birthday loot part 1

it's 4 days early, but if you're a fan of the show NCIS (which is just about my favorite show ever, ranked with family guy, the office and house), you'll understand why kz gave me this hippo tonight, and why i named him jethro:



he doesn't fart, but man is he cute.

happy candy corn holiday

who eats that shit?

today, i am dressed up as a disgruntled grad student who did not sleep well last night. please note my greasy hair, dirty jeans, unseasonable combo of ski hat and sunglasses, and my empty wallet.

when's the last time...

...that you accidentally got completely shitfaced on a sunday and had no choice but to call out sick on monday, such was the magnitude of your hangover?

it's a new thing for me. i don't reccomend it. but i really appreciate certain things (general health, solid food) more than i did yesterday.

wine, vodka and soda, and white russians intermingled: never again.
this day, and the homework i have yet to do, is a righteous punishment indeed.

what?

nablopomo: because i want to be like e$, and because clearly, i don't feel as though i'm being challenged enough these days. always looking for something additonal to do...

3 down, 7 to go...

i'm alive. i don't know how it went; it was 2.5 hours of nothing but brain-to-hand. i won't find out for over a week, probably, if i passed this section or not.

one of the questions was really shitty, mostly because it was better suited to discussion or like, one of them open book exams that we don't do anymore: describe a series of experiments to determine whether orotodine monophosphate is a chemical or structural inducer of ribozyme self-cleavage in the 5' UTR of the OPRT operon. be specific and include proper controls and unambiguous methods. UNAMBIGUOUS? first, i'd synthesize some OMFG, and i would conjugate it to some WTF. After incubation with SRSLY, i would run it out and sequence the fragments of OMGWTFBBQ. then i would analyze it using some DIAF.

for fuck's sake. weekend, let our tumultuous affair begin.

top three

i'm feeling pretty good right now, even T-minus 19.5 hours to the exam and counting. and i realized it's because even though most of your life is dictated by others - whether you get hired, whether you get fired, if you qualify for the loan, if you'd be a good tenant, if you deserve the speeding ticket or not, if you make the grade - some things are yours for the taking, and aren't up to anyone else but you. and once you figure out what those are for yourself, you don't have to be afraid of anything.

i mean, there's always true love, fast cars, and techno. how bad can anything be?

just in case

(mom: i swear i'm studying. this is my 10-minute break since my ass is asleep).

i'm making a list of things i'm good at in case i sort of flunk out of grad school. you know, just as a security blanket. like looking at a map before driving on 495, in case it gets backed up and you need to bail. but that's a bad example, because 495 is always backed up, and i'm trying to be optimistic here.

things i'm good at:
-making flourless chocolate torte
-burping pretty loud
-mixing liquor, beer, and wine in 1 night
-eating 3 grand slams at denny's (that was only once though).
-working on cars (perhaps i flatter myself, how sad is it that my automotive hobbies are the basis for what's left of my ego right now)
-making up fatalistic disgnoses of imagined noises in my car
-paying bills on time
-talking about people "behind their backs" when they are like, right there
-making racially insensitive remarks that only i think are hilarious
-reading 19th centuury literature with zeal
-cracking myself up
-yoga, when my knee is ok
-art
-rowing! i was really good! how long do i get to capitalize on that?
-overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles with nothing more than coffee and determination when all seems lost...wait...i think that means...
ok, back to studying :)

potty prattle

officially, first post from the bathroom.

as i pried myself away from my laptop with a pained expression, i asked kz, somewhat rhetorically, if we got wireless in the bathroom...and i was like, we do?? brilliant!!
we may have a 3' stack of racecar engineering, F1, and playboy mags in here, but i swear i've read them all already. this is like christmas coming early.

in other news, i got a really flattering, surprisingly un-creepy comment from some anonymous reader of my blog(z). i keep forgetting that people actually read what i write, because few seldom venture to comment. feel free; i swear my acerbic tongue is reserved for when it's truly warrented. except for that one asshole who commented on my mom's photoblog, of a picture of me and my grandma, that he thought i was hawt or something. what a douche. that really reminds me of the time i ventured out to revere beach on the blue line, during that electrifying summer of being single in boston before kz began to woo me. as soon as i hit the water, it was like sharks and chum; i had a circle of wee little swarthy brazilian men flocking around me, and one of them announced, after some polite banter about the weather, that he wanted to bite me. because i was so hot or beacuse he was in dire need of a substantial meal on his contractor's pay, i cannot say. i was glad to run into my postdoctoral boss and his son a few yards down the beach; that was some serious deus ex machina shit, i tell you. ah, back in the day. revere beach and lessons learned; i miss you not at all. so nice to be where i am now.

why, just why?

i saw 2 retarded license plates today, both NH. go figure.

