Today's quiz
Which happy bunny are you?
you are the "you're so dumb" happy bunny.
you are brutal in your words and enjoy putting
others down.
which happy bunny are you? brought to you by Quizzilla,
I Can See Clearly Now, the presentation is over
And yes, I lived to tell about it. I worked on putting together the talk all day Monday. It ended up being 85 slides. I showed it to the boss in the early afternoon and he thought that it was basically fine, but requested a few changes. I showed it to him again at 4, after waiting for him to be free for a while. By that point, I was feeling pretty sick and just wanted to go home. All of a sudden, he decided that there were all sorts of problems with my data (which he had seen for how many months before this?) . I made some more changes and showed it to him again at 5, when he could again only talk about the problems with the data and the experiments to be done. I was sort of like "Yeah, I know, but I couldn't do a 10 day experiment in an hour. Sorry." Then he thought I was upset and started asking me how I was liking my experience in the lab, blah blah blah. I said yes, I liked it, but I wanted to yell about the stupidity of coming up with experiments at that point, and about how sick and tired I felt. We went through the whole thing again when I came back with changes at 6. He drove me home (and no, despite what E. may say, this has nothing to do with favoritism. It was raining HARD and he didn't want me any sicker when I had to give a talk the next day.) and we re-hashed the whole thing again. I went to sleep pretty much as soon as I went home and have felt considerably less sick since.
During the actual talk, the nice one was nice, the mean one was mean etc., etc., so it was all pretty normal. They asked a lot of questions and there was lots of discussion, but none of it was TOO rough. They also wanted to see some experiments again, which did not make me terribly happy, but it was okay. Everything is going to move ahead as it was before, which is good but also means that they will still bug me all the time (and they want to meet MORE often, and they want me to email them all sorts of crap like NOW.) The AWESOME news: they are having a conference at the company in late August/early September and they want me to come speak at it. In Copenhagen!! Isn't that so cool? I have already had about 17 people offer to go with me, to be my "projection assistant" or my "web coordinator" or my "valet" or my "restaurant-picker" or my "suitcase stowaway." I will have quite the entourage.
After all of this madness, the boss decided that I was getting a technician to work with me (the technician that I previously turned down because I thought I had too much going on to manage another person.) I figure that's pretty cool, especially since the rotation student's last day is Friday and because now the technician can do all of the experiments that everyone was proposing and that I was now excited about while I can do experiments that I actually think are interesting. I talked to her about the idea yesterday, and she is SO excited. It sort of freaks me out how excited she is. I guess she feels like a robot with her current work, so she is thrilled that she can be involved in a project where she will be more engaged and can see exactly how her experiments will fit in to the big picture on the days when she doesn't have study work to do. She actually ASKED me for a bunch of stuff to read and a copy of the presentation that I gave yesterday to refer to. Every time I talk to her, she cracks me up.
Okay, I ought to get back to reading for the Ass Prof meeting tomorrow (as well as grad student meeting at 3.) Any ideas for what I should do this weekend, when I will so gloriously not be in the lab. (Oh, and by the way, I am having some funny thoughts on the stupidity of scientists while I am reading, so those may show up a little later. This is too long.)
Presentation development
Well, I stayed up till 2:30 working on the presentation. I still have lots of work to do, but as of right now I have 105! semi-formatted slides. I am no longer worried about filling the two hours. I have decided to ignore the email asking me for the presentation, as I will not have it finished in time to email to the company. It will still take me all of today to finish.
In other (related) news, I woke up this morning with a very sketchy voice. My guess is that it will be gone by the end of the day, and I wouldn't be surprised if it is also gone tomorrow. Well, at least I won't have to give the talk (instead, I'll get to watch someone else butcher it, I guess).
Off to do my unfavorite lab job-running lab meeting. I'll keep you posted...
Who stole my weekend?
Well, here it is, Sunday night, and I am supposed to be working on PowerPoint yet again. I'm meeting with the guys from the pharmaceutical company on Tuesday morning (see some previous posts for the backstory on this) and I have to give them this big presentation. The plan was to just use the presentation that I gave last week, updated to include the data that I generated over the past week. My boss said that he also really wanted me to "beef up" the presentation-ie add in a lot more data. I wasn't too concerned about that, because I had a bunch of data that was generated by someone who worked with me previously, so I figured I could just throw that into PP as well, and be golden. Oh, and I needed to make some aesthetic changes to the old slides.
In the end, I spent 8 hours analyzing data yesterday. I made lots of slides (or, I put lots of data onto slides which now have to be formatted) and lots of Excel files to graph and make slides of. The big time sink was the realization that this data generated by the other person was not analyzed correctly if it was analyzed at all (or else I didn't have the right files) so I had to go back and do it again before putting it into PP. I've still got a TON of work to do.
Today, I went into the lab again, but this time to do an experiment for my rotation student. The rest of my day has largely been consumed by doing laundry. Lucky me also received an email from the pharma people, asking me to email them the slides for the meeting. I have not yet replied, but I thought of some really nice things to say back. They have been emailing me daily for the past two or three weeks regarding picky details about this meeting. Maybe it's cultural differences, maybe it's a language issue, I don't know, but they never ask me for things, they order me to do things, and I hate it. I would love to tell them that the major hold-up on the project is that they email me and want me to give them presentations and have conference calls all the time, which seriously impedes my ability to do experiments.
After the thing on Tuesday, I am going to start reading all of the crap that my favorite associate professor has been putting on my desk (he is really excited, he comes to talk to me constantly lately and always has a stack of reading) in preparation for a meeting with him on Thursday. I still wish that people would leave me alone a little more. Whatever happened to me having fun weekends, especially when the last two weekends have enjoyed such beautiful weather. I am REALLY looking forward to next weekend (although I have no idea what I am doing, it just has to be more interesting than labwork) and I hope it will still be spring. I'm thinking that it will definitely be spring (I know that spring has started when I leave the house and wish for Claritin, like I did today) but I guess I am more hoping that it is sunny and warm.
