Ramblings of an Overworked Grad Student

Today has been a little strange, in that it's had major ups and downs.

1) I woke up this morning and realized there was no way I was going to be able to fit my experiment in between TAing (Down)

2) I did said TAing, and one of my students this year is room mates with three students I taught last year. Said students told current student that I was awesome. (Double Up)

3) I was involved in a four car accident this evening. I stopped (more sudden than I'd like, without slamming my breaks). The three cars behind me didn't. No damage to my car, but the car behind me has a loose back bumper, and the third car in line was smoking under the hood. The fourth car had no damage and drove off. I tried to, but they wanted my information. They failed to take the appropriate information, and proceeded to blame me for the accident. Because I stopped. And they didn't. Conclusion, drivers in London, ON, are idiots who can't, in fact, drive. (Double Down)

4) I found out V, my awesome Bulgarian lab mate is moving on Thursday, and tomorrow will be the last day I see her for a while. She is my closes friend in London, so it will suck (Down)

5) I played dodgeball with my lab group tonight. We're terrible. We're so terrible they need to create a third league for people of our caliber. It was a lot of fun (Up)

6) I managed to run for ten minutes straight. I can't remember the last time I was able to run for ten minutes. It was thrilling. (Up)

7) torchwood_santa is nearly ready to go live. I've gotten permission from a lot of the major coms to start promoting, but I'm not sure the best time to start with that. Signups will go from Oct 15 to Nov 1, but I worry that two weeks isn't enough time... Opinions? (neutral)

8) My D/C BB artist keeps sending me really awesome artwork. I'm excited beyond belief. (Up)


On a side note, I thought I would be less busy this fall, but the opposite is true. Monday and Thursday I play badminton. Tuesdays I play dodgeball. It looks like Wednesdays I'll be volunteering at a retirement home that runs an Alzheimer's outreach group, and Sundays I'm playing innertube waterpolo...

That writing I was going to do? Um... yeah... I think sleep and I are going to be going our seperate ways. Same with the little thing called free time.

On the plus side, it means that I've recovered from my mysterious vitamin deficiency (I think).


Day 14 - What is your favorite book pairing?

This is a tough one. I don't really get into books the same way I do into TV. I read a lot, but I mostly take it at face value and don't consider much beyond that. Looking back at my bookshelves, I'd have to say it was Fitz and Fool from the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies by Robin Hobb. Granted, she refused to acknowledge the romantic and sexual relationships she'd built up between the two characters, and doesn't allow fanfiction, so it could never be explored very well outside the series. Still, I always love them, just a little bit.


Day 15 - What is your favorite real life pairing?
Day 16 - What is the absolute worst pairing?
Day 17 - A pairing you thought would never work out, but did?
Day 18 - What is the cutest pairing?
Day 19 - A pairing you've rooted for since the beginning?
Day 20 - The "can't stand the sexual tension anymore" pairing?
Day 21 - A pairing you like and no one else understands why?
Day 22 - A pairing you hate and no one else understands why?
Day 23 - A crazy love triangle/quadrilateral that worked out great?
Day 24 - A crazy love triangle/quadrilateral that worked out badly?
Day 25 - A pairing that was/would-be adorable, but could never work out?
Day 26 - A pairing that you hated and ended up loving?
Day 27 - A pairing that you loved and ended up hating?
Day 28 - A pairing that you will never understand?
Day 29 - What ship had the best proposal?
Day 30 - Your favorite ship forever and ever and ever?

I'm leaving for a weeks vacation tomorrow, and the stress levels from trying to get everything done before that leave me with two (mostly rhetorical) questions

1) Why is it that supervisors expect you to have nothing better to do than wait around to meet with them?

I check my e-mail with breakfast, before bed, and several times in between. I can adjust my schedule to meet with people pretty easily because of this, so long as you let me know a day ahead. Not the day of. And if you want to meet the day of, you should be checking your e-mail more frequently >.>

2) Why is it, that the more you want something the work, the more likely it is to screw up, but when you're ready to wash your hands of something, it miraculously works?

I have no love for science right now. >.>

On a side note, big bang still isn't finished. Expecting to have it done by Monday (a week later than planned) because lab work is stupid.

Dear fleshlycherry:

Thank you for posting the link for the Eminem/Rihanna song. It's most enjoyable. I'm going to proceed with listening to it to infinity.

As a reward, I think I'm going to start sending you Flobots. Do you already have Handlebars?

Love,
Me

In other news, I'm sick, and my lab work still isn't working. I'm also torn between working out, cleaning my apartment, watching Stonehenge Apocalypse (because it has Misha Colins), and watching Criminal Minds (because I just went out and bought the first three seasons).

I also know how Rose and the Doctor met, and it makes episode 11 in season two make a lot more sense. I didn't know where the mannequins had come from.

