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.

I gave a talk at department seminar today. I was more nervous than I expected, which in turn made me annoyed at myself, which made me more anxious. But the talk went pretty well-- I didn't feel super great about it, but then, I didn't feel super great about it when I won the very prestigious (hah) award at our tri-lab retreat in April. Feeling competent is typically sufficient for me, so that's good. Sal thinks I need to "sell" the work better-- I'm sort of an advocate of letting data speak for itself unless you're begging for funding, in which case you kind of have no choice but to become Dr. Billy Mays. Anyway, that may be something I have to work on. It's not like I don't think the work is interesting or useful, I just don't want to overdo it, you know? Anyway...

What made today kind of special for me was the audience. Technically, last friday was supposed to be the last department seminar of the year, but my Advisor and one other prof had forgotten to sign up 10 months ago, so the department went ahead and had another one. But it wasn't highly advertised (usually we get 4-5 emails about these things, but not this time) so there weren't many people there. Hell, there were only two from my lab there, counting Advisor! But it was the people who came that mattered-- a handful of classmates and friends (who all sacrificed a full hour of their friday to come support me!), a postdoc I'd chatted with about my project while using equipment in her lab, the PI of the other speaker (who asked a great question for which I had specifically prepared a great answer for!) and, best of all, my parents were able to come.

Now, I know it's no Charger game, but this is what I do, and the work I present is good (IMHO) so to have them there watching was incredibly cool. I think a little of my extra nerves were due to wanting to show off for them, but the payoff was well worth it. Made me realize exactly how exciting my (eventual) thesis defense will be! That, coupled with the two or three defenses I've been to recently are actually pretty motivating!

I learned a lot about nematodes today. Also I got a new icon.

This little guy's name is C. elegans and he's my new bestest buddy in the whole world. When I don't accidentally smash him or slice him in half. Adults are about 1mm long to give you a sense of scale.

Today I set up a cross to make a background strain for the cross I actually want to do. Having never worked with any animals, it feels a little odd to be encouraging little critters to mate. But I persevere. It was fun to learn a totally new protocol, and I feel like I learned a LOT on the first go-- the mechanics of picking worms from one plate to another, as well as basic stuff like identifying genders, growth stages and mutant phenotypes. Dunno if this project will go anywhere, but at the very least it's good for me!

Though it also meant that I *just* got back to lab to eat lunch, so I'm a little dizzy. Water and sodium time for me.

Also, I got a new icon ;)

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 ;)

As I twittered: I expected more glee and less abject terror on my part. I mean, it's not like I haven't been thinking about this for EVER. I still winced as I clicked the "approve submission" button. And again when they asked if I was really sure.

I feel weird. Kind of like I might cry out of sheer relief and nervousness about it being out of my hands. Off to meet Sal for a quick dinner, then tutoring. The real celebration starts tomorrow evening (who's in?!) and probably won't end until Sunday (Friday is Mom's birthday spa day, and holy mackerel do I need a massage).

I can honestly say this is a totally new realm for me. Freaky.

[Also, Advisor said I am "getting pretty good at this." so, yeah :) ]

So there's this paper.

What's its name?

I can't tell you that until it's been accepted. Unless you're nice. Or you're nice to a Cell editor on my behalf.

I've been left hanging a couple times this week already, but this evening, Advisor said we'll most likely submit tomorrow. As in, the day after today. As in, sleep once and then submit.

It's weird to not have a deadline, like, oh, everything else I've ever done-- my lit thesis, my quals paper, all the big writing jobs have all had a countdown and a due date. So having lived with this paper for so long (two previous aborted attempts over the last 2+ years, not to mention the four years of research) it's odd to think of it being... away. I'm not going to even think of saying "done," since we could be rejected (in which case I *think* RNA would publish us), or they could require more experiments because they're jerks, or at best we would still be editting post-acceptance. But still.

So I'm really excited. But I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. Freaky.

(sorry to reuse the title from my recent chat with Em/Twitter update/Facebook status, it's just how I'm feeling)

"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 )

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: )

Some new pictures are up, but more importantly, video!

So, our cats are a bit odd. Strange is uninterested by all the toys we have, and Charm couldn't care less about kitty treats (which meant we couldn't reward him after giving him medicine). Today we stopped by Petsmart, grabbed a couple little toys just as a test, and a bag of treats (crunchy this time, in case it was the texture that Charm didn't like). The rattly, fuzzy green mouse was a big hit with Strange and he spent most of the day batting it about and carrying it proudly around the apartment. Sadly, the treats were a flop with Charm. I suppose it's not a big deal, just kind of weird-- and like I said, it makes bribery very difficult.

But they're lovely. I still have occasional moments where suddenly it doesn't seem real that we actually have cats of our own. Then again, I have those moments where it seems impossible that I'm married to Sal, so sounds like it's a personal problem.

The rest of the weekend consists of more brain-melting busy work. I really should have done it literally years ago, and it'll be good to have it done, but compiling all the data from every experiment in the current version of my paper (which is currently 10,000+ characters and one figure over the Cell limit, which is really saying something) is a long and irritating job. I spent all friday doing it, and by the evening I was sure my brain had atrophied. I had a decided craving for Shakespeare in an effort to jump start the synapses. I had hoped BSG would help as well, but... yeah, not so much. Not the best episode ever.

There's also the continuing problem where I started playing Final Fantasy VII....

Anyway, I am being very distracted by BBC America, having finished a quite good episode of Doctor Who (Catherine Tate was really amazing in an almost entirely Doctor-free episode), and now enjoying Dawn French and Jackie Chan on the Graham Norton Show. Very distracting, so I'm going to call it a night on the bloggery. Allons-y!

so i'vCe been stariAng at seTquences aAll afternoGon, trying--possTibly in vain--to desigCn a rescueG mutant for oTur bigT look-how-aweCsome-we-are interGaction. my braiAn hurts, aCnd my eyes are crossing a bit. it's rTeallAy really hard to tease apart sequAence, structure, anTd energetic coCmponents ofA an interaction wChose exact location we're still guessing aAt. so right now, it's sort of tGhe sledge-hamTmer-to-the-concCrete-Alock apprGoach, rather than the slow anGd steady decoding aApproach, so to speak. just designT a ton of mutants anAd screen through them. yiTkes. C 'least it's not in the coGld room, i suppose.