Dear blog, except not really

I am now at the airport, having discovered wireless internet that works (as opposed to the first few times where there was supposed to be internet but there wasn't and I was very disappointed), and since I won't be boarding for a while yet, I'm going to update my blog.

The announcer just called for someone who apparently lost their rosary beads. Huh.

I haven't updated in a few days, so where should I start? I did go over to Lucy's last weekend and we had a double-birthday thing (since I didn't get to see her anywhere near her birthday) and went to the crafts fair and discovered a place called "Nick's Cafe" (if you don't get it, it won't be funny even if I explained it to you), thus providing us with both entertainment (more ways than one -- the kids next table over were hilarious) and food that is of higher caliber than what we would've gotten had we chosen to remain standing under the sun for the long lines at the concession stands. I bought stuff, of the sort that will eventually find their way to someone else but will nevertheless continue to make me grin every time I think about them. There was also cake because, you know, birthday. And cider which we kept on forgetting but Lucy got me tea, so everything was awesome. (The rosehip-cherry one resembles cough syrup, but the pomegranate one was good.)

In lab I -- well, my PI, mostly -- discovered that the homologue of my gene of interest that I cloned is the ancestral copy and not the derived copy (yeah there are two) and the PI has decided that the derived copy is much more useful. After some consideration, I had to concede his points and so I will be banging my head against the wall of cloning hypothetical proteins for a few more month. I've also heard him raise his voice for the first time, against a post-doc, when they were arguing a point. I find this startling given how often I talk back to him (note to self: remember to break this habit before graduating as that not all PIs will be so indulgent) and he's never once raised his voice, even when I interrupted him mid-sentence to argue a point (yeah, he's really tolerant). Conclusion: still can't understand why my classmates find him scary but he is impressive when frustrated. His voice carries REALLY well. (Note to self: avoid sitting next to the PI in lab meetings at all costs. Too loud.)

As for the thesis committee? Still waiting for approval. Wendy says she has no idea what happened, since it took her only one or two weeks to get hers approved. Our current theory is that the Graduate Student Council or whatever it's called is operating under less than full capacity during the summer, since approval usually goes much faster during the school year. In any case it looks like getting the advancement to candidacy exam over during the summer is out.

Nothing's happening with the two dating sites with the root word "intellect" in them (forgot the actual name). I will cancel my account there, as soon as I get around to it / find the time. Meanwhile Xylitol and I continue to have very good discussions.We've moved on to books now and I'm trying to get him to read Bradbury's From the Dust Returned. There were still a few random flags here and there from the two geeks sites, but nothing came of any of them.

On a totally unrelated note: I've been following the author "Pru" from her HP story "Delta", from back in the days when Remus Lupin was my favorite HP character ever. (I don't really ship Evans / Lupin but it made more sense to me than Potter / Evans or Black / Lupin.) It was exciting when I started watching Merlin and discovered that she was already in the fandom (though as much as I laugh at the slash dragon --on my God that dragon -- I never really got into the whole Arthur / Merlin thing and I still am disappointed that Merlin / Gwen is well...not meant to be from the start really, but I really liked the pairing.) Anyway, the point of this ramble is that I have just discovered that she's in Due South as well! Well it's one story and it's Kowalski / Fraser, but I laughed so hard while reading it that I thought I'd share. (Though as far as I know the people I know who watch Due South's probably seen it already.) It's a very sweet story. With no cactus nor logs and approximately the same amount of sanity as the show itself(read: variable, depending apparently on the alignment of Saturn with Mars and the amount of Turnbull involved).

Also? Forget Glee, I'm watching Avatar (the cartoon). It is awesome.

This post is brought to you by: SD International Airport.

And also by:

Yours truly, who is turning a year older today (or yesterday evening if you're like my parents and like to factor in the time difference). (Yes my parents do that. Explains a lot about me, doesn't it?)

Cheers.

The benefits of no classes

No classes in the summer means that, in between experiments, I get to read papers that are only relevant to my research and read news / magazines I've been meaning to follow up on. Earlier today I was thinking "I love summer". Shortly afterwards I realized that I will be done with all the classes after fall quarter and this is what I have to look forward to! No more grading or reading about scale mutations in carp. This cheered me considerably.

Meanwhile, I'm going to share a few things that caught my attention, one of which is the attempt at driver-free driving on solar power, from Italy to Shanghai (random added comment: I want to go to a World Expo some day) (another comment, since I'm talking about the Expo, the official preview for the Shanghai one makes me think of something out of Second Life. Except with motion-matched music). Although there some people who are skeptical at this point about the usefulness of this technology, given that there are trucks that can just hook on various additional loads to the manned head portion, I can see some plausible advantages. For instance, in any route that will go over mountains, the larger / longer the truck, the lousier the maneuverability around the bendy roads. Having separate cars that can follow the track of the car in font of them means smaller turn radius for all. Another advantage might be that for a multi-load truck, all that cargo cart is still dependent on one engine. This means that the length of the cargo cart addition is limited by the amount of horsepower that the engine can generate, which is a very real physical limit. In contrast, for each driverless car that just follow the car in front of it, there is theoretically no limit on how long that chain can go. Another one-engine disadvantage is that there is literally one engine. If it dies, you are stuck, with all of the cargo. Each of the driverless cars have the additional manual override. So if one car breaks, the car behind can be moved up, and the broken car can be left by the side of the road for the engineer to come along with the next round of commute and the rest of the chain can continue, because each link in that chain will have its own engine. Sure the recharge thing is a minus and the first run is probably going to be full of problems, but just think of the first computer ever build and where we are today in terms of computational sciences.

Anyway, I think it's really cool and I'm looking forward to seeing the route they planned.

The other thing I found is an article about how , basically, if you are bored and if you have internet access, how about helping some astronomers classify galaxies at Galaxy Zoo? And while we're talking about stars, go see the pretty pictures from the WISE satellite. (This is probably another sign that biology ate my brain, but the little blue stars everywhere makes me think of DAPI -- 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole -- the blue fluorescent stain that stains cell nuclei by conjugating to the DNA.)

Lastly, a really well-written article from Seed about the identity of the modern scientist. The merging of the public and private, the research for the sake of research with applicability, is something that is understood in the field of biomedical science (since entering the field, I've always just taken it for granted and never tried to understood how the public sees us before, and so this is eye-opening for me as well) and that article describes the current state of things really well. (And yes, if anyone's wondering, we do get ethics lecture every quarter. I'm not sure if it's just this field or if it's for all fields of biology or all fields, period, but we do, with different speakers each time.)

I also noticed that Lucy's updated her class blog, which also does have some pretty well-written stuff as well. (Hope you don't mind the linking, Lucy.) Okay, so there are only two entries, but it's interesting to read thinky, non-news articles that aren't totally mired in science once in a while. Biology may have taken over my brain, but some more breadth is probably good.

