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09:50 am - Oxen, Gardens and Travel

Cathy’s daughter got me a very soft, small, orange, stuffed ox from the dollar store to match hers (whose name is Darth Buffalo Bob—it went from being an ox to a yak to a buffalo over the course of one meal).  She also showed me how to make mine do the “menacing dance” and described something, although I don’t remember what, as a “harbinger of doom.”  She’s my favorite 8 year old ever. 

Our now giant gardenia bush is completely covered in new buds and is going to look amazing within the next week.  The orchids are blooming like crazy (which has only happened a couple of times in the 5 or so years we’ve had them); we have yellow and purple orchids all over at the moment.  Our frangipani (aka plumeria), which has previously only flowered once and has been fighting for its life against some gross plant disease for the last few years, has a whole bunch of new, strong, healthy looking leaves all of a sudden.  And, my little tomato seedlings are finally just starting to sprout some real leaves (the two leaves that come out first aren’t “real leaves”).  I know that they still have a long way to go but the fact that my black thumb and I haven’t destroyed them yet makes me feel almost as if I’ve already won.  Although, I’m clearly going to have to keep a closer eye out for that creepy flower stealing neighbor. 

Also, I’m going to take a train from Chicago to Seattle to LA in July with my cousin Daniel.  I predict it will be lovely.  I didn’t expect to get anything back from my taxes this year and received a nice surprise so I’ve decided to just pretend I didn’t get anything back and have a lovely vacation.  Incredibly stupid of me given the state of things at the moment but the bio department just extended my contract through summer and is now working on how to weasel me into the fall. 

10:31 pm - So it’s been a while

The assorted happenings:

Debbie still got married in October even after we told him about the no return policy.

Thanksgiving in Ecuador was awesome minus the parts where we almost died. Actually those were pretty funny but only because we’re retards. It was kind of a laugh or cry/lose your mind kind of thing when it was happening. I can only think of a couple of other people who I might have faired that well with given the circumstances. Jessica is the best.

Neetika died in a car accident just before Christmas. She was fantastic. We found out in mid January.  I still haven’t been able to make myself call her husband yet.

Valerie got into medical school at FSU. 

Maria finally got her baby. 

A chunk of my family has moved back to Argentina because the economy is more stable there at the moment and there is more opportunity for them (which is scary as shit). 

I saw Lori and Anthony’s baby a couple of weeks ago and he’s the cutest ever and, oddly enough, really long for his age (not tall because they don’t stand yet, I think).

I have been going to a free conversational Spanish class at the library once a week for the last month or so and it pleases me although I don’t really think I’m improving. I want to just wake up and be fluent, tomorrow. One of the other students, a retired woman/man-eater, is trying to set me up with some urologist that she met on a dating site called Plenty of Fish. When I think of urologists, I think of the horror that is the cystoscopy and it kind of freaks me out but he would meet some of my man criteria (makes good money and is mostly too busy to be much of a bother).

One of my three bosses wants me to get my PhD in psychology. I think I can just buy one from Nova but I’m not interested. 

Jessica and I made the best blondies ever recently. They were probably so great because of how much we rule and/or because they were Martha’s. We threw in some cashews instead of the walnuts for any of you who might care. Seriously though, they were ridiculously good and you should all make them.

In general, I feel pretty uncomfortable around most of the people I know lately. 

I’m nearing the end of my temporary jobs and it sucks. I kind of want to be a 911 call operator next but I have no direction sense and knowing the area is apparently part of whatever test you have to take to be one. And, while I know that I should know it inside and out with how long I have lived here, I just don’t care to know anything other than exactly what I need to do to get to the few specific places I care to go. I think I’d be good at it though. The more panicked other people get the more calm I get and I can type 80 words per minute. Hmm, or maybe a court recorder.

Some lady left her 3 year old child with me at Sam’s club the other day. She didn’t want to get out of line but wanted to swap some cheese she was buying for a package that wasn’t already opened. She basically turned around (I was behind her in line) held up her cheese at me, said “you’ll watch my kid right,” and then just up and went. 

