ok, so i know i JUST posted ... but this is something for me to look forward to doing later and for YOU to look forward to reading and filling out later!
The I-Test (stolen from jennsylvania.com ... she wrote "Bitter Is The New Black", which an awesome book!)
* * *
I'M AMAZED ... that i can make friends with just about anyone. seriously, where did that come from?
I DOUBT ... that i'll ever buy a home in the bay area. unless i win the lottery.
I CAN’T SEE ... very well out of my right eye. damn the allergies!
I WANT TO BEAT WITH A SOCKFULL OF QUARTERS ... almost anyone that i share the road with. road rage - it's really attractive.
I'M ADDICTED ... to ricola. those swiss have a good thing going.
I FEEL BAD ... that i can't always come up with good advice. in fact, that i rarely come up with good advice. my best piece of advice? don't listen to me.
I WATCH ... more tv than any human being ever should. this season, it's studio 60, heroes, america's next top model, the nine, lost, grey's anatomy, csi, desperate housewives, brothers and sisters. thank goodness for streaming videos.
I LISTEN ... to sarah and no name at alice 97.3 in the morning. seriously, i can't wake up without it.
IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS ... i'd buy you a green dress (but not a real green dress, that's cruel).
I WANT ... things that i'm not going to publicly admit.
I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT ... oxygen.
I'M OBSESSED ... with project runway. so much so that i'm now designing my own clothes. PR season 10 baby, here i come!
I THINK CHILDREN ... are expensive.
I CAN’T WAIT ... to live in a place where i can paint the walls.
I'M PROUD ... that i can cook, despite my mother's complete lack of ability in the kitchen.
I HAVE A DREAM ... a dream about you, baby. you're gonna come through baby. ... (lotsa other lyrcs) ... you'll be swell, you'll be great. you're gonna have the whole world on a plate!
I ALWAYS WEAR ... earrings, especially big ones. they give any outfit instant personality.
I FEAR ... the dark ... and that someone will slash my achilles tendons and i won't be able to run to safety.
I WISH ... that i could get myself to focus on the task at hand.
I ONCE ACCIDENTALLY ... drunkenly connfessed things to people. oh wait, that was way more than once.
I NEVER ... go commando. eew.
I’D KILL TO ... have a peek at the future.
I MISS ... my grandma louise.
I'M LOATHE TO ADMIT ... that i'm a brat.
I’LL NEVER FORGIVE ... ABC, for moving Grey's to Thursday nights.
music: "But It's Better If You Do" by Panic! At The Disco
so, it really hasn't been all that long since i graduate college. it's been, what, a year and a half? today i was double checking the contact information for my former advisor and i ran across an aritcle on the depauw website announcing that she'd recieved a grant for her research. as i was reading the article, i looked at the pictures of her and i was like - who is this woman? this was my advisor? it's like i had NEVER SEEN HER BEFORE in my life. it was really odd to have this overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity (disfamiliarity?), especially since i was clearly IN one of the pictures in the article.
i've had this happen to me before on multiple occasions, but always with the more peripheral players in my life - acquaintances that i hung out with once or twice, former elementary school classmates, people that happened to attend the same church as i did - but never with someone as big as my academic advisor ... who was also my research advisor that i worked with for FOUR YEARS of my career. i babysat for this woman!
i hope that none of my real friends end up fading away in my mind. i don't want to wake up one day and not recognize kris, meggers, lady (that's you amanda), yunks ... man, there are so many of you i never want to forget.
maybe i have early onsent alzheimers.
and yes, i know it's not funny to joke about that sort of thing. but something is seriously gone awry with my memory.
music: "But It's Better If You Do" by Panic! At The Disco
the original post is from 10/9/2006 ...
1. you love high heels, but wearing them into lab is never a good idea ... especially when you spend at least 6 hr/day on your feet.
2. learn how to keep your damn mouth shut ... especially when you've been drinking.
3. post-its are awesome.
in other news, i love my lab. yesterday, i wrote on our orders white board that we needed a puppy. you might ask - why a puppy, they must be incredibly inconvienient in a lab environment? cause they're cute, dammit. anyway, much to my surprise, my labmates also posted their wishes on our orders board. karine wants a green card, lu-en wants a transporter machine, maria wants a phd, stacie wants an industry position. realizing that a puppy was the most likely thing to happenb on the list, i went ahead and added "passing my thesis proposal defense" on the board. picture to come soon, because, honestly, it's so damn cute :).
apparently, having one journal is not enough ... so i started another one - thedailylivi.
why? because i can.
this one will be dedicated to the longer, less frequent spastic ramblings, with thedailylivi will be dedicated to the shorter, daily spastic ramblings.
