No one quite believes it

Having talked with a few of my classmates it's safe to say, at this juncture, that none of us are processing "End of School Year" yet. Somehow it doesn't seem entirely possible that a year has passed and yet, somehow, here we are.

Last class tomorrow! I've already presented so it's mostly showing up and asking intelligent questions on my part. I also need to find some time to go and get my Hep B titer checked because I'm getting trained to work with lab animals (mice) and they need our health record.

... ...

My cell phone's call plan's going to end in about a month, I think, and I'm thinking of switching to using a phone card since I get calls once, twice, a week and they're generally short. (Have had the dubious pleasure of being reached via the lab phone now, and now that I have my access card, at least I'm fairly sure during school hours people are not going to be trying to reach me via cell phone.) On the other hand, I want to try text messaging, and possibly sending images to people via my phone. I've yet to check to see what the policies on that are, for a phone card. Anyone who does have text / image sending as part of their call plan know how it works and how much it costs, on average?
Hmm my phone's three years old this year, I think. It's working impressively well, still.

NSC NGF GDNF

Presentation at 9am!
(And then all the turning-stuff-in portion of this quarter would have concluded, thank heavens.)

Prospects ahead

I came up with a vague outline of my dissertation at around 7:15 this morning (those thoughts are immediately followed by "wow it ate my brain, clearly"). I'll need to check with my adviser to see how plausible it is.

Mostly I just feel like writing right now and can't afford to spend hours on it. I've slept lots last night (about ten hours -- great, isn't it?) and it (well, and the prospect of tea immediately after this) has put me in a chipper mode. (I think we can safely add "sleep" to the list of things that makes me happy.) I thought I should make a post with the images I've saved up this week while a) I still remember b) I still have the right laptop open and c) before incurable cases of brain disorder suck all the optimism out of me. (I could've chosen leprosy instead, and peripheral neuropathies, but it's hard to take something with armadillos seriously.)

Right. First of all, there was unexpected thunderstorm in SD on Wednesday. I was outside, eating lunch, when I noticed it getting darker and darker. Then it started sprinkling, and I thought, "Okay, well, odd SD weather, it'll probably pass because it's CA and it doesn't rain here in the summer." Shortly after that there was thunder and a downpour. I spent the rest of my break bemusedly trying to dry my glasses on my shirt in the bathroom.

I took two screencaps of my gmail, because I have the tree & sky background on and I've never seen a thunderstorm there before:



I do have my cell images on Ivy, too, but it's a) unpublished data, technically, and b) very large file so I'm not going to upload it.

Conferred with Lucy on who might be coming this summer (hi Victoria! I got the thing in gmail) and will be scrolling through more ads for housing this week to try to find a place and figure out the details for move-in when I do find the place. An option (if they're okay with partial rent and the rent is, in fact, cheaper than my current place) is for me to pay double rent for a month and a half, which will a) give people two places they can stay (hmm someone still need to bring an air mattress or sleeping bag or something; I have one spare cot mattress and a sleeping bag, that's all) at when they come down to SD and b) give me more time to move so that I can pack / move a little bit of stuff each day in the time after lab and c) still leave myself with enough time to clean up this place so I won't my deposit. (One of my classmate tried this last month and it seemed to work out okay with her.)
But yay, people! (Lucy, I think I have further proof that I should list each person as an individual item.)

Okay, tea and project.

I was going to put something else here, but I forgot

I'm currently talking to Lucy about the UCLA commencement speaker issue(s) and how they might get someone from Lincoln Park. I'm ashamed to admit that I completely forgot who those people are (maybe my subconscious was trying to protect itself by repressing the memory) until Lucy sent me the link to "Somewhere I Belong." I suddenly recalled very vividly the presentations they made us sit through in high school.

It's an unfortunate association. Even more so since if they do get that person, then Lucy's graduation from college will remind her of high school. When she wanted to know why they can't find something more original I got a sudden flashback of Kate singing "Cows In the Morning." Whatever else you might say about it, THAT certainly would be original. (Though perhaps it's more suited for UCD graduation, and not UCLA.)

... ...