first one: UCONN on a silver acura SUV with misaligned HID's. just in case you were wondering if thier two favorite sports are basketball and hogging the left lane.

second one: CHEM E on a beat up red hyundai everyman econobox. i wouldn't brag about my intellectual or profressional prowess unless i were driving a faster car. the only sm4rt jokes that belong on a shitbox are something clever that only applies to a smaller audience. like an ATP hydrolysis reaction. that would be ok. then i might believe you about your wit and stunning intellect, which earned you pride and not a mercedes.

and on another note, why fry tortilla chips? just why? not crunchy or greasy enough? so i can have something satisfying with my fat-free salsa? just pass me the easy cheese and sign me up for gastric bypass surgery already. sheesh.

"sick" day

i'm home sick.

i have a sore throat and a pounding headache. it's not keeping me bent over the toilet bowl, or in a moaning lump on the couch under my dinosaur blanket. it's just enough to keep me from feeling like driving 2 hours and being on my feet over a stinky flask of LB, inducing an e coli culture and pouring my own acrylamide gels.

well, then. if i'm not dying, time to be productive...go to the chiropractor for the head pain. call the dartmouth clinic to complain, for the 7th time, that my immunization bill needs to be revised before i agree to pay it. call some skin care products club and say no, i do not want monthly shipments of foundation, thank you so much. download the form to change my social security card. download the next 2 homework assignments. attempt to print all that out and remember we're out of ink. track down my ancient printer's toner serial number. call staples and ascertain availability and price. start heating up the homemade chicken soup i brewed last night. clean the kitchen because i can't bear it. consider whether i'm feeling well enough to stand in line at the social security office (i think an e coli culture is more attractive, personally). consider whether i can do my homework without printing out my reading material. consider if i actually will do my homework even if i do go to staples, buy ink, fix printer, and manage to print out my reading material.

what happened to those sick days where i ate a whole box of honey maid graham crackers, drank a full gallon of tropicana pulp-free calcium enriched OJ, and caught bits of montel and the gory parts of 'the 13th warrior' with commercials as i came in and out of my thera flu daze?

i miss the laziness at which i used to excel. i think maybe that part of my genome has been silenced since i turned 25. i search for frantic reasons to exhaust myself when i happen upon some rare free time. i must be getting ready to make babies or something. bleh.

procrastinatory list-making

things to do in lieu of studying on the day you took off for studying (in no particular order):

- go to probate court and change legal name
- write inflammatory email to head of benefits at old job regarding 5 month-old immunization bill
- make pureed butternut squash, never having done it before, and behold the mess with awe
- clean kitchen
- go to barnes and noble to study; find no outlet for laptop
- go to borders to study; find outlet, but find out wireless costs $$ after you've already ordered tea. mope for an hour, waiting for tea to cool
- watch the second half of 'mystic pizza' for the umpteenth time while eating too much squash and apple cider
- bitch to your mom for 20 min about the magnitude of the immunization bill and the state of health care in the country
- hunt around the house for aleve, clutching your abdomen and moaning
- write a blog post while waiting for the heating pad to warm up

was i this bad in undergrad about putting off studying? no. i'll tell you why: i didn't have my own apartment, a car, a laptop, wireless, cable, or civilization within 10 miles of school. what all i took for granted.

retreating

it was with great trepidation that i regarded our two-day research retreat in woods hole since i first heard of it during orientation. two days and two nights of nothing but university-affiliated research presentations, mediocre food, free mediocre booze, and unlimited binge drinking and faculty dance moves and moonlight skinny dipping.
i went because it was "required," but i have new news for you, my invisible internet friends: nothing is required anymore when you're 25, except death and taxes. and one of those is negotiable.

the past 36 hours have been the most boring, tedious, stomach-churning journey into further disillusionment. i thought i had hit my max long ago when, at my first research job, i happened upon my post-doctoral boss taking test tube shots out of waitress' cleavage and playing quarters on a beer-slicked bar stool in new orleans. oh mentors, how easily from the pedestal you do fall. but just because i've seen it once, doesn't mean i want to see it again.

at 3 am, i let in my drunken roommate (some loquacious broad hitherto unbeknownst to me) who was pounding on the door because she couldn't figure out how to work her key. having told her at dinner that i managed to find a ride home tonight and was going to forgo the DJ/keg/mixer soiree, she wasted no time in finding some random urchin and littering the room with their sweat-laden clothes, pausing only in their fetid fetishes to let me in to collect my luggage. bleh, i thought i was done with having to endure that rank college olfaction of evening activities.

and so, i am on my way home, to be with kz, my teddy bear fred, my comfy bed, my bathroom with so many motorsports magazines to pass the time, and my healthy pantry and full DVR. sweet jesus, i love my normal life.