Sun, sun, sun

Discovery of the week: if you microwave the eggplants for a few minutes before stir-fry they require much less oil, and therefore will cut down on the overall oil consumption! (And is better in the summer where the combination of heat and oily things frequently makes me queasy.) I also asked the Internets and found out that eggplants can be frozen. Supposedly. Well, I'll find out when I thaw them in...uh, three weeks.

In another spectacular failure at planning I finished my chores yesterday, hoping that I can walk to the beach and spend some time there with my sketch book early in the morning. However, it was both chilly and cloudy this morning, the former of which was more detrimental to my plans than the latter (the ocean is beautiful no matter what weather it is). Instead I stayed inside and drew. And also tried to make more elaborate dishes than I normally would bother with, concluding afterward that good food does make a difference in raising a person's spirits, at least in the contentment department. (Look! A rhyme! What fun.)

I'm going into the next two weeks with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation (while I'm still in the rhyming mood). I will be heading over to Lucy's next week in a "we'll celebrate each other's birthday with each other" exchange-type thing. There will be a fair, cake, and sparkling cider (which I already bought yesterday, Lucy, so don't). I'll bring along my camera, of course. The week after that I'll be flying up to Bay Area on Thursday, help Anna move either Friday or Saturday, spend Sunday home with parents, and come back on Monday. (Huh, I think I left myself enough time on Monday for a grocery run, but I should pick up a packet or two of Ramen next week, just in case.)

The weather has reached the "nice" part now: warm, not hot, and sunny. The people are lining up to go to the beach. Think it'll be quieter at the cafe?

One down

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have finally finished watching the tv series Due South. As someone who doesn't own a tv (and wouldn't watch much of it even if there was a tv around), this show currently ranks among my favorites. It has the advantage over The West Wing in that it has a conclusive ending and just didn't keep going on and on (and on and on) until the show lost steam. It has intelligent, interesting characters. It has a sense of humor that can be weird and / or witty but almost never crude. Most of all, it's got the crime-solving mystery thing going on and I can never resist shows where I feel like I'm competing against the main characters to try to see who can find the next clue first.

Of the characters, I think the one I sympathize with the most is Fraser, oddly enough. (Kolwaski is too physical and Vecchio can be a bit sleazy; both are too whiny.) I like the idea of Maggie / Kowalski, though the show never went anywhere with it. Thatcher / Fraser could make sense after that train episode, except for the fact that both of them are so repressed that it's surprising all that compression hasn't already lead to an explosion that leveled the Consulate. I am eerily drawn to Metcalf and I can't even say why, but I appreciate what a complex character she is given how little we know about her. I am aware that when looking up "duesouth" under Delicious I will get gazillions of Fraser / Kowalski (personally I think that being with someone like Fraser, long term, cannot be good for someone with Kowalski's insecurities, and when Fraser picks up on it he'll most likely to bend over backwards to make it better -- probably via big words and Inuit stories which will most likely get him threatened to be punched or punched) which, given that they obviously care deeply about each other and rode off into the wilderness together, I can sort of get. (It makes a lot more sense than some of the pairings I've seen in Harry Potter, at least.)

Dief is love. Pure and simple.

Okay, onwards: I like Pushing Daisies season one reasonably well, but the glimpse of season two that I've managed to glimpse doesn't really inspire me much (though no doubt the colors will still make me want to paint). The finale of season one is already a step in the soap opera's direction and season two's just...introducing too much drama. Of the kinds that does not interest me. Glee shouldn't take too long, given that since Lucy's last trip I'd found the perfect way to watch it: listen to the brief recap and then skip through the episode to the parts where they perform. This makes sense if you consider the fact that I don't like the character or the plot much, but find watching them perform so very...fun. So yeah, that should condense things a bit. Still debating on Merlin, because season one is ...well, the show in general is something that requires you to turn off a portion of your brain to enjoy. (I can now appreciate the term "veg out".) It's like those potato-chips --and not the good kind-- no nutritional value of whatsoever and a weird aftertaste, but it's addictive while you're eating it. The thing is I haven't seen it since I finished season one, and now that I know Merlin / Gwen is officially out (no surprise there given the Arthurian legends) and exactly how they decided to deal with the issue of Morgana...eh. We'll see. Definitely I will have to watch Doctor Who though. All two incarnations. And Avatar the cartoon. I plan to watch at least three episodes and then see if I like it or not.

Unrelated: you know what the problem is with leaving the windows open? Moth. INDOOR. The phobia I have of butterflies pales in comparison to my issues with moths and I can't even tell you why, only that I have walked semi-circles before to keep a six feet radius between myself and the moth parked in the middle of the path.

Code yellow, evacuate neurons

There is a "heatwave" in SD.

Yesterday (and what was with the drizzling Thursday evening, anyway?) the temperature reached the 80s and, after lab, that meant mobs at every stop that's within walking distance of the beach, with their wet hair, sunburn, and beach gears. I've never seen the bus crowded enough, in US, for it to turn away from multiple stops because there was no room for more people. The press of bodies brings back childhood memories of public transit, though the freezing air conditioning that was making everyone sneeze was a new American twist.

The "heatwave" (after living in places where 100s is considered acceptable summer weather, I can't really take the SD version of the term seriously) continues today with gloriously clear sky and impossibly bright sun (you don't expect the light to be strong enough to make you squint at 8:30am one day after weeks of no sun at all; you just don't). A good fraction of the cars parked along my street has already evacuated themselves by 9am, proving that my throw-away hypothesis about the weather last week might be correct. Given that parking was not going to be an issue probably before sundown, and the threat of far too much sun later in the day (which make make visibility of the white paint that separate lanes hell -- a fact that I never appreciated about sunny days before SD, I believe), I went to grocery shop about half an hour earlier than my usual time, and encountered a blissfully sparsely populated store as well as one of the PIs I knew.

And I thought that time when I ran into the post-doc in my lab Saturday morning at lab and then, right after, at 99 Ranch, was kind of awkward.

We have only one 99 Ranch within practical distance, which means that if you are Asian, you will probably stop by there at some point. I think I have met nearly every Chinese post-doc that I've spoken to there (I think the students go later in the day). This occurrence is something I have resigned myself to, despite of the fact I like to keep my work life separated and whenever it breached into the other portion of my time I always feel like...that something extremely invasive has escaped its containment barriers, actually. These days the mental flailing is at a minimum, until the moment today when I look up from trying to decide whether or not I'm in an eggplant kind of mood (I was) and saw the PI from one of the labs that I rotated in (the one that tried to keep in, in fact) grocery shopping with another much more elderly man that I presume is either his father or father-in-law.

There is something distinctly surreal about seeing your polished PI raggedy and carrying a 20lb bag of rice of his shoulder.

Did I mention that the guy is pending approval (by the Dean) as a member of my thesis committee and will sit through my advancement to candidacy exam soon? My bubble of zen at the quiet (and the ability to push my cart in a straight line unmolested) was irreparably shattered. My thoughts went from "eggplant" to "thesis".