And in closing...a quote from the current issue of
Jane ... "Fooling around at least once a week provides the same increased happiness as a $30,000 raise in annual salary, and four booty calls per week are worth about $50,000. "
I'm just going to say
damn, and leave this one otherwise without comment for fear of repeating an infamous incident following a comment on an unscientific study I wandered across in
Cosmo. You may fill in your own snarky comments on said quote, of course remembering that I am a single girl living on a graduate student stipend....
Entirely NOT what I was going for...
A few hours ago, I was mentioning how I was just trying to kill a lot of time until 6 or 6:30 when it would be time to start my experiment. The time is now getting sufficiently filled, but not in a very fun way.
This morning our fearless leader (read: the boss) ran over to my desk to tell me about an MD honors thesis that he was reading. He described an experiment to me and wanted to talk about whether doing a similar experiment in my system was a good idea. I agreed that it was a good idea, and we decided that I would set it up. After he left, I looked back through my data, because I was pretty sure that I had done a similar experiment. I couldn't find one exactly like it, but I did find one 75% like it, and wondered why I hadn't done the "perfect" experiment in the first place. I spent quite a while this morning chasing down the answer.
A little later, the boss was back to tell me about the thesis again. This time he wanted to talk about how my research related to another set of literature. He decided that I ought to read said literature and get back to him on it. The he decided he would just give me the thesis to read once he was done examining the student this afternoon so that I could get all of the kid's references and read them (notwithstanding the fact that I've already read them and cited all of them in my preliminary qualifying exam proposal, when I discussed how that literature would relate to my proposed experiments.)
Then, even later, E. and I were sitting in the lunchroom having a snack, and in walks the scary Associate professor that I was excited to see absent from my lab meeting (see Monday). He wanted to talk about how my project is going, and then he got all up-in arms about what I SHOULD be doing. After a bit of conversation there in the lunchroom (during which E. abandoned me!), my unfavorite associate prof dragged me upstairs to his office, where he talked at me for an hour and printed out a paper and a bunch of abstracts that I ought to read. Then, he dragged me downstairs to the boss's office to talk about all of these experiments that I should be doing (thankfully, el boss man was not there-he was actually at the thesis exam, so we could not discuss with him) and THEN he dragged me to another room, where he got FOUR textbooks from a shelf and gave them to me to read as well. Oh, and could I learn this literature and come back with some papers and talk with him about it again.
And then the boss dropped the thesis on my desk.
BOOOOOO! I ended up cleaning up and organizing my desk, because there were too many papers on it at that point, but I should probably get around to reading soon. It is looking more and more like the end of this week/this weekend will strongly resemble last weekend (all lab, all the time.) Can you tell how excited I am about that one?
Hello, I'm a dumbass
First things first: I tried to reply to the comments on the previous post, but I couldn't exactly figure out how to do it. I wanted to reply to each one individually, but apparently I can't and instead I have to reply to them all at the bottom (as shown below). Oops. Guess I'll have to be quicker next time.
At the moment, I am doing a lot of sitting around. Why, you ask? Well, yesterday I had three experiments to do. I thought to myself--time only matters with one of these experiments. I'll rush around and do that one first, and then I'll take my time and have lots of diet coke breaks while setting up the other two. As I was finishing setting up the last experiment at 6-6:30 pm, a very bad thought hit me. I realized that time DID matter for that particular experiment, and that I needed to leave the cells for 24-36 hours before doing the next step (which would take 3-4 hours). So it looks like I am staying super late tonight, and I could have prevented it if I had actually thought about what I was doing. What do I have to do otherwise today? Not much, other than avoid the boss who is on a mini-rampage with ideas for experiments for me to do. I'm glad he's excited about my project and all, but this is too much.
Someone just called me to go to lunch, but maybe I'll be back later, since I'm sitting here till 6:30...
A new week, but nothing new
Ahhh, it has already been quite the day, and it's only 12:45...
I gave lab meeting this morning, which was interesting. I was really worked up about it, which was odd because lab meeting isn't necessarily that big of a deal. One issue was that I was such a slacker about it, and had to stay up really late last night (and realized that I forgot to put some data on my laptop, so I had to come in early today to finish making slides) to get it done in time. I had such good intentions of doing it ahead of time, but it didn't happen. Oh well, I'm giving another talk on the 29th, so I guess I've got another shot to get something done before 5 minutes pre-due date. As I thought about it this morning, I realized that I was also worked up about it because it was my first REAL lab meeting presentation about my project-the previous ones were either background or random data that I had generated but had no clue what it meant (show and tell, I guess.) This time I had data, and a model, and a whole story, which was nice, but also meant that there was much more of my own investment in the presentation, and was much more liable to be attacked. It is definitely one of those times that I hate being in a humungous (sp?) lab- 79 pairs of eyes staring at you, and a couple of junior faculty members who like to rip into you are not comforting thoughts.
It went okay. I only got 3 hours of sleep last night, so I was pretty tired. I was in the lab this morning earlier than I get up some mornings, but at least I had the talk as close to what I wanted as possible.
