I'm having another one of those weeks/months/whatever where trying to do anything feels like slogging through pudding (both physically and mentally). I was at home most of today working on my lab meeting talk for tomorrow and waiting for the maintenance guy to come by (we got fancy new toilet and shower heads), trying my hardest to concentrate. I did get a little done, but more often than not the second I started working in earnest, something like this would happen this is from the computer's eye view-- I heart Photo Booth).



In other news, this week sucks. Lousy luck abounds for me. Add that to aforementioned pudding slog and the fact that my one major accomplishment of the week was to schedule what will hopefully be my penultimate thesis committee meeting (defense being the last) for December 18, reminding me how little I've actually gotten done and causing me to wonder exactly how much crack my advisor is on if he thinks I can easily graduate next spring, and you get one thoroughly demoralized Robin.

And I still don't get an actual day off (sure, I've got fun things, but I don't have time to just sit at home and recharge my introverted little brain, catch up on to do lists and the like) until... November, actually. Turns out Sal's parents are coming into town this weekend which means it's oh-crap-clean-the-house time (after I finish the lab meeting talk and paint the cornhole set for Saturday's tailgate). I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I need a lab minion stat.

What a simultaneously convenient and lousy time to get sick.

My throat hurt like crazy on the drive home from camping yesterday, and this morning my throat, nose and hears were all aching. As I started moving, I realized I was having that "my skin hurts" thing that I hate second most about being sick (brain fog is by far the worst). So, under "convenient" comes the fact that since I was out of town last weekend, all my experiments were at stopping points, as well as the fact that times being what they are, my advisor had no problem with me staying home (even thanked me for being sensitive to others, though if *I* had written that it'd be snark). Under lousy is the fact that I DO NOT HAVE FREAKING H1N1 FLU! I may have *a* flu, but no gastrointestinal symptoms (thank Maude) and I haven't been in contact with anyone who might possibly be a carrier. I figure this is just due to being rained on for three days, as well as my failure at self-control with respect to one Mr. Linus Pauling Saturday morning (I may never drink orange juice or champagne ever again).

Anyway, as the day has progressed I've gotten worse. Doncha love that? I've been monitoring my temperature, which started out normalish this morning (almost made me decide I should stop feeling sorry for myself, actually), is flirting unpleasantly close to 100. And the aches are worse, oh boy. And this is having been couch-bound all morning-- I can't imagine how nasty I'd feel if I had gone in to work!

But the cats seem to be enjoying my sick day-- though they hate it when I get up to refill my tea mug. Don't know why I feel it necessary to blog all this, but hey, I'm home, couchbound, and own a laptop. What else would I do?

I like to listen to the Ben Folds song "Live With What You Are"-- the chorus is "There's never gonna be a moment of truth for you/while the world is watching/All you need is the thing you've forgotten/And that's to learn to live with what you are." It helps when I'm in my more dramatic/justicey moods to bring me back to a more grounded outlook.

However, sometimes a person does get hir moment of truth. You can't live expecting yours to come, but I think it's nice, heartwarming, etc, to see and appreciate others'. Today Fillyjonk posted about a UK woman named Susan Boyle who got her moment and then some on the show "Britain's Got Talent." It couldn't have been an easy road-- as Fillyjonk says:

She’s over 40, she’s ungroomed, she’s on the fat side, and her accent denotes low class. As it turns out, she also has learning disabilities and has never been on a date. She flies in the face of what we expect out of a performer and what we, as a culture, esteem in a woman.

So the judges (how would we know what to value if Simon Cowell didn't exist?!) do their best snobby snark routines, and even the narration sets up the audience to look down their noses at her. And then? Well, watch the clip (embedding disabled, but really, seriously, click, it's worth it).

Blub and blub some more. Fillyjonk's post (linked above) is also definitely worth a read, as she's a much better writer (and philosopher) than I am. I really liked what she wrote. Aw, who am I kidding, I'm just going to have to post a big quote for posterity.

Folks, we are all Susan Boyle. Fat or thin, pretty or plain, butch or femme, old or young, abled or not: people will judge us and find us wanting. You can posture all you want, out of genuine confidence or bravado; you can insist that the ideals are wrong, that the goalposts need to be moved, that rational humans can shake off the shackles of cultural expectation. You can talk big and wiggle your hips — for some people, that’ll just make you more of a joke.