A week in conclusion: the seminar class has ended. I've spent a great deal of time sitting behind the curtain imaging cells at 100x, which looks very cool but drives your eyes nuts since you are sitting in the dark, staring through a microscope at dimly florescent things for hours. The issue with my account turned out (after being sent from the program coordinator to the student business office and back again) to be a change in my funding source, which resulted in half of my stipend now being deposited via payroll and the other half being sent through my school account, which is not enrolled in direct deposit. At least I know both sums are mine, which makes me happy since the half of the salary that got deposited in my bank account is enough to cover my housing, but that's about it.
So yay food. I ought to go and eat chocolate, to celebrate.

Final project's due on Tuesday. I'm going to look at an apartment tomorrow. It's further and slightly cheaper, but mostly I'm after a safer area and a place that doesn't quite so resemble the North Pole. (Though I'm keeping the polar bear.) There have been no other promising postings of places for rent so far, but then again, I haven't been haunting the sites and probably won't do so until after Tuesday.

Cheers.

[edit 21:28]

Ahh almost forgot! I found the neutrophil-chasing-a-bacterium video that I mentioned a long time ago (the one where my classmates and I cheered for the neutrophil).

The round things floating around are red blood cells. The vibrating black speck is a bacterium.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your white blood cell at work.

Go neutrophil go!

And now I can sleep.

Palliate, always

Dear Diary,

Today I am grateful for not being attacked by birds.

Like the guy in front of me was.

Yours truly,

S

But have you ever shaved a zebra?

Sometimes the PIs ask the oddest questions. Then again, I suppose someone who's studying the melanin pathway probably would be very curious about a zebra's skin tone.

Am having some trouble with my accounts right now. My salary has been reduced by half in the recent payroll and strange checks have shown up, with amounts just over of what would be half of my salary. The graduate program coordinator promised to look into it. I am just confused, and a little concerned.

Speaking of concerned, I feel as if the area where my apartment is has gotten progressively less safe. Last fall it was the safety issue of walking home alone at night, beginning of this quarter were reports of people whose cars have been stolen. This week it's acts of vandalism by people who are, apparently, racist and anti-gay-rights. Most of this is about one block away from where I live (Lucy, you might know where Regent is? It's near the crossing of that and La Jolla Village Dr). I feel like I should be braver about it, but I still can't quite bring myself to answer the door after dark when I know I'm not expecting anyone and there's knocking.
(Which has just happened.)

Ate an entire mango by myself today. Was late to class again because of the way class fell in the middle of labwork. Final project due next Tuesday!

In which things are sparkly

Went to Lucy's place this weekend (lol her mother likes me because I drag Lucy up at 8 in the morning and we go walking). I am still occasionally confused by the door that leads into the courtyard of her apartment complex, but given a few seconds I can now figure it out on my own. Cheers.

We also went to the Griffith Observatory, where I sat through my first planetarium show. It was magical unicorn fairy dust. I lack words to adequately describe how awesome it is to have stars and galaxies whirl past you, overhead. Though the narrator ruined it a little. PLANET EARTH has nothing on the overly-dramatic. I wanted to laugh a little in the introduction portion, but felt that it wouldn't be polite.

It was very scenic up in the mountain, despite of the fact that it was cloudy. Lucy pointed out the giant advertisements that she photographed and then posted in her lj. Yes they were that big. You could literally seen them from the mountains.

We also played Sims and I learned that toddlers apparently make people insane. This may or may not bear actual semblance to real life.

Nick still sucks at looking somber.

We found Tamaki on Twitter. It is frighteningly in character, complete with the roses. I was surprised that the person didn't employ animated glittering fonts. You can still feel the glittery-ness though.

Right-o, onward to next week!

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3

Soup in a mug!

My day has improved.

Huh

WTH I just received credit in my student account of over 1k. Why is it there? Is it the "congrats you've joined a lab" bonus? I know you get a raise if you join the pharm track, which I'm not in, but, what?

And then, possibly, tea

I have finished a training course this week and foresee at least another three before summer's over. Presentation in the lab of my previous rotation tomorrow (due to scheduling issues). Meeting with my first year advisor next Tuesday to sign off on my progress report (after this year, I hear, you get to try to get a sign off from your thesis committee, what fun). I think I'm going to do my presentation on prion disease on the Tuesday after next week, which means a lot of background reading, I expect. Finally figured out how to get the authorization for the password that will, hopefully,get me a security badge to the basement of our lab building someday. Cell lines are fine. I need to get hand sanitizer, still.
Geez it's almost nine.
No tea then.