(He didn't see me at first, but there was a point where we accidentally, but literally, found ourselves standing face to face, at which point we both looked awkward -- okay, I felt awkward and he looked it and had to say "hi" and spent the rest of the time trying to pretend it didn't happen.)

(Go easy on us: in labs there's a specific set of parameters and guidelines for the relationship between a grad student and a PI, which does not apply at all in a grocery store at nine in the morning, next to the peaches. Also, his dad/dad-in-law was there.)

And there was much mental flailing.

Hmm is it week three already?

No new developments from the two sites with the word "intellect" in them. Since I have tried to email someone in one of them (all with very abandoned-looking profiles) I am going to take that to mean that the profiles are indeed abandoned. Well, here's to one more week of the two week long probation period. I think this's about all the meet-a-geek sites that I know / have been told about, which means come next I might need to pick another site to keep my three-site-minimum plan and I shall need to brave the general population.

That should be fun.

When the last time I had an actual conversation with a guy who is not a geek? Six grade? No wait, there were those random people on the train. Except I don't think I can legitimately count someone who's twice my age and married for this so I guess it'll have to be...10th grade volunteering, listening Yonathan telling about the time when he walked into the school's pool and playing cards with Danny and Serena at six in the morning. (Good times.) I think conversation's gotten harder now that shared experiences of education, which composed of something like 80% of our time during that age, is no longer a given. Which brings me to:

Recent development in pen-pal-ship. In which I have been ditched by everyone except the Xylitol guy. This is oddly like real life, where though I don't attract much attention, I do have a few people who strikes up conversation with me here and there -- who will promptly bail once the conversation becomes a real conversation (i.e. past the "Hello, how's the weather / what do you do for a living" part). I suppose this means that online socialization is a working simulation of real life socialization, except with the reading of facial expression / tone / body language subtracted out. Well that, and two main differences in my case: 1) It's easier to meet people since I no longer have to wrestle with my schedule to try to find time to spend in a reasonably sociable environment at a time when the normal individuals of my age group and so I end up meeting people faster and 2) It takes people longer to flee, because while conversations go fast, the usually short email exchanges that we start with take longer. It takes people more than one email to get the idea that hey, she's ...kind of strange.

All this bailing probably would've given me a complex if it weren't for the handful of strangers who told me that I'm "fun" to talk to. Clearly my personality and conversational skills are not that repulsive to everyone.

I care about my personality more than my appearance, and somehow, over the past few years and persistent pressure from both my peers and my parents, I've found the fortitude recently to decide that I refuse to change for anyone except myself. Make no mistake that I am changing, for all that certain parts of me will probably never change. Make no mistake that not everyone will like the changes. Yet somehow, with a surprising number of people who continue to back me every step of the way, I've been finding it easier to face those people who are very not okay with me, grin, and say "Deal with it."

And you know what? Whatever people's responses have been, I have been happy with this.

Kind of weird, but it makes me smile.

Re: public transit

Having someone sneeze on you is really disgusting. It's a wonder how our parents have managed to handle it. Or does the fact that it's the germs and mucosa secretions from your own offspring reduce the disgust factor?

The animal paperwork finally went through and we have new strip tubes that are the color of pink grapefruit. My mice are still circling. All is well with the world.

Epiphanies

I think I finally understood the appeal of liquid soap over bar soap: you don't have to scrub out the soap tray! I mean I know it's only bio film and all but it's still really disgusting.

Also, hiking is a success. I got to see the sun for the first time in a week (it came out today!) and the new place has real hiking trails (any hiking trail that is paved does not count as real hiking trail in my opinion) and loads of flowers still blooming, because of the cool weather. Photos have been uploaded to Facebook, along with the blooming tea episode.

I have also discovered that while blueberry is awesome while fresh, blueberry flavored anything / dried blueberries is unappealing. They're like raisins gone wrong. Don't ask me why.

Lastly: there must be a better way to cube potatoes. I mean I know they're irregularly shaped and vaguely roundish and trying to get them into geometrical cubes of the same size is impossible but...at least there must be a way to get them more regular in size? What do people do with those bits at the edge? I have been sticking them in along with the rest but I'm thinking that there must be a better way.

Sudden onset of laundry

Well, speaking of emotionally cathartic posts, today is one of "those" days. I'm torn between being peeved and laughing at myself & life. C'est la vie indeed.

It started with laundry and parking: I was hoping that if I delayed my usual activity hours (and brave the subsequent onset of traffic down in PB as all the surfers hit the beach) I'll have a spot closer to my apartment so I won't have to haul my laundry (and detergent) that far (because remember? I switched cars last week and so lost my lovely spot that was right across the street from where I live). No such luck though. NO ONE had budged at their usual times and so I ended up having to haul my laundry, all the while comforting myself that at least this is good exercise.

Move on now to exhibit B: solely laundry.

The laundry place that I've been routinely going through went through remodeling (I think I posted about that too) and now it apparently is switching owners. And going through remodeling again. There was no deadline for when it will be open again but based on the advertisement for what kind of service they WILL be offering, I probably will no longer be able to afford going there. (Well, technically I can but it's unnecessarily wasteful and given the option, I'd rather spend the money at the used book store, where I can buy colored hardcovers for a dollar.) (Or possibly the used CD store. I need to investigate more to see which one is good though.) I went to the other laundry place that is at PB that I found during the last remodeling directly, but it turns out I should've gone home (assuming I could find a parking spot somewhere) and looked up the operating hours. The other place, for reasons that I've not yet determined, is only open from 5 to 11pm on Saturdays (i.e. at a time where there will be no parking space near my apartment for a three block radius). ...so that is a fail. Lastly I went browsing along one of the downtown streets for a coin laundry place that I remembered passing. I found it. That wasn't an issue. The issues were that it shared a parking lot with a car shop, which in the downtown areas, means no parking, and that the laundry machines there were all for multiple loads. It's no doubt cheaper and more efficient if you're the sort who hauls the equivalent of a person's weight in laundry in each time. For me, who does laundry regularly, it's probably cheaper just to drive up to La Jolla and use the laundromats there. (It is a sad day when you have to drive to another town to do laundry.)

Exhibit C: now onto car issues and me feeling extremely stupid.

My dad and I switched cars last weekend, as I may have mentioned, on the account that his car is the least likely to break down on the highway in the family (99 Camry) and makes my parents feel better about my general safety. (It's a nice touch. I am touched. Pun intended.) Given that I've learned to drive on both of my parents cars, there wasn't any adjustments to make, so I never thought to worry about anything except to incline my head a different degree when I'm getting in so I don't knock myself in the head. (Has happened before, and ow.) All of this means that when I got into the car at the end of my last laundry place excursion I was...stunned, if you will, to discover that the parking break is stuck.

I looked through the manual (not helpful). I tried jiggling it (no effect). I tried pressing it harder because occasionally it is a bit tight and that's all I need, but all it got me today was possibly bruised thumbs. (I've never had those bruised before, so it's a novel experience.) In the end I went over to the car shop that is sharing the parking space with the laundry (so you see, it turned out to be handy) and asked one of the staff there for help. What I learned from this particular adventure is that, since my issue was that the button on the break won't depress, I need to pull the break up, further, to relieve the tension, and then I'll be able to press the break down.

