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

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

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

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

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

PI brought in Thin Mints. They are unfortunately addictive.

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

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

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

Damn it.

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

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

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

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

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

I am confused.

That's hours I could've been sleeping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...ugh still got chores to run.

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

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

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

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

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

Am still more upset about the sketchbook.

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

Liver with freezer burn looks equal parts fascinating and disgusting.

It's a mystery in January

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been working in this building for four years.

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

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

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

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

Time to go and drown my depression in tea.

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

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

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

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

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

...somehow I drink MORE tea when drawing's going well but less tea when my experiments do?

List time

1) The cells (yeah those that I screwed up on before break) lives! YAY I have experiments. Oh wait. Oh well better than the alternative.

2) Have now tried honeydew green rooibos and apple-spice chai.. The rooibos is very good (thanks Kate!) and conveniently caffeine free so I can actually drink it on weekdays after work. The chai is somewhat lackluster. Maybe it's because I'm used to Tazo's chai tea but this version seems very...bland. Not very fruity and certainly not very much of that distinctive blend of spice that is the main reason I keep buying chai.

3) I went and saw RISE OF THE GUARDIANS today, which I liked very much (though I'm sure it's not to everyone's taste) and bought my tickets for it early. ...so I took a brief walk through the mall before show time and discovered that a bunch of clothing stores are having sales and managed to find the plain, long-sleeved tees that I have been hunting for at 5$ each. VICTORY IS MINE.

4) I mentioned wanting to try the cheap Monoprice drawing tablets while at home and my father decided that since he has no idea what to get me for presents, ever, I should just order it for Christmas and he'll pay for it. This is the tablet that costed 51$, shipping included (needless to say my Wacom costed MUCH more) and it came in yesterday! So far the verdict is that the sensitivity setting is way different and there's less of a gradation, at least in Photoshop, for changing the size of the brush based on pen pressure. As in it goes from very small to very large VERY quickly. Also the drawing surface is textured, which I'm not sure how I feel about. On one hand it's more like sketching on a textured sketchbook. On the other hand it SHOWS in Photoshop. I think I prefer the Wacom because if you drew smooth and wanted texture you can still do a filter later on, whereas if you drew textured...it's not so much of an option anymore. Anyway, the package came from the driver installation disc and replacement tips (bless them, Wacom would never do as much) so on the whole this is a pretty good deal for traveling tablet that's going to inevitably go through some wear and tear and possibly get tea spilled on. The only thing to note is that I can't install both drivers on the same computer. Or at least Photoshop Does Not Like It and will not have the sensitivity setting for one if the other is also installed. I run a windows 7 with PS CS6 and I'll admit I panicked a little when the Wacom sensitivity suddenly died on me. (All fixed now though!)

Have just tried to explain to my father my theory that we get warm more quickly when drinking something hot than when eating something because water has a very high specific heat.

Also: suspect that parents have in fact packed away my mass in food to take back with me. No complaints though since affection in my family is shown with food, apparently, so am going to interpret the amount of freezing I will have to do upon arriving home tomorrow as appreciating affection. There is a lot of affection. Some of which are probably crunchy.

80% sure I'm going to Peru in 2013. Mail me if you want to come with.

Not sure if the difference in water pressure's a universal thing between north and south Cal or if it's differences in the plumbing at my parents but that shower was bliss. Hot, prickly bliss.

Complete inability to focus throughout lab. Am going to ditch work and go home early...

...to do the dishes and pack.

I was planning to spend the 25th doing absolutely nothing but now suspect I won't be able to  manage it without my head exploding.

Opened work email inbox and saw there's an email titled "Sponge!" from the professor which arrived at 10pm last night.

Ladies and gentlemen -- my life.

(It's the protein conservation thing which will continue to haunt me, I suspect, until the day I die.)

Labmate got me Lindt truffles!

FINALLY finished all the cards. Mailing the lot off tomorrow morning!

Brought cookies for lab but sadly they didn't survive the crush of the public transit (the ones with peanut butter are always so crumbly...). Also had an argument with two different character sheets which left me feeling more peculiar than usual.

There's a type of cheese called Drunk Goat. It's Spanish. The origin of the cheese I mean. Though possibly the goat as well.

Ohgodohgod the antibiotic I was using expired and I didn't notice and I think I may have just lost a month's worth of cells OH GOD.