Mm cookies

Taken from Le Pichon et al., 2008, from Nature Neuroscience:

Here we uncovered a previously unknown phenotype of Prnp–/– mice in the olfactory system by using a combination of genetic, behavioral and physiological techniques in a systems approach. We employed the so-called 'cookie-finding task', a test of broad olfactory acuity, to analyze a battery of mice, including PrPC knockouts on multiple genetic backgrounds and transgenic mice in which Prnp expression was driven by cell type–specific promoters.

(Was reading this for a project presentation and wanted to share. That is all.)
(It is what it sounds like: you take a cookie, bury it in the bedding, and see how long it takes the mouse to find it.)

In which I should probably go to sleep and call it a day

A bunch of things in no particular order, because it's late on Friday and my brain is more than a little fried:

Workload in the upcoming week -- three readings for the ethics course, two for the presentation I have to give next Friday, the presentation that I have to give next Friday, one paper for the presentation due in June, the presentation due in June, and a written response for the ethics course that is thankfully short, so I won't start on it until late next week.

As for lab right now -- I've five plates of bacteria with eight different vectors (PI decided to do two per plate, not sure why since I made about 30 plates and they last only six months, anyway, before the antibiotics degrade), three different cell lines, and reagents for three different treatments. I've finished a first round this week, with two vectors and one cell line for all three treatments! (Whoo, productive week!) Unfortunately one of the treatment didn't turn out that well, so I'll need to play around with it to get better results (and also optimize another one, but at least that one sort of worked whereas this one didn't). I'll need to go in on Monday to get some things started. I also need to email a whole bunch of people about equipment and paperwork for training, which I have to do next week as well.

Oh and the oil-immersion lens' resolution sucks.

I also have to go to a safety training thing next week. Which should be fun. Not. (Do they make it boring on purpose? I've often wondered.)

... ...

Last night I had a dream in which I had to identify cones of gymnosperms. There were cones from pines, firs, sequoias. They were all in these plastic trays, similar to the ones during the labs in floristics. I remember wanting to ID this one thing as something from cedar of Lebanon, except from what I retain of the image from my dream, upon waking, it doesn't really look anything Cedrus lebani. I wonder if this is symbolic of anything.

... ...

I got this in one of the school-wide flyer-emails this week:

5/22 • 10:00 AM-3:00 PM
Fri, May 22 - EBU1 Rm B706
Ever wonder how a hologram works? Want to make one yourself? Come to our Spring Hologram Workshop and you can bring your own object to image. For more info, see listing at right (Entertainment & Fun).

It sounds awesome. Doesn't it sound awesome? Unfortunately I had both lab and class in that time (not surprising, since that's a huge chunk of time right there) and so couldn't make it. Now I'm tempted to look up hologram-building. And maybe try to make one the next time I have the time & leisure to do so (which is not in the foreseeable future, but well).

... ...

I should do laundry. Maybe tomorrow morning.

Gone phishing

Got an email sent by alerts@bankofamerica.com complete with logos and my name and everything. It said that a third party tampered with my account (or something like) and now they have to freeze it, and to reactivate it I need to follow the link in the email and fill out some information etc etc. Being naturally suspicious, I read over the email three times, switched over to my oldest laptop, and clicked on the link and noticed the secure website color code that usually came on in the url field didn't come on, which made me even more paranoid. Have just called (super fun to come home late and realize that you have to call the bank to ask about a possibly frozen account, no?) and was informed that it was, very likely, phishing. Have forwarded email to the reporting center at the bank. Have received email back within five minutes confirming that it is fake. Heaved a sigh of relief at being paranoid and not filling out any information for that email, because otherwise I'd be very sad right now.

Some of you will be getting the forwarded fake email from me. It's pretty well made, all things considered, no?

On a happier note, dad has recovered enough from jet lag to send me an email with a few photos he took when he went to the botanical garden at Beijing that he thought I might like. Here's one:

Almost as good as a dose of chocolate.