Seems simple, doesn't it? I'd never have thought to try it on my own.

So now it's past noon, I've finished about 20% of what I was planning to do this morning and I still have a basket of laundry in the back of the car. Animal shelter's a no-go now, since now all of the volunteers are there already(well most, since something like 90% of us only show up on Saturday and only in the late morning / early afternoon --which is why I only go in the morning because they don't need me in the afternoon. The shelter's closed to volunteers and public alike on Sundays, by the way). (Speaking of which, it's July now and I've just never found the time to make it down there. Then again, given that my life is lab Monday through Friday and the Saturday afternoon volunteer overflow, Saturday morning is my only time slot, so maybe I should just look into doing other stuff instead.)I wanted to get most of my stuff done today so I can go hiking tomorrow, so now I suppose I'll do laundry (at La Jolla, since I'll be passing by there anyway) and then go hiking or something, and aim for somewhere closer to hike at.

To top it all off: there is still no parking space when I returned just now, and the space I vacated this morning was taken as well.

I think this calls for ice cream.

Can I blame the weather?

[Edit]
Daemon's LAN capabilities are broken along with wireless. In fact, all networking functions are down. I wonder if the NIC's broken. Software I can cope with (or at least try to cope with), but with hardware I'm way out of my depth.

lolwut

So I have one site that I opened an account on the last round, Geek 2 Geek, that I've kept. I did not try OkCupid after all, since I figured three is about as many as I can keep track of at any given time. Therefore, this week I'll blog about:

Intellect Connect:
I like the layout. It is very much like another Facebook (yes, down to the free account part), except shinier and more up to date in terms of applets and css than Sweet On Geeks. However, it does suffer from the same issue: that a lot of people there, when you do an initial scan, have profiles that haven't been touched in ages. The users don't even seem have logged on for a while, and while it may be just me, but the average age of the population there seems to be about 10 years higher than Geek 2 Geek. It does have one feature that I like, should I be the sort who's interested in constantly actively searching for people, and that is that Intellect Connect saves your past searches. The searches have more criteria than Sweet On Geeks and Intellect Connect saves the exact criteria that you've chosen, but presumably when you use those criteria again at a later date you'll get to see any new people who'd fit the bill. Other than that, there's not much that's notable. I'll keep it for another two weeks to see if anything interesting reveals itself to me. Otherwise? I have a Facebook account, thanks very much, moving on now.

Intelligent People:
Another site that's free...provided you pass their IQ test (18 questions this time). The site design is on par with Intellect Connect in terms of scripts, except it is way more sparse. In fact, the sparseness can be applied to describe the members as well, in the sense that there aren't that many. This is possibly due to the fact that it make people take tests to join and not many sane people want to take tests when they don't have to. The site structure is like Intellect Connect and Sweet On Geeks in that it's a social networking site mostly that allows you to actively search for people, but doesn't match you with anyone. I do like how international it is, because there're people there from all over the place. Case in point: the first message I received there is from someone in Russia (Moscow, to be exact, and for someone who's never been in Russia I seem to have a lot of Russian speaking people in my life) who wrote something along the lines of "We're too far apart, I'm having trouble finding someone near me too, but good luck!". It was the nicest message ever. With questionable grammar, but still nice. (I don't think I've ever been cheered on by someone from another country who's not related to me, either, come to think of it.)Aside from possibilities of finding international pen pals, I'm not so certain about keeping this account, either. I think I will also apply the two weeks-long rule here.

Soul Geek:
This is my favorite site, so far, out of all the ones that I've seen. Sure the site design is tacky and a bit passe, but aside from that? Just...wow. My favorite thing about it is definitely its sense of humor (it's of the same caliber as ThinkGeek). For instance, in the area where you tick off boxes for your physical description, there's an area under "Extras" that lists: tatoo, glasses, evil minions. Evil minions was inexplicably appealing at the time when I was filling this out but alas, I didn't check it. Then there's the part with word verification where they said something along the lines of "We know this is stupid, but our lawyers said that we have to do this or else zombies will break out and eat all our customers". I lol'ed at that one. ("Aaaallll we want to do is eat your brains!") Free account gives me profile, messaging, and winking/glance/hail whatever the flagging operator is for this site. I think it's "hail". They are very big on the Star Trek theme. Paid account should give me access to chats and forums and ability to share fanart and fanfic AND it's about a third of the price of Geek 2 Geek.(It's not like they're being unreasonable...okay I will stop referencing the zombie song now.) My only issue is that the site is more fanboy fangirl based than geek based (though a giant fraction of the fans are geeks, yes), which means lower percentage of nerds. Oh also they are still trying to solve issues with yahoo, so I can't use the same email account as the other sites. (But they say they're working with yahoo techs to solve this. In giant fonts. Flashing across the top of the page. When they want you to know something they are not shy about it.) This account is a definite keeper.

Other news? People have figured out that I can't send message on Geek 2 Geek so I have received email giving their none G2G email address, which I greatly appreciate and think is much better than randomly giving out my own address by posting it in my profile (I think I'm definitely more the sort of girl who asks for numbers than gives them out). I got flagged down as "hot" by one person, which cracked me up because guys, this is the Facebook photo. With the birds. I felt bad at first, considered briefly whether or not I should try to get a more flattering photo of myself, then went to investigate the person who did the flagging and it turned out that significant amount of alcohol was involved (they were very honest about it). After that I didn't feel bad anymore, but instead thought about the saying I've read somewhere about how the attractiveness of the person next to you is directly proportional to the amount of alcohol you've imbibed. Is this why people go to bars? Then again, considering that alcohol negatively affects a person's sexual drive and the fraction of bar-going people who are looking for hookups, isn't this a self-defeating endeavor? I suppose it depends on whether or not the rate of increase is greater than the rate of decrease but thinking too much about it only reminds me of those relative rate problems from calculus. As much as I appreciate the fact that this may be the only chance where what I learned from that will come in handy in real life, I think I'll pass.

I think I may be acquiring pen pals, in the sense that we have established already that dating is probably not going to work out but we'd like to have more geeky friends. There was bonding. Over the many uses of xylitol, among other things, but there was bonding.

Umm

Dear Diary,

When your PI suddenly walks up to you one day and says, "So, I need you to give me a quick reality check", do you:

A) Stare.

B) Blink, and then say "Excuse me?" just to make sure you heard right.

C) Sit down on the nearest surface not contaminated by samples or chemicals and laugh hysterically.

D) Flail.

E) None of the above.

(To be sure I actually DID remember that I theoretically work for him in time and didn't just go along with instinctive response which, for someone I work with and about the same level in terms of social hierarchy, would probably be along the lines of asking them to tell me how many fingers I'm holding up and pronouncing that they either passed or failed.)