What makes people stop laughing — or at least, what makes you stop caring if they do? The discovery that something about you is utterly remarkable. Because it is. It might not be an angelic voice or some other showy talent. It might be humble, even difficult for others to notice. You might not know what it is yet (lord knows I don’t). You don’t even have to realize, right off the bat, how your remarkable qualities elevate you past any backwards beliefs about who you should be or what you should look like.... It’s an arduous process and goodness knows we’ve never said otherwise. But whatever it is, once you really know it’s there, once you know how much that means, a smirk from Simon won’t change a damn thing — and you’ll slap that smile off his face when you bust it out.

So I don't know. I may never have my moment of truth while the world is watching, the way Susan Boyle did. In fact, I probably won't. But some mere facts of my existence-- I mean, the fact that you people are in my life and reading this right now!-- are moments enough.

I figure it's not so much a sin from someone who typically errs on the other side of things, so just a quick moment of glee for me:

Today was the retreat for the group of three semi-independently-funded labs of which I am a part. I gave a 25 minute talk on my work that went pretty well, but I was second-to-last and had been marveling at how good all the other speakers were. I felt I stumbled a bit at times, but overall better than I had expected. Afterward during the poster session, all three PIs sought me out to tell me I had done a good job. One (the one on my thesis committee) even phrased it as "as usual, a very good talk" which gave me a warm fuzzy (particularly since he had been particularly hard on the structure and organization of my talk at my first committee meeting). At the end of the day, they announced a prize for the best question that had been asked, and then for the best talk, which just happened to have been given by me! I'm still a bit giddy about it, so you'll have to forgive the moment of braggity :)

The non-committee-member PI also hadn't heard of our publication troubles and encouraged us to keep aiming high. So here I go condensing what used to be a 60,000 character, 7 figure paper down to a 4 printed page, 4 figure paper for submission to another Big Three journal. Watch me go. To sleep.

We got rejection #2 today. And I'm actually not bothered. I mean, first of all, this one was in a timely manner, and second it was much less fishy (though we do wonder how much overlap there is between Cell and Molecular Cell). Also, apparently, when I get rejected, people buy me beer. Fourth Year suggested that maybe I should sabotage myself just to get a bunch of free pints. Which I probably will not do, though it's a nice consolation prize.

We're rethinking strategery for now, so I didn't immediately submit to, say, RNA. But this stuff happens. I figure they'll all have to cite me one day, and I will giggle.

I am, however, thinking of bringing a bit of Caltech to the lab by printing out the rejection letters and posting them upside-down over my desk (for the uninitiated: seniors at Tech post their grad school response letters outside their doors, right-side up for acceptance, upside-down for rejection, and sideways for deferral or waiting list.)

For now, off to the pub for beers and some sort of basketball game (they tell me ;)

Thank you all so much for your encouragement, well wishes and congratulations over the last few days (okay, years)! I am really truly grateful to have such kind, supportive, caring friends watching out for me.

Now, in the spirit of caring for myself, I'm off to for an afternoon at the spa with Mom and Shelby. Nominally, we're taking Mom as her birthday was last week. But coincidentally, all of us have things to celebrate: Mom's birthday, my paper submission, and the wonderful fact that Shelby's fiance is coming back from Iraq very soon. I'm very excited about taking some time to relax, both emotionally and physically (my shoulders haven't been really functional for a good long while, from being designated stress storage locations, as well as general hunching-over-computers-or-experiments mistreatment).

Then it's off to Livermore for dinner with Grandma and Dad (if he's not too sick), and the opening night of Mom's play, after which there will be the traditional pie. And then the somewhat less traditional watching of the episode of BSG that we missed while at the play that Mom agreed to Tivo so we wouldn't have to decide between her and Battlestar.

"As I reflect on the scientific careers of the people I have known these last thirty years, it seems to me more and more that these career decisions hinge on character. Some people will happily jump on the next big thing, give it all they've got, and in this way make important contributions to fast-moving fields. Others just don't have the temperament to do this. Some people need to think through everything very carefully, and this takes time, as they get easily confused. It's not hard to feel superior to such people, until you remember that Einstein was one of them. In my experience, the truly shocking new ideas and innovations tend to come from such people. Still others - and I belong to this third group - just have to go their own way, and will flee fields for no better reason than that it offends them that some people are joining in because it feels good to be on the winning side. So I no longer get bothered when I disagree with what other people are doing, because I see that temperament pretty much determines what kind of science they will do. Luckily for science, the contributions of the whole range of types are needed. Those who do good science, I've come to think, do so because they choose problems that are suited to them."

