Week Dos

This past week was not as bad for the No Eating Out Challenge. I ate out with friends at the newly opened Indian Restaurant. Finally! Vegetable Samosas! Lamb Saag! Naan! I was in heaven. I didn’t do so well later when Dr. Man came to visit. We went out to eat alone to a local restaurant. He had to drive down and I had to work all day and we were just beat. Plus, there was little food in the house. We did manage to eat in the rest of the weekend, though. So, I’m pretty proud of that.

This week I think will be a little harder because… drum roll, please… Dr. Man moves back to UniversityTown on Tuesday! Marie is coming up this weekend to help move him. Then, we’re continuing on to Dodge, packing the truck, and leaving! I’m so excited that I can hardly believe it’s really happening.

This also means a lot of traveling on the road and being tired at the end of the day. I’m planning on bringing sandwiches and stuff for the drive up, but I’m not so sure about what we’ll do while we’re in Dodge. Kitchen stuff should (and that is the operative word) be packed and it’s awfully hard to make food without pots, pans, and utensils. So, it’ll be an adventure.

And a life without adventure is just boring, right?

Posted in No Eating Out Challenge | 18 Comments

Follow up to the Crazy

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Take your crazy elsewhere

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 GirlsTM 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

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

RBOC: Brain Dump Edition

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’ NightTM 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!

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Confessions Week Uno

Jennie and I agreed to do this No Eating Out in June challenge (see her post and mine for more information). We agreed to do confessions on a weekly basis and she did her confessions yesterday. And I am nothing if not a procrastinator, so here are mine. I freely admit that I did not do as well as her on this challenge… so far.

Forgive me internets, for I have failed this week in the challenge. Things started out well. I went out to eat with Dr. Man and Co. on Sunday and that was fine. Then, research struck! I ended up having to stay in the lab until ~9:30pm (this works out to be 13 hours in case anyone is keeping track) and I got hungry. I hadn’t expected to stay so late, so I hadn’t packed dinner. I ended up ordering out for pizza. Then, the following day Advisor treated us all to lunch (and I want to encourage Advisor to do this, so I didn’t refuse) (BTW, isn’t that just really nice of him?). Finally, there was Saturday in Dodge. I went shooting again— this will be another post– and Dr. Man’s friends wanted to go out to dinner. I would’ve been the only hold out and felt guilty. So, I said yes and went along.

I’m hoping to do better this week. I’ve got emergency peanut butter and crackers in my desk drawer to guard against late nights. I’ve already scheduled my one night out this week (Girl’s night at a local indian food place). And Dr. Man knows that we’re eating in this weekend.

I’ll pipet thirty-two digests for my penance.

Posted in No Eating Out Challenge | 8 Comments

Wonderful Husband and Father

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?

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Staking Claim

Recently, I’ve been taking up much more space in the lab. And I don’t mean extra body weight. I mean bench space, equipment space, and even desk space. And I need the space.

For equipment, well last year I tentatively asked for Expensive Accessory (EA) for New Fancy Piece of Equipment (New FPE). I do need the EA for experiments that I’m going to do. In fact, it’s impossible to do my dissertation with out them. However, our collaborator’s lab has the EA for the older version of Fancy Piece of Equipment– it’s not compatible with our newer version, though. But Collaborator said we could use zie’s EA and Old FPE. So, I explained this to Advisor that, although I could use Collaborator’s EA and Old FPE, I would prefer having my own so I don’t have to deal with scheduling issues, etc. (plus, I knew that the grant should have enough money for EA). Advisor said yes. Later he told me that I need to be more assertive with asking for what I need. He doesn’t know everything that I need (as he knows less about this particular technique than me) and that it’s not being selfish, rude, or obnoxious to demand things that I need to be successful.

I’m doing several different experiments that include E. coli and yeast (S. cerevisiae if anyone is interested). I’m the first person in my lab to bridge the gap between the prokaryotic and eukaryotic versions of Our Favorite Protein. This required a separate incubator, which I lobbied for and eventually received. I, also, got a dedicated bench for my yeast stuff (this mostly had to do with undergrads using my YPD as LBG –yeast vs. E.coli media– and causing other contamination issues). Labmate graduates soon and I’m claiming his desk. It’s in a better location than mine and it’s near my bench. So, I want.

I’m working on being less shy on asking for what I want and need. It’s working to a certain extent, too (see above evidence). I’m losing my long taught shuffling-eyes-down-if-it’s-not-too-much-trouble demeanor. In science, if I don’t claim the space I need, then no one else will do it for me.

But I can still be polite about it.

Posted in scientiae-carnival | 12 Comments

In which I apologize for my hot molten crazy

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Crapping Rainbows

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

No internets!

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments