Hi

We had a holiday party the other day that turned out rather well.  There was lots of food.  And cake.  Mmmmm, cake.   I do like me some cake.  Other than that not much has been going on with me.

Lab work has been going fairly slowly.  I'm troubling shooting this ligation/ gel extraction that I've been doing.  By the end of today, I should have a better plan of attack.  Also, lab work has been kinda lonely.  The Y. lab isn't around (or at least not around when I am).  And SC has been working odd hours (and not the ones that I have been working).  So, it's been a fairly solitary endeavor.  

Christmas.  Ugh.  Starting Sunday, I'm going to be doing the great tour of Ga/FL.  I drive up to MedShitTownVille on Sunday.  Then, we drive down to visit S.'s family on the 27th-ish.  Then, to visit my family on the 2nd-ish.  Then, back to G'ville on the 6th.  Then, back to MedShitTownVille on the 11th to drop S. off.  Then, back to G'ville on the 13th.  So much for a relaxing break!  However, I think I'll enjoy being away from G'ville for two weeks and I'll definitely enjoy being with S. for three weeks (!).

I'm back on the caffeine.  Big. Time.  I try to go off the caffeine, or at least cut back, every so often.  Now, I know that normally I give off the vibe of drinking many, many pots of coffee.  However, that is all hyperbole on my part.  Usually, I drink about 2 cups a day, albeit they are 8-12 oz cups.  Additionally, I don't drink soda.  That means that the only caffeine I receive are fully contained in those two cups of coffee.  So, when I say that I try to cut back I mean that I try to cut down to one cup of coffee per day (usually at work).  At this moment, though, I'm up to three cups a day plus tea in the afternoons.   

I've been rather stressed.  What with S. in MedShitTownVille, extra projects that Advisor asked (well, told) me to do, undergrads to mentor, projects not working, Christmas, etc. there's been a lot on my plate.  All that combined ends up with me not sleeping too much.  Hence, the extra punch of caffeine in the morning.  However, that's not enough to counteract the afternoon, after-lunch coma.  So, I drink (caffeinated) tea; in the hopes that the tea won't contain as much caffeine as coffee.

I, suppose, that this is just a vicious cycle.  If I stopped with the afternoon tea, maybe I'd fall asleep earlier.  That would allow me to get more sleep and cut back on my morning coffee, etc.  However, without the afternoon tea I'd fall asleep during faculty presentation.  That would draw the ire of the professor speaking and lead to a stern-talking-to from Advisor.  That stern-talking-to would lead to more stress and less sleep.  Then, I'd need more coffee...  It's damned if you and damned if you don't, I suppose.  

I think I'll just ride the caffeine wave for a while.

The One Where S. & I Almost Get A Cat.

S. & I were upstairs cleaning my room when I heard the familiar barking.  "Uh oh," I said as I scrambled over a box and blanket bag to get to the door and race downstairs.  Opening the front door, I could see that the dog had a cat cornered underneath a pickup truck.  As I ran across the parking lot, yelling "No" and being ignored by the dog, I could see her bite the cat around the middle.  At this point my voice went high and squeaky and I yelled for S. to come and help.  The dog released the cat, who immediately retreated further under the truck, and I was relieved for a fraction of a second.  That was until the dog followed the cat and evaded my grab for her hind legs.  S. came out and a neighbor came out to see what my squealing was all about.  

Luckily, S. was able to get the dog corralled and into her crate in the apartment.  The neighbor and I watched the cat and coaxed it as far as the tire.  S. brought a towel and we wrapped up the cat, which we soon learned was a kitty.  The kitty was unharmed except for a lot of slobber.  Apparently, Dixie Dog was confused as to what to do with the kitten (it didn't fight back really).  So, she would pick it up and spit it back out.  Anyhow, back to the kitty.  It was adorable (orange stripey) and tiny.  Our neighbor, who happened to be a 2nd year vet student, examined her and pronounced her as healthy as a stray could be (that is no injuries from her run in with the Dixie Dog).  

S. and I decided to take the kitty to the humane society.  On the way over we begin discussing what could happen to the kitty-- would she be euthanized?  S. mentioned that it would be nice to have a pet to come home to while up in MedShitTownVille.  We tossed around the idea a bit.  Pulling up to the humane society, I told him "One last chance."  But, alas, we headed in and gave them our rescued stray.

In retrospect, this seems like a good decision.  Especially seeing as how we're both allergic to cats.