I sent Ted a bib for his new baby (who happens to be really cute). It has an adorable little alligator graphic on it. Ted has a genuine alligator phobia. All you have to do is show him a picture of one and he’ll have nightmares for at least a week. Maybe this cute little alligator bib will help, or maybe not.

One of our neighbors came by today to tell us that the family next door to her has been stealing plants from our front yard when we’re not home and that they have a whole garden in their backyard. She said that they told her it was for god when she yelled at them about it. 

And that’s probably it for now.

06:38 pm - The end of the end and other such news

Other news first…

There have been 4 cases of MRSA (super antibiotic resistant bacteria) among young healthy graduate students in the biology department within the last semester which is pretty gross/horrifying.  The most recent case that I know of ended up in the hospital for most of the last week.  They sliced open the giant boil which was growing under the surface of the skin of his leg and packed it full of antibiotic soaked gauze in addition to having him on intravenous antibiotics. 

Emily and I went to RenFest this past weekend and were cute.  She bought a fun new costume and dressed me up in one of her old ones and we made friends with some old man and a guy in a giant troll costume.  We also spoke to the guy who runs the Henna booth that Bri used to work at.  And, Emily made friends with a big bird.

I am now taking a yoga class with Bryan G. in addition to the Tai Chi class that we take together with our mommies and while it makes me feel a bit like I might die, I’m liking it a whole bunch.  I have also decided that I want to learn how to run.  I’ve never been able to because I just can’t freaking breath but I have noticed that since I’ve been doing Tai Chi for a while I suddenly have a MUCH easier time on the elliptical at the gym when I happen to get around to getting there.  So I’m thinking I might actually be able to give this running thing a try.  It sounds good anyway.

07:19 pm - Starstruck

So I got to meet and chat with two Nobel Prize winners yesterday—Dr. Gunter Blobel (1999 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—yes that is what it is called) and Dr. Harold Kroto (1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry).  Dr. Blobel gave a lecture at FAU and, because my boss co-chaired the event, I had to run around like a crazy person to help with all kinds of stuff but was able to attend the happy little reception at the President’s house after the lecture.  The Nobel Laureates were super nice and wonderful and I got to catch up briefly with some computer science people from Scripps and from FAU who I’m hoping to get some help with my project from so that was lovely as well.  Overall it was a very long but pretty awesome day. 

09:07 pm - Good Things

So I guess it has been a while.  

I have been awarded another fellowships for 5000$ since I last posted and am very pleased.  However, it seems that I will need to spend it all.  My boss wants me to dress like a big girl from now on so that I don't look like crap when he randomly drops by with important people from assorted companies for me to meet (he's like dean of making research institutes want to work with us or something) and also so that I get used to wearing them.  He knows how uncomfortable I am in real people clothes and decided on my change of wardrobe when he realized that having to dress up adds to my stress when I have to give a presentation.  

I gave a talk for a bunch of people from Scripps and IBM recently which is what prompted all these clothing issues.  I wore a suite for the first time in my life.  But anyway, the talk went really well.  People asked good questions and I was able to answer all of them.  And really the whole school thing overall is going really well right now.  It looks like I might end up with a degree yet. 

Also, I am learning to appreciate computer science more and  more.  My boss and I are working with this other professor and his student on a project and the other student sat down for about an hour the other day and wrote a program for me that reorganized a whole bunch of data which would otherwise have taken me at least a week (of working on nothing but that) to do manually.  I wish I could magically wake up as a computer programmer tomorrow.  If I had realized what he could do back in May I could probably almost be done with my project by now.  I must learn how to program, like this second.  

05:47 pm - Heck Yes

Who just won a scholarship for 1000$?  Oh yeah, it was me.  I'm just going to pat myself on the back for a while here. 