location: corner of alma and hawthorne, dowtown palo alto
players: our lovely and talented heroine OLIVIA super-shuttle driver (who shall be referred to as: SUPER-SHITTLE DRIVER)
scene: OLIVIA, enjoying her drive home from the grocery store by singing along to some panic! at the disco, turns onto alma street from el camino real. realizing she must turn left onto hawthorne, she dutifully puts on her blinker and slows for the turn. to her dismay, many a car is driving on alma at this time of the evening, she stops and waits for the cross traffic to clear.
at the same moment, SUPER-SHITTLE DRIVER pulls up to the stop sign on hawthorne and alma and, polietly, indicates that he wants to turn left onto alma by turning on his blinker. SUPER-SHITTLE DRIVER appears very anxious to turn left, as he creeps up past the stop sign and practically forces himself onto the road.
after what seems like an eternity waiting (and with a whole long line of cars behind her), the traffic finally clears and OLIVIA takes the left turn. as she turns, she looks at the SUPER-SHITTLE DRIVER ...
SUPER-SHITTLE DRIVER: (mouths) BITCH!
OLIVIA is clearly shaken (not stirred) at this defamation of her character. after all ... SHE HAD THE RIGHT OF WAY ... SHE WAS ON A MAJOR ROAD AND DEMONSTRABLY NOT AT A STOP SIGN!!!!!!!!!!!
ps - if this was actually in a movie, i would ideally be played by sara rue. and the rat bastard would be played by philip seymour hoffman ... cause he's an excellent actor. him or william h. macy.
ok, so clearly my committee members aren't nearly as powerful or as animated (ha) as pokemon. they do not possess super powers and they most definitely don't fit into small little spheres that are kept on my person to defend me from my enemies. (admittedly, it would be easier to schedule meetings with them if they were - all i would have to do is pull them out of my pocket, emphatically state their name, and BAM! instant committee! ... but that's besides the point ... and leads to funny mental images). these last few weeks of my life feel like i've been a character on pokemon - trying to capture the best ones to be on my team. after losing many an (email) battle, i've got my three committee members. AND i have a date - DECEMBER 13, 2006, 1-3 PM.
t-minus 2 months and 2 days until i defend my thesis proposal.
in the immortal (?) words of the killers, 'everything, will be alright, everything, will be alright, everything, will be alriiiiiiight.'
ps - go ahead, make fun of me for the pokemon refernce. i would just like to point out that it was way big in hawaii before it got to the mainland and got to be such a craze. so, i guess, i win?
Interpreting your results: An average Squid Quotient is around 100. A SQ of 100 means you have a normal affinity for squid. A SQ above 100 means you have an attraction or fondness for squid. Below 100 means that you should probably stay away from the deep ocean.
ps - i don't know how this is relevant to my thesis proposal, but i'll find a way to incorporate it! personally, i think it's way important that i have a fondness for squid :)
music: "Burning Down The House" by The Talking Heads
two things i walked by this morning:
1. our flammables cabinet 2. our fire alarm system, labeled 'out of order'.
not gonna lie, i'm a little concerned.
just in case (and because you can never say it enough), all of my friends should know that i think that you're awesome and that i couldn't imagine going thorugh life without you!
hope you're all having a wonderful, not-dying-in-a-fiery-blaze, day!
if you've been paying any attention to the news recently, you might be aware that the nobel prizes are being awarded this week. if you've been paying extra special attention, you might know who the winners are. it seems that this year, lightning has struck stanford twice - andrew fire and roger kornberg recieved the prizes in medicine and chemistry, respectively. andy fire (& craig mello) won for the discovery of RNAi, whereby transcribed genes are silenced by double-stranded RNA. roger kornberg won for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription (his daddy, arthur kornberg (emeritus at stanford), won the nobel prize in medicine in 1959 for his discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). (incidentally, andy fire was one of my lecturers for principles of biotechniques ... and he DIDN'T talk about RNAi; we were all quite disappointed by this).
anyway, on tuesday, there was a celebration for andy fire after it was announced that he recieved the nobel prize. i couldn't make the celebration on tuesday due to journal club. today, there was a celebration for roger kornberg. the dean of the medical school (dean pizzo), the president of the university (hennessey), the head of the structural bio department (????? .... i should know, but alas, i don't), arthur and roger all gave speeches, which i will reiterate to all of you that couldn't be there.
dean pizzo: stanford is awesome. arthur is awesome for starting the research program here at the medical school. stanford medical school is more awesome than stanford university. yay roger.
hennessey: stanford is awesome. not only is arthur awesome for starting the research program here at the medical school, but stanford is awesome because we have the stanford linear accelerator center (SLAC). without slac, roger couldn't have done the work he did. yay roger. ps - we're going to be starting a huge research initiative next year (give us money, bitches!)!