- Lee Smolin

H/T to tdj

( Musings on the quote below )

is a few Oreos, dunked in milk until soggy. That, with the running-until-it-hurts (which for me is NOT very long so don't worry) really helped me get my head on straight.

Hooray for impulse purchases at the grocery store!

Okay, so, last night, not so much fun. Most of you are familiar with just how risk-averse I am (sidenote: I think that's why I never felt like I understood econ-- and it's not entirely stupid to not understand how one can count on risk paying off) so faced with the possibility of rendering useless four years of work (and yes, as sidur_mispacha pointed out, there is plenty of intangible stuff that I wouldn't lose, all the skills and knowledge) I was just utterly destroyed. Also as previously mentioned, my threshold is a bit lowered (getting back to equilibrium is a slow process for me).

Anyway, the way it looks now, the most likely explanation (costing me full work days Saturday and Sunday to get the Northern blot done) is that there's cryptic promoter activity in my "promoter-free" system. As ferventsquirrel noted, it's all a probability thing anyway-- transcription factors are notoriously hard to predict, and particularly because I'm using an immortalized cell culture line (which are invariably extremely screwed up-- they are, after all, basically cancerous) in which who knows what's going on.... Right. Again, won't know until Monday, and requiring me to do an entire Northern over the weekend (longish protocol that involves a LOT of 30-60 minute incubations, so lots of sitting around waiting).

The other option is that I just blew a giant hole in all of biology. Unlikely is putting it mildly. ferventsquirrel tried to get me excited since actually I've kind of got a win/win situation (either my current paper is fine, or I'm super-de-duper awesome but have to start over) which is to his credit. But my innate hatred of wasted time is particularly rankled these days. But, I can see how it's not the absolute worst thing in the world.

So, breathing. Thanks to people who commented and AIMed to offer sympathy and condolences, it means a lot to me.

For now, time to set up for Northern blot....

So, the good news is, I'm on my way out the door to get a shiny new computer!

The bad news being that it's because my laptop bit the dust-- HARD-- yesterday. I had never seen the legendary translucent screen of death, but now I get it if I open more than one program at a time. What, I want to have Firefox AND email open? Bah, silly person.

I'm not super thrilled about the expenditure, but it was inevitable I suppose. My hope had been to hold out and get a new one for my birthday, but that's just not going to happen. It will be nice to not have to wait 10 minutes every time I hit apple-P though, that's a plus.

I've been pretty remiss with the blogging lately. It's been kind of weird inside my head, plus I'm still busy as hell with work (my advisor upped the "n" required for some of my experiments from 3 to 6, luckily I'm badass enough to get that done in a weekend and have the data tomorrow afternoon) and the writing struggle (for which I've kept browsers closed and AIM logged off), and I've been tutoring a lot lately as well. So, apologies for the incommunicado, but it's likely to continue.

( A few quick things worth updating: )

I'm too much of a chicken to comment at Shakesville, but the questions-of-the-day are always interesting. I've had kind of a lousy day (some lousy stuff happened, but mostly I was tired and not feeling well so the logical (by my brain's standards) conclusion of everything was "I suck") so here we go with today's QOTD:

What part of your body is most beautiful/handsome?

"None" is not an acceptable answer. Go on and be radical and publicly love at least one part of your body!

I do like my eyes a lot, and also my hair, but a big part of both of those is the artificial stuff I put on them (dark eyeliner/mascara and bright red dye, respectively) but the part I like most of all is the bolero-jacket region-- back, chest, collarbones, arms and hands. I may not have been the most ballerina-shaped and -talented, but I always loved how graceful I could make my arms look. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so averse to strapless dresses, because they show off the only part of my body I actually don't think of ways to change. They always seem a bit out of proportion-- technically from the size of my wrists I'm supposed to have a "small" frame, which my good solid german thighs would disagree with. But I'd rather like my wrists than hate my thighs :)

If it's not one thing it's another with these cats! The snuffles seem to be gradually clearing up, but we still have 10 more doses of amoxicillin (though I am getting much better at doing it quickly, so that's a plus). And now one of them has the runs (which I kind of think could be a result of the antibiotic, but of course I don't know for sure and I wouldn't know what to do about it anyway since I don't want to stop a course of antibiotics!). And they still think 6am is a good time to wake up.

I do love them to death, since they are soft and fuzzy and sweet. We're certainly not going to give them back. I'm just a bit exhausted trying to deal with each new special case!