Outed myself as ace to another friend today and her comment is that maybe I'll "feel differently" when I'm no longer working so many hours a week (there were other comments as well).  For which I tried to explain to her why I find that kind of talk is a bit not good (sexual orientation is not a result of life style nor -- the more troublesome implication -- something that could be "cured" if you changed your life style) and she said by the way of excuse that she's never heard of "asexuality" before today.

And then we moved on to other topics and I discovered that her opinion on the restaurant calling customers "fat girls" incident (x) and she announced that she considers both sides to blame, meaning that the bartender should not have done what he did but the girls shouldn't have made such a fuss about it because they really are overweight. Because she considers obesity to be a fault of the individual, as a marker for...I don't know, lack of self control? Will to exercise? And so I spent some time explaining why THAT is a bit not good.

...and I ...don't want to lecture my friends and I try so very hard not to come across as a snobbish know-it-all, but when someone makes comments like that not out of ignorance but because they didn't have all the information, I can't help but want to provide the information because I really do believe that they wouldn't have the same opinion if only they knew better. And isn't that presumptuous of me? Who am I to assign myself the role of the educator? To designate what the "better" of knowing better? I have the right to speak up on asexuality because I am ace but should I refrain from commenting on the wrongness people making judgmental remarks on people who don't fit the "skinny" expectations of the society because I am, myself, "skinny" and therefore don't have first person experience of the discrimination, save for the brief period in 5th-6th grade when I was chubby? Should I not speak up for trans discrimination because I am cis? I don't think so. There's really no conflict-free way of making a stance, and the best way I can think of to handle this is to point out what I think is wrong, do my best to explain why that is and engage an active discussion about it, and always defer to the people who have first hand experience of the topic. I really can't think of a better way to handle it than that.

Also I'll admit that I'm still smarting a little from her variation of "it's just a phrase / it's not real" comment on asexuality, not because I don't encounter it often, but because she's my friend and I honestly didn't expect her to make that kind of comment. I don't think I am being too judgmental or holding my friends to too high a standard when I expect them to acknowledge what I am telling them first instead of having an initial response, almost reflexively, to deny. Though I suppose I should give her credit for honesty, the fact that she had zero ill intent, and definitely zero clue that she had just spent a few minutes trying to invalid my experiences.

It was all very civil. We had hot chocolate and our time together ended on amicable terms, so it definitely could've been worse.

Life hack

When my second box of brown sugar solidified (as in, I tried to break it with a hammer but only managed to smash it into 3 giant chunks type of solidified) despite of the fact that I kept it in a plastic bag, I was frustrated and looked up "how to declump brown sugar" on the internet. This is what I found:

You take your solid chunk of brown sugar
Put it in a ziplock bag
And stick in a slice of bread
Then you let it sit.

I was kind of skeptical of this because, as I've mentioned, I had a LOT of sugar that was REALLY solid. ...so I stuck in 2 slices of bread ...and let it sit overnight at room temperature...and it WORKED.

As in when I poked at it this morning the edges of the chunks crumpled back into the texture sugar was supposed to be and then I, thrilled, took out the bread, put the plastic baggie on the kitchen floor, and pressed down with the base of my palm and the chunks ALL WENT BACK TO BEING SUGAR GRAINS.

I felt like I just completed witchcraft. Except it was not magic, it was two slices of bread.

Anyway: the wisdom of the internet also says that if you keep the de-chunked sugar in the freezer it will prevent it from solidifying again, so I've labeled and dated the bag and put it in the freezer (this is so similar to what I do in lab that I nearly typed "sample" there instead of "bag"), and if someone will remind me in a few months I'll let you guys know how well the second tip works as well!

Also you can still eat the bread. It's got a bit of sugar on it but the bread (I used whole wheat, I don't think this matters though) isn't soggy or anything.

Some day I will learn not to buy Christmas with glitter, because they shed like you wouldn't believe and get tracked everywhere and I will probably ingest it at some point because it'll just be EVERYWHERE, but even that's better than inhaling it because mercy on my poor lungs.

Exam's over and everyone's punchy and filled with good will. ...sort of sweaty good will, but good will never the less. Guys I am having the most awesome day and no amount of chores in the remaining hours can take it away from me. Also I'm buying milk so there will be both tea AND hot chocolate for me today.

And now, it's officially winter.

By which I mean it's wet and chilly and water's started to seep into my socks. Cold weather is never quite so miserable as when your socks are wet.