Sincerely,

-S

-------------------------------------------------

In other news: Daemon's wireless went kaput! The software portion keep telling me that the card is inactivated and when I try to activate it Daemon tells me that it can't be found. So guess what I'll be doing this weekend?

Oh hell

Ever had a moment where, half-asleep, you suddenly remembered something that snapped you wide-awake while you mind gibbered to itself madly, all traces of rest lost?

I just recalled that I was supposed to contact a collaborator to talk over some behavioral data of my mice. Two weeks ago.

And ask about the auditory tests, but that part didn't have an appointment involved.

It's possible that she'd forgotten too, since we have exchanged emails in between this time and neither of us mentioned it. But even so...asdfasdf dammit!

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Okay, it's been one week since I started visiting dating websites (read: I signed up and posted a bunch of profiles last Friday evening). Here are the sites that I've tried so far and what I think of them:

Geek 2 Geek:
Very easy to use. Posting a profile is free and I really appreciate the fact that 1) I was allowed to pick my area of geekiness (they have everything from science to Harry Potter to politics) and 2) of the questions I've filled out in the profile, I was allowed to pick the top three traits that are the most important to me, ranked by order. When the site matched profile the potential matches are listed in three different sub-pages, where there's a page where the profiles are ranked by my top three most desired traits, another by the potential match's top three desired traits, and last page ranked by some algorithm that combines the top desired traits of both our sides. The real names and all contact information are hidden, so the only way to contact potential matches initially is by sending "winks" to indicate interest or sending messages through the website's messaging system. We are also allowed to rate a person's profile (with stars, like a restaurant) and list a profile among our "favorites" (which made me feel vaguely like a bookmark, of the web-browser variety). The downside is that, for a free account, I was allowed to post a profile, send and receive winks, and only receive messages but not send any. The subscription fee that allows me to send messages is...well I don't know what the "average" fee is, but it's a lot more than OkCupid (which I will talk about later). I got sent two emails with new potential matches the past week. I don't know whether there's a two-per-week schedule or I just get sent emails whenever they do match up someone.

I am pondering whether or not subscription is worth it. The profile reviewers (I'm guessing they're reviewing to make sure we don't post anything obscene, and that we are in fact human, but that's just a hypothesis) worked pretty fast. My profile was up within twenty-four hours. I was flagged just as fast, too (dunno when it happened, I just logged into my email account and the first contact email came right after the profile-approval email). I did flag someone back, but unless the person can figure out that I'm on a free account and send me a message with non-G2G dependent contact information, this is where it'll stop.

Sweet On Geeks :
...is like Facebook, for geeks. (Well...it's less polished, too.) The intro page has the cutest robot-looking-for-mate ad that I've ever seen. Everything is free, profile, status update (yes, just like Facebook), blogging, forum, messaging, you name it. It has more essay questions than multiple-choice type questions (well it's my first time around, so I did have my moment where I felt vaguely like I'm taking an exam -- I am going to get evaluated one way or another, anyhow) so that it took a LONG time to get the profile set up. I know I didn't have to put my life story up there, but Lucy was right: the profiles that have no photos and little to no answers to any of the questions are creepy. Me? I'm thinking that creepy is not the way to go here. Geeky? Of course. Weird? Sure. Not creepy. The profile-approval process is also pretty immediate and the entire set-up relatively painless.

There are two main problems that I will deduct points for. One is that there's no matching going on. It really is like Facebook in that, if you want to find someone, you have to troll through lists of profile after tackling the search machine. Very time consuming, especially since the search machine only has the basic criteria of zip-code, gender, age, and whether the person's interested in friendship/dating/flirting. I didn't try the keyword search, because the use of keywords is an art --you almost have to have a sixth sense of what the right combination of words should be to find what you want. I'm pretty sure that keyword rules for finding the right person isn't the same as the keyword rules for Google. Or else Google would've launched its own dating site already. (Or maybe it did and I'm just not aware of it -- it's Google, after all. One day it will take over the Internets.)

The second main problem is the reason of why I'm deleting my profile: even when I did give the search machine a shot, the majority of the profiles are of the creepy, photo-less sort. Of the few that have photos, the ones that I've seen are ones that haven't been active in a while. The forums are mostly empty also, with few posts scattered throughout time. In general the site has the pleasant atmosphere of a ghost town. Now, it may be that if you earn enough points you'd get to "unlock" another level, where all the posh people hang out. However, there's no clear explanation for a point system or how the site works, exactly, so I'm not going to bother with it anymore.

IQcuties:
I gave it a shot for the heck of it. To join you need to take an IQ test, which is graded in batches. I have not heard back yet, which means either that it hasn't been graded yet, I failed, or that my email inbox ate it and it's now in the in-between no-man's-land area of data, where all the lost emails go to die. I'll wait another week and then write it off, so as of now, I have nothing to report. (It's a six-question long test, so my guess is that I failed.)

OkCupid:
The site that everyone but me apparently knew about already. Except it turns out that I seemed to know it too. Or at least my email did. Let me explain:

After the initial check, when I went to try to set up an account, the site told me I already had one. This confused me, as that I am pretty sure I've never visited the site before. I think I would remember if I visited a dating site, but I started considering possible spontaneous onset of amnesia (worrisome and improbable, but I suppose not impossible). Since it claims that my email is registered already, I clicked on the button to sent lost password. I did receive a password-reset link in my email, so it really was my email in their database, but when I logged in, the username (which the site told me is locked and cannot be changed) immediately told me that no way was I the one who registered with this website. Whomever had set up the profile initially had left everything else blank, which I suppose I ought to be grateful for. It was pretty freaky though, and I deleted that profile, partly for security reasons and partly because I was wtf-ing over the username, which I can't change.

I think I might try to create a real account there sometime this weekend though, and see how it goes.

In conclusion, the only place so far where I managed to get something working is Geek 2 Geek, where I garnered a lot of attention from military geeks. And geeks that work for the military. (Differentiation being soldiers vs civilian contractors.) Given that the matches are taking geography into account and that I am surrounded by the navy, the air force, and the marine corps, this isn't too surprising. However, it's quite strange that my initial encounters are with people whose profile photos include themselves in their uniforms and have phrases in their profile along the lines of "will be deployed soon", "waiting for date of deployment", "looking for someone with patience as may be deployed". So, even if I subscribe? I think I'll stick with the civilians. I have nothing against them personally, but I think I should establish some sort of standard for what a normal (well, as normal as anything involving me can be) relationship is like before I venture into the vast and uncharted waters of long-distance relationship.

Last comment: this post should effectively answer any question people may have about what my "type" is. No, really, it should.