Does anyone know how worried we should be about kitty diarrhea? I know to be careful about giving them lots of water, but as usual searching the internet really only gives the scary information. We gave them some wet food with brown rice in it, as recommended by their foster mom, but that's about all we know to do. If nothing else, we'll probably drop by to see the rescue people at Petsmart tomorrow I guess. *sigh* *yawn* Time to go pet kitties. They do have their advantages, even if they're being medically tricky....

---

ETA: Thanks to Theresa below and Allison, pet-taker-carer-of extraordinaire (who says it's almost definitely the antibiotics), I have successfully calmed. The issue is that I *think* stuff like this isn't too big a deal, but WHATIFITSNOT?! And the internet is not helpful in that regard. So thank you, experienced people ;)

Why yes, I should be spending my day at home beating my head against my intro and discussion sections. But I hate them, and they hate me, so here we are.

Outside of the writing slog (I'm trying to pretend that this is like quals, with a short period of time to write, but that's not really an encouraging mindset either) things are great. I still tense a bit when I write things like that, but the fact remains that I wrote it.

I've been getting a little bit of all my tasks done every day-- wrap a few presents (turns out it's a lot more fun when you don't have a giant stack to completely finish in a couple hours!), make a batch of something sweet for the party we're throwing (did a giant batch of gingerbread and sugar cookies, decorated and everything, sunday afternoon, then peppermint fudge monday and peanut-butter-chocolate buckeye candies last night), get some writing done (some days more than others-- monday I wrote 8 pages (double spaced), yesterday i could only manage a few paragraphs, but introduction is MUCH harder than results), get some tidying done, make sure I'm fed, AND get a few minutes to relax on the couch with some Doctor Who and crochet.

And three days of dense morning fog have helped get me into the wintry/christmasy mood. Our apartment may not be the pinnacle of good decorating taste, but I'm enjoying having our tree decorated and lit up, and our front window surrounded by red-and-green chile pepper lights.

So I've got Nutcracker on, and even in the midst of these warm and fuzzy feelings, it's probably time for me to submerge myself in my work. So here I go....

Twice in less than a week I've had dreams of sitting on cliffs. The first was a tiny cave cut into the side of a sheer ice face (maybe a glacier?) that I was in with my family, and for some reason we were supposed to be climbing back and forth to a similar cave a few meters to the side. There were no handholds, just more snow and ice. And the nook we were in was so high up on the cliff that I have no idea how we even got up there in the first place.

Last night it was a giant, semicircular waterfall, a bit like Niagara Falls, but I think it might have been part of a thermal region since it had that yellow and orange coloration on the rocks that I've seen at places like Yellowstone and Lassen. Apparently though, the water was coming from underground, since we were sitting just on the very edge of a cliff with the water pouring out in front of us. It seemed safe enough to sit, but the thought of moving or even standing up was frightening. Other people with me seemed not to be bothered (I think Mom and Dad were there again, and three or four other people I don't remember).

So out of general interest I looked up what this could possibly mean. The online dictionaries differ a bit, though all contain something to the effect of conclusions and risk. The first and most complete (also the one that seems most relevant) was the one I found at dreammoods.com:

To dream that you are standing at the edge of a cliff, indicates that you have arrived to an increased level of understanding, new awareness, and a fresh point of view. You have reached a critical point in your life and are afraid of losing control.

That bears some commentary, but it's morning so I'd better get moving. More later? I'm supposed to be hardcore writing all this week (I'm thinking quals-level intensity, yikes) so I might need the occasional break.

i decided to keep the typo. it seemed appropriate.

• in case i didn't make it clear before, wicked was amazing. i read the book over four years ago, and when i was done i downloaded the musical score, which... well, didn't seem to particularly resemble the book outside of general themes. the show itself is darker than the score seems to imply, and really the impact is completely different in person. i realized how exciting it was for me to watch a broadway show with real powerhouse roles for women-- i mean, i was into les miz and rent and that sort of thing, all of which is pretty male-centric (rent obviously less so, but still). anyway, i definitely want to see it again. for "defying gravity" alone, really-- i got a little choked up it was so incredible ;)



• the giant dr who scarf i'm crocheting for tdapenguin is nearing completion. it's just about 11 feet long, and i've reached the end of my random-number-generated stripey pattern. so the question is, is 12 feet enough, or should i keep going? i have yarn to spare....