Tried to trap moth in kitchen cabinet since failed to lure it out with light (what kind of moth doesn't follow light?), forgot that the cabinet was not sealed to the wall -- a fact that was brought home to me this morning when I accidentally poured tea dreg over the moth, who was in the sink (apparently really concentrated chai tea has potential applicability as insecticide?). Had to remove carcass with paper tower (EXTREMELY UNPLEASANT) since my kitchen sink doesn't have garbage disposal and the moth'd probably block the drain, and having it moldering away in the drain is a new and shining item I'm adding to the very long list of Things I Do Not Want to Have to Deal With. Though I suppose one conclusion we can reach is that tea does, however indirectly, make everything better. Someone ought to get a chuckle out of that.

I also had a very nice dream in which I'm piloting ships for interplanetary travels, and the moment when the ship breaks orbit is amazing. Also apparently my subconscious can dream up pretty good inertia dampeners.

OH GOD GIANT MOTH HAS SOME HOW GOTTEN INTO MY APARTMENT WHY.

I have discovered mint-creme oreos.

It almost makes up for the fact that I left for work at 7:15am this morning and got back home just now.

The effects of deletions in my protein failed to reach statistical significance LIFE YOU ARE CRUEL AND UNUSUAL.

Do people even still use ribbons

Just spent 2+ hours wrapping things and am ready to start flailing because I realized that one of the things I ordered HASN'T COME IN YET and there's glitter everywhere, because of the cards and methinks it's time to type up my annual recap letter for some of my more out-of-touch friends.

The holidays are upon me.

LIST TIME

1) Labmate made these oatmeal cookies with white chocolate and dried strawberries in it and it's really, really awesome. She forwarded me the recipe here. I mean normally I don't even like oatmeal cookies and I ate three of these under not-starving conditions, so. Uh. I highly recommend the recipe?

2) The husband of my former teacher who passed away earlier this year send around the newsletter. I guess I'm still on the mailing list, which is kind of awkward because I've never even met the husband, much less talked to him. Also it's less of a newsletter and more of a summary of her last moments, the funeral, and the aftermath. It came in just today like a particularly unexpected punch of emotional trauma and now I will have to spend the next day trying to drown my sorrows in tea.

3) As a result of the UCLA accident my school is taking preventative measures by having us fitted for lab coats. Which we are required to wear, in theory, at all times when we're in the lab and outside of clean areas ("clean area" is what it sounds like -- it's clean, it's usually our desks where we can eat something during particularly long all-day experiments). This does not make a lot of sense because lab coats will not save us from the sort of mistakes that happen at UCLA and anyway, most of the things I work with I need to be careful with because I need to protect the samples from me, not the other way around. I mean the chances that I'll be severely harmed by half a liter of ice is extremely slim. Then again, according to my PI, when he was a post-doc their department passed a mandate to lock up all storage containers for radioactive chemicals (so that only the lab people have access) because some post-doc somehow ended up ingesting some. I mean the solution doesn't even address the problem! So maybe calling it a "solution" is a bit of a stretch. Hm.

4) Ashley's successfully mustered her first trimester (and the in fact not limited to morning morning sickness) and continues to baffle me with her tendency to describe her baby using fruit. WHY.

5) Stupid proteins. My shoulder hurts.

6) I have tried netflix. About half of the things on my to-see list is not available, so I will probably not have an account and continue to borrow Lucy's for the odd show that's on there. Are cookies acceptable currency?

7) It's been nearly 6 months since construction and we still have odd people in fluorescent vests and hardhats wandering through. WHY.

8) There are more things but I can't remember them at the moment, so I'll probably do another list at some point.

• I was in lab both days last weekend and it looks like I'll have to go in both days this weekend as well and it feels like THE WEEK NEVER ENDS oh god.

In which the theme color is yellow

Trip to Arizona is a lot smoother this time because I've done the bulk of the route before and retained a vague memory of where the rest spots and gas stations are (or more specifically, which point has cheaper gas than the rest of the route -- v. important these days with the 4$+ / gal pricing). This time I also had the benefit of taking the same route both ways, which means I get to drive through a part of I8 in the morning light, which is quite pretty. There were wisps of very dense fog on the ground, but only enough wisps to look fantastic and poetical under the sun and the blue, blue sky. There were also a couple areas with deciduous trees with bright gold leaves tucked into the nooks of the mountain, which I missed completely last year on the account of the sun being in my eye when I drove through that area in the evening.