Standing up and make some noise

Remember the issue with the parking permit I mentioned last time? A classmate of mine did start a petition. An online petition. That, seeded through our department's list serve, gathered over 200 votes within the first two hours and is now spreading throughout the campus. We are allowed to leave our personal comments and the departments that we represent when we sign electronically, so just by glancing at the petition (over 700 signatures the last time I checked, and this petition started at noon, today) we have people spanning all stages of academic career, from undergrad to techs to grad to staff and tenured professors. We have a lot of people from my program and biology, quite a few from chemistry, biochem, bioengineering, and a handful from physics, economy, engineering and political science. We have more lighthearted comments such as "Thanks for giving me the weekend off" and we have mini-essays. I got almost everyone in my lab to sign, including the PI (who gave me a brief lecture on the history of parking lot economy and how it apparently dated back to Reagan --yes this is what my PI tends to do) and have forwarded the link to a few others who have indicated interest, including the vivarium staff.

I'm quite excited about this now because a) we're sending this to the chancellor, and right now it looks like there are enough people who are upset about this that the administrators can't just ignore it and b) this is a good chance for me to see how much power the student/staff body really do have, when it comes to changing regulations and policies.

It's amazing though. Every time I click on the refresh button on the e-petition link, new signatures show up. Even if I click it every two seconds.

...

Unrelated: got my SfN session appointment! Anna's presenting on Monday morning in November, Lis (the other one presenting in my lab) is on Monday afternoon. I'm on Wednesday afternoon, and I forwarded my notification to the PI with a note about whether or not this meant I get to skip lab meeting that week (we have it on Wednesday afternoons). He "supposes" so. People have been giving me tips and advises and things to see about the conference so now I'm getting all hyped up about it too. Should be fun!

May the fun never end

Last I checked, of the teams that I drew the lots for, only Chile remains on the short list. There is now a bag of chocolate for second place as well as for first place in the shelves next to our lab tech's desk.

We got another undergrad in our lab recently and both Wendy and I, along with a post-doc, were asked if we'd have the time for an undergrad. The main issue Wendy and I had with this applicant was that he was planning to only work here for the summer, which wasn't enough time, in a biology lab and especially not for a genetics lab that works with mice, to both teach a student the techniques, have them master them, and get usable results. (A general rule of thumb from my undergrad days is, if you want to be more involved in a lab than just washing glassware, you need to pledge more than one quarter. That rule still seems to apply.) (If no one wants to take on an undergrad we just don't accept the applicant, since my PI's of the opinion that it's rude to accept an undergrad into the lab if there's no one who can make the time to deal with him / her.) As a result, the post-doc got the undergrad (who is thankfully more experienced than our current undergrad, in the sense that he knew how to make dilutions and buffers and basic safety rules). Unfortunately, this is the post-doc with the somewhat...unstable schedule, so within the past week there have been many times where no one can track down the post-doc for the poor undergrad and he ended up just kind of lingering around, waiting. And generally making me twitchy since I am in the midst of in situ hybridization, northern blot, and western blot as well as occasional mice, which apparently looks very impressive. Or something. I have no other explanation for why I'd return to find him lingering over my bench, staring at the mess of experiments there. Oh well, whenever there's someone new it's always a group effort, in my current lab, to help out anyway, since we've all got expertise in different areas...and keeps track of different stock reagents in lab.

Speaking of lab: there was one day last week when I looked up at an odd scraping sound and saw my PI pushing this large box toward the lobby (by large I mean he'd fit in it, easily, multiples of him, even). We caught each other's eye, and then he went back to box-pushing. (Yes Kate, this is one of my boring stories, where I ask no questions.) PIs are very strange. I have no idea where that box came from. We have no room in any part of our lab space or his office for something that size. Or what he was doing with it. It was like that time when Wendy spotted him cutting strips of carpet (which later turned out was because he was experimenting with...never mind). Tiffany, a former tech in our lab and now a grad student, had once wondered if the PIs knew that we observe them like they're animals in the zoo. I'm pretty sure mine does. He's self-aware to a degree that occasionally leaves my lab mates unsettled. (After that time where I heard someone from a neighboring lab describe him as "young and neurotic"...I mostly try not to remember that comment when I'm talking to him, especially not in conjunction with his somewhat self-deprecating sense of humor, so I can keep a straight face.)

There was one thing that I was a bit upset about last week, and that was finding out that our campus is getting rid of free parking on weekends and nights. Supposedly this is because of shortage of campus funds. What it means is that for all the grad students who have seven-day-long experiments or need to come in for a few hours on the weekends to get a result sooner, we'd have to pay fifty dollars for a permit. Now, since I tend to avoid going to lab on the weekends whenever possible, I don't go in enough times to make that fee worth my while. Nor am I inclined to go in on weekends anymore than I absolutely have to: there are plenty of burned out grad students, I do not intend to become one of them. All of this means that I either need to brave the two hours of public transit on the weekends, which is unacceptable, or that I'll take my car to the nearest mall shopping center and take the bus / walk to campus from there (so an hour round trip at the most instead of two, but at least if I walk I'll get some sun and exercise). Some of my classmates have time point experiments which means they have to come back to something every six hours or every twelve hours. Before, after dark, they'd just take their car to campus so they can still grab a few hours of sleep at home in between. Now I think there're plans of camping out in the student lounge and in the lobbies of the lab buildings, where the couches are. Thankfully the only time point I have to do right now is long enough that I can just stay later the night before and arrive earlier the next morning, and I'd be fine. The generally feeling, however, is that if there's a petition to repeal this, we'd sign it.

The new rules are effective as of July 1st, 2010. I think it's an absolutely dismal way to start July. I wonder what all the PIs will say when they realize this will decrease the data output in their labs because now, rather than starting something that'll require two hours on the weekend, but will allow the next step to be performed as early as the next Monday, we are more likely to not start the experiment and just wait until Monday, and damn the delay.

Have ordered plane tickets. Will be in bay area Jul. 29 afternoon and leaving Aug. 1st in the morning. My parents are still coming next week. I think.

People vs life

Labs have to deal with sales reps. They come around with their flyers for lab supplies, for anything from pipette tips to mini-centrifuges. They often leave us with pieces of candy (or else advertise that there'll be a vendor show on campus with food, please come), or occasionally a pen or post-its (everyone likes post-its; if you work in a lab, post-its are you friends). Today, for some unknown reason, the rep, after talking to our lab tech, left us with a flyer and a packet of sunflower seeds. As in the type you find in a nursery, not the type you find in a grocery store. It is also of the mammoth variety, not dwarf.

My labmates and I are equal parts bemused and amused. What are we supposed to do with the seeds? Grow giant sunflowers in the middle of the lab, between the incubator and the spec? I mean in some lab some people can have a small potted plant at their desk (clean area, never on the bench with the chemicals). Very tasteful. Gives a nice ambiance. Mammoth sunflower does not equal small potted plant. Mammoth sunflowers, as the name implies, are huge. (Well, for something that's not a bush or tree.) Give them right amount of sunlight and water they average over seven feet tall. Why on earth were we given a packet of these seeds?

I continue to be confused by marketing people.

Dorothy's taking home the seeds to give to her son. Maybe he can do a science project out of it or something.