• memo to sarah palin: it's called a model organism, and it's very important to science that we have species that are thoroughly genetically mapped. addendum to memmo: don't run your mouth about stuff you clearly don't understand, it makes the rest of us very angry, particularly those of us wasting our time on things like flies and worms in an effort to understand very basic and yet very confusing processes.



• pursuant to the above, i've been meaning to link to this sinfest strip for a really long time. i *lurve* the obama-as-hendrix/kravitz thing. and just to make sure, the pig is a recurring character who's been around for a good while, it's just the whole "piglin" thing that's new. a later strip on the same theme is also quite good.



• wednesday's xkcd (it's all good, of course, but the sixth row of panels really made my week.



• michael flatley is still around? and, like, relevant? weird. (he was a guest judge and performer on dancing with the stars this week)



• what's with the baby boom? first my college buddy, now my doctor? these things usually happen in threes, but my doctor says since she's adopting two little filipino girls maybe that counts as three total. still gotta decide what i want to do while she's on the equivalent of maternity leave for 4 months, and it gave me something to talk to her about this morning (turns out, it's *okay* that i'm totally not ready even a little to even commit to the idea of *wanting* to have kids. probably should have gotten to that one on my own, but granted this is all pretty recent stuff that i haven't had time to integrate. it's just... weirdly overwhelming to have people i know becoming parents. of course, that's not to say i'm not totally thrilled for everyone! it's just new information, you know?



• mmm hot chocolate with whiskey. i love cooler weather!

we're out of the old place. we spent this evening scrubbing the four square feet of linoleum and making a token effort to clean the windows (which i realized we had rarely if ever done for the last 4 years). it was odd to leave though. i didn't like the place that much. it was too hot or too cold, it got bright sun when i tried to watch jeopardy, the carpet was dumb and there was no free space. but it had a nice view, and having a residential permit made parking for football games easier. and it was home for four years, which is longer than i've lived in one room since high school.

i think the main reason i was attached (besides the obvious inertia issue) was that it gave me the illusion of still being a college student. i had a tiny living space with university-owned furniture and i could complain a lot about the place. that means i never really left college, right? and college felt safe and my friends were there and i liked who i was there.

except it wasn't the same. it was illusory. it probably made things worse to keep trying to convince myself that nothing was different.

so now we've moved on, and i am sure it's for the better. i just have to get past my moving-every-four-years baggage and finish unpacking and things will be easier to deal with. unpacking is important.

pictures really truly forthcoming eventually maybe for reals

the last week of my life
advisor: hurry hurry faster faster but oh no we can't sit down and plan out what we'll do each day, it's much more productive to COMPLETELY FAKE IT every morning

this morning
me: well, at least i don't have too much to do today. luciferase assay, precipitate the RNA from last night so we can use it tomorrow for the thing that has to be done soon for some unknown reason.

the awesome apartment building kim and mike live in: i am available for a more or less reasonable price! but you have to commit to me by the 7th!

me: *panic* what if the move is too much for me? what if i can't handle not only commuting but carpooling with sal and having our work schedules chained together? what if it turns out living in a tiny 6th floor apartment with no a/c was actually nice? i mean, it's nice and sunny. and hot. butbutbut....

mom: it's okay, we'll help you move and you have good judgement even when you think you don't.

me: *whimper*

advisor: hey, i noticed you came in last night to start the in-vitro transcription, that was really good of you.

me: who are you and what have you done with my advisor?

advisor: this means we can do all that stuff we were going to do tomorrow, today!

me: yeahbuWHA--?

advisor: yeah, you don't need to incubate 3hrs, just do 20 min.

me: *calculates how much work i now have, which includes 3-3.5 hrs of running a gel, panics more, takes a pill and goes to pour gels*

sal: are you busy today?

me: ....

sal: according to stanford housing we kinda have to be out by the 1st. apparently it's *only* $400 to cancel our contract now, but after the 1st it's $400 plus rent until someone moves into the apartment.

me: !!!

sal: soooo do you have time to run over there with me to see what needs to be done?

me: *whimper*

me: *blogs angst in attempt to feel better*

blog: *fails to help overmuch*

me: damn.

and, scene.

it feels very weird to realize that i'm doing now almost exactly what i was doing exactly four years ago. there were more people (not to mention more mead) then, so it's kind of a lonely realization. nice cyclic theme though (all this has happened before, and will happen again). sometimes i wish i didnt put such significance on dates-- it just focuses all the emotions into a point on that one silly date.