Also, who's the fucking shit?  Definitely me again.  I seriously thought this day would never come.  I'm not first author but still.  Go here: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1196/annals.1422.023.  Excuse me while I go print this out and frame it.  

And, I just got a check in the mail for the stem cells lab that I wrote for the new biology lab manual.

03:19 pm - Tools of the trade

There is nothing quite like having a boss who genuinely means it when he congratulates you on improving on your ability to bullshit.  This was the response that I just received to a brief run through of a presentation I’m working on.  He has actually told me that, academics aside, he sees a lot of potential for me based on my ability to bullshit.  This pleases me. 

As per my professor/graduate committee member’s request, I’m preparing a presentation on bioinformatics to give as an introductory talk to the computer science students in the Bioinformatics and Data Mining course that I’m taking this semester.  I’m going to be the only person who is not pursuing a degree in computer science in a course designed to teach biologists about some of the online tools that are available to them and computer scientists how to make useful tools for the analysis of biological data.  So basically, I’m telling them what DNA, RNA and proteins are and giving a brief intro to what tools are currently available for computer-based analysis of these molecules.  I’m also explaining why/how biologists use these tools and what else we still need from computer science in addition to highlighting some key points like the fact that your ability to design a program to identify some pattern for me is useless if it doesn’t generate output which can be interpreted quickly and easily.   

In other news, I have just discovered a new favorite tea and am very pleased.  Twinings Earl Grey (with no milk!) has been my favorite for as long as I can remember.  This is probably in part due to the fact that my mom only ever bought Twinings Earl Grey and English Breakfast for the bulk of my younger years.  Anyhow, I just recently bought a Twinings variety pack which contained, in addition to Earl Grey and English Breakfast, a tea called Prince of Wales and it is lovely to the point that I want to bathe in it.  Just thought I’d share with whoever among you enjoys tea.  I hope you are all well. 

05:16 pm - So

I just finished Harry Potter 7 and seriously can someone please finish it and like call me or something?  My mom won't have time to start it for at least several days and Grace is out in the woods and still won't be able to get near a copy for a while.  And of course, all I want to do is tell anyone who hasn't read it yet everything so really please don't call me if you don't want to know. 

02:52 pm - Hatred

More to follow

09:47 pm - Because I'm apparently nuts

So once again I joined a new lab.  So far so good, or at least as good as can be expected considering that I've been in graduate school for seemingly my whole life at this point.  One plus however is that someone just introduced me to this site.  I thought a couple of you might appreciate it.  http://www.phdcomics.com/ 

03:47 pm - When you’re only wet because of the rain

So I quit my lab Thursday.  I’m currently being considered a ward of the department (registered for empty credits with the Chair of the Bio department) until I figure out what the hell I’m doing.  My boss offered me the sun, moon and stars to stay which was nice but I know he’s full of shit. 

I went to the Roger Waters concert last night (Pink Floyd) and it was fucking awesome despite the fact that it took us 2 and a half hours to get from my house to our parking spot because of how packed it was with people with tickets and people hoping to get tickets.  The show started at 8 and we got there at 9.  For the second set he played the whole Dark Side of the Moon album and if fucking ruled.  Just as the last song of the second set ended it started to pour and continued to pour straight through the encore of Another Brick in the Wall followed by Comfortably Numb.  I’m seeing Rush in June and I’m pretty sure it’s going to rule just as much.

On a completely unrelated topic, I went to Maryland last week and am going to California this week.  Other than these two vacations, I have only left the state of Florida twice in the last 8 or so years at least.  I almost don’t know what to do with myself.  Maryland had real dandelions, trees that weren’t palm trees, and air that wasn’t so thick you feel like you’re swimming through it. 

01:12 am - You know it’s bad when…

you get into your car in the morning and upon seeing the time your thought process is as follows:

Oh, it’s 11:11, I hope I die…oh shit, um, amend that to quickly and painlessly! (just in case it works)…oh, and like if it could happen today please then that would be great.