Okay so the 2 day roundtrip to Arizona and back is a little bit exhausting but REALLY fun. This is mostly a post to hold the place and remind me to write more about it later.

Out of season honeydew tastes strangely like cucumber. I wonder if I should try cooking it with shrimp....

So hey, I got here after all

Remember when, over two years ago, I made a post and outed myself as being asexual? Specifically, remember this quote?

Oh and just so you know, despite of the fact that I am comfortable enough with this aspect of myself to write a post on the internet, I'm not at that point where I'm okay with people teasing me about it yet, however well meaning they may be.

 Well in the past 2+ years I have passed both my qualifying and candidacy exam, grown older physically and mentally, dealt with minor verbal harassment on the bus, taught undergrads (who, in my opinion, utterly failed to appreciate the magic of genetics), tested up one rank in martial arts (due for another exam in December, oh dear God), presented at two different conferences, ventured into online dating, washed my hands of online dating, while keeping up my schedule of explaining to my parents that I don't wish to get married and have babies at least twice a year while THEY are still at the point where they are supportive of everything I do without letting go of the belief that asexuality is something I'll "grow out of". Well my mother anyway. Father dear who checks over my car every time we see each other and spent the day before we meet making all my favorite dishes still declines to acknowledge that I've said anything about my sexual orientation at all. It's a shaky sort of passive aggressive peace at my household.

As I was typing up the other post trying to explain to people, most of whom I've never even met in real life, that asexuality is a valid orientation and not a form of repression, I remembered all of this. All of which reminded that me at this point I've learned to be more assertive and be more comfortable in my own skin so I should let people know that there's no need to be super careful around me regarding this anymore. I don't think I'll ever be what people consider to be "normal", but I feel astonishingly well-adjusted and capable of dealing with whatever people choose to throw at me. So, discussion & teasing are fine, questions are fine (actually more than fine because that way I will know where I'm unclear and will have a chance to explain). I want to be a person who's comfortable with herself and now I realize that I am one step closer.

I think this calls for celebratory tea.

Food: more thoughts

1) I have no idea why I keep buying two eggplants when I only ever manage to eat one and I know that the texture gets all weird if I try to freeze it.

2) I can't tell the difference between maple sugar and cane sugar, so the wildly inventive decision to put maple syrup in my tea was anticlimatic.

3) Che-choui, the banana-coconut-tapioca pudding, is really not my taste. In fact it reminded me of how I thought I hated coconuts until I came to the US and discovered that I do, in fact, like fresh coconut, pina colada, and in fact coconut in baking (imagine my astonishment when I discovered coconut macaroons).

4) I still don't understand why people like tootsie rolls.

5) Don't remember if I mentioned gulab jamun yet but it's really good! It reminds me of baklava in the sense that I expect it to be too cloyingly sweet for my taste but I ended up liking it despite of the fact that it's much sweeter than stuff I usually eat. (The version I tried had rose water and I think that's the first time I've seen it in food.)

Last night I had a dream in which I was explaining my data to the PI at my desk and my lab bench spontaneously combusted. It was the sort of fire that could not be put out by water / normal extinguisher and my labmate figured out how to put it out by setting fire to the stuff that's on fire with a bunsen burner which, for some reason that only makes sense in my subconscious, ended up putting out the fire.

From this I conclude that I need to spend a weekend Not In Lab.

Also I had the recent revelation that cool is overrated. As in the popular notion of "coolness" is an unnecessary amount of work and a bit pretentious. I've decided that I'd rather be the flailing dork because frankly they seem to have a lot more fun in life and, I've realized, being unapologetically enthusiastic about something is actually kind of awesome. I'm not entirely sure what the next generation will take away from me, based on this conclusion, but I've also realized that I apparently belong to the group of people who try to teach a two year old how to say "mitochondria" so, if all else fails, I will lure the progeny to Science. [Insert mad cackling.]

That will be all.

1) The phrase "Important information inside! Open immediately." No longer has any meaning for me because they inevitably contain advertisement.

2) I forgot to water my mini-rose before I left for the conference and came back to find it dead. Graduate school has been absolutely terrible for practical horticulture.

3) While we're on the subject of food, I'll load photos of stuff I ate in New Orleans probably to Facebook. In the meantime I should mention that while here I've also tried kiwi berries (you can eat them peel and all) which are quite good and spaghetti squash, because it was on sale and the handy sticker on the thing actually includes instructions for how to cook it. I have the strangest urge to lecture it and ask it didn't it know that it's a melon and not a type of pasta and it doesn't really taste like pasta...but not quite like a melon either. It's good though.