The flying spaghetti monster (FSM) gets national coverage at the a National meeting about religion. (See Yahoo! News story) 

This does bring up some interesting points.   Does a religion have to be ancient to be a true "religion"?  Is there a number of followers a religion must have in order to be verified as a "religion"? What does constitute a religion?

In other news, things are going well for me so far.  Stuff in the lab is coming along nicely.  I tweaked R.'s project a bit and may have gotten some promising results.  C. is becoming more competent (she's extracting plasmid DNA as I type).  So, things are progressing nicely.

S. is coming into town this weekend for the game and to see moi.  And then he'll be down again next week for Thanksgiving.  

It's a relief to have things (at least temporarily) come together.

My First First-Author Paper just got accepted!!!  

I am a dumbass.

Let me tell you why.

Today is a holiday.  It's Veteran's Day (for all you unpatriotic thugs out there ;-)).  Ergo, there are no classes today. I knew this.  So, I figured the bus wouldn't be too crowded and I'd probably be able to catch the 9:15am bus with little problem (usually this bus is fairly full of people trying to get to their 9:35am class on time).  Still, I get out to the bus stop at 9:10am.  I sit down on the bench and begin to read a journal article.  Time passes and I look at my watch. 9:30am!  Holy crap the bus is late!  Eh, I'm not too anxious to get into work today.  Then, at 9:35am I realize that it's a holiday; there is no bus service on holidays.

Ergo, I am an idiot.

My friend from high school, Rhiannon, just asked anyone who read her post to  tell the her six things that make them happy.  So, here are mine:

1.  Seeing S. this past week!

2. Experiments (finally!) working.

3. Getting my paper submitted (and, hopefully, published)!

4. Sleeping in. a. lot.

5. My friends.  It's great to hang out with everyone!

6. Brownies :-)

I'll do the same thing as Rhiannon.  Instead of tagging people, I'll say that anyone who reads this should respond in kind!

Well, I'm half way through the week and it seems to be getting better.  So, a few updates:

I submitted the paper yesterday to Field Specific Journal.  So, not as great as General Subject Journal, but still it's pretty good for a paper that sprang from a rotation project.  We'll hear back in about a month as to whether or not it will be accepted, but Advisor thinks that it has a good chance of being accepted (with only a few minor revisions).

General Lab Stuff

It's going ok so far.  I've got a little fiefdom going on in the mornings.  Two undergrads who do research and one undergrad who does the dishes all come in at about the same time.  It's really strange to have all of these people asking me questions and the like.  But things are progressing C.'s work is coming along.  Right now we're just trying to get her to do basic stuff.  I (but not Advisor for reasons unknown to me) have given up on having her do this project for the collaboration with Eminent Scientist in Germany, because they needed this construct yesterday.  So, I have her do some stuff and then I redo it later.  R. is doing pretty well for herself and is fairly self-sufficient.  However, I want to hurry up the project she's working on because I want to use that for my poster for the Ireland Conference.  That means that I need to start working on it along with her.  Since, she can only come in a few days each week for only a few hours at a time.  My fluorescent stuff is moving along.  I think within the next few weeks I might actually have a trial experiment going.  That will be really awesome.  A little scary, too.  It's been a pain-in-the-ass to learn all the principles behind said fluorescent studies On. My. Own.  Then, to figure out how to apply said things On. My. Own.  So, there's quite a bit of a chance of crashing and burning (and wasting money) on this experiment... but it's also the first experiment I've ever done completely On. My. Own.  That means I'm fairly excited about it, too.

Life

Husband is still in MedShitTownVille, but he will be down here this weekend to visit and revel in Big Football Game.  Also, my parents are coming up to see a play and visit.  I'm definitely looking forward to this weekend.  Next week-- on Wednesday-- Husband is coming for an entire week!  One! Whole! Week!  It'll be wonderful.  Plus, Roommate will be out of town Thursday-Sunday.  We'll have the apartment to ourselves... it'll almost be like we're living in the same town again.  

And this has been a really long post!  So, here's signing off with, "Goodnight and Good Luck."

So, here I am again in MedShitTownVille.  Let me tell (complain) you about my drive up to this place.  First, dog was sick.  And by sick I mean liquid poop.  And by that I mean, emergency stops to let the dog out when she whined to avoid explosion all over my back seat.  Then, the rain came.  By rain, I mean torrential downpour.  So, here I am driving in the middle of bass-ackwards RedNeckVille in the middle of a horrible rainstorm (and now I'm worrying about shoddy construction of the roads) and a whining dog who is in imminent danger of pooping all over herself and the back seat.  So, that was fun.