P.S. – Even if you are already close to 30 minutes into your drive to school (and there was a portion of road blocked off right next to home that you would have to maneuver around all over again), it is worth it to turn around and go all the way back just because you forgot to take your Nexium.  I had apparently forgotten just how horrendous I felt at all times before I started taking it and I seriously don’t know how I survived pre-little purple pill.  I need to write them a letter or something to thank them for upping my quality of life a hundred fold.  I kind of feel like there is a small bonfire living my throat and chest right now. 

01:12 am - The latest

So I decided I was going to change my program to Masters non-thesis and just leave FAU.  I spoke to my teaching boss, the lab coordinator for bio, about it.  On her insistence, I went and spoke to the chair of the department and one of the members of my grad committee who is pretty high up as well. My grad committee member has told me that he will happily take me on as a PhD student to work on a massive colon cancer drug screening project that he is just now starting with 7,000 plus compounds from Torrey Pines (big biotech institute or something).  He has told me not to make any rash decisions and that he will figure out who else he thinks would be a good fit for me and tell me what he thinks about them on Monday and then I can think it all over and decide.  There are assorted pros and cons but I think I might just do it.  If the first semester with him is sucking horribly then I can always leave as a non-thesis but I do have to really sit down and think before I commit since I'm so fucking tired and I'm having a really hard time coping with the idea of again putting my fate in the hands of a single individual where it is subject to their moods and assorted psychoses.  

The biggest pro if I do join this particular guy would be that joining him would be the best way to curb the backlash.  My advisor is going to be so pissed when I leave because I'm currently running 4 out of the 6 projects going on in the lab and he goes all out on people when they leave as it is.  Not to sound arrogant but there will be no way to pick up the slack when I leave at least initially because I'm running assays that no one else has done except for one girl who I just started training and she's planning to leave as soon as possible also.  And the tech is about to leave too--her contract ends at the end of the semester and she's not signing on for another.  So after the three of us leave it will be my boss, one grad student and the lab manager and that's it.  He will have lost 5 people within 1 year and maybe now finally the rest of the department will start to think that maybe it's him and not us--they always assume that the students are the problem and not the boss until at least 5 or so people leave within a relatively short period of time.  So after us someone should start to take notice and maybe the last remaining grad student will be able to actually graduate because there will be pressure on the boss.  But anyway, my boss is less likely to try to talk shit about me to this guy than any other person I might leave him to go and work with.  This guy is one of the 2 professors that my boss actually respects and doesn't talk shit about constantly and I don't think my boss would ever try to challenge this guy. 

I feel like I'm probably crazy to even still try to get anything and that it's obviously not meant to be but this committee member of mine tells me that he'll have me out in 3 years for sure because I've already been here too long and he won't let me stay longer.  So it's not really any more than I would be staying if I didn't switch labs again.  He and the lab coordinator are very insistent that I make sure I get the damn PhD after putting in this much time and effort in already.  And again, not to pat myself on the back but he's very selective, generally takes on very few students and has really high standards which makes me feel pretty pleased that he would make this offer.  

11:35 am - I always new that cleaning really would kill me one day

I just cleaned out my shower/bathtub and it is beautiful if I do say so myself.  However, I think all the bleach fumes are interacting badly with all the other chemicals that my lungs have collected over the course of my time spent working in labs.  I kind of can’t breathe all that well at the moment and, while death might just be my best option these days, I’m really bothered by the idea of death by suffocation.  But I suppose it could be worse; if you’ve ever breathed in SDS then you know what true torment is.  You’re throat just kind of pinches shut on you every time you breathe in. 