Cathe persuaded me to try pumpkin smoothie ("It can't be scarier than Cajun food."). It's got pumpkin and soymilk in it, is sweeter than I would've liked, but is somehow not as weird as it sounds -- mostly it tastes like icy pumpkin pie filling. It does, however, makes me want to make some time to try to track down a good recipe for pumpkin bread.

Also: milk is icky, soy milk is very nice, almond milk it tolerable, but rice milk is ...kind of awful. 

Weirdest dream last week: Crime and Punishment and the Metamorphosis fusion, featuring Razumihin (is that the guy's name? Really tall guy who married the sister) being agitated and flailing around yelling at Rodya about how he's not a super-human, dammit, he's a cockroach, and Raskolnikov explaining that cockroaches are in fact superior beings and did you know they have really high tolerance for radiation? (Because my subconscious has been taken over by science, no matter what else may be going on in there at any given time). And there was someone who was either Gregor's (Gregor? The guy who turned into the bug) sister or Soniya, sobbing.

This entire dream may or may not have been inspired by the fact that I stepped on a giant cockroach in the hostel's kitchen.

My brain, guys.

Flying out to New Orleans tomorrow (one layover in Texas)! I have my trusty knapsack with my wallet and my poster tube of awesome with my poster. Everything else is pretty much secondary. That being said packing for business is definitely different than packing for pleasure: after some thought I'm not taking my sketchbook with me or my fancy camera (though I stuck my old Canon one in my suitcase because is small) but decided to include Ivy (there are keynote symposia that I will compulsively take notes at), so there will be internet access, at some point.

Labmate introduced me to goat milk candy! She brought something called "Aldama", described as "obleas con cajeta de leche" ("something milk" I told her, reading it; she laughed). It's something like caramel.

Grad school is apparently my time to be introduced to goat-based food products, what with the goat cheese in Crete and goat candy now. Neither of which are actually as weird as goats themselves. (Seriously goats are...physics defying, among other things.)

I should go hiking somewhere where I might see goats for the completion of the experience.

After some contemplation, I realized that most girl's dads probably don't sign their emails to their daughters "Regards, F." (F for Father.)

Families are Complicated.

So the weather prediction for New Orleans is going to be in the 80s.

Today: the lab microwave started random emitting sparks so we put it out of commission because no one was sure if we could heat up our gels without something exploding. Also, I learned via Tumblr that it is apparently possible to take off one's bra without removing the shirt first. When I find the time I will need to figure out how this is possible.

I was politely stalked by four different bees four separate times and my thesis adviser advised me to watch Casablanca. 

My life, guys.

(As in, the bees ignored my abandoned lunch & jacket & bag and followed me across the courtyard and to the building entrance where I closed the doors on their face while they buzzed anxiously outside and my labmates are unsympathetic and joked about pheromones.)
(I am not wearing perfume and have been avoiding food / floral scented shampoo & soaps for years now. They're not trying to sting me. They just keep trying to land on me.)
(The professor went from early endosome marker to Casablanca. I'm not quite sure how his brain works, either.)

I think our neighbor's spectrophotometer has a cricket living underneath it.
Warm autumn = crickets in doors?

Susan vs. fashion: the epic quest for pockets

Nearly all of you who know me in real life (as well as some of you who only know me from online) know of my continuous bemusement & frustration with fashion, the most recent of which is my on-going quest to find a suite (blazer +/- slacks) that I can wear to the conference in two weeks that a) fits and b) have pockets. It was an arduous journey fraught with treachery and well-meaning but confused sales reps and, until today, fruitless.

As I've posted to facebook: I have found a blazer with pockets. Victory is mine. 

Has "it will fit once you wash it" ever been the case for anyone? Because I am looking back in my memory and the fit-after-it-shrank has never worked out for me.

Soy milk is fine in nearly all forms and Almond Dream is okay but Rice Dream is vile.

Lab smells of paint and something floral.

Courtesy of the explosion and how our negative air pressure ventilation works it's been raining a small but steady amount of soot indoors these past few days. Today a bunch of guys came in near the end of the day and cleaned out the air vents with a mixture of chemicals and giant blow-dryers; I am now waiting for Claritin to kick in because I started to have and am having a mild allergic reaction to something and it's making me want to crawl out of my skin.

