A Lady Scientist- Blog

I received a very nice note from the neighbors. They thanked me for my apology and gently chastised me for the dog getting out. They explained that the cat in question was not her cat, but she was afraid for her cat since it was old and an outdoor cat. Then, they welcomed Dr. Man and I to the neighborhood and wished us well.

So, I think that went about as well as possible. We’re going to dip into our emergency fund and get the privacy fence in place as soon as we can. I’m glad that it went civilly and they seem to have calmed down.

Dr. Man still votes with putting Dixie Dog poo on their yard, though. I’ve vetoed that idea.

I’ve spent the past day dithering about this… my 100th post! Who’d have thought that I could babble about enough things to fill up 100 posts. Anyhow, I feel like I should be writing something very well composed and thought out, but I’m not going to do so. First, I’m doing about a million things in the lab. Second, I’m not that profound. Third, see my first point. So, instead I’m going to share an anecdote about my crazy neighbors.

A few days ago I invited The Girls^TM over for coffee/dessert/wine to celebrate me having a dining room table in my new house (I’m still excited). Of course, I get hung up in the lab, needed to still acquire said dessert, and rode my bike that day. This meant that I got home late. I decided to check my email to make sure everyone could find the place fine. No internet. This is tantamount to torture for me, as I use the internet for everything (including keeping in touch with Dr. Man). So, I call the internet company thinking that this will be a few minute call to get someone out to fix it.

Twenty minutes later I’m still on the phone and Mouse (my friend who works with mice– in a lab) came over and she lets the Dixie Dog out. About 10 minutes later I hear her barking, get off the phone with the Internet Company, and go outside. As I’m going outside I see her leap over the fence to chase a cat (I didn’t realize she could climb chain link!). I take off after her at a dead sprint (I may or may not have yelled a profanity at this point). Mouse goes outside to see what was going on, possibly because of my loud expletive. At the same time Shopper (my friend who likes to shop) drives up and slams on her brakes to avoid hitting the Dixie Dog (who by the way is loving this).

My neighbors are out in their yard start yelling at the dog. The daughter (?) is getting hysterical. Yelling something about how it’s hurt! she bleeped it! Now, Dixie Dog may chase cats and squirrels, but she doesn’t hurt them. In fact the one time she successfully caught a cat, she just sat their licking it. So, now I’m wondering if my sweet dog really did lick something to death (it turns out not, the daughter was just upset with the Dixie Dog chasing the cat). Eventually, the cat goes up a tree and the Dixie Dog sits at the base of it looking up hopefully. Thus distracted, I was able to grab her collar. She looks rather pleased with herself– if not a bit confused– as I’m hauling her away from the cat.

As I return to my house, I look over at my neighbors and start to offer an apology/assurance that we are in the process of getting a better fence. And the mother (?) looks at me and screams if I ever see your dog loose again, I’m going to call animal services. And if she in anyway hurts a cat, I’ll come over there and kill her myself.

Lovely, right? I understand their fear and I even understand the animal services comment (I’d rather her get picked up than get hit by a car or worse!). But to kill her? What if the cat just hurts him/herself by running? I’m worried that some cat will get into a fight with another cat or car and lose– and the Dixie Dog with get blamed.

But I’ve tried to smooth things over. Last night I wrote them a very nice note that offered the apology and assurance that I was originally going to give them at the time. So, here’s to hoping that’ll be received nicely and there will be no more run-ins

So, well, yes. I’m exhausted. And I have no idea as to why (I went to bed early last night. I’ve had my coffee this morning.), but there you have it. I’m so tired, in fact, that I was at the bench doing something and Advisor came up to ask me how things were going. And it took me about five seconds to remember what I was doing. I’ve been doing things like that all day, much to my amusement. So, as much as I’d like to write a very profound blog post, I’m just going to do a brain dump– bullet point style.

-Oh why oh why did Awesome Undergrad (AU– a little chemistry pun… ok you can stop groaning now) have to graduate? Now I’m stuck with Untrained & Flighty Undergrad (who desperately needs a shorter pseudonym). I just need to keep reminding myself that they all come this way and that once-upon-a-time I, too, was Untrained (however, I don’t think I was ever flighty). Patience is a virtue.

-I’m making progress on World’s Most Uncooperative Plasmid. I’m pretty sure that I’ve gotten 3 out of the 7 constructs that I needed (still need to confirm this via sequencing). Really though I just need 1 more and then I can test my hypothesis– that’s all I really need for the poster for Major European Conference. I’m just hoping that I can keep on a roll long enough to just tease out one more.