My boss is kissing my ass right now.  I was incapacitated with migraine the other day and couldn’t get out of bed until about 5pm.  When I got up there were multiple missed calls on my phone from pretty much everyone in my lab.  They apparently thought that I had quit given the current atmosphere and everyone got a little freaked out (the only other person in the lab who can handle all the different cell types that I’m working with is away in Sweden for the next week and a half).  Within this past week my boss has suddenly found money for me so that I don’t have to teach this summer, decided that he is going to get me an undergraduate slave to do my busy/shit work for me and is considering sending me to some lab in Virginia for a couple of weeks to do some HIV work with them.  He also had me switch all my stuff from my little lab laptop that I have been using to the newer better one that the guy who quit had (which has been such a pain in the ass to do and I really didn't want to change it to begin with but he insisted) and tried to get me to switch my desk space to take over the other guys space too.  I convinced him not to make me move (it would have put me back to back with him and at the moment I'm situated about as far from him as I can get). 

He also did some of my work for me on the day that I missed even though I told him that it would be fine to wait one more day and that I would be in to do it the following day.  This might sound like it would make me happy but he did it wrong (of course and of course there’s no telling him that) and as a result is now invading the one place where we all normally go to escape him—that would be the cell culture room.  According to one of my lab members who was there with him, he immediately started indiscriminately throwing away peoples work and complaining about all the things that were “wrong” (he knows nothing about working with cells) and now intends to give us all a good talking to about what we should be doing in there and has decided that he “really needs to have a presence in there”.  This is the room that we liken to the confessional on the Real World.  They do still have that on the show don't they?

On a positive note, he doesn’t remember what he originally wanted me to do with my stuff that he messed up the other day and so now he’s telling me to do what amounts to less than a quarter of the work he’d originally intended for me to do.  I, unsurprisingly, have no intention of correcting him.  

Oh, and also, boss called me babe again the other day.  It's happened once before that I can think of and it was baby another time.  Generally it is dear; he's very sexist and talks to the girls like they are morons and dear is part of that but no one else gets babe or baby although he does make racial comments to some of the other members.  It really bothers me but I haven't been able to say anything any of the times that it has happened because I was so focused on the blood in my veins turning to ice upon hearing it come out of his mouth.  

Does anyone know of any good science programs in other states where snow never happens?

09:48 am - Since I’m nice, the really long part is behind the cut

I apparently started a small war last night…oops…sorry miss

I am suddenly trying to plan 3 different vacations within May/June.  California is calling your name Greg.

For assorted reasons, I have eaten something like 4 different cakes in the last week or two.  One was a Coldstone ice cream cake and it was amazing.  Alternating layers of red velvet cake and birthday cake ice cream with rainbow sprinkles throughout and sprinkle-covered kit kats on top.  Mmmmmm.

I have lots of gift cards to spend at the moment and am pretty excited about that.

I have been going to the gym every day (except for last week because of migraines, out of towners and other grossness) for at least two hours a day for the last month and some.  I haven’t lost a single pound but my boobs got smaller (of course) and I’m now ravenous all the time. 

We lost another lab member this week.  My boss actually provoked him into walking out in the middle of a presentation he was giving—the last girl who left made it through the presentation before quitting during a screaming match that she had with him in his office immediately afterwards.  Of course, I acquired his project in addition to my own as well and my two other side projects—no one else in the lab has anything to do other than their own work and one girl doesn’t even have a project of her own at all right now.  

06:07 pm - New Cars and Grossness

We traded in my dad’s car today and would have also traded mine if we had been able to figure out what the hell happened to the title.  I will be inheriting my mom’s car, she’ll get the new one and my dad will get mine until we can get the title and then trade that one in.  The two cars that we are trading are both 96’s and have over 120,000 miles on them.  It was time.  My starter is about to go, I have two broken door handles, there is some portion of the car (although we don’t know where) that has an imperfect seal (it sounds like you’re in a wind tunnel when driving over about 30 miles an hour), and the left part of my front bumper is crushed in.  Despite all of that, I love my little car and am sad to see her go.  I also wish that I hadn't just spent the money to put in a new timing belt.