Labmate joked that she was getting high off of the fumes. I couldn't help but think how potentially dangerous it is to be high in a lab setting. Or, you know, it could lead to a scientific break-through.

Found cricket in bathroom. No idea where it came from or how it got there. Ended up stepping on it because it was jumping all over the place. Wish I hadn't put on my glasses because the hi-res view of the thing is actually incredibly creepy.

There is a cricket in my apartment. It is very loud.

Both my conference admission badge and the voter information guide came in today! I love it when things come on time.

This will degenerate into a rant about lab safety

So: I have a sprained toe (again) and a fairly recent dream where I had to get up at around 3am in the morning because a hurricane is blowing in and I had to save the flamingos by herding them into the shelter. I stayed (in the dream) until the (dream) morning and ended up having to drag a lot of giant tree bits out of the city hall / conference center place that the weather wrecked. On the plus side, this is far more interesting than dreaming about protein gels (which I did, before this). However, I haven't decided how I feel about the fact that flamingos have evidently infiltrated my subconscious.

And now we're going to move on to the lab safety portion, because as fascinating as my flamingo dream and oft-sprained toe are, they both kind of paled in comparison to real life, honest-to-goodness explosion.

My order of minicards from moo.com came in!

I ordered a set of half-cards for the career fair at the neurosci conference next month, along with a card holder, and right now I don't have a better way to describe them other than "helplessly adorable". Everything seems to be decent quality (though I'm having a bit of an issue putting the keyring on the card holder, on the plus side, that probably means it's not going to fall off by accident either), though I'll post back after the conference to let you guys know how well it traveled.

I also have 3 coupons that it came with for my friends. No really that's what the instructions say. moo.com to business cards, to me, is kind of like ThinkGeek for presents. It's just...shiny and cute. For my definition of cute. They're 15% off for the first order so if anyone's interested in them let me know -- they don't seem to come with expiration dates. (Also if you're a student with an .edu address there's an additional discount, which I duly took advantage of.) The print & delivery time is pretty quick too and they give you an exact date of arrival when you order ...and mine promptly came two days early.

The only downside is that for half cards the lowest number you can order is 100. It's pretty cheap, considering what I'm getting and the tons of options I got (I only have 2 designs for 100 but you can have 100 cards with...I forgot how many it is...10? Different designs printed on one side, in full color), but still, 100! What am I going to do with all of them?

Well we'll find out, I guess.

Microwaved bacon. Now everything microwaved smells of bacon. Cannot decide if this is an improvement.

Neighbor had a party last night. This morning I found an abandoned shoe in front of our place. It looks expensive. I wonder if I should try to return it?

On a completely unrelated note:
CURRY PUFFS! They're like less spicy, bite-sized samosas. I may have found a new addiction. 

Why brain, why?

I just had a dream where a couple of friends and I were at the zoo and one of them collapsed and was not breathing and there was no heartbeat. I asked one of them to call 911 and he handed me his phone so I ended up dialing but it turns out he was here to visit (we forgot) and the phone put us through to HIS local dispatcher and I found out when I said zoo and he asked to confirm if it's the zoo in XX city and I realized "sh*t, not local" and had to explain where we are, blanking momentarily on our location because I was so terrified, and then he transferred us to the local dispatcher and my friend's crappy cell phone connection cut out --

(Note: I've never had personally called 911 before so I have no idea if they transfer people if you called the wrong dispatcher to get to where you are or what. I would prefer never have to call 911.)

--at which point I just gave up and asked my other friend to call 911 because the person who's collapsed is just lying there and no one's DOING anything and my brain keeps screaming "brain damage in two minutes at me" (not strictly accurate -- it depends on age and temperature but it's more like 5 minutes) so I had to roll him over and try to perform CPR and it was REALLY frustrating because I kept explaining to the two who are not on the phone that they have to watch because I'll need help in a few minutes (approximately 10-15min before I start to get dizzy because my lung capacity's improved a little but not THAT much) because it isn't easy and the dispatcher takes time (average time depends on location but it's around 15-20min here) and they keep interrupting with questions like how's he doing (how do you THINK? I have to breathe and pump his heart for him) and just, UGH.

It was a very real dream. There was patches of dying-from-summer-heat grasses in the area near the entrance, kneeling on the cement is uncomfortable, and my fingers were shaking so badly that it took me two tries to get 911 (dialed 6 by accident the first time).

