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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things We Established Today:

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

Baffled by undergrads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cargo pants are, in conclusion, for boys.

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

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

Gah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PI brought in Thin Mints. They are unfortunately addictive.

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

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

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

Damn it.

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

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

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

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

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

I am confused.

That's hours I could've been sleeping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...ugh still got chores to run.

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

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

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

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

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

Am still more upset about the sketchbook.

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

Liver with freezer burn looks equal parts fascinating and disgusting.

It's a mystery in January

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been working in this building for four years.

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

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

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

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

Time to go and drown my depression in tea.

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

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

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

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

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

...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?