[Insert lunch and work break here. Okay, now I'm back]
Then there was the meeting itself. J. (who spoke before me) and I were excited to see that certain members of the lab who often tear up people's data were not there. J. spoke, and his talk was short and uneventful. I got up and gave my talk, which was also pretty short. For some reason, the boss decided to shoot rapid fire questions at me for about half an hour. It could have been a lot worse (I was able to at least propose an answer to all of them) but it wasn't fun, and whenever I thought it was done, he just kept going. Afterwards, I got lots of compliments on how well I answered questions, or how calm or patient I was or how great my talk was blah, blah, blah, whatever. (At the same time, I would be mad if no one said that, so I'll just shut up now.) I was kind of annoyed-it isn't like my boss never sees me and never gets to ask me about my data-why today in front of everyone instead of one of the other times I see him in a small group setting. The whole presentation thing is hard enough already-remembering to speak clearly (I was over-caffeinated and spoke WAY too fast today), remembering to look at the audience and not at the screen, remembering how to use the little remote control pointer thingy...it's tough. No need for "let's demonstrate our immunology knowledge" too. Oh well, I lived, and now it's over. Just have to give ANOTHER talk on the 29th (which means more work this weekend). No biggie.
I've been looking forward to post-talk today for a long time...I was trying to decide what fun thing that I have skipped during the past couple of weeks while I was busy I would do today. Now that I think about it-I have to run downtown and buy moisturizer and clean my apartment tonight. No fun for me. :( I went out to a special top-secret lunch today, which was AWESOME. I would elaborate, but I'm not entirely sure who is reading this, so I will not divulge the secret. (I know a secret! I know a secret! Yay!!!!! It's a good one!!!) Things are good. I'm not so into focusing this afternoon what with the day thus far and the lack of sleep...I'd like to leave but the rotation student is here needing attention, so I'm sill here.
Also-I got to fill out a survey today that was supposed to be a Harvard Graduate Student vote on the issues with Larry Summers that the faculty put to a no-confidence vote. I voted (it was sort of like an online quiz, and we all know how I feel about online quizzes.) , but I still can't figure out what the point is. No one cares what we think, we aren't really involved in the situation, and I can't see how my voting will change the number of women scientists or anything. How silly.
Movie quiz
This is soooo true!! (And I am soooo hungover. More on that later.)
 | You scored as Sadistic Humour. Congratulations, you scored Sadistic Humour. You find the little things in life to be funny, and have a great sense of humour, whether it's stupid or dark. You're probably young, and older people don't understand why it's all so fucking hillarious. Either way, check out: Clerks, Mallrats, Napoleon Dynamite, Wayne's World.
Sadistic Humour | | 90% | Romantic Comedy | | 90% | Sci-Fi/Fantasy | | 85% | Mindfuck | | 80% | Artistic | | 60% | Drama/Suspense | | 60% | Mindless Action Flick | | 15% |
Movie Recommendation.
created with QuizFarm.com |
Can you spell A-W-K-W-A-R-D?
Before I begin, I just thought I'd let you know that I would consider myself to be extremely liberal politically. I don't think I've been too political in posts yet, so you may not have picked up on that, but most of you who know me well know that this is obvious. This is relevant because the whole rest of this semi-annoyed post is a big fat example of liberal guilt.
I just went down the street to my local laundrymat to put some clothes in the washing machine. What did I find there but a homeless woman, who apparently took up residence there sometime during the day. As soon as I paused to readjust the laundry in my arms to open the door, she got up from sitting and opened the door to help me. The main reason that she opened the door for me was that she also has a dog, and the dog had crapped right in the middle of the doorway, where I definitely would have stepped (particularly since I couldn't see that spot on the floor while carrying my big bag of laundry.) Okay, so this was weird. I was also the only person in the laundrymat (and no one had any clothes in any washers) --apparently I was the only person with the balls to stay when they came upon this situation. As I was putting my clothes in the washers, her cute little beagle ran over to me wanting to play. Then I realized yet another issue. The lady was sitting on the windowsill next to the change machine. Which of course meant that to get quarters, one would have to go stand in front of her (practically in her lap), close enough for her to see how much money someone has on them. I looked in my wallet (which as some of you know, is nice and makes me look like I have more $$ than I actually do) and what did I have? Not enough quarters for one load, let alone the two that I had, a twenty, which is too big for the machine, and a ten. So I got to walk over and stand there and have the maching spit 40 quarters at me, right in front of her. What exactly was I supposed to do in this situation?? Also-generally everyone leaves their laundry while it is washing at this laundrymat. Should I have left, or should I have been more worried about losing my clothes than I might have otherwise? (Someone else came in to put in their laundry as I was almost done)
I ended up leaving and then going back early, having thought better of it. She was gone when I moved my clothes to the dryer, which absolved me from the situation a little. I'm still a little annoyed about the whole thing though. I understand that being homeless is horrific, and I certainly want to help. At the same time, I still feel like it was a little bit of a ploy. It was sort of like she was forcing people to notice her (by which I don't mean the dog, although that certainly helped) and by sitting in a place where we were forced think about (any maybe even show) exactly how much money we had. Its sort of like the people who ask you for money outside of the drugstore actually coming into the drugstore to ask you for money. Every time I get annoyed about it, I feel bad, though. I mean, I'm sure it wasn't fun for her either, in fact I would have been humiliated had it been me. I suppose if she was desparate (sp?) enough to put herself in that situation, then things must be pretty bad, and I ought to have done something.
Okay, I'm going to watch the rest of Survivor, but I'll probably be back with some thoughts later on my day at the lab.
Bleh
Ick. Today was a very long day. I was in the lab (really at the tissue culture hood) from 7am until 7:30 pm. I almost fell asleep at the microscope about three times, and my eyes kept losing focus while I was counting cells. I cannot get up that early. I ended up surviving the day, but just barely. At least I got a ton of work done. Now if only I can figure out a way to get out of giving lab meeting on Monday (or to at least push it back a week) I would be golden. Around 7 I started feeling icky, and that has continued until now. The ickiness didn't stop me from heading over to Best Buy to pick up The Incredibles and Alfie when I left the lab. As I was leaving Best Buy, the fire alarm started going off. I don't know for sure what happened, but I just have to say that things did not generally go my way today, so I apologize to all of my fellow Landmark Center Best Buy shoppers if I made Best Buy burn down with my presence. We will all feel the loss.
I also figured out that I screwed up when I sent out an email about one of the NCAA pools that I am running (I am running 3 and participating in 7 competitions of some sort.) Turns out that the email that I sent had a weird title and said that it was sent from my user name from last year, Devil with a Blue Dress, causing lots of my friends to delete the message thinking that it was spam. Ooops.
I LOVE college basketball, but March Madness is not really at a good time for me right now. Can I ask to have it pushed back a week? We have recruitment this weekend, I have to prepare for lab meeting this weekend, and I am so busy this week that I am afraid that I will forget to fill out my bracket. It looks like tomorrow will be the day for that. Tomorrow is being pegged as the day for a lot of things around here, let's hope I don't oversleep/feel sick etc. too much...
Still feeling a little blah (And people are busy Friday night! I WANT TO GO TO BROTHER JIMMY'S!! Who's with me?). Any great suggestions for fun things to do (keeping in mind that it will be tough for me to find time to ACTUALLY do them???)
World traveller
It was quite the weekend. I started off with some travel trouble-I was stuck in Dulles for about 3 hours longer than I was supposed to be there, since my flight was delayed. It was okay except for the whole no wireless access in Dulles thing, and the fact that I had to spend the time in Terminal G. At Dulles, G apparently stands for ghetto...it is sort of like a converted shack with shitty heat. I made it to the hotel though, so it was all good. I was a little freaked out, because I had planned on doing a little shopping in Durham before everyone else got there, but I was stuck in Dulles instead. Shock of all shocks, I managed to find most of what I needed in the Durham Kroger, so it worked out. Other thing that I learned during this part of the trip: there is a lot more to Durham than I thought. Whole sections that I was unaware of. This means that a: I was very clueless about my environment as an undergrad or b:A whole other section of the city appeared overnight. I prefer option b, so that is what I'll believe.
Had a GREAT time Friday night watching Duke beat UVa at Satty's while eating lots of yummy pizza and drinking yummy beer. Then we played PhotoHunt, where we reset the top scores and generally got to feeling like it was old times. The only problem on Friday (and it was actually a problem that happened THREE separate times that day) was that we had to wait for unending amounts of times for cabs. I learned that perhaps I will have to live in a large city for the rest of my life solely because I'm not patient enough to wait very long for cabs. How do cab companies survive when they take half an hour to show up after you call? Unbelieveable.
Saturday was super fun too. We had a good time at the bridal shower pretending to be grownups. Duke won again and I got to walk around a cool mall. All in all, the best part of the whole experience was that I got to see old friends who I hadn't seen in a while. I miss them (you guys) and I wish that I could see you all more often (well, except for the whole mocking me at Satty's thing....) Sometimes I think that maybe I should have stayed in the south (and not only when I miss my friends. Also when it snows here, which is about every 5 minutes.)
Yesterday was kind of crazy-I tried to standby onto earlier flights and ended up hanging out in Dulles (again) most of the day. At least I didn't have to hang out in Terminal Ghetto. While bouncing around Dulles trying to get to Boston, I hung out with this guy who is sort of my polar opposite, but we were being kind of flirty, mostly because we had lots of time to kill. It was kind of funny--he was Mr. Earthy Crunchy, while I am, ummmmmm, not. The part that was really interesting was that he seemed really curious, intelligent, well-read, etc., but he was really ignorant about HIV/AIDS, and he spent a good two hours asking me questions about what HIV/AIDS and vaccines were. It was good for him to find stuff out (it took a while, but I also finally explained to him that he sounded silly when he talked about doing certain things for enzyme health, when enzymes are actually inside of cells. Then we talked about what he could do for cell health) and it was good for me to realize that I can't always assume that people understand what I think ought to be common knowledge. Great line from Mr. Crunchy Granola "You know, before I talked to you, I thoght that condoms rock, because they let people enjoy sex for sex and not worry so much. Now, I think that condoms rock even more, and I am going to start telling all of my friends how important they are." (Look at me, changing the world little by little.) I had another semi-enlightening conversation with the cab driver that drove me from my hotel room in Durham to the airport. I don't know what got into me, but I thought strangers were really interesting yesterday.
Today was a relatively busy day getting little crappy administrative details done. Tomorrow I have the experiment day from hell, so don't expect anything. Oh, today I also set up lots and lots of NCAA tournament pools, but I haven't made any picks yet. I really can't get behind Duke as a number 1 seed--we just aren't worthy of it. Oh well. I won't be surprised when Kentucky beats us.
All in all, it's been an interesting few days. Lots of alcohol, lots of fun, and lots of chatting with old friends and meeting new people (who are generally somehow related to old friends.) All of the old friend/new people-ness resulted in my being asked about what I want to do in the future a whole bunch, and the conversations led me to talk about a couple of issues that nag at me but that I never talk about. The whole thing has put me into a bit of a pensive mood (it is readily apparent that all of the things that I really want in life are incompatible), so you may be getting some more deep stuff soon.
Cat story
Just a quick thing....
I just finished doing my laundry. As I opened the door to leave the apartment and get my clothes out of the dryer, a super cute black kitten entered the apartment. He/she/it ran around the living room for a while (obviously really scared) and tried to hide under a chair. Our cat, Kimble had the most confused look on his face. We took the kitten door-to-door to the apartments in our building until we found the people who were cat sitting for him for the week. We also ended up having nice chats with all of our neighbors and getting a party invitation in the process. Kimble is still staring at the door, really pissed.
