fell asleep on the bus in the evening, missing my bus stop and making it necessary to walk back in the rain.) (Speaking of which, what is with this whether? It's nearly May in Southern California and I'm still wearing sweaters.)
Next week will be equally gruesome, since TAing means that I have to help put together the midterm, take the midterm (timing myself so the teacher'd know how long the exam takes and adjust according as well as figure out which problems are just not working out), grade the midterm (we are doing one TA per problem and have to do a long grading session all together, approximating six hours), on top of running a two-hour review session (with another TA so I'm not totally by myself the entire time, thank God) and grading another problem set. At least I don't have to stay past 6:30pm on any given day, I think.
Wendy's baby came home on Tuesday, so now she's mostly gone from lab. The baby's fine, though apparently he does this thing where if he eats too fast he'll stop breathing. Supposedly (according to the doctor) this is normal. And you can restart his breathing by rubbing his back.
I just think it sounds scary as hell.
No pre-med tried to kill me for giving them their grade for four weeks and counting now. I have gotten used to making up a plan of attack before each section and prodding students to respond during discussion section. TAing, I think, is strangely rewarding. Or at least strangely involving and I feel like I'm being sucked into it because I catch myself making lesson plans at the most random moments. I think I'm learning as much from this as my students. Admittedly in my case this would've been a lot easier if a) we are not dealing with a professor who's teaching for the first time (some days I feel like I'm re-teaching half of the lecture) and b) I'm not also taking two classes (about 4 papers to read and 1 homework assignment per week) and working full time in a lab on top of that. Speaking of which...
Oh God. Two hours. I need to finish making the lesson plan.
No thank you.
(By the way, by "not enough energy" I meant I tripped and fell getting dressed in the morning and nearly fell asleep on the bus in the evening, missing my bus stop and making it necessary to walk back in the rain.) (Speaking of which, what is with this whether? It's nearly May in Southern California and I'm still wearing sweaters.)
Next week will be equally gruesome, since TAing means that I have to help put together the midterm, take the midterm (timing myself so the teacher'd know how long the exam takes and adjust according as well as figure out which problems are just not working out), grade the midterm (we are doing one TA per problem and have to do a long grading session all together, approximating six hours), on top of running a two-hour review session (with another TA so I'm not totally by myself the entire time, thank God) and grading another problem set. At least I don't have to stay past 6:30pm on any given day, I think.
Wendy's baby came home on Tuesday, so now she's mostly gone from lab. The baby's fine, though apparently he does this thing where if he eats too fast he'll stop breathing. Supposedly (according to the doctor) this is normal. And you can restart his breathing by rubbing his back.
I just think it sounds scary as hell.
No pre-med tried to kill me for giving them their grade for four weeks and counting now. I have gotten used to making up a plan of attack before each section and prodding students to respond during discussion section. TAing, I think, is strangely rewarding. Or at least strangely involving and I feel like I'm being sucked into it because I catch myself making lesson plans at the most random moments. I think I'm learning as much from this as my students. Admittedly in my case this would've been a lot easier if a) we are not dealing with a professor who's teaching for the first time (some days I feel like I'm re-teaching half of the lecture) and b) I'm not also taking two classes (about 4 papers to read and 1 homework assignment per week) and working full time in a lab on top of that. Speaking of which...
Oh God. Two hours. I need to finish making the lesson plan.
20100421
Earth Day?
In honor of which I'll show up briefly to link everyone who hasn't seen it to the great octopus thief!. (As in an octopus who steals, not as in someone who stole an octopus.) Cheers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)