Thoughts of the Day
1. The description on the Irish Cream coffee pot in the coffee cart says something like, the taste of irish whiskey and cream blended into gourmet coffee. For the people who need coffee and whiskey to get the day going.

2. I just caught a lab mate in the bathroom wearing both her lab coat and gloves. I don't actually know what she was doing there, being sequestered in my stall, but I may have uncovered a source of contamination in some of our stock supplies. *shudder*
- posted by meg @ 2:23 PM

 
I can't think of an appropriate title
Someone totally farted in seminar today. Loudly. Wicked loudly. I'm surprised the speaker didn't flinch.
- posted by meg @ 5:05 PM

 
It's the little things that count
There are a few things that make me smile during my day. These things don't happen everyday, but that just makes them all the better. Here is a partial list.

1. people wearing stirrup pants
2. people wearing Members Only jackets
3. strangers who heartily tell me to have a nice day
4. when Bon Jovi comes up in my playlist
5. finding a letter or package at my door


- posted by meg @ 8:35 PM

 
What? Is there something on my face?
I joke a lot about being hot. I say joke because I think I overestimate my hotness. Maybe overrepresent is a better word. In all honesty I'd say I'm in the 75-80 percentile. Perhaps I'm wrong and humility and spending all day with my faults have clouded my judgement. I mean, I'm awesome, I'd date me if I were a man, it's not a low self-esteem thing. I just know I'm not Heidi Klum or Cami Diaz competition. Although some actresses that are supposedly hot I totally have beat.
Anyway, my point is that when I get honks, yells or gapes from passing motorists I sometimes get a little confused. I mean, sometimes I look good and I'd understand honking at me, even though it's crass and I won't acknowledge it. (Baby, when your daddy whooped at me from his pickup I knew I found my prince.) But twice this morning and at least once earlier this week I was hollered at. This morning I was wearing my large winter coat, which is way puffier than I need in the torso area because the next size down was too tight in the sleeve department, at least with any kind of sweat shirt or sweater. I also had my messenger bag and relatively wet hair. Not horrible looking but not my best. Earlier this week I was wearing a hoodie and carrying my leather jacket, bag and a tray of brownies that I got free from a seminar.
I'd appreciate any insight on this. I think maybe the one car was honking more for the brownies, but then again it would've been pretty hard to tell what I was carrying from the opposite side of the street travelling at 40mph. Do college towns just have a large population of desperate, crass, and or mid-life crisis-ing men or do some men honk at anything vaguely female? Am I more approachable when I look like crap and you're speeding past me?
(I hope the first paragraph makes it clear that this isn't meant to be a reassure me I'm hot post. I don't fish for compliments like that.)

- posted by meg @ 9:47 AM

 
this post brought to you by my post-poker night drunkenness
Everything has been touching my boobs today. Everything I eat ends up needing to be dusted off the shelf. There was a scare with some (human) tissue going down my shirt in the lab today (false alarm, no liver in my cleavage). I have spaghetti stains (yay black sweater) in my blind spot from making the hugest lasagna ever (for the uninitiated, the blind spot is the part of your torso that is hidden by your rack). I'm pretty sure they bumped into a few people more than once. You get the idea. So when I shouted "why does everything want to touch my rack" in the lab today, in frustration, it reminded me of a guy on the bus. Not in a good way. This guy is always on the bus with me. At least when the bus and I are able to come to an agreement on its schedule. He works on the floor below mine too, so we take the same elevator. The thing is, he always seems to brush up against me in the elevator, even when it's not that crowded. It's not blatant enough (or really in wrong enough places) that I can say something, but it's frequent.So I saw him one morning and thought, "Oh no, it's the guy with the blue reeboks. He's going to touch me in the elevator. That's the problem with being hotter than the other scientists. Everyone wants to rub their junk up against you."
If you know scientists you know how true that is.

- posted by meg @ 1:55 AM

 
deja vu
Some people are familiar with my super autocrine somnabulant powers. I am completely capable of falling asleep during a commercial break. Not the dozing/half awake/somewhat aware of my surroundings kind of sleep (although I do that too) but completely dead to the world asleep. The best part about this is that if I fall asleep watching adult swim and wake up 3 hours later I can pick up right where I left off. It's a little disorienting at first. I am aware that I was asleep, by virtue of waking up, and yet the house is as I left it. The downside is that I then go to bed and have a bit of trouble falling asleep again, which is sometimes why I fell asleep on the couch in the first place (30 feet is a long enough walk to wake me up a bit, apparently). Or, like last night, do not fall deep enough asleep not to spend the entire night dreaming. I'm surprised I'm as rested as I am having accomplished a lot in my sleep. I think there was a party of some sort. Sans Rob Lowe and coke, which is surprising because I watched a few Rob Lowe West Wings on Bravo yesterday.

- posted by meg @ 10:33 AM

 
Today's WTF link brought to you by a town named after a neighboring state
Totally. Batshit. Crazy. (And no longer A-Dora-Ble)

I mean, I can kinda see what he's talking about what with the glare and all off the shell, but wanting to believe the turtle is the embodiment of satan? That's just sad. You'd think pure evil would pick a faster animal. Or at least one with a visible penis.