Update and funny story
Okay, so here's the deal on the company meeting...
I got in early this morning before the boss got in and ran into him as he was walking in the door. I asked if he had seen the email and he said that he had skimmed it at about midnight the night before (phew on not catching me leaving early) and that he would read it again and we would talk. When we talked about it, he made me feel a lot better, mostly because he is really good at spin control. We talked about what we would say to the company and how we would present the data. He didn't go for my idea of having the meeting on the 22nd or after, but I was sort of lulled into thinking that it was okay and that he would make sure all hell didn't break lose during the conference call. I checked with his secretary to find out when he was free next week, and emailed the times to the company (Wednesday or Friday being the times.)
Reply:
Oh, we're actually out of town next week. We won't actually be around to meet with you for a while. We will be in the US later this month-would it be okay if we just spent a day in Boston on April 1st?
I was SOO excited. I mean, I was resigned to doing lab meeting on the 21st, and I was almost calm and resigned to meeting next week and hiding behind the boss. I can SO do April 1st. I jumped on that really quick.
The rest of the day was frustrating as usual-too much work, but I at least got it done.
Then we had graduate student meeting at 3, where the grad students and the boss get together and talk about our recent data and implications of our projects. We were talking about trying to infect a monkey with this one special virus and how much of the virus we could risk using up vs. how much of virus was necessary to actually infect the monkey. In the end, we started talking about how much trauma had to be caused to a mucosal site to get transmission to occur. For those of you who are non-science types, we were talking about how much an intra-rectal injection tears tissue and whether the tearing was important. There were all of these comparisons to "the physiological setting" and we danced around the topic for a while, but no one ever came out and said the words "tearing involved in sex" or "rough sex" or "which types of sex are the roughest" which is what we were all thinking. I managed to act like a grownup through the whole thing, but it was tough. I couldn't look right or left, because I didn't want to catch anyone else's eye. Oh well, at least that is over and I only have ONE DAY left of work this week. Yay for the trip, and yay for leaving all of this yucky weather.
Addendum to previous rant...
So there are three third year graduate students in our lab. One took 2+ months off last summer when he got married. One goes on vacation relatively often (and is currently in Italy with his girlfriend for a week.) I occasionally take a long weekend, but I am actually under the amount of time that I can take for a vacation, unlike most of the other grad students that I know. How is it that I might get burned here for taking one day off this week? This so sucks.
Nooooooooooooooo
I was all about taking the good with the bad today. I really was. Got up at 8:30 instead of 6:30? No biggie. Still got to work on time. Timing actually worked out about perfectly to coordinate centrifuge times with my rotation student, so if I'd have gotten there at a different time then things would have been a real pain in the ass. Rotation student's ficolling was crap as usual, but no biggie. The day went relatively well other than doing a lot of boring work. I originally thought that I would have to stay pretty late today to get regating computer time, but it turned out that the computer is free all day tomorrow, so I am going to regate then. The weather was crappy, but it's New England, what did I expect? In the end, I was able to cut out a little early (5:45) to run to Best Buy/Bed Bath and pick up a couple of things and then take the T home instead of walking. I ran into a friend at Best Buy and we chatted for a while and I found a new Sims2 expanson pack, so it seemed like an excellent trip (other than the crappy weather). And then I got home and checked my email. Before I go into what I found in my email, let me give you a brief overview of my plans for the next couple of weeks:
Tonight: Read The Shadow of the Giant so that I can be done with it before the weekend, so roommate can take it to BU to get Orson Scott Card to sign it while I am out of town.
Wednesday: Regating, grad student meeting, seminar, getting stuff together to go out of town (laundry)
Thursday: Setting up experiments, making sure all data on my computer, writing protocols etc. (getting ready to be gone)/lunch with friend/packing
Friday-Sunday: Exciting trip to NC. Bringing laptop to work on lab meeting presentation that I have to give on 3/21. Said presentation will take a lot of work, and I need to get as much of it in order as I can.
Major experiments every day of the following week with the exception of Monday (including Saturday and Sunday) in preparation for the lab meeting. Lots of stressing and powerpoint work to occur.
3/21-Give lab meeting, should I not think of a brilliant way to get out of it before then. (Do you get how much work these presentations are/how much I dread them?)
Okay, back to the email....
I got an email from our collaborator in the pharmaceutical company. The email arrived in my inbox at 6:06. This email was not particularly nice, and basically yelled at me for not having a meeting with them recently and asked me to set up a conference call ASAP. The tone was not nice, and it sounds like they want to have a big discussion of where the work is going and possibly end the collaboration. The email was cc'd to my PI. My guess is that he came to look for me all worked up by the tone of the email, and found that I was gone because I cut out early (see above). Crap. The question is...when is he going to want me to set up the conference call? He usually is like "well, set it up for the next time I'm free" which ends up being in two or three days. Problem? I'm going away, so I won't be available Friday and will have to ruin my days off to get it done for early next week. Can I convince him to have it 3/22 (after the lab meeting?) Boy do I hope so. Until I talk to him tomorrow morning (and believe you me I am going to get in at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow) I am going to stress all night about how much of my plans are ruined, when we'll have to have the meeting, and how mad at me he'll be. I am trying to decide whether I should do some of the prep work tonight just to have it done in case I need to do a quick turnaround, or whether I ought to hope that he hasn't seen it and try to relax for the night, since I certainly won't be relaxing any time soon. Goodbye all things not related to the lab for the next few days. Let's hope it's not goodbye trip. Oh, and remember how I haven't been getting much sleep lately for no apparent reason? Looks like that trend will continue. My other question--what happens to my project if we decide to discontinue the collaboration? It seems to be going fruitfully for getting data for publication, but it doesn't sound like they are happy about it from a pharma point of view. If we quit collaborating, do I get to keep the materials that they sent me? Is my boss still interested in the project (I think so, but who knows)? Will I have to up and change projects after a year of work and almost a publication's worth of data? The only good part that I can see of ending the collaboration would be that I would never have to have another conference call with them again.