On the plus side, I correctly remembered to curl my fingers correctly, the depth of compression, and the 2 breath per 30 compression rule. Congrats, Red Cross, you have managed to instill information all the way into my subconscious. Now we just have to wait for another nightmare to see if the first-aid part took.

Actually no, dear powers that be, if you are listening, I would like to petition to have Friday and Saturday nights be nightmare-free-zone. Because otherwise I end up awake at 7am on the weekend and unable to go to sleep because it's bright outside and I have too much adrenaline burning through me-- its half-life might be about 2-3 minutes but I think it takes up to 30min to clear my system and I'm jittery for about an hour afterwords. This is not conductive to my plans to sleep-in at least until 8am on the weekends.

He was honestly trying to be comforting

Thesis adviser: "You can't survive in science unless you have thick skin. It's actually worse than in politics, because in politics your friends will stick up for you, even if you are a jerk."

Followed by something along the lines of "in science your friends are supposed to be your harshest critics because they're supposed to help you succeed by giving you their honest opinion &c &c".

...is it so egregious to want friends whom I can depend on for both honesty and moral support? I did not ask this out loud, because it sounds like the sort of thing that will prompt an "if you are a REAL scientist" sort of rant.

And of course, if you're not REALLY serious about Science, that makes you a Bad Scientist.

I miss the days when being a bad scientist meant someone doing bad science (i.e. producing sloppy unreproducible results / running badly designed experiments / fail to ask the right scientific questions).

Well that was different

This morning on my way to the bus stop I was waylaid by an unknown young man who tried to offer me a ride in his truck to the beach.

1) It sounds like the start of a joke. It FELT like the start of a joke -- especially since I initially thought he was asking for directions.

2) This wouldn't have been too shocking, I suppose, if it was in the evening, but this happened around 7:30am. Mornings are quiet time. It (the context) was confusing.

3) It vaguely made me think of that scene from Disney's Aladdin. Except instead of Aladdin and a flying carpet I got a boy in tank top and a white pickup truck on a thankfully public street. (Oh geez a pickkup truck why.) (Huh, given the thing with strange man showing up on her bedroom balcony unannounced, at night, I suddenly understand why she keeps a tiger as a pet.) (Though for the parents out there: despite of what Disney says, tigers do not make appropriate pets for your daughters so, for the safety of you and yours, just get her a dog. Mutts tends to be less neurotic and hardier than purebreds.) I think there's some kind of connotation about guys offering girls rides. I'm still working on figuring out when people are talking with metaphors and when they're talking about this sort of things literally.

4) What is he even trying to accomplish??? As I've mentioned, it was around 7:30am in the morning. The only people I see around that time are shift-workers, students, and occasional senior citizens. Maybe he's well meaning and genuinely in the habit of offering random rides to strangers (that early in the morning?), but can you imaging him dropping off random shift-workers, students, and seniors at the beach? What. 

Conclusion: it was strange and people are weird. 

In which I have sudden sympathy with John

Adventures with the self checkout machine:

Me: scanned an item and put it in bagging area.
Machine: "Unexpected item in the bagging area! Please remove item."
Me: removes item.
Machine: "Item has been removed from bagging area! Please return item."
Me: puts item back.
Machine: "Unexpected item in the bagging area! Please remove item."
Me: removes item.
Machine: "Item has been removed from bagging area! Please return item."
Repeat.

Out of order machines are SUCH fun when you're the one to discover that it's out of order.

Trying to buy a lighter weight gi but everything is unisex cut and I am, according to the height by weight chart, in between sizes. My female classmate says that it fits well if you're slender hipped...but what does that even mean? I'm trying to google what waist to hip ratio would qualify as slender hipped but I keep getting these things about healthy weight, the importance thereof, and how to flatter slender hips which is supremely unhelpful. I tend to get pants one size up from the tops in anything that comes as a set, but this is not an option here...so I guess I'll buy everything one size bigger and wash the top in really hot water or something, because that's the benefit of buying things that are 100% cotton.

Labcoats, gis, nerdy t-shirts...everything's unisex cut and I'm nearly always in between sizes. Why is this?

On the other hand I remembered to finally print out the forms to register to vote! (Yeeeeaaaaah democracy.)

I hate for this to be the first thing I'm posting here after regaining coherency, but is it me or have there been a lot of earth tremors today?

Strangely fascinating

Is it possible to get sunburn on your toes?