The European Journal of Pain

My lab life ate my life.

I usually depart for school around 7:45 each morning and I've already had the pleasure of leaving lab at a quarter to 7, which means that by the time I got home, almost a full 12 hours would have past. The oddest part of this (after eight-to-five shifts of the previous rotation) is that I don't mind. Much. (I do mind when I don't get to eat lunch until 4:30, because being hungry for that long makes me cranky.) There is always something to do. Further more, there is always something I find interesting to do. My current philosophy seems to be that, if the PIs expect us to work 60 hours a week, I might as well as spend 60 hours a week on something that I'm interesting.

I.e. week two is progressing nicely.

My parents are paying a visit this weekend. Dad just came back from China on Monday. I may have to go in lab on Monday though, but we'll see.

And yes, that journal does exist. We're having a discussion on it. Now.

In which there is karaoke

I feel much more human after ten hours of sleep. As predicted, the retreat made me somewhat sleep-deprived, though I am much better off than many of my classmates and faculty (for reasons that will be explained later). However, on the whole, it's great fun! We're far enough from SD that, despite of the fact that something like 80% of us brought work with us (100% of the faculty, but that's a given), none of us disappeared into labs halfway through (aside from certain PIs, but that's also a given). The talks are 15 minutes long each and strung into mandatory sessions, but we also get socializing hours (which I avoided mostly after my first one) and free time for half a day on Thursday, so combined with no classes and no labs, it's a bit like a vacation.

Riding on in a bus full of biogeeks is kind of fun. We watched PLANET EARTH on our way there and PLANET EARTH and RATATOUILLE (but mostly PLANET EARTH) on our way back (when I also had the dubious pleasure of having a PI sit next to me. He fell asleep half way through PLANET EARTH). I don't know about my classmates, but I for one started making little corrections in my head as I watched. We did get to see the part with the tundra and the caribou, which made me think of DUE SOUTH. Then were was the part about grasses and such where I kept thinking "Well, technically...". I'd forgotten how overly dramatic the narration and soundtrack for those sort of things and was Very Amused at the music accompanying caribou migration.

My roommate was kind of bad the first night, mostly because she kept forgetting that I existed before inviting her guy over (who happened to be my classmate, and I'm going to pretend that I went deaf / didn't speak Chinese for a few hours on Wednesday because otherwise things would be very awkward for the rest of my classes). But she remembered the next day though, which was good. The place was very ...homey, in a rustic kind of way. My room didn't get wireless, for various reasons that don't need to be explored at this juncture, but it is in a building named "Ponderosa". In fact, all the rooms are in plant-named buildings (at first I thought it was just trees, then I saw "Acorn"), which was cute.

The talks were fairly good, though there was a panel discussion about fellowships that made me realize I should perhaps considering applying for something over the summer (you could feel the pressure in the room build up as the discussion went on). We got fed a lot and my PI showed up the morning of the second day, only to disappear again as suddenly. I heard he left after lunch. Certainly he was standing in the lab with a gel tray in his hands when I returned yesterday. I was a little...nonplussed to see him the instant I stepped inside the lab.

On my free hours on Thursday I went for a hike by the lake (will post photos later to Facebook), which didn't take long, then went back, showered, and finished BELOVED. A lot of my classmates went to the pool or played volleyball (though there was a notable exception who wanted to swim across the lake -- I never found out whether she did it or not) and had tired themselves out enough that they were all sleepy during dinner. Which meant a bunch of them went to nap after dinner and came back later for the socializing hour / karaoke, which lasted until the wee hours of the morning. (I stayed for the department panel and went to sleep during socializing -- I managed to endure about fifty minutes of socializing my first day there and had to go and take a nap afterward because of a headache.) (I don't MEAN to be so antisocial, but the amount of small talk -- and you always get asked exactly the same thing every time someone comes up to you --gets tiresome really fast.) However, from what I've heard, karaoke is a lot more popular than dancing ever was. As in, there was more people dancing during karaoke than there ever was during dancing. More specifically, I heard that the faculty eventually got into it too and some of them even went up to sing while others randomly grabbed people -- students and faculty alike -- and fake swing-danced them around the room. My labmate claims she has filmed this. I am kind of boggled by the idea of some of the faculty who are there, swing-dancing.