Something else strange happened today as well, with my bottle of water that I tried to autoclave. I needed to treat the water with DEPC (...uh diethylpyrocarbonate) to get rid of the RNase in it, since RNase chews up RNA and I need the RNA of my samples intact, not chewed up. Usually you put DEPC in the water (where it forms clear little beads that roll around in the bottom of the bottle -- pretty cool to look at) and let it sit overnight, and then the next morning the beads would have magically disappeared. Then you autoclave it to inactivate the DEPC so it doesn't interfere with the enzymes you might need to put in the water later. Since the DEPC beads are always gone by the morning, I usually don't check for the beads. Yet somehow, today after I took my two liter bottle of water out of the autoclave, I noticed that there's a small bead of DEPC rolling around on the bottom. I stared at it. Wendy stared at it. Eventually most of the lab (except for the PI) came to stare at it. We have no idea how this was possible, especially given the thing's been autoclaved and usually that much heat and pressure can be used to help things go into solution. I've left it to cool overnight and I'll try to autoclave it again but really, what? (I should mention I had three other bottles of DEPC-treated water and this did not happen with those bottles and so, before you ask, I used the same DEPC for all of them so it is neither the DEPC nor the autoclave.)

People confuse me. Life confuses me. It's been a confusing sort of day.

Love will remain a mystery

Why do I want to date?

I've considered this question for a while now. When I first approached the issue of romantic relationships I considered treating it like an experiment. I'll do some background research and test out each of my hypothesis and see what works and what doesn't. However, between the contradicting advises from many so-called "professionals" and my understanding that these advises are meant to address your average single woman, which I am not, the experimental approach doesn't look like it will pan out. Relationships vary so much on a person to person basis that the only way for me to find out anything is, as far as I can tell, to step off of the cliff into free fall and brave the terra incognita of your local dating scene with neither a compass nor a map (much less a GPS).

I like maps. I like experiments. When I drew the above conclusion, I was not happy.

So this brings me back to the question of why do I want to bother? I don't particularly want to be married or have children (not to mention I'm not even sure, at this point, of whether or not I'll be capable of either). If workaholic has a genetics component, I would have inherited it from both sides of the family which is, frankly, terrible for trying to do things such as dating. In what time that's left to me I volunteer, wander the streets and the beaches, write, draw, read. My life can be pretty full as it is, and I love my independence. If I were Zach diagnosing myself this is the point where I'd be telling me that I clearly need to figure out what I want.

(That last sentence sounded confusing, but less schizophrenic than it did in my head.) (The pun is accidental.)

After some thoughts I've drawn up three main reasons, one of which is based a bit on my personal insecurity. My mom keep reminding me (when she is in that certain phase that all mothers go through, visions of grandchildren dancing in their heads) that she and dad won't be around forever, and I shouldn't be left alone. Understandable. I like being independent, but I don't want the "I am all alone in this big wide world poor me" scenario either. I have excellent friends, yes, but family is still (or should be) the top priority. It will no doubt be a bit lonely when everyone gets married and such.

The second reason is mostly because I am at a phase in my life where I believe I deserve to have some fun. I like going out. I don't know if I'll like going out. Long-term relationship not withstanding, people my age seem to like the latter, so I figured I should at least try it once. It's like Greek food except less likely to involve words that I cannot pronounce. Going out, from what I understand, doesn't require anyone to make a commitment after the first date, so it shouldn't be too bad.

The last and the most important reason (in terms of influencing my final decision to get up, put in some effort, and do something) is simply curiosity. It's a good trait to have as a scientist, I've been told, and as a personality trait I am aware that it can potentially get me into all kinds of problems. Nevertheless, I have considered myself and decided that, theoretically, I am no less capable of loving than anyone else, nor am I any less deserving of love than anyone else. Therefore, if I want to find out what this kind of love is, I should be able to blunder along like everyone else and find...something.

Because really, aren't we all curious? Love is such a simple word. In languages that conjugate and decline their words, it's one of the first words we learn. By the age of new comedy we can already get a glimpse of the themes in the works to come, where love plays many key roles. Poets have waxed lyrical over it, literally, and lyrics...well: considering the proportion of songs dedicated to the subject, saying that it's popular would be a gross understatement. It is such a powerful thing. People sing of it, cry over it, die for it. For love the hanging gardens of Babylon were built. For love Isis hunted for the fourteen pieces of Osiris and Orpheus walked into hell to bargain with his music. In short, love is life and therefore death, because neither would have meaning with out the other. Love is a person and his or her world, and how a person can be someone else's world but how a person's world can change, as well. The more we find out about love the more confusing it gets until, frustrated, we are forced to yell out, "It just is!"

...which may be the truest thing of all, considering.

With the nuance of English we can make the distinction between "love" and "in love with". Trace the literature world and we can find many ways to express either (though Mr. Darcy's "how ardently I admire you" always makes me want to laugh for some reason...I can try to blame the BBC mini-series' cast but I think it may be just me in this case). It is one of the oldest and most sacred human emotion we know, and therefore we are not lacking in either words or experience when it comes to the subject of love (as compared to many other subjects of similar nature that exists out there).

We can travel faster than sound, synthesize proteins from scratch, and predict the trajectory of the stars... so why is it, even now, that we are still singing of the riddle-in-a-mystery-in-a-enigma that is love? (Or Russia, if you ask Churchill. Apparently the two are similar in their ability to bewilder.)

I'm old enough to wonder. I'm old enough to care. I want to know.

Don't you?

(Forget Rubik's cube. This is like the ultimate puzzle.)

Time is...brain?

So continues my confusion with the advertisements. The above line is part of one of the slogans for the Scripps, "Time is brain, think FAST." I can see how the perception of time and the brain relate. What I still can't understand is how one equate the other.

People are strange.

Okay now for the long recap, I'll try to organize it by days and see how it goes.

Friday, last week: the undergrad assistants did not ditch us, and so I had relatively little to do in terms of grading. To celebrate, I ate a box of Pocky and taught myself how to do inner ear dissections. (And subsequently discovered a maddening tendency to type / write "innear" instead of "inner ear".) It was difficult. I messed up two out of eight samples but, in my defense, I was dissecting out membranous, cork-spring-ing tubes that are embedded in bone, where the largest part is about 2mm at its longest part. I actually felt rather pleased that I managed to get six out of eight and, when the PI passed by later to see what I was up to, showed him my results (which were floating in 4% paraformaldehyde). He had trouble spotting them in the paraformaldehyde solution and was confused / amazed that those things can be dissected out. I felt that I had fulfilled my job as a grad student.