Best case scenario: Boss says give the presentation after the lab meeting. We decide to discontinue the collaboration and I get to keep working on the project and keep my reagents. Of course, there are a whole lot of scenarios that are much worse. Right now, I am halfway between wanting to cry and wanting to throw up. Looking on the bright side...at least it is taking my mind off of the other stuff that I have been thinking about lately. All humor and positive distractions would be appreciated.
Smells like Teen Spirit
The first thing to notice is that I am again on pace for less than five hours of sleep, which is not cool since I only got 2.5 last night. Today was a kind of blucky day, though I guess I survived. Tomorrow I have some more technically challenging experimental stuff to do, so lots of problems certainly could ensue. Great....
I am still in a pensive/angst-y mood, which is certainly exacerbated by spending the night time hours awake. Aren't I too old for this? Shouldn't I have figured more stuff out by now?
I'm spending a lot of time wondering if all of my precious and soon to be written up data is, in fact, complete crap. I have to present on it in two weeks, and the pressure of needing to generate certain data and to format the rest of the data is getting to me. I'm afraid that once I plot some findings the way I am told that I ought to, the effect will go away. What if it does? Where does that leave me? I am certain of every other part of the story, but there is one thing that I have never re-graphed. I know that it is true deep down, because I always see it, but what if the numbers don't convey the effect that I definitely see in the wells. Also on the lab topic-does my boss think that I am working hard enough? I know he was really happy with me before, and I don't think things have changed in the way he is acting, but is he okay with my progress? My rotation student seems unenthusiastic. Will the boss think that it is my fault if she doesn't come back? There are a couple of meetings to discuss my progress that I am avoiding. When will that come back to bite me in the ass? What kind of problems will I face for my avoidance? Exactly how late am I going to need to stay in the lab tomorrow to get things done? Doing science would be so much easier if I could just do/plan/analyze the experiments and not have so many nagging doubts. I think that is one of the biggest things that I don't enjoy about the process during the times when I am anti-science-in the end, you can never be sure exactly what is happening to your cells, because you can't actually SEE them and observe everything about them...you only see what you look for. Sometimes I really with that I could be SURE about something. It's not like I need to be sure about what's going on all the time, but a little while of certainty would be really comforting.
I've got a similar list of nagging questions about my personal life too, as usual. Same old same old problems, and same ultimate conclusion as above: it's not like I need to be sure about what's going on all the time, but a little while of certainty would really be comforting.
I guess I am going to work on reading for a while, and hope that I can fall asleep. As with everything else, I'm not too optimistic about it. Wish me luck...
Who needs sleep?
I am soooooo tired. Can I sleep? Nope. After an hour of trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep, I gave up. I have now spent an hour reading magazines, surfing, etc. etc. etc. You will be happy to know that I have lots of ideas for potential posts. I am also caught up on the major theories of what will happen next on Lost. (I know you were worried.) The alarm clock is set for 6:30, which is going to come way too soon. As if I needed another reason to be grumpy. Watch out for venom tomorrow. This sucks.
What comes around, goes around?
I'm still not really a fan of the blog yet, even though I keep writing in it. That probably explains why I haven't really circulated the URL much, although that may change. Up until now, I feel like I have been rather shallow in my posts; at least more shallow than I am in real life. I think that there are three potential reasons for the shallow-ness: first, that I have only been writing for a week and have been occupied by less deep thoughts during that week; second, that I have not been entirely comfortable admitting and declaring some of the deep thoughts that I have had lately; and third, that I am just considerably more vapid than I think I am. I'm not sure which of those reasons is the most important, though I suspect all are partially correct. I, for one, will be interested to see how that changes.
Earlier this evening, I was reading a magazine and came across the quote "Everyone evolves and people become more like themselves." Now, I can't vouch for the profundity of that statement, because the rest of the interview makes the speaker sound as if he has a rather poor command of the English language, but it made me think. At first I thought the whole idea was silly, but then I realized that it might have some merit. I have certainly changed in my 25 years, and I sometimes wonder if those changes are for the better, and how I will change in the future.
In high school, I had ups and downs like anyone else. For a lot of reasons, I think I put up a little bit of a wall between myself and others so that I could be shielded during social interactions. I definitely had more going on than people may have thought, but I was extremely conscious of being judged and wanted to limit that to some extent. Ultimately, I was rather upset with the person that everyone judged me to be, and wished that I had more choice in the matter. The downside was that I was also a bit introverted and I took a little while to warm up, which likely made some people decide that I was stuck-up.
All of that changed in college. I was considerably more outgoing (at least when alcohol was involved) and got to know a lot more people much better than I knew anyone in high school. I think that my college friends know me better than anyone else, and truly understand what is going on in my head. A lot of this stems from my assumption that I would not end up being viewed in the same way that I had been viewed in high school (that I would stack up to my college classmates differently than I had compared to my high school classmates) and therefore I didn't have to worry about judgement so much. I thought that I had a lot more power in shaping how I was percieved, so I was more generous in terms of giving out information about myself. The walls came down and there was a lot less spin.