structural bio dude: stanford is awesome. structural bio is awesome. i bow to your greatness, roger.
dean pizzo: now i get to introduce arthur. thanks for getting jiggy with your wife back in the day and knocking her up with roger. ha ha.
arthur: stanford is awesome. funding agencies are awesome (give us money, bitches!). cute story about his son (dad takes 8 year old son to lab for a day every once and a while. dad asks son what he wants for christmas. son replies: 'i want to spend a whole WEEK in lab!')
roger: holy crap, this is happening to me? all the people i have ever worked with are awesome. my teachers (nobel laureate paul berg among them) are awesome. i love you all.
dean pizzo: fooooooooood!
ps - roger kornberg's son is totally hot.
and that's how it went down, at least in my mind :).
i know it's thursday. and it's a little late to be thinking/writing about things that happened last weekend (move on already!) but i'm going to write about it anyway.
last week was the welcoming party for incoming graduate students (i know, i'm a second year - but it's FREE BEER!). amy and i headed on over and met up with a groupd of 'older' graduate students to chat and enjoy the free beer. all is well, the beer is good, etc. at one point of the night, i'm talking to two guys; let's call them 'guy A' and 'guy B' for lack of creativity. i've known guy A for a while now (hence why he gets alphabetical 'superiority') and i used to like him back in the day ... that is before he made a move for my roommate (bad move buddy, you had a sure thing here!). needless to say, i stopped liking him right then and there (this situation has happened to me too many times, and i'm proud to say that i've gotten pretty good at moving on). guy B is new in the picture, and he's totally (totally) awesome. i can't quite tell if there is anything other than friend potential with guy B, but he's definitely higher on the 'i like you' list (no, i don't actually keep a list, but it is a good idea) than guy A. so, there i am, talking to 'you're awesome and maybe someday i'd like to date you' guy B and 'i'm sooooo over you' guy A. AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS JUMP GUY A. i hate myself.
i used to have such good taste in men - such good taste in men that my friends dated all the guys i liked. kristin is dating my former crush andy (3.5 years!) and emily dated kyle (sigh) for, like, a long time. WHERE DID MY TASTE IN GOOD MEN GO?
music: "mad world" off the donnie darko soundtrack
all of you people that are really good at keeping up with your LJ (i pretty much mean megs, amanda, and damon)are amazing, because i don't know how you do it. seriously.
oh, and you know what jesus would freakin' do? split up this ridiculously long post into multiple lj cuts. because jesus, he's down with livejournal and he loves himself some html.
music: "They Are Night Zombies!! ... " by Sufjan Stevens
seeing as it's been a while, i'll update in bullet-point form:
-- i passed quals! (yay!) -- i joined olivia martinez's lab (yay!) -- i've got a promising side project going (yay!) -- i've got a good idea of what my thesis proposal will entail (yay!) -- i've got about a million papers to read about said thesis proposal (sigh) -- i moved to downtown PA in close proximity to a whole bunch of my friends (double yay!) -- my 23rd birthday was amazing (yay! although it would have been more kickass if all you other people not living in CA were there!) -- my dream of going to a party in an art gallery (SF MOMA, with a free guided tour!) was realized thanks to my lovely lab mates maria & stacie! (super duper yay!) -- i got sweet new digital editing software and more memory for my Mac (yay! especially the part where the moeny for these things came from my book budget money, so i didn't pay a penny!) -- social events this year for the immuno program are going to rock (yay for me, amy p & nic as social chairs!)
in conclusion, life rocks. i do miss all of my friends terribly though. the world should be smaller.
thanks to amanda for my awesome new shirt :) and the complement on my boobies ;).
i kind of suck at being a scientist. and it's mainly because i have a hard time with the unknown. i like knowing the right answer - i hate being in a state of limbo where i may be wrong or i may be right (and i really, really hate being flat out wrong). because of this, i'm having one hell of a time finishing my qualification exam. i don't like answering a question by SPECULATING. i become completely paralyzed by doubting my speculative abilities, so much so that putting even a well-informed speculation on paper makes me feel like a failure. this probably doesn't make sense to you people reading this (if any of you are ... and i'll admit that it doesn't quite make sense to me the way i've written it ... but i get where i'm coming from).
maybe i should embrace the freedom of the unknown. since the answer isn't known at the moment, and all i was asked to do was speculate, how could i be wrong? well, i guess i could be wrong if my answer was something crazy, like "differential signaling through a shared receptor is the result of the mass consumption of sugar by panda bears". but i doubt i'd make that my answer. although it is tempting.
is school over yet?
EDIT: all of this worry over 2 pages double-spaced. seems kind of silly. i mean, honestly, there's like no space to even write an answer!
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