Still, I did get to see Stephen (finally!).  We had dinner (pizza) and then went to sleep (which was interrupted by pages).  He was eventually called away in the middle of the night to attend to some (deranged, perhaps?  I mean, he is a psychiatrist) person.  Either way it was wonderful to see him again.

So, for as far as today goes?  Well, I have big plans.  I brought some work along.  I (finally!) finished the last bit of experiments for that paper I submitted back in May (that was rejected).  So, I want to write the sucker up and be able to give my advisor a copy of it on Monday.  Oh yes, Monday.  I also brought my research, etc. for the presentation I have to give on Monday to Journal Club.  Oh yes, Journal Club.  I brought along  the stuff for the presentation for the BMB Journal Club presentation I gave three weeks ago; so, I can give it again at Dr. W.'s lab meeting on Thursday.  So, there's that.  And I'm going to go food shopping for Stephen.  That actually is a pretty high priority because all he has is this crappy coffee (of which I am partaking in now).  And any of you that know me, knows the importance of my getting better coffee.

But then after 2pm... I get to see Stephen!  Finally!  That makes all this above crap worthwhile.

I've spent all week forcing myself to get up in the morning.  The mornings lately have been of the grey-overcast-let's-sit-in-bed-and-have-some-coffee variety.  I'd much prefer the drinking-a-ton-of-coffee at home-and-then-lounging-around-all-day to the get-up-and-oversee-see-the-minions-first-thing scenario.  However, I'm enjoying spending lots of time at the bench.  I've finally(!) got data to put in my lab notebook.  And I feel like I've actually been productive in the lab.  

Note the above key words: "in the lab."  I'm making slow (but steady) progress on unpacking.  I'm using the "just unpack one box a day" method.  Using this method I'll be done in about two weeks.  To aid in this unpacking I'm juggling my schedule Thursday and Wednesday of this week to allow maintenance to come by and fix the shelf in my closet (this would be the shelf in my closet that collapsed/fell two days prior to my proposal, the very same shelf that stalled my unpacking progress in the first place).  Apparently, I have to move everything out of the closet and out of the way (I'm uncertain as to how I'm going to do that).  Additionally, I have to lock up the dog.  So, I need to be present for said repairs.

Now, it's time for the weekly update from Middle-of-Nowhere-GA:  S. is on his last month of inpatient psychiatry.  After that his schedule should become much lighter.  Thus, possibly allowing us to see each other more often than twice a month.  He made it down for his first football game of the season... just in time to see UT get the crap kicked out of them.  He'll be down again to see Auburn (hopefully) get the same treatment!

So, I don't think that I've posted in months.  So, I will try to give a brief update of the interesting (at least to me) episodes that have occurred in the past several months (possibly in chronological order even!):

-the one where S. moves (to borrow a phrase from FemaleCSGradStudent) "MedShitTownVille."

-the one where I drive the 12 hour roundtrip journey to and from MedShitTownVille approximately 50 trillion times

-the one where I nearly cried after not seeing S. for three weeks

-the one where I decided to quit my PhD program (but didn't)

-the one where I spent a month writing my proposal

-the one where I moved in to the GiantBedroomApartment with M.

-the one where my Dog met M.'s Cat

-the one where I passed my quals

-the one where I hit the quarter-century mark

-the one where I watched Gator Football with N.

-the one where my grandfather asked me how my career would affect S. and me starting a family

-the one where I kept putting off posting to my LJ

Only in Gainesville would they celebrate the 4th of July the evening before.  However, being that there is so little to do, we had an “If you don't love America, you can kiss my ass” picnic.  We had fried chicken, potato salad, cole slaw, macaroni salad, beer, and apple pie.   We even had the red gingham picnic blanket my mom gave me.  However, in true tradition, it rained.  So, we picnicked on the 4th floor (out of five total) of the parking garage.  We took up a parking space, spread out the picnic blanket, and generally had a good time.  There was a slight apprehension as per the beer.  It was a conflict-- we'd be un-American without it, but with “The Mormon” as the UF president it was likely we'd be executed.  But it seemed that UPD had more of an issue with the minor car accidents than with a few over-age people partaking in refreshment.  Then came the fireworks, which were gorgeous, and the freshmen.  A group of five freshmen were standing next to us.  The most amusing was the girl whose comment on the fireworks was, “They're sooo fleeting.”  The second was the guy who tried to cop a blatant feel.  Ah to be young again!