Now, two and a half years later, I feel like I am tending back towards some of my high school tendencies. Partially, that is because I am drifting back towards being introverted in professional situations, so as not to do something that would have long lasting professional implications. I know that the impressions I make now are going to affect me far into the future. Of course, since the vast majority of people that I interact with are work either in my lab or are in my program, that really colors my actions. I'll admit that I do things that are silly often and sometimes share too much, but I would generally attribute that to not being able to be entirely open on a day to day basis. I've also noticed that I am getting some of the same judgements that I used to get. Since I hear those same sorts of perceptions (which bring the same demons that I used to run from-and they don't have anything to do with Wake Forest) in a setting entirely different from my high school setting, I realize that I need to get more comfortable with them, whether believe them or not, and that I need to start to accept them and incorporate them into my view of myself more. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, the more I feel the judgements, and the more I notice that I am being noticed for qualities other than the qualities which I value in myself, the more I have been shutting down. I have become considerably more introverted, and I can see the walls going up. I really wish that wasn't happening, because it also means that I have a much harder time opening up to people that I actually want to be open with. I also have a very different place in the social scheme here than I did before. (Note: I said DIFFERENT. Different means not the same. Different does not mean bad. Don't think that I am criticizing my friends here, because I am not, I am just saying that they are not the same as my college peeps. We've had this discussion before; you know who you are.) The people here are quite different from my friends in other places-they are interested in different things, we relate in different ways, and in the end they make my world a very different place. There was a little less choice involved with the graduate school friends as compared to the undergrad friends (there are only so many people in the graduate program) but that doesn't mean that I don't adore them just as much, and that they aren't as important to me. It just means that they stimulate and challenge me in different ways and that they allow my to express/be myself in different ways.
So the question comes: Do I act differently because of situational differences, or because my personality is evolving? (I would assume some of both) Can I say that all of the above qualities are parts of myself, or is one personna more me? How much choice do I have in the matter-how much can I direct who I am becoming? Is there a way that I can be comfortable enough with whatever version of me I end up with so that I can stop being so cautious with what parts of myself I disclose? Is is all some sort of screwy esteem problem? (I wouldn't say that I am particularly unhappy with myself; I just value some of my traits more than others and wish that everyone else would also find them to be my more noteworthy qualities, instead of focusing on something that I have never been particularly impressed by. ) Am I "evolving into myself?" Am I "evolving back to myself from being someone else before?" Will Sydney's mother return and vanquish the evil stalker Stavros? (Oh, wait, I'm not supposed to be writing Alias/soap opera dramatic copy, now am I? Ooops. I got a little carried away with questions there. Back to topic now) Is all of this just typical twenty-something angst? Do you all now think that I am crazy? (Stop shaking your head yes!)
In other news, I have some other non-shallow thoughts that lean more towards politics, but they can wait for another day. I've got some other stuff too, but this is getting long.
Oh-last bit of news....I am currently voice-less. (I'm sure it will be back tomorrow.) THAT is how much I screamed at the TV while watching the game. I think I will end up having nightmares. How frantic waving of the arms translates into a time-out is beyond me. Anyway, my general thought on the matter is Grrrrrr and WTF.
Important thoughts
Okay, it's a commercial of the Duke game, so I don't have much time.
Just got home from shopping on Boylston/Newbury Street. I went with E. to help him pick out a suit. He ended up getting two suits that look really nice on him. I think that I did my job well (particularly of picking shirts/ties to go with the suits. Go me.) Funniest moment of the day: We are in Brooks Brothers being helped by a rather elderly man. After sending E. to the dressing room, the guy asked for his shoe size. After he answered (with what is apparently a relatively large shoe size for his height? I don't know.) , the guy smirked at me and winked before going off to get the shoe. Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. Afterwards, I couldn't stop giggling (I mean, think about the situation) and E. was all like, what? What are you laughing at? (Thinking that I am laughing at him in his suit.) Anyway, he got two nice suits, and I was a good fashion advisor.
After the suit shopping, I made a purchase on Newbury Street too....... I pretty bad and spent more than I should of. Ooops. I am working hard at not feeling guilty, but I am sure that I will once I see the credit card bill.
Once I got home with my exciting new purchaseS, I found out some other excellent news....Illinois lost!!!! I made a couple of phone calls to Illinois alums to console, er, remind them that I was right that they wouldn't run the table. Now I am watching the other, considerably more important game. I am really not pleased with how Duke is playing....we need Dock back now!! And we need to learn how not to foul, as usual.
Okay, I need to get back to game watching (and the concomittent yelling at the TV and cursing). I have some more stuff that I might write about, but now is not the time. I'l probably set up some links and such as well and definitely attempt to be less boring. On that note, I realize that my last post is stupid. All of the events mentioned were really funny at the time (as was another involving someone covering my desk with condoms) but were not funny out of context or if you weren't there. So please ignore.
Quotes of the day:
(This will be quick since the 5 hours is up. Almost.)
Two quotes that I am a fan of today:
#1 "Verb object, pronoun gerunding noun!"
(Apparently I was supposed to already be familiar with this one, but I wasn't. However, I got it on first sight, which makes me happy. If you didn't get it, think harder.)
#2 "It sucks. It's like penis enlargement!"
(This is in response to getting lots of junk snail mail, but I think it could be useful in describing any sort of SSDD event. Also, it doesn't look as funny in print as it did when said. I guess you had to be there to fully experience the ire directed towards penis enlargement.)
#3 "Can I copy your mistakes?"
(During a conversation about the paper that I had to edit...someone else is supposed to edit it as well, but doesn't want to read it and would prefer to use my edits.)