I had the idea of a beer-pong explained to me. I had concluded that people are very, very strange. The next morning one of the faculty was so hung over that he had to switch his speaking time with someone else. On the whole though, most of the faculty were up freakishly early. By which I mean that when I went down for my tea in the morning there was a whole ensemble of faculty sitting right there by the tea with their laptops out. It was a little unnerving. I've heard more than one student wonder how they do it. PIs, we concluded, are very mysterious beings.

I met Tiffany, who was a labtech in my current lab before she became a grad student. She promised to teach me how to do brains slice cultures. I also learned a lot about the processes of grad school from my upperclassmen, a great deal of which is about getting papers submitted and how the reviewers have an uncanny ability to slowly destroy your will to live. (I take hope from the fact that all of them are still alive and I've so far only heard of one grad student who had a nervous breakdown.) All the sessions are announced with a gong, which was...strange. (Seriously, why a gong? Why not a bell? Or a buzzer? Every time I hear it I think of summer fairs when I was little.)

Upon returning I found my cell lines to be alive and well, which means I can go ahead with the rest of the experiments next week. All is well with my world.

And now, to the animal shelter!

Hihi

Back. It was fun. Too tired to post much now. Will go eat dinner and clean up stuff (have showered). May type a detailed post tomorrow.

BBL

Will be going to department retreat. Leaving SD at noon tomorrow and will not be returning until late Friday.

Cheers.

Smoke on

Dear Diary,

I went to the Air Show yesterday despite of stats and enjoyed myself very much! I stayed far longer than I expected and got sunburned for the first time in my life (at least the silly flush has mostly died down by now), but it was totally worth it.

-S

I've forgotten how much I disliked statistics.

I could've done without the reminder.

In which we talk of feral squirrel monkeys

I finally caved the other day and resolved to start paying more attention to facebook (and then thirty minutes later my enthusiasm was diminished by the fact that there are feeds and add-ons that I just can't turn off, darn it). I even uploaded photos and set up email notifications, then promptly got swamped in my inbox when Lucy commented on the photos with all the speediness of someone who had just spent twenty minutes walking me through how to turn things off in my account.

It was entertaining, to say the least. I'm glad I didn't use my school email account for that one, since I get enough list-serve spam as it is. (I almost missed the check-in email from my SPAC adviser, who already thinks I have a strange habit of disappearing off of the surface of earth.)

I have finished all 352 pages of the book, thank goodness. It was a mercifully fast read, which is also aided by the fact that I skimmed about half of it. I'm not getting the silly thing, because we're discussing it next Monday and after that I will probably never again need to know who Robin (blonde and met the beauty prerequisite, of course) and Cliff (dirty blond and described as movie star handsome, or maybe it was music star...some sort of star) are. Unfortunately that meant that I had to get the book from the reserve (library copy already checked out and none of my upperclassmen had theirs around), which means I have only 24 hours with it before the next person gets it (grad privilege of 24 hours, otherwise I'd only have three). It's more scientifically accurate than Dan Brown, but Brown does a better plot. I was entertained by DA VINCI CODE. I can't say the same for INTUITION.

That was, of course, on top of the two research articles I had to read for the 8:30 discussion this morning. One of which is about feral squirrel monkeys. (The professor brought up an interesting point: where DID they get the "feral" squirrel monkeys? The authors are based in Baltimore, Maryland. Mental images of feral squirrel monkeys wandering through Johns Hopkins are surreal, but entertaining.) More specifically, about giving amphetamine to feral squirrel monkeys (yes I like typing "feral squirrel monkeys" as much as I like saying it). I cannot take the paper seriously, not just because of their choice of animal species, but also because it's just a ...really bad series of experiments. It's feral squirrel monkeys plus shoddy science. I felt bad for the monkeys. (There were also baboons involved, but they're not as ridiculous.)

Now there's only the stats final which was supposed to be posted on Monday but wasn't posted until yesterday, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, despite of the fact that the software we need to solve the problems expires this Saturday.

Oh well.

I still get to read extracurricular stuff. And drink lots of tea.

Life is still fairly good.