I need to get that paper out stat

I woke up this morning and realized that 5 years will be the longest I've ever spent at one school, ever, and even at 4 years that's ties for being the longest at one school thus far, given that if I define the last day that I spent at the school as the Last Day the breakdown of my childhood is:

3-4
4-5
6-9*
9-10
10-10
11*
12-13*
14-17*
18-20*
21-now*

This is....strangely frightening. 

---------------------
*Note: I'm counting my age as of the Last Day, and since my birthday's in the summer, the asteriks marks all the schools where I entered in the beginning of the school year, like everyone else, as opposed to being dropped in the middle. I guess what they say about people settling down / getting more stable as they get older is true. For some variation of it.

I can math, REALLY

Moment of Stupid today:

Classmate asked me how old I was and I literally could not remember -- tried to calculate it in my head (for some reason kept thinking I was older than I am), which unfortunately happened in the middle my attempt to do put his wrist in a lock-hold and thus the spectacular failure of both the math and the lock-hold. Apparently I can't access both the math portion and the muscle memory portion of my brain at the same time. Or maybe I can but I just need to wait for the other bit to become actual muscle memory (intrinsic instead of extrinsic knowledge). In either case there was a moment where there was someone else's hand right in my face and I literally stood there because I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with it.

...and then we both burst out laughing because it was really ridiculous.

In other news there was a spontaneous lecture on the difference between research in neurdevelopment and neurodegeneration today, by yours truly, because a classmate showed interest, so score one for the fandot.

Sometimes there is no explanation

A while ago I mentioned that I was going to write a post about bullying and the time feels about right tonight.

Bullying is one of those things that is shared across cultures and according to news media people use to consider it to be a rite of passage of sorts until the more recent years, where the string of suicides had made people realize that maaaaaaybe we should find safer rites of passage.

For a while I was considering whether or not to write about it because, let's face it, most of the people I know who reads this share similar political and philosophical views with me, and anything I say will be preaching to the choir. Then I realized that maybe I should talk about it because my friends are at the stage where they are getting married and having children, the oldest child is around two, and the concept of bullying and discrimination is something that is taught, if not by parents, then by society and media, in which case a passing explanation that Bullying is Bad is not enough to combat it. People have noticed an active role in parental teachings, not just in what is right and wrong, but what are the correct actions, or what should be done, does make immense difference in how children treat others in school. That takes extra time. That takes extra effort. Both of which are hard to give for an abstract problem. By which I mean yes, there are starving children in the world, but it's abstract -- how many of us lose sleep over it. So I wanted to make it more personal, because it is personal for me, so I hope the people close to me, at least, could see why it's a big deal and can hopefully make the extra effort. And then I felt all my preaching is getting...not so much condescending as well...as someone who doesn't plan to procreate, how much right do I have to lecture others on how to deal with their toddlers? Which led to me second guessing how much of the delay (because this post has been years in coming but I just wasn't ready to talk about it until more recently) is just me being cowardly...which led to more second guessing...which led me to conclude that, okay, I'm just going to write this, and people can make of it what they will.

So let me use many many words to tell you why the phrase "bullying builds character" has always bothered me, since I learned enough English to understand it....

I am continually shocked whenever my experiments work like they're supposed to.

I wonder if I can print this out as a flyer...

7 things extroverts should know about their introvert friends. Courtesy of tumblr.

I'm going to take a moment and be deeply, immensely grateful for the invention of emails, IM, and text messaging. And the internet in general. I mean I would be, incredible as it may seem, even more of a loner if it weren't for our technology since, unless I implied / promised that I would call someone, it takes nothing less than family emergency and me nearing a potential melt down for me to even call a close friend.

My thesis adviser doesn't get it. He's all "Oh you have trouble reaching so-and-so? Call them" while in my head my first reaction will always be "ASDF!@#% NNOOOOooooooooooooooo."

So: thank you, text-based information networks.

My day began with tea, oreos, and blueberries.

I am baking a chocolate cake.

The lone professor has finally (!) signed the paperworks.

I don't even have to go to lab today. 

I am going to sit around and doodle things in my sketchbook until the cake is done. And then I will have cake. And I will eat it too. 

...can I declare this my birthday weekend instead?

So the professor approved of the slides but apparently didn't sign off on anything.

I'd headdesk if my desk isn't covered with notes and binders and pens that are in danger of losing their equilibrium.