Let's not even acknowledge that this made the top of the fold (so to speak) of cnn.com.
- posted by meg @ 2:46 PM

 
bored now
This is a frequent sentiment of mine lately. It's that super-busy-yet-unable-to-get-very-far-on-anything kind of bored. The million little errands on top of larger issues (like scheduling an eye exam and harassing the dental school) on top of major issues (like getting my thesis work optimized enough for me to pump out the data and start writing) kind of bored. My attention is fractured into so many places and I'm busy all the time but I don't feel like I'm making progress on a lot of things some days. Some days are productive though, that helps. I'm sure most of it is just in my mind, that I am productive, etc. Caffeine helps. I either need a lot more caffeine or a lot less at the moment, I can't tell. I'm some kind of jittery. Running also helps, with many things. Except that it takes 1.5-2 hours of my evening (including showering) so I only get about 4 days in a week. I'm going to stop now before I get too tangential.

- posted by meg @ 3:10 PM

 
This is totally perfect
This totally made my day. Especially since it looks like I'm going to eat it on the cost of fixing my tooth a couple weeks ago. The insurance company won't pay for it and the dental school is ignoring me. Maybe I'll find the dental student and tell her to pay up and get half from her supervisor if she likes.

Except that problem and the others aren't little annoyances. But when I find one, watch out. :-)
- posted by meg @ 3:25 PM

 
Special, not "special"
I don't win stuff. By stuff I mean raffles, contests, etc. I once got a bottle cap to get a free song and my computer crashed when I tried to retrieve it. But basically, I don't win anything relying on chance. Scholarships I earned (in high school, no prizes yet for my research) but that's different anyway.

Today, I won a crappy mouse with a floaty in a water-filled compartment. I went to a Qiagen product show in the conference room, filled out the form, grabbed some fliers and some coffee and cheese danish and went on my way. I was so not expecting to win anything that when the rep came into the lab and asked if I was Meg and told me I was a winner, I had no idea what she was talking about. Until I saw the mouse.

This is nice. Perhaps it's a subtle change in fortune. The last raffe I remember winning was in the second grade. I was 6 or 7 and won a diary that my babysitter promptly read to my little brother. This is much better. I just hope it extends to poker games. Hmm, I think the diary year was the same year I found a five dollar bill near a pond. I could totally do with finding paper money lying around as well.
- posted by meg @ 1:11 PM

 
An example of something that does not help
Vegetable lasanga told me that a tech from another lab asked her how long I had been in the lab because after watching my presentation last week she had concluded that I did not have much data.

I should probably ignore it or tell myself she meant it innocently and not on the passive-aggressive bitchy plane so many woman work on but I can't. Because it's true. I don't feel like I have much data or that I'm making good progress. And I certainly don't feel like I'm publishing much, my first non-review paper from this lab is in the pipeline.

Other people in the lab tell me I'm fine, that I'm right where I should be. That could be true but I still feel like I'm behind. I can blame it on the manipulative lies of my former supervisor or on the lack of contact with my advisor that sometimes leaves me hanging for a while (like this week---we're going to talk about something before I press on, but that leaves me not able to press on until we do) or on the occasions when I have to wait on reagents or cells, but basically I feel like I'm not up to par. I'd really like to be writing a year from now, perhaps performing a few experiments to back up my data, but I don't know if I will. Hopefully my thesis committee meeting later this month will help give me some direction and something to work with to get this project going. I know what I want to do, I just need help when things aren't working right. I suppose having a plan is the most important part. I'm just used to being in control of things and able to work problems out on my own and I can't always do that in grad school. I'm supposed to be learning how to do that, yes, but having to reinvent the wheel for every experiment doesn't make for speedy progress.
- posted by meg @ 5:27 PM

 
there goes the deposit, aka this is why I drink (coffee or liquor, you'll never know) aka sometimes it's hard to be me
aka maybe I won't have to dye my hair, just run my hands through it and the residual bleach will take care of things.

My front door is heavy. I mean wicked heavy. It doesn't stay open or ajar on it's own. So twice a month, approximately, I balance my towering laundry basket between my hip and the wall and open the first of 3 doors between me and the laundry room. Except today, since yesterday wasn't cool enough, the bleach decided to leap from the basket where it was temporarily stacked and fall to the floor. And that safety cap? Yeah, that fucker totally popped off. To which I say, LAME. I'm guessing that about a liter of bleach fell out of the once-full bottle onto the rug directly in front of my door. (If you aren't familiar with a liter, think of an entire nalgene bottle or a literacola.) Oddly, though by far most of the bleach landed outside my apartment the only part to actually bleach thus far is inside my apartment.

To complete the irony, one of the 3 washers was broken so I just put my whites in with the warm load.

So yeah. If anyone sees a sale on door mats I'll take two.
- posted by meg @ 3:58 PM

 
gah
I usually find out that it's some sort of break when I go to the gym and it's closed. Yesterday, I was reminded that it was spring break. Which was particularly funny because it's been snowing for the better part of 3 days. So I ran outside. In the snow. And twilight. Because it had been nearly a week and I felt sluggish. The way I saw it I could have a)wallowed in my sloth for another week because both weekends surrounding break have a modified gym schedule; b)driven to the only open gym and prayed I found parking closer than the actual distance I planned to run; c)driven home and taken the bus to the gym, adding a good half hour to 45 minutes to my night or d)sucked it up and run outside.

Today, however, I think I'll just do some pilates. I missed the bus and power walked home, so I do have a significant time period of aerobic exercise. It's hard to power walk carrying a laptop through barely shoveled sidewalks. Plus I have a talk tomorrow I should practice for some more. I plan to run 2-3 more times this week though. Maybe I'll be able to get parking at the open gym on the weekend.

You'd think they could rotate the open gym so people who don't live on central campus can easily work out too. Presumably the students on central campus are the majority of the ones that are gone, hence the lack of staff and the closed gym.
- posted by meg @ 6:08 PM