Life in isolation
Sometimes I wish that I lived in a little bubble. Not only do I recognize the utlity of a bubble from an immunological point of view, I also think it would be quite useful in avoiding other people. I'm not a misanthrope by any stretch of the imagination, however, I've been slightly frustrated this morning. I came in early because I have a long experiment going on today, and I was behind schedule (note to self: no matter how much you might want to think that step 1 of your protocol takes 45 minutes, it actually takes an hour and a half in real people time) . While I was working, someone (a non-native English speaking Post-Doc) came by my tissue culture hood and told (not asked) me that I needed to read her paper, and oh by the way, she needed it done today. I was feeling frazzled already, so I wasn't entirely sweet to her, but I told her I would get to it and asked her to put it on my desk. When I made it back to my desk a little while later, I found not only the paper but emails from two other people telling me about things that they desperatly needed me to to this morning. All three of these people are super lucky that my experiment has a one hour incubation followed almost immediately by a five hour incubation, so I have the time to do it. But why do they expect that I can just drop everything and do random crap for them RIGHT NOW? Can't they take some responsibility for themselves? Ah well, it's just going to end up eating up some of my goofing off time, so I'll be okay, it's not a big deal. Oh, and a side benefit to the bubble could be that I could more easily avoid other people's drama. I so wish that I could pick which co-workers I sat next to...
Doing other people's work is a nice distraction from other stuff that is going on, though. Going back to the theme from a previous day...I am still over-analyzing/stressing/thinking about/obsessing (pick the severity of your adjective) over stuff that I would rather ignore. Bleh. Any funny distractions are appreciated. Also appreciated would be a personal assistant as well as someone who can figure out how to get my ejournal email search account to stop fucking up. I think it has something to do with my Java settings, but I'm not sure. Grrrr.
Alright, I have to go read this paper....and feed people's cells....etc. etc. etc. (And avoid the boss, who I hear coming, further proving the point that he only comes by when I am slacking.)
Oh, and you may hear from me again this afternoon. I am currently at the beginning of a five hour incubation, so I may be back to kill more time.
Novella du jour
First, I would like to congratulate myself on fixing my internet connection last night and again earlier tonight when it went down. Good job self! Today was another day of mostly internet-based research (PubMed and BD Pharmingen are my friends.) and then an excellent pulled pork, sweet potato and hush puppy dinner. Sigh. Even though Boston will never have NC's wonderful weather, at least NC food is readily available.
On the way home from eating too much, I decided to stop at the Gap. (Right away 90% of all readers know where this is going...) I needed new khaki pants and wanted to look around. I went in knowing that I have seen lots of things that I like there lately, but I figured I could hold back since really all I needed were khaki pants and maybe to try on a pair of jeans and because I was not going alone and would not want to hold the person I was with up. Damn Gap. Their current line's color palette is basically brown, pink, yellow and khaki. Those of you who know me know that 98% percent of my wardrobe is a.) from the Gap and b.) jeans, khakis, brown, black, white and varying shades of red (including pink). If I threw in blue, it would be 99.9%. Really, I am a brown-based outfit type of girl. Right away you can probably see the problem. So now I have a lot of new clothes. (I told my fellow shopper that he didn't have to stay while I shopped, and he promptly went home.) It's really all the Gap's fault though, for picking those colors. Oh, and I still need a new pair of sneakers, since the ones that I wear every day have holes in them. It always makes me laugh to think about how poorly I dress when I go to work everyday given how much I shop. I am sure that my co-workers think I know nada about clothes.
After the copious shopping, I took the longest T ride ever home. I think the red line was having some big problems. This T journey gave me lots of thinking time, and I had three dominant thoughts:
1. How out of touch are marketing peeps? On the way in to the station I noticed that there were a bunch of new ads up for something called Axe. After much consideration, I figured out that Axe is a deodorant, but the way that is pictured made it look like an energy drink. Anyway, the ads were semi-official looking, and seemed to be of the opinion that if you wore Axe, your fellow T passengers would want to have sex with you immediately. On the T or in the station. For example, there was a semi-official looking sign that said "Clothed passengers only beyond this point." Another, which was somewhat obstructed, seemed to say that passengers were prohibited from asking Axe wearers to engage in intimate contact on the train. Ummmm....EW! Ew, ew, ew. I suppose that you could say that the campaign is doing it's job-after all, here I am telling you about the product; I know its name and that it is a deodorant. But, um, I'm not sure that I'd want such insanity associated with my product. Maybe that's just me. Also on the marketing front: the Target ad is still on the T wall, and I still contend that the girl is topless. I assume that she isn't, because if she was I would probably not be the only Bostonian to have noticed, but it still looks like she is. The problem is that the guy who is shirtless segues into the girl who is potentially topless a little to seamlessly. And after we go by and I am like "was she topless?" I can't exactly make the T move backwards and go by the ad slower to check. Okay, enough about being sold products.
2. Did you ever notice that sometimes the qualities that you might consider your strengths-ie qualities that make you particularly successful in one part of your life, just so happen to be the exact same qualities that totally kill you in other parts of your life? Not to brag, but I think I have relatively good analytical abilities. I think that helps me out in the lab-I am pretty good at analyzing pages full of plots of 100000+ dots and figuring out what the hell is going on. At the same time, I tend to over-analyze things to death in my personal life. I objectively know that I do it, and I wish that I didn’t, but I can’t turn it off. Hmmm.
3. When are coincidences not coincidences? Obviously this thought speaks to bigger themes that are kind of on my mind. I know that as a human I am programmed to look for patterns and notice coincidences often (You know how you always notice when certain things happen at the same time and infer that they are related, but never notice the vastly larger number of times that they don’t happen at the same time because they aren’t noteworthy? I mean that.) Anyway-at what point do you conclude that maybe there is something more to events than just pure chance/coincidence? Just wondering.
Oh, and one more thought. Why do they keep discontinuing my deodorant? My switching to a brand of deodorant is like a death knell. Grrrrr. Maybe I should switch to Axe so I don’t have to see those ads anymore.