Finally, I had a not!date with my cute/nerdy friend, and now I'm torn between asking him on an actual date or not, because he's the room mate of the other friend I turned down, and that would make sexy times very awkward.

So, yesterday I was supposed to be home. I was supposed to have caught a flight from Sao Paulo to Chicago overnight, and then, after a long layover in Chicago, flown back to Canada.

Instead, the flight was cancelled, and we sent to a very fancy looking hotel near the airport at 2am, and told we would be contacted about rescheduling. The hotel beds were the most uncomfortable I'd ever slept in, and the first I heard about the flight was when my lab mates went to the airport and scored us some tickets from Sao Paulo to Atlanta, then Chicago, then Canada.

We renegotiated, and got ticekts to New York, then Toronto, then home, and so here I am, in JFK airport, killing time for the next flight. I'm tired, with a head ache, and I just want to get home now.

Right this moment, there are several things I should be doing, and the reasons why I'm not doing them.

1) I should be paying more attention to the microscope scans going on, in case the image goes out of focus --> There's only so long I can watch the computer take 2.5mins to scan an image, and it's really hard to tell if it's gone out of focus.

2) I should be reading over the Physiology notes so I'll be ready to put together a tutorial for tomorrow afternoon. --> PLEASE, OH GOD PLEASE LET THIS COURSE BE OVER!!!

3) I should be digesting PCR product so I can ligate it into a new vector and transform bacteria so that I have awesome myc-tagged proteins --> I'm on the microscope and need to be watching it scan incase it goes out of focus.

4) Writing reel_torchwood fics --> I'm supposed to be doing lab work.

5) Feeding cells --> I'm on the microscope...

So instead of doing any of these things, although I am sitting in the room with the microscope, occasionally checking to see if the image is still in focus (looks good right now), I'm on LJ, compulsively checking to see if people have updated fun things to read. There should be more, because I recently got into deancastiel, but I aparently read more than people update...

And now the image is out of focuse, so I wil pause the scan, start the timer, re-focus the microscope, and repeat.

This may be why I spent most of yesterday morning on the verge of a panic attack, nearly in tears... Despite the fact that my life doesn't suck, it's really not that great at the moment >.>

I'm thinking things will greatly improve once I've got the flight confirmation for Brazil, so that I can get the Visa, so that I can be certain I'm actually going.

So, I've been exercising a lot lately, which makes me feel better, and strangely sexier, despite the fact that my old pants still don't fit. I'm okay with that, because there are nicer pants in my wardrobe now.

Stuff in the lab is both interesting, and highly messed up. Turns out the reason I haven't been getting some results is because the plasmids the other lab gave me don't encode for any protein. Also, I managed to switch two plasmids around, though I'm not sure when it happened. Worst case I've lost two weeks of work. I also can't seem to get my cells to stick to confocal microscopy dishes, no matter how hard I try, or what cells I use. This is frustrating, because I've gotten some really cool results previously.

On the plus side, my supervisor wants to send me to this fancy "summer camp" for grad students in Jasper this June, and there is this course on translational science (taking research from lab bench to hospital bed, effectively) being held in Brazil in April, and I'm thinking of applying. I don't have any papers, and I might not have any results for an abstract, but it sounds like fun, and it's free.

They're actually both free, which means I might actually get out of the southwestern Ontario (and the country!) this year.

In real life, I met a cute, funny guy who spent Saturday night flirting with me, but I have inside sources who tell me he refers to his girlfriend as "the current one," meaning 1) he is seeing someone, and 2) he's a bit of a douche. It reminds me enough of past situations that I will continue to remind myself that it is not worth getting involved.

Instead, I have a date with a boy from e-harmony, and *fingers crossed* he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who will apoligize for calling my friend a bitch by saying it seems like she consumes a bowl of carnation insta-bitch every morning.

I really just want to sleep a lot, though.

Short post regarding writing. For someone who has become quite used to writing 100 word drabbles in present tense, I'm finding this Merlin_Santa thing rather mind fucking. It's growing on 5000 words and still going. And this is after I cut out 90% of the idea...

To top it off, I'm watching Alice, some really messed up rendition of Alice in Wonderland that is equally full of mindfuckery and quite awesome.

I think my brain will explode.

I am an awesome TA, because I repeatedly reschedule with people who cancel on me for extra lessons, and because I arrange not one, but two review sessions for my students during their exam breaks.

That, and I buy them candy.

I wonder if I should get them to nominate me for some teaching awards.

Additionally, I may have just detected a novel protein interaction in my research, which would help to explain why my protein does funny things in the brain as we age.

Hurray! Topic to chase, which will potentially get me a trip to Hawaii for the International Alzheimer's conference this summer.

(Because I really, desperately want to leave southern Ontario!).

Started my PhD about two months ago.  Managed to develop a strange and twisted love for BBC's Merlin during that time.  Expect to see some fics popping up here between experiments and gaming, among other things.

Cheers!