-I biked to and from work yesterday. Of course it poured in the afternoon/evening when I was biking home. But it wasn’t really unpleasant. The rain cooled things down a bit and made the drivers a bit more cautious. That was nice. There’s this stretch that is a two lane road with no bike lane and drivers want to begrudge me my little two foot clearance from the curb. There is a sort-of spotty sidewalk, but it’s poorly maintained and tends to have lots of broken concrete. Hence, I stick to the road. So, that was a grand total of 13 miles (20.1 kilometers) of biking yesterday– Go me!

-The Dixie Dog loves the squirrels. They still haven’t figured out that the yard is no longer safe. I caught her doing a three foot vertical jump in the air (on her hind legs) trying to get one yesterday. I’ve got to get a picture of that!

-I’m doing fairly well on NaComLeavMo. So far I haven’t fallen behind. However, it’s a much greater time-suck than I thought it’d be. There are so many good writers out there and I spend a lot of my time reading their posts. I’m fairly certain that Google Reader is about to explode with all the new blogs I keep adding.

-Labmate has set a tentative defense date. Advisor told me that I need to start focusing on getting data. He said it’s getting close to the time when I need to start thinking about my dissertation. That completely threw me for a loop. I’m not expecting to get to that point for about another year. However, Advisor said the time to start thinking about my dissertation would be in another six or so months. He does have more experience than me with this, but then again… I can’t possibly be close to the beginning of finishing everything by then!

-I’m getting together with the Girls for Girls’ Night^TM tomorrow night for Indian Food… yum! That’ll be my Eating Out for this week. Some of the Girls are coming over to my house tonight for dessert/coffee. It’s nice to have company.

-I’m going to have to go food shopping for this weekend. I wonder if I should attempt doing so on bike. After all, I do have the shopping bag panniers. Hmmm….

I’m going to leave the lab slightly early (shhh! don’t tell anyone). And by slightly early I mean about 15 mins early today. I got in early and so I’m going to leave early. So, yay for that!

I attended Dr. Man’s graduation for his department (he “graduated” from his intern year and the Final Year residents graduated from residency). At this graduation I heard the best-est thing ever. When introducing a Male Final Year Resident (MFYR), the program director said:

“MFYR is a wonderful doctor who has helped build this program. Additionally, he is the recent father of young Amy there.” Program Director gestures in the direction of MFYR’s spouse, who is holding a really cute baby. “He is an excellent husband and father and we expect that he’ll bring that excellency to Fellowship.”

Pretty nifty, huh?

So, I’m rather embarrassed. I was going to delete that post from yesterday once I got home. But there was no internet (still!) and, well (obviously) that didn’t happen. That will teach me to post when I’m overly upset about something in lab. (I mean, it’s not the end of the world and it’s not as if it’s life or death… there are plenty of other– better– things to be upset about).

Anyhow, I want to thank everyone for being so nice about my ranting. And raving. So, if you’re ever looking for a definition as to hot, molten crazy, see the last post.

That’s pretty much what I’m doing here. I keep finding frigging problems with my research. I hate this project. Simply hate it. First I find out a week into May that I have to redo everything that I spent the past five-six months doing because I forgot that eukaroyotes have localization sequences. Since then nothing and I mean nothing has worked. That possibility from Friday? Forget about it. My E. coli do not like my yeast protein. It seems that somehow it has been rearranged out of my farking plasmid! Yes, it’s a whole kb shorter than it should be. I’m so frustrated and stressed right now. I’ve got the dog to take care of, a new house, and myself. Plus, I’ve got to complete all this in the next few weeks. I’m beginning to doubt that this is ever going to happen.

I moved this past weekend and was without internet for the past 48 hours. I didn’t check email or blog posts. So, one of the first things I did after getting into work today was to check my email. I felt like an addict getting a fix. Finally! Internet! I felt a wave of relief wash over me as I checked my iGoogle page, my gmail, the New York Times website, and was able to google some song lyrics that have been driving me crazy.

The house is great. I’ll try to take and post some pictures later this week. I’m almost all moved in. There are a few odds and ends that I need to get from my old apartment. Then the unpacking fun begins. I don’t think it’ll be too bad, though. I’m pretty good at dividing up large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones. I can just take it one box at a time.

Oh! And how the Dixie Dog loves her new yard! She loves going outside to run. Just watching her tear around the back yard yesterday made me very happy. She finally has a yard! Plus, it was really nice this morning to be able to sit outside on the back porch with a cup of coffee and watch her run around.

So far I’ve only done so-so on my No Eating Out challenge. I had dinner out last night with Dr. Man and co. But I’m trying really hard not to go out to eat tonight, but it’s my friend’s birthday. So, I want to go, but I know I shouldn’t. Le sigh.

But house! And yard! And garage! The new challenge is to keep the house from getting too cluttered and curbing my wants.