I have been cleaning up a bit lately when I can (or because I found that I absolutely had to) and apparently I’m kind of gross.  I was going through dust covered shelves piled with papers and all kinds of junk the other day and found, stuffed in the back of one of my shelves, a jar of little fish heads that had been stained with some magenta colored dye and preserved.  I did A/V for the 7^th Annual Vertebrate Morphogenesis Conference that was hosted at FAU a couple of years ago and dissected the jaws (and some little rocks that live in their heads) out of some of these fish heads with a really cute little Scandinavian man who had a little fun dissection area set up at the poster sessions.  He sent me home with a fish head care package which I apparently stuffed, with countless other random things, into my shelving.

I also cleaned out my car last night in preparation for the eventual trade in.  The last part of the car that I checked for junk was beneath the front seats.  I stuck my hand underneath my seat and felt a small box.  I pulled it out and to see what it was and I had apparently been driving around with a microwaveable chicken pot pie underneath my seat for what must have been at least a good couple of months.  It must have fallen out of one of my grocery bags some time ago and slid under the seat.  I never smelled anything and I really don’t understand how but seriously, how freaking gross am I? 

08:52 pm - What’s in a name you ask?

So, Maria’s husband is a fireman and he wants to set me up with one of his co-workers.  Said co-worker’s name is Malachi (sp?) Horowitz.  Wasn’t that the name of the main evil kid in one of the Children of the Corn movies?  I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep a straight face around this guy but I’m told he’s perfect for me (which basically means that he makes good money, doesn’t want babies, won’t be insulted by how tactless I am and won’t be down my throat about my being too busy to spend my every waking moment with him).  But really though, I can’t think of a worse name.  I’m all for entertaining names (my favorite student ever’s name was Great Patoombal—how amazing is that?) but I don’t think I want to potentially attach myself to one unless I somehow magically end up birthing a child in which case it's going to have the worst name I can come up with.  This is all probably sounding pretty shallow but if I’ll be unable to help myself but to harass him and/or laugh at him constantly over his name then it probably wouldn’t work out anyway.  Not to mention the fact that I’m so damn tired and busy that I don’t think I can stomach the thought of having to try to further divide my time.  I also don’t even know if my parts still work anymore at this point as it’s been so long since I’ve had any sort of human contact.  I don’t think I’d even know what to do with him aside from laugh at him for his unfortunate name. 

12:05 am - Macintosh computers are the bane of my existence

And also, I wish someone would have told me during undergrad that I should minor in graphic design if I wanted to one day be a scientist.  And funnily enough, it’s apparently even harder to learn how to use a program when you can barely use the computer that it’s running on. 

Everyone in my lab has been passing disease back and forth over the past month or so and I started to get a little gross a few weeks ago but got past it super fast somehow.  Everyone finally seems to have recovered nicely over the last week and I figured that I was in the clear.  So of course my nose closed up immediately the moment I got home yesterday and now I feel like ass.  And now I’m spending my Saturday night complaining about it online instead of reading the multiple technical manuals that I need to understand by Monday to start a new experiment. 

I’m trying to start using a new machine (whose program I can only get to run on the PCs in the lab despite the fact that it’s supposed to run on Macs also) that one of the other labs bought and my boss has this thing where he doesn’t think that we should have to stop and think or read any instructions, that we should just run stuff and it will work out—and yes, he has actually said this to me and it’s not just me commenting on how he seems to act about it.  I’m pretty well overloaded right now but at the same time it’s kind of nice to feel productive in some weird way, even if half of my shit isn’t working.  And speaking of which, hey Soraya, if you’re reading this please click below…  I won’t subject everyone else to this.  

I’ve also found that, oddly enough, if I get up early and get to lab by 8-8:30 instead of 10-ish then I can generally get out by around six and I actually feel less tired than when I go in later.  Go figure. 

01:33 am - Catching up

12:45 am - Belated Halloween

I've been meaning to post some halloween fun and just haven't had any time to do much of anything that doens't involve slaving in the lab.