Saturday: Lucy came, we went to get food (since I mostly depleted my fridge the past week) and I marveled at how nice it is to sit around not having to do/think anything. I like thinking. I like thinking about things. I think more people should think abut things. However, after my brain's been placed under stress / in overdrive like it had been that week, slouching against the wall listening to birds chirp was very nice. We got Greek food and discovered moussaka (it was delicious, by the way).Then Lucy introduced me to the wonder that is the 11th Doctor and Amy. I like the 11th better than the 9th, possibility because I can identify with the talking-self-through-thought-processes-very-fast trait very well. Too well. (My PI has told me that I talk too fast, and he talks fast himself.) There was the part where he muttered, "Com'on, brain, think!" which is pretty much what I tell myself often, so I can definitely relate. Amy has rapidly gained a place as one of my favorite female leads of all time (I also liked Alice from the recent Alice In Wonderland film, in case you're wondering), since she is a) courageous, if occasionally lacking in foresight b) smart, in the sense that although she might not have the breath of knowledge that the Doctor does, she's genuinely observant and clever, and c) has a sense of humor. (See: Peruvian folk band.) Also in the same day: played with Lucy's phone's dice widget, with the result that we craved eggs and had to look up the difference between "sunny side up" and "over easy" (and Anna, the next morning, proved herself to be even more helpful than the Internets). Lucy's also introduced me to the weird circular version of Bejeweled on her computer. It was very addictive.

Sunday: Went to see Prince of Persia with Lucy and was pleasantly surprised. Mostly from the trailer I was expecting an adventure / fantasy film that's fun to watch. I wasn't expecting the characters to be actually more than two-dimensional (see: Avatar), I wasn't expecting a truly interesting plot, and I certainly wasn't expecting themes. (They beat the "destiny" one to death, but given the plot and that the kind of movie that it is -- well, nothing's perfect and I'm more than willing to forgive.) Then I renewed my acquaintance with Greek food (gyros sandwich very good; also, I got to have fries), and watched more Doctor Who. I have now watched up to the Dream Lord episode and grins whenever I hear really loud bird chirping. (Seriously, I think Amy, Rory, and the Doctor should be conditioned -- yes in the Pavlovian sense -- to paranoia at that particular cue after that experience). I also got the "Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts" song from the HP musical stuck in my head, for which I blame Lucy entirely.

Monday, this week: start of my week of trying to get back in the rhythm of full length lab days and ended up playing a lot of games of "what did I forget?" as I tried to remember what I did and how for the experiments done during / before spring quarter. Discovered that the girl who was going to trade supply fund with me this year (resulting in my rather rushed foray into researching the pros and cons of different types of Vaio laptops) had decided that there were things she wanted to get after all, so we called off the laptop thing.

Tuesday: discovered Trillian Astra. Very shiny, very aesthetically pleasing, very confused about the invisibility status of the gchat plug-in (due to the nature of the original gchat interface, according to the wisdom of the Internets). However, it does allow connections to twitter, facebook, msn messenger, yahoo messenger, aim, and ICQ (and a unique Trillian chat program that I will probably never use), which is handy. I cleaned up my contact lists and generally annoyed everyone who was online at that time by signing on and off a lot as Lucy and I tried to figure out how the invisibility option is (or isn't) working.

Wednesday, Thursday: massive amount of cryostat time. I am nearly done with all of my sectioning, thank God. I pondered what to do with what's left of my supply fund (it has to be used before the end of June). I also pondered when to fly back to bay area, given the timing of the birth of my mice, that mom's flying out of the country in August, and that I have to present in lab meeting at the end of August.

Friday: went to the Japanese place that Wendy had introduced me to and had my end of the quarter udon (I like udon, I don't like ramen, and I am still mystified by the fish-flavored thing they put in the noodles). Our undergrad's doing an undergrad research poster presentation that afternoon, so our entire lab trooped over, field-trip style, to cheer her on and look around. (I noticed that something like 80% of the PIs listed in those posters came from the PIs in my program. I like to think it's because we have really nice PIs who do really cool stuff that even undergrads know they're cool and are interested in helping out -- and yes, that was sort of how I picked my senior thesis lab. It was gratifying.) One of my undergrads (from my discussion section) emailed me to complain about grades. I emailed back and then allowed myself about an hour of obligatory guilt (I can't help the initial response of feeling like that I'd failed them in some unknown but significant way), but if they scored that low on both of their exams, there really wasn't any way that they could've gotten anything but what they did get. At which point I decided to cut short my remorse: the quarter's over, the grades are posted, I did a lot of the scoring but didn't assign the grades and they are no longer my responsibility, anyway. Bitter recrimination is always doable but at this stage? Very unproductive. I decided to use what's left of my supply fund to buy some textbooks and managed to get a brand new neuroscience textbook that was very new and very shiny (sorry for the obsession, but those things usually cost over a hundred dollars so I'd never thought I'd be able to afford to get a brand new copy). It made my day better. Books improve my day. Then I received a letter from my mom, which is five pages (front and back) handwritten, and ended up crying for over an hour over it. But you know, that's parents for you -- they know how to push all your buttons because they're the ones who put the buttons there. We're mostly good now, though, so I'm glad.

Today: had a very good morning (with tea). Did the random items run that I do once every few months and probably puzzled the store clerks (by getting really strange assortments of things, from shampoo to cereal to gum to wire whisk -- and yes Lucy, I did finally get the whisk). Did laundry. Got hair cut by a new but very nice lady. Went present shopping, which is always fun, and my venture today proved to be fruitful, too. (The only kind of shopping I like better than present shopping is nursery/gardening supply shopping. Book shopping doesn't count. I usually know the exact book I want to buy, so I don't browse. I browse in libraries.) I also went and finally tried the No. 73 frappe from Chuao's. Remember? Last summer I tried the one that's around 50% cocoa and decided that it was too sweet. I can now say that, for me, the 73% is very good, as in a moment of bliss good. It's really too bad that there's so much methylxanthine in there (mostly theobromine, I think) that I dare not drink the entire thing, since I'd like to sleep on time tonight.

Planned for tomorrow: grocery run, smog check, and baking cookies!

More scary people on the bus

I was going to wait until the weekend and then write a long entry but I wanted to just share this now:

The girl who sat across from me on the bus got attacked (physical shoving) by one of the crazy people today, who was set off (like a bomb, she seemed to have exploded suddenly), apparently, because the girl started using her cell phone The crazy person really had something against that cellphone. She was screaming about how she ought to beat the girl blind and next time that's what she'll do as she was let off the bus. (The bus driver asked the girl if she wanted the police afterwards, she declined.)

Crazy or not, I've never before, in my life, heard someone scream at another person with that much hate. Movie actors/actresses have nothing on it. (Seriously, a cellphone. My mind does not compute.) I'm mostly sharing this since if I talk about something I'm less likely going to have nightmares about it.

My God.

In lab

While I'm waiting for things to thaw. Here's a question for the masses: which holidays do you celebrate? This is for those who were born in the US as well as born elsewhere. Personally I've sort of picked out a few holidays from both cultures that I grew up in and follow. Except Christmas. I don't actually celebrate Christmas (we haven't done the tree thing or the decorating thing since...what? High school? Except I sort of did in Davis. But that was more in the spirit of thing. I didn't do anything on Christmas day that year except open a present, I think). Or Solstice, exactly (not in your traditional sense of "celebrate"). I just make sure there are two days in mid-to-late December that I can get together with friends and family and do the food & presents thing.